Director's conference report!

June is always exciting for librarians. The reason is simple: The American Library Association's Annual Conference! It's giant. Think San Diego's Comic-Con with fewer comic books and more library furniture.

I didn't go to this year's conference for two simple reasons:

1. I went to the Midwinter Meeting in January, and one of these things per year is tiring enough. This year's Midwinter was hosted in San Diego, in fact, in the same convention center used for the Comic-Con. If you're familiar with what a huge event it is, you can get an idea of how busy Midwinter was!
   
2. It was in New Orleans. In June. I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico, and there's a reason why I left. The humidity is quite satisfactory here in Washington, DC; why be a glutton for punishment?

Still, two of us were brave enough to go a couple of weeks ago: Sarah Hamrick, our Director of Library Public Services (and my boss!), and Patrick Oberholtzer, my fellow Instruction & Reference Librarian.

Because they don't have enough to do (ha), I asked them to write up a report of their experiences for you guys. Today, you get to read Sarah's! Patrick's will come next week.

So: Sarah's conference experience. Here we go!

---

I was one of 20,000 participants in the American Library Association’s annual conference, held in New Orleans the last weekend of June. ALA has more than 60,000 members who work in all types of libraries, and the annual conference is our opportunity to learn about new trends in libraries, network with colleagues, and meet with vendors to learn about the latest products and services. It’s also our opportunity to slip out of our sensible shoes, unpin our hair buns, and go crazy.

The conference takes place over a weekend -- there are preconferences and a few early meetings on Thursday and Friday, followed by the big kick-off Friday night. Saturday and Sunday are jam-packed with programs and meetings, and by Monday afternoon most of the sessions are over. The exhibit hall includes about 350,000 square feet of space full of vendors selling/promoting everything you can possibly imagine -- furniture (LOVE the child-sized desks and chairs in bright colors), equipment (I’ve got my eye on a scanner you can use to convert our old microfilm to PDF), clothes (librarians love t-shirts with cute book quotes), software, services, and books. Lots of books. There are always long lines of people waiting for author signings, and the free books many vendors hand out are always hot items!

ALA is spread out across the host city. Many sessions take place in a massive convention center (which in New Orleans is right on the Mississippi River, so it is very LONG), and there are meetings and programs in at least 10 hotels across town. There are always long lines at Starbucks, and at the end of each day there are many weary librarians with bags full of vendor freebies loading up on the buses that shuttle us around to our meetings and hotels. Since we were in New Orleans this time, all of those weary librarians were also kind of sweaty and a little wilted. Fortunately New Orleans offers many kinds of refreshment to perk up the heat- and humidity-bedraggled librarian!

I always learn a lot at ALA conferences and have met many colleagues there who help me do my job better. Of the sessions I attended this year two were particularly good.

The first was entitled “Libraries of the Future: Designing from the User Perspective.” The speaker was a librarian who retired after many working for many years in a college library (I hope that’s me some day!) and has started a new career (I hope that’s not me--I want to spend my retirement years at the ballpark and the dog park!) advising libraries that are designing new buildings. He talked about the importance of planning based on not only how students use the library building now but also how we WANT students to use it and how we THINK students will use it in the future. He spoke of two issues I thought were particularly interesting. Consider the exterior design, particularly at the main building entrance, and try to make it usable space. (A few comfy reading benches and some picnic tables would be nice!) And the first ten feet to the right of the building entrance is the busiest area of the building, so it is important to place the most heavily used materials/services there. (Coffee bar, anyone?)

The best session I attended was called “It’s All About Them: Developing Information Services with User Experience Design.” User experience (UX) is a relatively new field in the library profession, and it’s becoming a very sought-after specialization. UX librarians look at what students want and how they want to get it. It’s a customer service thing. Most UX librarians still do a lot of work in the technology area, but the field has expanded to include all types of library UX. The speakers at this program gave lots of tips about improving the quality of service to library users. One library schedules staff to walk through the building regularly, trying to see it through the eyes of the library user. Another library connects their library web site log-in with Blackboard so students who log into the library’s site get a specialized page based on their specific course needs. One of the program’s speakers works for a major U.S. retailer, doing the indexing for their web site. She talked about the importance of setting up our systems so that users are able to find what they need using the keywords and concepts they know and understand. While that has always been the general idea of library catalog systems, it was interesting to hear her thoughts on the issue from the retail perspective.The best part of the presentation was when a participant asked the speakers if their libraries had a UX brand or motto. The retail indexer said theirs is “Crush Amazon.” Sounds like a worthy goal to me!

