I have had some great discussions on Twitter. Professional discussions, discussions about parenting, conversations with friends. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that you can have a quality professional discussion with multiple people (some of whom you may not normally follow) in that medium. I have also gotten great information and advice in response to “querying the hive” on Twitter. In spite of what people might say about its value, I have gotten a lot out of Twitter professionally.

But if I try to recall those conversations, that great piece of advice, or that link to that article that someone posted to Twitter maybe a year ago, I usually find myself at a dead-end. While Twitter can be a great medium for having conversations with many, many knowledgeable and interesting people, I am frustrated by the ephemeral nature of those conversations. I was working on creating slides for a presentation yesterday, and I remembered that a friend had posted a link on Twitter to an infographic that would have been really useful to me, but it was a long time ago and would have been nearly impossible to find. I ended up searching Google for over 20 minutes before I finally put in the right keywords and found a blog post that included the link I was looking for.

In theory, people could bookmark the permalinks of tweets that they think they might use in the future, but often, we don’t know what we might use in the future. I also can’t find a good way to actually archive a conversation on Twitter amongst a distributed group of individuals. And maybe that’s ok. Maybe, in that way, Twitter mimics the real world, where we don’t record our conversations and have to rely on our memory to recall what was said.

But it’s not just Twitter. Very few of us are only having conversations in one space. Twitter. FriendFeed. Google Plus. Facebook. I have friends in all of those and while some are friends in all of those spaces, many of them I can only interact with in one of them. I have given up on FriendFeed because I just don’t have the time (and I never got into Google Plus), but I know I am missing meaningful interactions with friends I care deeply about. But who can be everywhere? Is there anyone who can have meaningful interactions with their networks in all of those spaces? I find that difficult to imagine. And who wants to have to go to four different places to have conversations? Do you post the same things to all of them?

Jack Vinson recently wrote about his frustrations with the overly distributed nature of our online conversations and I was happy to see that I’m not the only one bothered by this:

About a month ago, I posted my review of a book and mentioned the idea of “schedule chicken” which is a funny-but-sad problem of project management. A few days later, another friend posted a link to a video from Apollo 13 (I think) that demonstrated schedule chicken perfectly. Awesome!

The problem? Several weeks later, I have no idea where he posted that link to the video. Was it on Facebook, or Twitter, or Google+? Could it have been on LinkedIn? I hunted about, but having no idea where to start, I was quickly frustrated at the lack of search capability in the various platforms and the lack of ability to have control of my stream of stuff!

I’ve been blogging for nearly seven years now and my blog is an amazing record of my changing interests, views and more. It’s also a great record — through comments and trackbacks — of the conversations I’ve had and that others have had about my ideas. You can really get a sense of the tenor of conversations around certain topics in the past by looking at my blog comments. Though there are certainly things I’d like to delete from that history, it does represent me at a specific time in my professional and personal development and I appreciate having that window into the “me” of two, four, or six years ago. And how many times have I gone back to a post of mine it for ideas for an article or a presentation?

And blogging certainly was distributed too. Lots of different people writing about similar things in different spaces all across the Web. People continuing conversations not only in comments on a specific post, but on their own blogs. But with comments and trackbacks, it still is relatively easy to follow the thread of a conversation that happened many years ago across the blogosphere. This is something we lost when we jumped into the stream. And maybe that’s ok most of the time, but there are moments when we might like a record of those conversations; where what we feel we (or others) are writing about or linking to is significant.

I have found my blog posts quoted and cited in dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles over the years. It’s gratifying to know that what I’ve written is impacting scholarship. And it certainly makes the case for blogging to be considered as scholarship. For someone like me who is on the tenure track and has a blog that one could argue has had an impact on our profession, it is important to me that blogging is considered legitimate scholarship (not on the level of a refereed article, but scholarship nonetheless). And that’s part of why I feel disappointed that so much of the professional conversation is moving to Twitter. Will Tweets ever be cited in the scholarly literature? I find that unlikely, not only because of their length, but who the heck could actually find it when they need to cite it years later? And if the conversation is leaving the blogosphere, will blogs like mine still be important parts of the scholarly conversation or will there be even more of a wall up between “real scholarship” and “social media.”

I know it’s futile to argue for a return to blogging as the primary means of professional conversation in social media. But I think it’s valuable to consider what we lose by replacing blogging with steam-based social media (not supplementing, but replacing). A loss of control, of history, of scholarly relevance and perhaps of deeper and more meaningful discussions (though I know I risk sounding like Michael Gorman with his “blog people” screed). There are things I post to Twitter that I think others might like to know about that I don’t feel merit an entire blog post. Twitter has a lot of advantages over blogs for a lot of things. But it is not an adequate replacement for the kind of thoughtful conversations one can have via blogs. There were a lot of blogs that I loved years ago that have become nearly (or truly) defunct as their authors have moved to Twitter or FriendFeed to have the majority of their professional conversations. I know it’s just the way things go, but I can’t help but feel some disappointment that it’s the way things are going.

As someone looking to build or maintain a coherent presence online, I think there is still value to carving out one’s own space on the Web, rather than just contributing ephemeral insights through microblogging. There’s a place for both, but, for me, at least, I want to find a way to centralize and control my contribution to the profession. And I’m just not sure how to do that with what I write in “the streams.”

Since having my son, I have not been the best blogger in the world, but that doesn’t meant that I’m not thinking about blogging. I probably have a year’s worth of posts in my head, but always time with adorable toddler trumps blogging. I wish I could be more of a Tweeter, but I find it even more difficult to find my rhythm in that medium. I can’t just sit all day at work with Tweetdeck open because it distracts me from the work I’m doing (how do people do that and actually get anything done? I’m really curious!). Popping in and out periodically doesn’t really lead to the sort of satisfying conversations I’d like to be having. And it’s the same with Google Plus and Facebook — I just can’t find a way to use these in as satisfying a way as I did blogs.

Let’s face it: I’m a blogger. I like the asynchronicity of it. I like not missing things (my RSS reader will hold everything until I have time to take a peek). I like long-form writing (both my own and others’). I like being able to really process my thoughts about something rather than blurting out my first impression. I like easily being able to see other people’s reactions to blog posts in a single space. I know so many people who have given up blogging for Twitter and I totally understand why they like it. The immediacy. The ease of commenting. The fact that it’s a social world and not just one person’s blog. I get it and had Twitter come out two years earlier, I probably would have integrated it into my information diet and online social world much more easily. I often feel sad because I know I feel like I’m losing touch with many dear friends in our profession by not being on Twitter or Google+ or Facebook more often, but I have come to accept that multitasking just doesn’t work for me.

I hope blogging won’t go the way of MySpace, Google Wave and so much other social media. To that end, I thought I’d encourage new bloggers by sharing some advice about what I constantly remind myself of when I write blog posts and what attracts me to blogs as well.

Be authentic – As a new blogger, it can be tempting to try to be like some other successful blogger out there; to emulate their writing style, write about the topics they cover, etc. I can tell you that there is nothing more appealing to me than a blogger who is uniquely themselves in their writing. It’s so obvious when someone is being authentic. It can take time to find your voice. Look at the first few posts on my blog (way back in 2004) and you’ll see that I clearly hadn’t found it yet. It took me a while to be comfortable enough writing in my own voice, expressing my own opinions and writing on the topics I found compelling. Sometimes you don’t know really what topics you find compelling to write about until you’re doing it. We all flounder a bit at the start, but it’s critical to find your own voice. Some great examples of librarian bloggers who write authentically (and beautifully) are Barbara Fister, Char Booth, Andy Burkhardt, and Iris Jastram.

Sometimes you have to ignore your inner critic – oh, I have such a mean inner critic. Basically, my inner critic tells me that everything I write is either too controversial or completely ignorant. I can’t tell you how many times I have hit publish with a sick feeling in my stomach only to find a few hours later that I’ve received tons of comments saying “I totally agree!” or “way to go!” I am a terrible judge of the quality and appropriateness of my writing. It’s helpful to have a friend or partner to read your work when in doubt, though sometimes my husband is even more cautious than I am. I usually ignore my inner critic except when my inner critic tells me I’m disclosing too much. Whether it’s about myself, my place of work, or someone else, if I have the tiniest inkling that what I write might be inappropriate in that way, I will likely shelve it. I also try never to write in anger (this is something learned from experience) because angry posts are almost always a mistake.

I appreciate longer, more thoughtful posts – While I appreciate blogs that provide links to other useful information, my favorite bloggers seem to be working out their thoughts on the page. That’s why I originally started blogging; I was in library school and had so many swirling thoughts about our profession and technology that I needed to work them out through my writing. Even now, I often don’t know what I’m going to write about something until I start mentally working it out while I write! Posts don’t have to be long, but I’ll take a long, thoughtful post over a short post with news and no insight. And I know that not everyone feels that way. Every semester my students seem about 50-50 split on whether In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a fantastic blog or way-too-long journal articles pretending to be blog posts. To each his own. Not everyone is going to like your writing. And if you’re not a long-form writer, don’t try to be. But I personally think blogs like In the Library with the Lead Pipe and Library Babelfish offer such valuable food for thought. I usually have to save their posts until I really have time to digest them, but they’re so worth the wait.

Self-disclosure is great and also can be terrible – I love blogs where I can really get to know the bloggers. I want to know what they struggle with professionally, what they care about, what excites them about our profession. It makes me care about them (and thus, their writing) more. The best professional blogs manage to inject themselves into their posts and all of those bloggers I mentioned under authenticity do that beautifully. However, some bloggers go too far with that, whether it’s personal disclosure, disclosures about work, or about others. I might mention my son from time-to-time, but I’m not going to write blog posts that are solely about him or go on and on about the adorable things he did here. I’m not going to blog details of my trip to the Oregon wine country last weekend. I know most people reading my blog are here for library-related stuff and don’t care about all that. I’m also not going to write about work, my colleagues or my family if I have any inkling that what I write could make people here feel uncomfortable. I choose to respect their boundaries. I will not write things about people that are designed to hurt their feelings. Criticism of ideas is one thing; personal criticism is another. Blind items about people, in my opinion, are actually even worse than writing about someone directly. It’s usually obvious to some people who it is and to everyone else, it just feels like you’re trying to hurt the person you’re writing the blind item about. There were times early in my blogging career when I screwed up in what I disclosed and who I wrote about and I’m sorry to anyone whose feelings I may have inadvertently hurt. I believe strongly that you can be authentic and interesting without ever violating other people’s boundaries or personally attacking people (though people may also be hurt by criticism that was not personal and meant to be constructive — see below — and I don’t think that’s a reason not to criticize someone’s ideas so long as you do it respectfully). Some things just shouldn’t be discussed publicly, in my opinion. If you need to vent, that’s what friends and partners are for.

Accept criticism gracefully – this is another one that I was not always good at and certainly learned from experience. It can be difficult to read negative comments, especially on a post that you really put your heart into. It can sometimes feel like people are attacking you personally. I would suggest that if a comment makes you angry, defensive or sad, do not respond right away. Wait until you are calmer to respond and respond assuming that they had nothing but good intentions with what they wrote. You can disagree with them, but do it in a way that is respectful of their viewpoints as well. And also be open-minded enough to consider their point-of-view. My views on things have changed over time, sometimes inspired by a commenter who saw things a different way. One caveat: sometimes people are actually attacking you personally. The best thing you can do in that case is ignore it. The issue is with them, not you and attacking back or even responding graciously will not lead to a satisfying conclusion. Let it go.

Engage in conversations – whether it’s commenting on another blog post, writing a blog post in response to something someone else has written, or engaging with your own commenters, treating blogging like a conversation instead of a monologue is the best way to attract readers. I’ve been much better at that in the past than I have been lately, but I’m feeling inspired to engage more through blogs (even if everyone is on Twitter). This is where I want to be.

Just thinking about this stuff makes me want to blog more often. We’ll see if I can tear myself away from that adorable blonde budding comedian long enough to do it.

There are so many other important things to consider when creating a blog that people will want to read. What tips would you offer to a new blogger?

Let me say this first. I am not an expert in ALA or LITA (or even ACRL) bylaws regarding participation, open meetings, etc. I’m sure a lot of very experienced and awesome people like Jason Griffey, Aaron Dobbs and Cindi Trainor could speak to these issues from the standpoint of someone who is immersed in this world. I am speaking to these issues as someone who does not have the funding nor the inclination to attend both Midwinter and Annual (since those would likely be the only things I’d do all year), but still wants to contribute to her membership organization and is willing to put in the time and effort. I’m also speaking as someone who has dedicated her professional development work over the years to improving access to professional development opportunities for librarians who cannot physically attend conferences. In fact, I even got an award from LITA for my work in this area.