That’s what I learned at ALA. I also enjoyed some delicious seafood, window shopped in the French Quarter, gazed at the mighty Mississippi, gawked at the sights on Bourbon Street, and caught a New Orleans Zephyrs ballgame. My favorite evening was spent at a very nice restaurant (delicious oysters) with friends who work in correctional (i.e., prison) libraries in Colorado. It was a very productive trip!

Vlog review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Vlog review of Danse Macabre

Danse Macabre by Gerald Elias.

NEW resource: Films on Demand!

A couple of things to close out the week, just to offer you a nicely-quivering little gobbet of deliciousness to tide you over through the weekend.

First thing: The collection shift I wrote about in this post started just this past Monday, June 20. I've documented part of the process and posted the results on our Facebook page. Check them out!

I will say it is very, very interesting to see the Library change in this manner. Most of the long-timers -- we've got people who've been here for over 30 years -- don't think too much of it because they've seen a lot more than this, but I'm a relative newbie. Even this little bit -- only two or three ranges' worth of shelving and a bunch of microform cabinets so far -- is pretty weird!

I also thought I'd take the opportunity this week to introduce people to a new online resource that we've just set up: Films on Demand.

First, a caveat: It's not that easy to get to. It's pretty different from most of our other online resources (you'll see why in a minute), so we're working on figuring out a way to categorize it that makes some kind of sense. Until then, you'll have to search for it (just enter "films" in the search form that pops up after clicking on the "Find article databases" link on our home page). But don't worry; we're also seeing if we can figure out a way to get all the information about, and links to, the available films into ALADIN Discovery and the Classic Catalog. That way, you could just do a search in either catalog and watch a film straight from there if it's relevant to your needs without all that mucking about with "article databases."

Anyway, this thing is awesome.

It's a big database of online streaming educational videos on pretty much every disciplinary topic under the sun, with offerings appropriate for most age and skill levels (hence the difficulty with categorizing it). It's set up so that instructors can either show the entire video or just the segments they want that are relevant to their courses; if there's a video about mammalian biology, for instance, and you want to focus on thermoregulation and homeostasis (e.g., warm-blooded animals), you can head straight to that segment and show it to your class without playing around with glands and slider bars and the like.

We'd been sniffing after it for the past couple of years, but had always balked at one issue: captioning. Films on Demand offers captioned videos, but not all of their videos are captioned. We went back and forth for a while about whether it was cost-effective to purchase access anyway, even if it meant spending a lot of money on videos that nearly all of our students and faculty wouldn't be able to watch.

Last year, we got fairly close to the brink and set up a trial, but found that not only were our faculty frustrated by the lack of captioning on many videos, but there were also some issues when it came to limiting search results to captioned videos only. It was possible, but not as easy as it could have been, and this combination made us decide to hold off for a while.

Fast forward to ...

Aw, heck. I had the entire background story typed up: two years, one trial, three faculty requests, two representatives, six months of back-and-forth, two WRLC task forces, and one offhand remark. But you aren't interested in all that!

The upshot is that Films on Demand has made it possible for us to subscribe to only their captioned videos, with pricing that's commensurate to the relative size of the collection. This is most excellent of them.

So you can use Films on Demand all you like; all you'll ever see are captioned films (ideally, that is -- we've found one or two so far that may have either slipped into the collection or accidentally mislaid their captions somewhere else). No muss, no fuss. We've set Flash as the default format; the other options were Windows Media Player and Quicktime, which is annoying. Quicktime only really works on Apple computers, while Windows Media Player only really works on no computers.