I first heard about the LITA Board shutting down Jason Griffey’s live stream of their meeting through Michelle Boule’s excellent post on the subject (so nice to see a post like this from you Michelle! You’ve been missed). Jason is not just some rabble-rouser who is trying to subvert authority; he’s an elected member of the LITA Board who has dedicated his time in LITA to making the organization more transparent and responsive to the needs of its members. He has had a part in creating most of the best new things to come out of LITA in the past 4 years. I’ve been to and participated in a number of events and meetings that Jason has streamed to make them accessible to people who were unable to attend and I think it’s wonderful that it extended the reach of and conversation about events at ALA Annual/LITA/Midwinter beyond the physical room. I do agree that Jason should have broached the subject of streaming the meeting with the other members of the LITA Board prior to the meeting, but I’d bet that he’d have been turned down and we’d never have heard about it. Maybe it was important for him to do this and be turned down publicly so that we’d know how open our “open meetings” really are.

What I really couldn’t understand was the argument that “we paid a consultant to talk to a Board, not hundreds of people.” First of all, that consultant was paid with money that came from our dues. Why we are any less deserving of access to that report is beyond me. Second of all, the LITA Board meeting was not “closed doors.” It was an open meeting — open to anyone attending ALA Midwinter, so the report couldn’t have had any confidentiality tied to it. There legally could have been hundreds of people in the room who weren’t even LITA members, and they would have been allowed to hear the report bot not members of the organization who could not attend physically. This doesn’t make sense to me other than that it’s the way they’ve done business since before these collaborative technologies existed.

While I do think these meetings should be streamed, I don’t think it should happen in the way that Jason has been doing things. I think this speaks to a bigger issue — that all of the efforts to make these LITA meetings and events more open have spearheaded by individuals. That does not a sustainable project make. If Jason Griffey and other individuals like him suddenly couldn’t attend LITA, ALA and Midwinter, would we suddenly not have any more streaming? This sort of access should happen, but it should be a regular part of how LITA does business. But the way it is now is doomed to failure because it’s seen by most people as something extraneous, or even as “entertainment.” If LITA wants to be responsive to its membership, when fewer and fewer people can attend conferences but still have not lost their passion for contributing to the profession, then it needs to look at how it can accommodate participation and keeping-up from afar. Jason’s done a beautiful job of bringing these issues to the fore, but now it’s time to either make it a part of the way LITA does business or make it clear that this is not the way LITA does business.

Several years ago, I decided that I wanted to get more involved in ALA. I was asked to be on Jim Rettig’s Presidential Initiatives Committee and the ACRL Annual Conference Virtual Conference Committee, so I thought I’d do both. Working with the diverse and impressive group involved in making Jim’s presidency awesome was truly a pleasure, but it was the ACRL committee that really changed my view of participation in ALA (or at least in ACRL). I had always heard that virtual participants were never treated like full citizens on committees and it was one of the big reasons why I hadn’t previously wanted to get involved. With this committee, at least, that could not have been further from the truth. Around that time I was getting funded by ALA for my travel to Annual and Midwinter as I was covering the exhibit hall for American Libraries, so I was actually able to attend all of the meetings for my committee (until I got too pregnant to do so). However, there were other members of the committee who could only attend a few, one or none of the meetings. At every meeting I attended, we had webinar software set up and were able to have a hybrid virtual/physical meeting. This was more than just streaming what went on at the meeting — the people online were just as active participants as those physically in the room. We also met several times synchronously online to catch up, make decisions and conduct other business. It was nice to feel like I could still be helpful and involved when I was too pregnant to go anywhere. Heck, I was able to give a talk for the virtual conference when I was 9 months pregnant! That whole experience gave me new hope that I could make a real contribution to ACRL; that virtual participants didn’t have to be second class citizens.

I would have gotten more involved in ACRL immediately after my experience with the Virtual Conference Committee, but I had a baby a month after ACRL’s National Conference and have been just a tad bit busy with that bundle of energy and moxie since. Now that he’s nearly two, I’ve decided to volunteer with ACRL again and am eager to see what committees I end up on this time around. I hope that I’ll be able to participate through a mixture of virtual and physical participation, since I neither can afford to nor want to attend two ALA conferences each year. I hope that I’ll be given the opportunity to do good things for ACRL, because I’m certainly willing to put in the time and energy. And LITA? I decided to let my membership to LITA lapse. From what I’ve seen, I feel like that division is languishing and that those who want to innovate and make LITA more relevant and accessible are facing one brick wall after another. ACRL has responded in many ways to the needs of its membership (Cyber Zed Shed, OnPoint Chats, Virtual Institute, online classes, National Virtual Conference, etc.), making professional development experiences and participation more interesting and accessible to those who can’t physically attend conferences. I feel like I can find a home at ACRL, because I believe that the organization is moving in the right direction (they’re not there yet, but I believe they will be). I know there are a lot of really fantastic people working to make LITA better (take a look at the EParticipation Task Force Recommendations), but I get the sense that they are swimming against the tide.

ALA, LITA and ACRL are not organizations that embrace or are even structured for radical change, but I think the age that we are in (where people have less funding, more job stress, and more opportunities to participate in professional development, network and make professional contributions online) requires radical change to ensure the survival of the organizations. Enabling more people to participate virtually is not going to kill ALA. People do not just attend ALA and Midwinter because of committee responsibilities and to hear what a Board has to say. They also attend because there is still nothing that holds a candle to attending a conference, learning from someone standing in front of you, seeing old friends, and having long talks with like-minded librarians over sushi and beer. Offering more opportunities to benefit from and make contributions to the organization virtually will increase overall participation and will likely attract members who wouldn’t otherwise have joined because they didn’t feel like ALA/LITA/ACRL represented their needs.

But don’t just read my views on this. Here are some other interesting perspectives:

How Much Is Enough? at ACRLog
Disconnect of expectations between physical and virtual participants at Library Web Chic
New Technology, Open meetings? Not at LITA at Thoughts from a library administrator
Dear ALA, about Midwinter at The Sheck Spot
A Hybrid ALA For 2015 at ACRLog
Virtual Participation on a Shoestring – LITA Rocks the House! from ALA TechSource Blog
Why virtual participation in ALA must be legalized, not decriminalized at Free Range Librarian

I’m not sure if I’ve become more cynical or just more observant, but lately I feel like I’ve been seeing things through new eyes. We make so many assumptions in this profession, often based on the idea that we know what students need and want. Time and again, research has shown that we’re usually wrong. Some of the things we think are great might actually be great… just not for the average college student. Some things create a whole different set of problems. I’ve been thinking a lot about how so many of our efforts to make things simpler for our students only seem to make it more difficult for them to find the best resources for their papers. Are we making things better or just more complicated?

An example we’re dealing with now at our library involves WorldCat Local. Our library is going to be moving over to OCLC Web-Scale Management for our ILS (which I am really excited about!). Now that we’re going in with Web-Scale Management, we are going to be upgraded to the full version of WorldCat Local (which is called a discovery tool, but doesn’t hold a candle to something like Summon). Through agreements with vendors it is indexing and in some cases federating a variety of database content. But I have to wonder if doing this is going to make it easier or more difficult for students to find what they’re looking for. I’d say at least 75% of students doing research at Norwich have to cite scholarly works in their papers. When they search in WorldCat Local, they can’t limit their search to scholarly sources, so students have to look at each source and determine whether it is scholarly or not. How is this any easier for them than just going into Academic Search Premier, and limiting their search to scholarly journals? It’s searching more stuff at once, but it’s not giving students the tools they need to narrow down their search to quality sources. And as much as I’d like to believe that our information literacy sessions are churning out keen-eyed critical thinkers, too many students still can’t distinguish a blog post from a scholarly journal (as I discovered this semester when I assessed EN 101 students after their library session).

It gets even more complicated when you think about teaching all this. How do you explain this buffet of options to students when the majority of college students don’t want a buffet; they just want some relevant, authoritative options. I’ve experienced this when teaching students about Google Scholar. On its face, it seems like an easy sell. It has scholarly stuff and it’s the Google interface. ‘Nuff said. But then you find books from Google Books in there… most of which are not available in full-text… even though it may look like they are when you find a long preview. Oh yeah, and some of the books aren’t scholarly by a long shot. Uh oh, and did you just find a website with someone’s unpublished articles? And you found an article from the New York Times? And you found some random crappy website? Ok, so yes, there is an awful lot of awesome scholarly stuff in here, but unfortunately, just like with regular Google, you still have to wade through a lot of stuff (some scholarly, some not) to find what you’re looking for. And if we use WorldCat Local as a discovery service, I fear our students will have similarly frustrating experiences.

Project Information Literacy’s most recent report indicates that “students think library sources require less evaluation than information posted by anyone on the open-source Web.” When you have library search engines that are throwing everything from Time-Life books and USA Today articles to the Journal of Military History and Oxford University Press books at students, it’s scary to think that students are assuming the resources they are finding through the library are always of sufficient quality to use in their paper. Then again, I’ve even heard faculty say that to their students that anything from the library is of good quality. One of Project Information Literacy’s other reports suggests that students are overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them and have difficulty making sense of the results they get. Does this seem like a group in need of more or in need of simplification and a sense of context?

Another thing I’m having a crisis of faith about is screencasting. I was one of the screencasting early adopters and promoted it in presentations and on my blog. But the more screencasts I created, and the more students I worked with, the more I realized the limitations of screencasting for providing assistance to students. I read an article about screencasting a few months ago (darned if I remember who wrote it), but it confirmed what I was beginning to suspect. The author(s) gave students an assignment for which online instruction would be helpful and then had some students use a screencast and some use an HTML tutorial. What s/he found was that while students found the screencast more engaging, they weren’t as easily able to use it to complete the assignment because they couldn’t easily switch back-and-forth between the database and the screencast. This begs the question, do most students want to watch a video of how to search a database or do they want to quickly pick out the piece(s) of information they need and move on? This, other articles and my own experience tells me that the majority of students are coming to online instruction with a specific information need and want to skip, skim and scan around until they find the answer. Satisfying an information need like that with a screencast is like students coming to the reference desk with a specific information need and us spending five minutes showing them various aspects of a database that they don’t care about. I can see screencasts being good for people who just want a basic orientation or as a required component of a class in place of face-to-face instruction (I can also see quick-and-dirty custom screencasts being useful for providing reference assistance to remote students), but the majority of people who could benefit from library instructional assistance probably have a very specific information need and would likely rather skip, skim, and scan their way to the answer.

And don’t get me started on ebooks or patron-driven acquisitions! I’ll save those for future posts. I’m not saying I have all the answers — or any of them for that matter — but I do think the answers for figuring out what our patrons need come from… wait for it… our patrons. We need to understand how they do research, how they use our current resources, why some of them don’t use the library, and what they want from the library that they’re not currently getting. So often, library surveys ask about their satisfaction with our current services, not what the ideal library would look like or how we can support their research needs. They may never even have thought about those things themselves. We need an in-depth understanding of our users, through focus groups, surveys, ethnographic studies and more. And while studies like those from Project Information Literacy are fantastic, they aren’t a substitute for studying your own unique population. Development of technologies in the library world is way too vendor and librarian-centric, when the focus should be on what it is our students really and truly need.

Between work, my son and the class I’m teaching at SJSU (which is about to start), I rarely have time these days to blog. It’s certainly not that I’m uninspired to do so, as I’m constantly reading things that inspire me, provoke me, or just plain interest me. But anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I put a lot of thought into my posts and have a difficult time keeping them short. So I thought that it might be worthwhile to periodically share the articles, posts, and other resources I find that get me thinking as they might get you thinking too. So here’s the first installment of “Inspiring stuff to read.”

Want to read all of the articles/sites/posts in one browser tab? Click here.

What Can We Stop Doing by Merilee Profit in Hanging Together – This is fairly old, but is something I’ve wanted to blog about for a long time and have realized that it’s never going to happen. Unless you have an influx of new money and people, in order to undertake new initiatives, you have to give up something. I really loved the quote in it from the President of the Getty Museum “‘If no programs are allowed to ever die, in the end you become captive to decisions from the past… Every now and then . . . you’ve got to step back and say, ‘Certain things have been very successful, but we should sunset them now.’” I think that the unwillingness to stop doing things is largely behind the failure of a lot of Web 2.0 initiatives, as people simply aren’t given dedicated time to make them successful.

Introduction to Online Pedagogy – This is a self-paced course designed by the WISE Consortium (a consortium of library schools that teach online and allow students to take classes at the other universities — SJSU is a member). It’s designed to prepare LIS faculty to design and teach effective online courses. Useful for anyone designing online instruction.

Customizable Library Portal Pages by Aaron Tay in Musings about Librarianship – Again, not a brand-new blog post, but Aaron showcases some libraries that are WAY ahead of the curve in developing customizable library home pages. I strongly feel that this is the future of the library website — users should be able to design their own library website experience based on what they actually need/want to use. After talking with our Systems Librarian about this idea, he started playing with Drupal to see how he could create a customizable library homepage. He’s still in the very early stages, but it’s already looking promising. Thanks for the nudge, Aaron!