One thing to note, though, is that at the moment, it's not too obvious how to turn on the captioning. Look for a button with a speech balloon on it along the bottom of the video. After you've hit "Play," click on that button; two white lines should appear inside the speech balloon, indicating that the captions are on. You'll have to click it again if you skip ahead in the video, though, I'm afraid; seems to be unavoidable, although I am trying to talk them into getting rid of the speech balloon in favor of something more obvious. A big "CC," for instance. We'll see how that turns out!

Ah, I see. You're all hung up on that phrase a paragraph or two ago: "the relative size of the collection." How big is it, you ask?

Well, as of April 27, there were 2,935 captioned films, encompassed by broader disciplines like:

• Humanities & Social Science
• Business & Economics
  
• Health & Medicine
• Science & Mathematics
• Careers & Job Search
• Family & Consumer Sciences
• Guidance & Counseling
• Technical Education

The largest subject area is Humanities & Social Sciences, followed by Science & Mathematics. These are the most recent numbers, by the way; they've said they intend to keep adding to the collection as more captioned films become available. It's been a couple months since then, and the collection has mostly grown, so we are certainly past the 3,000 mark by now. Something to think about.

We're super-excited about this! It's only one change in a frankly surprising number of them that are taking place this summer, though; I just hope I can keep pace with this blog. It's good for all of you to know what's going on with us and what you can expect in the coming months and years. We -- or at least I -- also like to have a document of all the things we've done and are doing, because it's always interesting to look back and see where we were compared to where we are now. Things have changed, are changing, will always change.

Enjoy your weekend!

Vlog review of The Informationist

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens.

Summer update!

No vlogs this week!

I know, even I can hear the groans. Truth is, we're just busy.

With what? Fair question.

At this point, I suppose I should share the things on my mind (and desk) these days; it'll also reveal a little something about what's going on in the Library this summer.

The biggest thing on the collective plate right now is the collection shift.

You heard right. We're shifting the collection. I was joking around with someone not too long ago, actually; I told him we were moving the collection, and he asked where we were moving it to. I thought about it for a moment and said, "About five feet to the left."

Funny as it sounds, it's more or less an accurate description. And it's not at all minor; close to a quarter of a million books takes a lot of moving, whether it's five feet or five miles. This is happening largely because the Archives is expanding this summer. The current reading room will just about double in size, which will take up the space occupied by the 900s and some of the 800s downstairs.

Because this is a once-in-30-years kind of occurrence, we're seizing the opportunity to do a number of other things, too:

1) Clearing out space for ourselves. Right now, there's zero space for the collection to move into. This is mostly because the very beginning of the General Stacks is hemmed in by a set of microform cabinets. Those cabinets contain our historical records of The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and ERIC, the government's repository of education research. However, it's kind of silly -- we've got electronic subscriptions to the same stuff, this collection is duplicated across the Consortium, and it sees very little use for such a large collection. We're not the only ones facing this kind of issue, either; the other Consortium schools who have the same collection have been talking about moving one school's collection to the WRLC storage center and getting rid of the rest. We plan to follow through on our end and clear out space for more shelves at the beginning of the collection. However, even that won't be enough, because ...

2) We're moving Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences materials to the General Stacks from the Deaf Collection. The Library and Archives have been in a yearslong process of evaluating the Deaf Collection and its institutional role in general, especially within a larger cultural context. One of the results of this is that there's been increasing consensus -- within the Library and Archives, elsewhere on campus, and out in the rest of the world -- that deafness as a cultural phenomenon is markedly distinct from deafness as a physiological phenomenon (as in deafhood versus deafness). So all the items in the Deaf Collection -- from books to periodicals to films -- that focus on deafness in scientific and medical terms (audiology, genetics, speech pathology, etc.) will be moved to the corresponding sections in the General Stacks.

If this sounds complicated, by the way, it is. Patrick Oberholtzer, the librarian who's taken over the subject area in the past year or so, has been spending almost every working hour for the past few months figuring out the logistics of the move. Kudos to him!