So You Want to do Anthropology at Your Library? or A Practical Guide to Ethnographic Research in Academic Libraries by Andrew Asher and Susan Miller. Asher and Miller were the anthropologists involved in the ERIAL ethnographic study conducted jointly by five Illinois universities. They created this amazing PDF guide for libraries (like mine) that want to undertake similar research. Such great practical advice in here!!!

Patron Driven eBook Acquisition: Crab Legs vs. Spinach by Eric Hellman at Go To Hellman – A thoughtful post about patron-driven electronic acquisition, a topic near and dear to my heart these days as we prepare to go live with eBook Library in a few weeks. The post also contains some really useful links at the end if you’re interested in the topic. As we are a teaching university and our focus is on building a collection out students and faculty WILL USE, I am looking forward to seeing how we can make patron-driven acquisition a larger part of our overall book purchasing.

Making the case for a fully mobile library web site: from floor maps to the catalog by Laurie Bridges, Hannah Gascho Rempel, and Kimberly Griggs in Reference Services Review. This issue of Reference Services Review is all about mobile library services (with lots of awesome, awesome, awesome articles!), so if you are interested in the topic, I’d highly suggest reading the whole shebang. This article from librarians at Oregon State is a perfect read if you are looking to make the case to the powers-that-be that you absolutely should be mobilizing your library website.

Does Where You Work Define Who You Are As An Academic Librarian by Steven Bell at ACRLog – while I actually liked the title and the comments more than the post itself (not that the post was bad by any stretch!), it asks a very interesting question: Does where you work define who you are as a librarian? My answer? YES!!! To me, it’s less about prestige and more about the size and structure of the library. I think where you work early in your career can have a tremendous impact on your career path and on your work personality. I have gotten so accustomed to working in a small place with a very risk-tolerant and change-oriented director where we can move quickly on just about any project, that when I was offered a position at a pretigious ARL library, I turned it down because I knew I’d be miserable dealing with bureaucracy and moving SO SLOWLY on things (not that all ARLs are like that, but I knew this particular position would have sapped my passion and energy). After working at a small place, I really like to wear a lot of hats and work on a lot of different projects. This place really does suit my personality, but I often wonder how different I would be had I first worked at a large ARL with a lot of bureaucracy and a tenure track for librarians. I’ve had so much FREEDOM and CHOICE here and now I feel spoiled by it.

e-texts and (library) accessibility by Char Booth at info-mational – accessibility is a topic that I think most librarians and educators would rather not think about because it ‘s just another thing we have to assess when considering new technologies and services. But try to imagine the person who can’t watch your screencast, can’t use your Meebo widget, and can’t use the Kindle you’re lending out. I’d much rather make text transcripts of my video lectures than potentially marginalize one of my students. This thoughtful post provides great insight into accessible (an inaccessible) design in the digital world and I can’t wait to see the e-text usability/accessibility rubric for librarians that Lucy and Char are going to create. Char is truly a force of nature, churning out one useful article, book, guide (PDF), report, etc. at a dizzying pace. She totally inspires me!

I think it’s fantastic that companies are using social media to promote their brands and communicate more directly with their customers. It’s wild when I write about my favorite wine and the New Zealand winemaker actually responds to me on Twitter. Great brand monitoring St. Clair (update: fixed incorrect URL)! There are so many inspiring examples of brands that are providing real support for customers via social media or are getting out in front of disasters/problems/recalls in a genuinely transparent way. Their involvement in social media is simply a natural extension of their corporate culture, which is transparent, human and customer-focused.

On the other hand, there are companies that are only paying lip service to social media. They think that if they have an account on Twitter or Facebook it makes up for their crappy products or service. Some will delete Facebook wall posts from critics or won’t allow wall posts from customers at all. Many will only selectively respond to customer complaints on Twitter or will only respond to positive customer responses (to make it look as if people on Twitter are only saying glowing things about them). When they do respond to criticism or problems, it’s not in any way that leads to satisfaction. For these companies, Facebook and Twitter are simply window dressing, thinly disguising the closed, soulless, profit-centered corporate culture within.

I’ve been having major problems with the screencasting software Adobe Captivate. When I converted some instructional screencasts from Captivate 3 to 4, they looked fine on preview, but when I published them as an .avi file, the audio became unsynched 2/3 of the way through and got way behind the video (to the point where the audio was cut off at the end of the video). This happened with multiple videos in the exact same way. So, as Adobe suggests, I posted to their forums. That was on June 11th. To date, I have not received a response from anyone regarding my issue. I also submitted a bug report, since I couldn’t find any other way to email my issue to anyone. Never received a response to that either.

After waiting almost two weeks for a response, I tried to contact Adobe Support. First, I spent a significant amount of time trying to figure out how to contact support and actually considered creating a Captivate screencast on how horribly designed Adobe’s support site is (I ultimately decided that drinking a glass of wine would be a better use of my time). Finally, I called the only number I could find and discovered that none of the options matched with what I needed, so I tried to get an operator. I got put through to four different people, each of whom needed me to repeat my phone number, email address, Captivate serial number and what my issue is. Do you people have any sort of tracking system???? Finally, I get a Captivate support guy and I tell him what my issue is. He looks up my serial number and says that he can’t work with me unless I purchase a support plan. My response was “I have to pay you to fix a bug in your software?” His response was that it probably wasn’t a bug because he hadn’t heard many reports of anything like this and it might just be user error. My response “so there’s no way for me to get help for my issue?” His response was “not unless you get a support plan.” I was beyond livid. Basically they’re saying that 1) it’s probably my fault that it’s not working and 2) they won’t stand behind their product.

By now I’d now wasted at least 3-day’s-worth of my time, which cost way more than if I just gave in and bought their competitor product, Camtasia. I’d vented on Twitter about my experiences with Adobe and someone suggested that I contact @Adobe_Care on Twitter. My husband’s response to that was that “Adobe only cares about turning you upside down and shaking the money out of your pockets.” That person apparently let @Adobe_Care know that I was having issues and the next day I got a tweet from them asking if I still needed help. I let them know that I was told I couldn’t get support without purchasing a support plan. They told me they’d get someone to contact me the next day. Huh?