However, given that our space is shrinking, even with the removal of the microfiche cabinets, and the collection is getting larger, this means we're doing yet a third thing:

3) Weeding. Weeding. Weeding. And more weeding. I've lost count of how many books I've cleaned out of the General Stacks in the 800s alone. If you end up in the Library this summer, you'll notice some odd patches where shelves are nearly empty, kind of like the "after" photo in this post. That's because we've been at work. So far these past few months, I've focused on getting rid of large, old sets of books between 801 and 840, clearing space in the language-related areas (e.g., linguistics, language education, foreign languages), and slashing and burning my way through 801-810, which are mostly focused on both theoretical and practical aspects of literature, ranging from discussions of Aristotle's thoughts on rhetoric to how to write a term paper.

Don't worry. I'm leaving the best stuff. It's astonishing how many books we have about computers and composition ... from the 1980s! These books are great if you want to learn word-processing, except I think they stopped making word processors a few years ago. It was very forward-thinking of my predecessors, but these books are museum relics! Once I've hit -- and cleaned out -- 810, I'll backslide to the 700s, most of which relate to the fine arts. Why am I not tackling the 810s just yet -- American literature?

The truth is, I'm a little scared. We have such a diverse collection of fiction that I keep thinking that someone will show up in the Fall and feel that we've completely neglected readers of his or her proclivities and might, in fact, be hostile to lovers of books about, I don't know, coincidental apples or something.

Not that there's anything wrong with those. Anyway, we are focused on shrinking the collection, which is complicated by ...

4) Ordering. Yup. Even while we're streamlining the collection, we're adding more to it. At this point, though, we're getting close to the end of our major annual purchasing period and the money's starting to dry up. We're also doing it in conjunction with the weeding -- don't view both activities in isolation! For instance, we do have a lot of relatively redundant books from varying periods that cover more or less the same topic. In my particular case, weeding often informs my ordering -- if I end up getting rid of 20 books on how to speak effectively in public, published between 1898-1988, I'll generally plan to replace them with three or four comprehensive overviews from different angles -- rhetoric, overcoming anxiety, organization and structure, stuff like that.

Of course, all of this gets more interesting when you consider that we're ...

5) Cleaning out the reference collection. We've got a huge number of dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, and other reference works that need to go. Most of that is because almost everything is either outdated or available online through our electronic resources or for free on the open Internet, and part of that is because we're moving the General Periodicals up to the first floor. This particular shift is relatively easy; as we've increased our electronic subscriptions, we've cut way back on our print material, which doesn't see anywhere near as much use as the digital stuff and isn't searchable besides.

Now, the reference collection is pretty sizable and is being cleaned out at the same time as the rest of the collection, so that's a lot of work! If you stopped by the Library last week, or plan to this week, there are a lot of carts full of books congregating on the first floor over by the Deaf School Yearbooks, which is not-at-all-coincidentally right by my office.

That's right, I'm fulfilling the "other duties as required" clause of my job description and removing a lot of the material from our system, along with our director, Sarah Hamrick. Because of that, I probably should warn you that this blog will go quiet for a week or two. We'll still get a post up later this week -- and this will be a fun one! -- and most likely a vlog if we're lucky, but then I go on ...

... wait for it ...

... VACATION! For a week. Sorry, guys. Even librarians need a little R&R from time to time. But after June 20, things should be a lot more active on the blog front!

Anyway, that's the big what's-the-Library-doing-this-summer update. You'll hear more as the summer wears on, though -- the list above is far from the only thing happening around here. Keep an eye out!

Guest post: Setting minds at easel

To make up for such an execrably long period of silence, as mentioned in yesterday's vlog, I'm offering something new today: a guest post! Elizabeth Henry, our Electronic Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian, had the brainwave a few weeks ago of putting up easels with large blank pads of paper and inviting people to write on them with comments about the Library. They were placed at various locations around the building, and we got quite the response!

She's written up a summary of what people had to say, as well as our responses to it all. It's very interesting reading!

---

Hi everyone! Remember those easels that we set up with those big pads so you could write comments about the Library? The easels had three questions total, which were:

• I visit the Library because…
• I like the Library because…
• I wish the Library had…

We were thrilled to see the large number of responses! We felt it was only appropriate to give you a summary of what everyone had to say; after all, you took the time to write your thoughts!

We were glad to hear that people like to visit the Library because it’s a quiet place to study and work on assignments. There’s plenty of space here! Of course, a nice bonus is being able to bring in food and drinks to enjoy while studying -- totally understandable! I enjoy drinking and eating while reading too.

We were also pleased to see that our support for Gallaudet’s students, faculty and staff is appreciated as well! We are always more than happy to help where we can. All you have to do is come in, e-mail us, or use the chat widget on our home page -- we’re here for you!

Now, down to the nitty-gritty: How can the Library improve?

First, some people wanted longer checkout periods, maybe up to a full semester. That’s understandable. But did you know you can already have a book for an entire semester? How you ask? All you have to do is renew your books! You can do it up to three times. Our shortest borrowing period for books is up to four weeks, and if you renew it 3 times, then you can have a book for another 12 weeks for a total of 16 weeks. That’s an entire semester right there!

We set it up that way because we’re a Library -- people like to check out books from us! So we like to try to make sure that the books are available to everyone within a reasonable time. Yes, I know, it can be a pain in the neck to have to renew a book over and over, but if someone else had a book you wanted, then you’d want a fair chance at it, wouldn’t you? By the same token, if you find a book you need for class, but it's checked out to someone else and doesn't look likely to come back soon, you can ask us to place a hold on it. When that happens, the other person with the book will bring it back instead of renewing it, so you'll have a chance to use the book, too. For more information on this, just ask at the Service Desk any time!

Other people asked for more computers, and we are working on it! We are aware that there are a few issues involved with the computers, such as the long log-in times you’ll sometimes experience on our computers, plus there can be such high demand that there’s nary an available computer to be found when you visit the Library. But the good news is that we’ll be replacing many of our public computers this summer! Also, we’re looking into improving our wireless Internet signal in the basement so students with their own laptops can be more flexible in where they work.

Many people mentioned how gloomy the Library can be! Yes, we know -- the basement can get dark! Every summer, we check all the study desks in the basement to make sure the bulbs are working, and do our best to replace any burned-out bulbs both there and in the rest of the Library. Still, bulbs don’t die on schedule! If you see one and it’s causing a problem with visibility, just let someone at the Service Desk know which light needs to be replaced and we’ll happily report the problem to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Another thing we noticed is that there seems to be a lot of people who love coffee! We got a lot of requests for free coffee to be provided all semester long, or at the very least a café in the Library building.

To be frank -- I need my caffeine fix myself too! I love to get my caffeine fix by drinking mochas. Mmm! -- the truth is, I can’t figure out where we can put a café in this building, as much as I’d love one! As for providing free coffee all semester, that does sound like a pretty nice idea, but that can take a lot of money. So what we do instead is that we target the most important parts of the semester -- midterms and the last week of classes! We know our statistics really shoot up during those times of the semester, and we know students’ stress levels do too, so we try to make the coffee available when it’ll do the most good. Some people have also asked for alternatives, like tea and hot chocolate, which we think is a great idea. We’ll let you know if that suggestion will become a reality!

As for the leaks, yeah. We know about the leaks. We’ve been working on them since the day the Library opened; although they’re a fact of life, we won’t stop until they’ve been eradicated. Lots of people also had suggestions about how to improve the general feel of the building -- the color scheme, the smell, and the furniture. We’re taking all those suggestions very seriously and are already kicking around a few ideas that might see some new things in the Library this Fall!

We also noticed an odd issue with this building … vampires? Ghosts? Really? Well, I’m not so sure about the vampires, but ghosts … well, now that’s definitely a possibility. If you see any, please let me know. I’m curious about which areas they usually haunt…!

Again, we really appreciate all of the responses we got. One person actually filled two or three big pages with all of her reasons for coming in to the Library, while others had a little fun. Did you know that the word "Library" spelled backwards, is y-r-a-r-b-i-l? Some of our librarians had a hard time figuring that out! There also plenty of useful comments, concerns, ideas and suggestions on top of it all.

So we want to thank everyone who participated and had their say. You’ve been heard and listened to.

Have a great summer!

Vlog review of Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Vlog review of The End of Overeating

The End of Overeating by David Kessler, M.D.