After telling them that I was available until 3:30 pm ET, someone from support called me at 4:00 pm (right as I was about to leave to pick my son up from daycare). They co-browsed with me and saw the issue I was having with Captivate. They had me send them the file and told me they’d work on it and get back to me. The support person was still rather unfriendly and impatient with me, but at least she listened.

Do I think they’re going to find a solution? Doubtful. But what really bothers me is the idea that I got special treatment because I complained about the company on Twitter. I go through the recommended support channels and am not only told I can’t get help but am insulted. Then I use Twitter and get treated like a human being (or as well as anyone can hope for when dealing with Adobe). So basically what they’re saying is that Twitter is the best way to get help with Adobe issues and if you’re not on Twitter basically you’re screwed. This creates a situation where the digerati — who are likely more savvy with software already — are given better service than the people who don’t use social media and probably need support the most.

Social media can put a human face on a company and help them build more direct relationships with their customers. Look at companies like Zappos and Newegg. But, too often, social media only gives a soulless corporation that doesn’t give a damn about the customer the opportunity to put up window dressing that makes them look like they actually care. And, sadly, some people don’t look beyond the window dressing.

Just because a company is on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. doesn’t mean they’re 2.0. It doesn’t mean they care. The real test of a company is how they treat the average customer, not how they treat the loud, whiny geek with the Twitter account (and by that, I mean me).

I never in a million years thought I’d get an eBook reader from the current batch of options. They were so not on my radar. I didn’t get all excited and jealous when I saw people with them. I never even thought I’d want to read a book that way. Heck, I hate reading articles on my computer! I’ve printed out every article assigned for ACRL Immersion because there’s no way I’ll retain anything if I read it at my computer. And even if I did want to read eBooks, I’d never want to do it on a device that only does that — like I need another electronic thing to lug around.

And yet, here I am, the owner of a Kindle. No, I didn’t have a total change of heart and buy one for myself. I actually won it in a raffle at a conference I was speaking at. Even if you don’t necessarily want to buy a Kindle, it’s pretty exciting to win one! From my hotel that evening, I registered my Kindle and downloaded a couple of books. I read stories from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on the way home the next day and found it to be a pretty good reading experience. It’s nothing like reading on a computer screen — no glare, no backlight. To my surprise, I actually found it to be just as pleasant as reading a print book. A few weeks later I read a 320-page book, Orange is the New Black, on the Kindle (by the pool, in the bathtub, and in bed) and, other than having to plug it in at night, I never thought about the fact that I was reading on an electronic device. The reading experience was just as absorbing. I even fell asleep reading on it! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by it and am actually reading more now that I have it than in the entire year since my son was born.

Knowing what I know now, would I have bought it? Probably not. I don’t travel enough (or read enough, with a toddler in the house) to make it really worthwhile. But there are other reasons why I think the Kindle, and eBook readers like it, are not where it’s at. First of all, while you can annotate a book, it’s extremely cumbersome on a Kindle. When I was in college, I highlighted and underlined the hell out of my books and wrote notes in the margins. When I thought about transferring my Immersion readings to the Kindle, I rejected the idea because I knew I’d want to write notes in the margins and underline important passages and it seemed like a hassle to do that on the Kindle and then refer back to those annotations at Immersion.

Most also don’t take advantage of one of the most exciting things that’s happened in computing in the past decade — the growth of the social web. In addition to easily annotating the things I read, I might want to see what annotations others have added to what I’m reading, if they choose to make them public. If I’m working on a group project, I certainly want to share my annotations with my team members. I want to make it easy for friends to see what I’m reading and what I thought about it and to see what people I trust thought about the book I’m considering downloading. I know the upcoming update to the Kindle firmware will have some social features, but it’s still a long way from what could be possible in the future. I can’t even imagine what reading online is going to look like in the future!

I’ll wait to spend my money on a device that offers all this and is more than just an eBook reader (go convergence devices!). The iPad still isn’t exactly what I want, and at that price it’s just not worth it for me (though I must say that I’ve had fun playing with other people’s iPads). I know so little about the market for eBook readers, but I feel like everything is really in its infancy, is so proprietary, and is so tied only to recreating the print reading experience rather than reimagining the reading experience. I definitely enjoy reading on my Kindle, but I’m much more interested in seeing what comes out in the next several years. I have a feeling it’s going to put what’s available right now to shame.

Last semester, one of my students linked to this great conversation between Teresa Nielsen Hayden (community manager for Boing Boing) and John Scalzi about community-building through comments and moderation. It’s a fantastic read — check it out. Nielsen Hayden made a comment about the need for moderation to promote good behavior in a community and Scalzi responded with his thoughts on how old media has dealt with social media on their own websites:

That’s why I find that some of the worst places for comments tend to be old-line media sites. In my opinion, the old-line media is really still stuck on the idea that it’s asymmetrical and that when people respond, it’s in the old “letters to the editor” sense. For a long time, they didn’t get and they still don’t get that instantaneous communication, if left unchecked or unmoderated, will quickly go down to a lowest common denominator of people yelling at each other. If you go to a newspaper site and look at the comments on any kind of article there, it’s usually toxic spew followed by toxic spew.

My experience with newspaper comments totally jives with Scalzi’s, but I think worse than not moderating comments is deleting comments in an effort to silence discussion on a specific topic. We had a big fire downtown on Memorial Day in a 100-year-old building. When I heard that the Mayor (who is also a prominent businessman) had recently bought the building, I jokingly said “must be arson!” Turns out, I was right. My local paper, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus reported the story (and here) and, as always, had comments open on it. Discussions in the comments section of Times Argus articles tend to be very polarized and full of vitriol. I honestly don’t know why most of the people bother to comment at all, since it’s not like they’re dealing with reasonable individuals. Not surprisingly, a few people commented on the story and suggested that the Mayor had the building burned down. Others defended him.

All of a sudden, the comments disappeared and there was no space where people could post comments anymore. You could see on the front page that it was one of the most discussed stories, with 19 comments (the other had 17), but those comments had disappeared, replaced by nothing. No note explaining why they did it. The comments were just gone.

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I’ve seen some of the most horrible comments on this newspaper website. People blaming a mother whose three-year-old was hit by a car. People writing offensive things about gays and lesbians. People saying awful stuff about a teenager who’d just died in a car accident. None of those conversations were moderated in the least. In fact, I’ve never seen anything deleted from the comments. But now, instead of moderating a conversation about a fire that destroyed a local landmark, they simply make all of the comments (some completely innocuous) disappear. This is not how you treat your readers, especially your “super users” who probably visit the site many times each day. I can understand moderating comments that suggest that the mayor might have been involved in criminal dealings and lack any proof, but there were plenty of comments that suggested nothing of the kind. Also, if you get rid of any comments, you should be transparent about it — make it clear that you did it and (ideally) explain why. This isn’t moderation for the sake of creating a safe and welcoming community space (which should always be the primary purpose of moderation); this is censorship to stifle conversation about a topic they don’t want conversation on. I ends up looking like they have zero respect for their readers and that they’re simply paying lip service to social media. And I doubt that’s too far off from the reality.