Amazons shifting into OverDrive

This might be a little bit overdue, but lots of other things have been happening, so please bear with me.

For a little background, read this article that I ganked off our Facebook page.

As news go, this is pretty far-out. In summary, Amazon's agreed to make it possible for people to borrow e-books from their local library on their Kindles. They've partnered with OverDrive, a major vendor for lendable e-books to accomplish this.

For a variety of reasons, most of which are known only to them, Amazon has historically been resistant to the idea of e-book lending. That's why, for instance, when I talked about EBL last month, I had to note that it didn't work on the Kindle. Ditto OverDrive, which I wrote about the month before that (I seem to be turning into quite the e-book blogger).

Up until this deal came along, it was a truism that if a library made e-books available for lending, those books would not be Kindle books. It's sort of a format-war thing -- VHS and Betamax, DVD and LaserDisc, HD DVD and Blu-Ray, Microsoft and Apple, Kindle and ePub.

ePub is the other format that's most widely used to disseminate e-books. It's readable on a large variety of devices and can be distributed with digital rights management (DRM) software baked into the e-book so that it either can't be copied, or can remove itself from the user's device after the borrowing period expires.

There are just two problems with ePub, a general one and a specific one.

First, the general one. The ePub format is an open standard, so it suffers from what I call the "Android Syndrome."

If you're not familiar with this, some background: Android -- the smartphone operating system created and distributed by Google -- is an open standard, meaning it's free for anyone to modify to their heart's content. Predictably, this has led to a huge variety of personalized versions of Android, depending on what phone company you use, what kind of smartphone you have, which third-party software developer you particularly like, or your own personal taste.

This means that when Google releases newer, faster, and better basic versions of Android, millions of people miss out because:

• The particular type of Android they have on their phones doesn't play nice with the new stuff.
• Their phone company is too slow to release a new version of their personalized Android that works with the new stuff.
• The smartphone they happen to have just doesn't have the hardware necessary to run the new stuff.

It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because when people run into any of the three problems listed above, their only option to upgrade their phone is generally to break their phone company's hold on it and find a third-party developer who's created a better version of Android that's suited to their equipment and needs. And we wind up with an Android that's been fragmented into a million pieces.

In ePub's case (back to the point!), as an open standard, it doesn't require or enforce a specific digital-rights mechanism, which means it may become difficult for a given device or app to support all the possible forms of DRM applied to different e-books, leading to a fragmentation of usability. This is still a relatively small concern -- ePub isn't all that old as standards go -- but then it was also a small concern in the early days of Android. Still, most public libraries use large e-book vendors, like OverDrive, that require that users download a specific app or use a specific format in order to read their e-books, which makes the DRM consideration a pretty small one!

So that's the general problem with ePub, which really isn't much of one these days, despite the lengthy exposition!

The specific problem with ePub is just that they're unreadable on the Kindle. Sigh ... and the war goes on.

In general, the Amazon-OverDrive deal seems to be a good thing for libraries. A lot of kinks still need to be ironed out -- how much control will libraries have over their Kindle e-books? Will they have to pay again for a Kindle copy, even if they already have an ePub version from the same vendor? -- but there's cautious optimism about the implications for libraries that are facing the growth of e-books.

It's certainly made us sit up and take notice here at the Gallaudet University Library, but we have to admit to being uncertain that there actually are all that many people on campus -- or off, in the case of our online students -- who would use a mobile device to read one of our e-books. Working with EBL will help us learn a little more about whether or not that feature gets used, but we also don't know how many people own Kindles, for instance, as opposed to Nooks or Sony Readers.

Or would more people use their devices for this purpose after the e-books became available?

It's kind of a funny little dilemma. Either way, we're still buying e-books and they are still being used, even in the current, relatively-limited format that's available.

One way we could get around this is to get feedback. If you're reading this and you use a device of some kindto read e-books, let me know! Just e-mail me at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu and let me know what device you use to read e-books and your thoughts on whether or not the Library should start thinking about stuff like OverDrive and its Kindle e-books.

We may also do a survey about it over the summer, depending on how quiet it is here. Nevertheless, you can still expect to hear more about it in the coming months ...