This is a good lesson for anyone who runs an online community. Moderating comments is ok. In fact, it’s critical to moderate comments in order to create the sort of environment where everyone feels comfortable posting comments. But you want to be consistent. You don’t want to let offensive comments go on one post and then delete them from another. And you definitely want to keep comments open on everything, not just those things you’re comfortable having people discuss. When you do delete something, you want to explain why you did so — transparency is critical. While you might be the moderator, you’re not the boss. In fact, you exist to serve the community. You need to make participants feel like it’s their community; you need to show respect for them and keep the lines of communication open. Respect your users and they will respect the community. You might own the site and be paying for the server space, but if you treat it like it’s your community, you will never create the successful community you want.

This was another amazing semester teaching at San Jose State University. I had significantly more students in my class this semester than in the past (more than double), which at first made me nervous about the workload I’d have to take on. But it actually ended up leading to an even better class experience, IMHO. Just like with every social networking tool, the network effect was in evidence in my classroom — the conversations were more valuable and lively because there were more people involved in them.

This semester I got a lot of comments from students about their engagement level in this class versus other online classes they’ve taken. I thought I’d share some of them here for those who might be trying to figure out how the can better design their own online class/program:

“I wouldn’t have believed I could connect as well as I have with my online classmates as I did for this class… I feel that we all had the encouragement and opportunity to think critically and in depth about these technologies and their implementation in and ramifications for libraries.”

“The blog format feels less stilted than a traditional threaded conversation, and the comments list and the tweet list were wonderful additions that made the task of finding recent contributions very easy. ”

“Perhaps the most surprising thing about this class is how much of a personal feel it had. I felt familiar with everyone in a way that I don’t usually feel in online classes. A number of things contributed to this: subject matter, clear and organized Drupal classroom, engaged instructor, and awesome people who jumped right in to the discussions.”

“I loved using Drupal because it feels more personal, especially since everyone has a picture next to their posts. I felt like I was able to show more of my personality through and I feel closer to my classmates than I ever have in an Angel class. It’s closer to a real classroom experience, with the added bonus that we can all say as much as we want without running out of class time. I also thought it was really cool that a few people we mentioned in blogs dropped by our classroom site to see what was going on and to make comments. It felt like we were part of something bigger than just an ordinary class.”

“I have had a great time in this class, and I attribute a great deal of that to the interactive activity encouraged by the class blog, an active and engaged instructor, and the ability to learn from the experiences and insights of my classmates. Since I have been lucky enough to have had similar experiences in SLIS classes where we did use Angel or Blackboard, I’m a firm believer that it is not so much which technology the class uses, but how that techology is used, which makes for a good class experience.”

“It is amazing how just having an image attached to someone’s words makes them more identifiable and fosters a feeling of connectedness that I find mostly lost on Angel. The blog format makes it so easy to follow specific class members and review new posts in threads.”

“Holding class with Drupal instead of Angel had the feel of getting out of the classroom, like holding class out on the lawn during nice weather. It gave posting a little more of an informal feel… I think the biggest difference was the use of avatars. I think it’s easier to associate a poster’s voice with an avatar picture than with just a name. I found that I got to know the voices of more of my classmates and know them faster in this class than in my class that used Angel.”

“Our instructor was more involved in class discussions than any I have had so far. My classmates were more engaged, and everyone’s writing was thoughtful and thought-provoking. I loved the resource-sharing requirement, because I got just as much from that (our “hive mind”) as from our assigned readings. And, of course, the “classroom” itself was very well-designed. I think the designers of learning management systems like ANGEL and Blackboard could really learn a lot from instructors designing their own class sites on platforms like Drupal.”

“Drupal rocks, if every teacher used Drupal the program would be 1000X better. First and foremost I felt like I actually had an idea of who my classmates where. Second the blog format was a lot easy to track than the pain of Angel. Also the class material was organized really well, though that might be more Meredith than Drupal.”

It’s really flattering to hear that students got a lot out of the class, but also troubling that they’ve have had such lukewarm experiences in other online classes. So many stated that they’d never had the level of interaction with their peers or with their professor in other classes. That makes me sad, because I’d had the same experience myself in library school (with one class being the exception), and my main impetus for teaching was to design the sort of course I’d have wanted to take. I don’t feel like what I’ve done as an instructor was particularly extraordinary, and while I did probably do more work on the front-end to create the Drupal classroom and organize the content, I feel like this is something most people could replicate (even in some traditional course management systems). It’s not just about the technology. It’s about organizing the classroom in a way that’s inviting for students, where content is easy to find, and where conversations are easy to follow. It’s also about taking a constructivist approach to learning — playing the role of facilitator and supporter in the classroom rather than the sage on the stage. It’s about taking part in online conversations; not as “the authority,” but as a fellow learner. It’s about providing real constructive comments on students’ work in order to help them do better next time. It’s about having a passion for the subject matter and trying to instill that same passion in your students. It’s about making students feel like they’re part of a professional dialogue through reading current literature and taking part in conversations going on in the profession right now. Yes, it’s more work to make all this happen, but that’s our job. If we aren’t making students excited about being a part of the profession, we shouldn’t be teaching.

It’s frustrating to know that the tools and teaching techniques are out there to make the online education experience a positive one for students and so many faculty simply aren’t taking advantage. I know some faculty feel too busy to learn new tech or rethink how they teach and others just aren’t that tech-savvy. Still, I think a lot of faculty have simply come to accept that distance learning can’t come close to providing the sort of engagement and interaction you find in many face to face classes. One of my students put it so well in a comment:

It seems like the root of the problem lies not in the technology (ANGEL isn’t that great, but can still be used effectively) but in the assumption (however subconscious) that the online classroom is somehow subpar in comparison to face-to-face learning. And because of that, sometimes instructors and students bring less to the table, just assuming from the beginning that it can’t be as engaging. It’s just not true! This class was among the best classes I’ve taken, both on- and offline, so obviously online classes can be engaging and successful. It’s just a matter of understanding not only the limitations but also the opportunities.

I completely agree with his sentiment. It’s quite possible to make an online course an amazing experience, but too many faculty simply try to create an online version of a physical class. And what they usually end up with is a sterile, boring environment because they’re not taking advantage of what online tools can offer that you can’t get in a face-to-face environment. It reminds me of eBooks. The eBook market has been so focused on putting print books online and creating a good reading experience. When I first saw interactive books on the iPad I thought, this is what it’s all about. It’s just not about recreating the reading experience online, but about taking advantage of what’s possible in the online medium (interactivity, social reading and commenting, etc.) and transforming the reading experience. Reading an eBook is not going to be the same as reading a physical book, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a great experience. The same goes for online learning. We need to stop trying to recreate the face-to-face classroom and start rethinking what the learning experience should be like online. What would online learning look like if there never was face-to-face learning?

I know there are a lot of educators out there who are doing amazing things online, and it gives me hope. But there are too many instructors who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort necessary to do anything more than put their content and expertise into their classroom. Distance learning is not just a fad or something for a small portion of the population who can’t or won’t attend face-to-face classes. This is a major trend in education and the number of people taking advantage of online learning is growing exponentially. We absolutely need to be putting time, money and effort towards rethinking education in an online context and building our courses based on best practices for teaching online. Doing anything less is an insult to your students and a disservice to the profession, since we should be doing everything we can to help develop passionate and engaged librarians.

Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

Day 2 was just as full and wonderful as Day 1. I continued my mostly staying offline during the conference and I think it really helped me to keep focused on what was going on in front of me. While I do like Twitter in a lot of ways and think it’s great for conferences, I feel like I came to Computers in Libraries for face-to-face learning, networking and fun, so I’m happy to have found a good balance between focus and connectedness.

I try to never miss a talk that Rebecca Jones gives, and, as usual, I was not disappointed by the talk that she and Deb Wallace of Harvard Business School’s Baker Library gave on Critical Thinking: Getting to the Right Decision. Rebecca started with the seemingly obvious point that if you’re not willing or ready to change, don’t bother doing strategic planning. While I’d like to believe this is obvious, I know of libraries that have done strategic planning with no intention of changing in any meaningful way. Rebecca stated that critical thinking is not about being critical; it’s about decision-making. You have to challenge base assumptions. When people have to make decisions, they tend to do one of two things – they oversimplify the issue or they get overwhelmed by the decision and are like a deer in the headlights. To employ critical thinking, people must demonstrate clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, use sound evidence, have good reasons behind our decisions, be fair, and open-minded.

We need to be clear on the fact that when we are challenging assumptions we are challenging a situation, not people, but people may feel challenged by it. When making decisions, we need to look at our assumptions and how our views of things are colored by time/perspective/others. We need to look at statistics and trends with clarity and try to think about what they’re really telling us, rather than looking at them through the colored lens we usually employ to examine such things. I really like what Rebecca said about sunk costs and how people often stick with something that’s not working because they already invested so much in it. “When you find yourself in a hole, the worst thing you could do is keep digging.”

Deb works at the Baker Library of Harvard Business School, which is an iconic structure, but they’re trying hard not to be identified only as a building. They have an important role in educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Over the past few years, they have worked hard to connect all staff to the bigger picture of the library and how it can move forward, which was difficult with some staff who had rote tasks and were not really in the habit of thinking that way. They wanted people to look at the library with new eyes and ask themselves if they’re anchored in stuff that was done a specific way 35 years ago. When you erase the status quo, people actually have to exercise judgment, which can be scary for some.

Deb said a lot of profound things, but there was one thing that really stuck with me as the Head of Instruction. She talked about making clear the distinct capabilities we bring to the table that the faculty don’t have. The different roles should be clear to avoid butting heads when we collaborate. This has been a big issue at our library as we try to ensure that every freshman gets basic information literacy instruction. While we’d like to standardize this and do it through the library, some English faculty are really against this, arguing that it’s their role to teach information literacy (though some don’t do it or at least don’t do it well). So I’m really struggling to define what we offer that’s unique in this realm, when faculty can (and in some cases do) teach information literacy as well.

In the afternoon, I gave a talk with Joan Petit on Virtual Learning & Training: From Classrooms to Communities. I talked about how I use Drupal for my online class in SJSU’s SLIS program to make class more engaging, encourage reflective learning, and create a more constructivist learning environment. Joan talked about how she used blogs in a face-to-face information literacy class to extend learning and make the class more engaging. Joan was a last minute addition to the lineup as my original co-presenter realized on Friday that she couldn’t make it to the conference. In light of that, it was even more amazing what a great job she did. It was such an interesting session and we got a lot of good questions from the attendees. My slides are below and links to my classes also can be found on my presentation wiki.

I was so energized by the ladies from UNC Greensboro (Beth Filar Williams, Lynda Kellam, Amy Harris, Hannah Winkler) who presented on Instructional Technology: It’s a Team Thing (a much more detailed blog post on this session can be found on Heather Braum’s blog). Before the four women came together, instructional technologies at the library were not used systematically, and it was dependent on the individual instructor. One of them was tasked by her supervisor with trying to standardize the use of instructional tech to a greater extent. To that end, she asked interested members of the library staff to meet with her about instructional tech, and from that group, she assembled a team of four librarians to be the instructional technology team. They each have different skills/strengths and really complement each other. They brainstormed ideas for tech to implement, and broke them down into high impact/low effort, high effort/high impact, etc. to figure out what would net the most impact with the least effort. Those were the things they decided to try first. I was really impressed by how organized their meetings were, with very detailed agendas (with what/who, details, and time allotted for each topic). It’s something we really don’t do at my library and as a result, we often end up with overlong rambly meetings that veer off on various tangents. At the meetings I run, I think I’m going to start organizing meetings the way they do.

In April 2009, UNCG had a big budget freeze and had no money for anything, so they had to reprioritize what they wanted to do. They created tutorials, an assignment calculator, and several other things that they could do for free. Later on, when they had money, they could get things like clickers and a video camera and boom mic. These are all things I’d really like for my library too. The women also started a team blog to communicate amongst themselves and with the other staff members about what they’re working on.

In addition to their internal group, they also started an instructional technology group with librarians from other local academic institutions. This is something I’d really like to do in Vermont (or at least central VT). It’s so easy to develop tunnel vision or groupthink when you’re talking to the same people everyday. It’s really nice to get out of your little box and talk to other librarians on a semi-regular basis.

Stay tuned for Day 3!