What’s on your minds this week

Between last week and this (weeks 6 & 7) there has been lots of discussion about reference, customer service, and library users. The most active discussions revolved around the catalog, classification, and how information or books are retrieved. You pose great questions and are definitely ruminating about the issues. The reflective journals echo these concerns as well as issues that jump out at you. I’d say Weigland’s article was the most popular and put reference, information seeking, and information needs into perspective. As I mentioned in my podcast, I didn’t see the benefit of the article originally, but after ruminating on the idea of how we make decisions, Weigland is right on target.

Some of you continue to write about reference interviews, giving information to patrons vs. teaching them to find it. It’s important to remember that although each reference encounter is a teachable moment, sometimes they just want that “factoid” and a quick, here’s the source. and the info may be good enough for the patron.

As the patron continues to return to the reference desk, you’ll get a sense that teaching them to find the information will be helpful and more rewarding. I’m thinking here of genealogy & local history, literary criticism, art history and school paper topics.

My favorite question used to be “Where can I find the Bible?” My response was, “What type and what language?” Sometimes that elicited a longer reference interview; sometimes I just took them to the 292’s and showed them how the Bibles and biblical commentaries were arranged. I always ended the discussion with “If you didn’t find what you want or need more, come back and I’ll help you find it.” Today I hear the refrain as “Did that answer your question completely?” If you remember that reference is a multi-step process, you’ll help the patron learn step-by-step.

Here’s another example of searching step by step, but not necessarily in a mediated manner. Look at what Ancestry is doing with their TV show “Who Do You Think You Are?” http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/  They make genealogy research look really easy, just log on and put in your name, and voila, there’s a leaf and your family tree is growing. What you don’t see, unless you work in a genealogy or local history department, is how difficult it really is to use the database. When we examine the searching mechanisms at Ancestry we discover that, while their search engine pulls from their huge database of documents, it also provides imprecise answers and the searches are difficult to replicate. It is almost impossible to get the database to retrieve a specific item unless you save it. The imprecision and the huge number of hits, frustrates patrons. It just looks easy but it’s not that easy. I love searching Ancestry, and they have raised the publics’ awareness of the importance of libraries, archives, and museums and the vast collections housed within their walls. If you watch their show carefully, individuals seek assistance in their research from librarians, archivists, and historians. When it comes to searching for information, librarians and archivists are an essential part of the equation and solution. We, the librarians, help our patrons make sense of databases and information, so their search is successful or at least somewhat fruitful. [1]

As librarians and archivists, as professional researchers, it is important to take the time to learn how databases and search engines retrieve data and citations. What elements do they actually query? How do they rank or select the elements for each data set? How is the located data displayed? All these factors are important to consider as we explore resources, search catalogs and websites, and teach these reference tools to our patrons.

By the way, if you are interested in reading more about teaching at the reference desk and / or collaborative teaching, check out James K. Elmborg and Sheril Hook, Centers for Learning: Writing Centers and Libraries in Collaboration, Publications in Librarianship No. 58 (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, ALA, 2005).

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[1] My comparison is a gross simplification of the differences between database search, retrieval, and output mechanisms.

Reviewing: books, articles, websites, exhibits, and presentations.

What’s the purpose of reviewing various media and presentations, physical and digital? For librarians and archivists, reviewing is a way to share our opinions about the content, authority, and importance of produced works. Those reviews are important for collection development, for making lists of “read-alikes” for readers’ advisory, or compiling subject bibliographies. We cannot read everything that comes into the library, nor can we even look at all the titles that are available for selection.  Even if we went to the bookstore every day, we would not be able to look through all the books that are published every month. It’s too big a job. On top of that, we are not all subject specialists. We must rely upon the expertise of subject specialists and scholars to review books for their content and their quality.  As librarians, we need to be able to write an abstract of a book or journal article, to review the same for their importance to the field, both librarianship and the academic field. To do that, we need to think about how each title fits within the field and helps shape the field.

One approach to reviewing is to put together a list of questions you would like to ask the author about what he or she wrote. I always imagine what the questions I would ask if we went for coffee and I wanted to get to know the author better through her book. Why did he approach the topic in this manner? What was missing or unclear? Did the conclusion make sense? There are so many excellent questions to ask. One thing to keep in mind while reviewing is that it’s the text the author wrote that you are considering, not what you wanted them to write. I always get stuck at this issue.

One thing to remember when you write review and analyze books and articles is to draw in other literature and authors to support your arguments. Don’t just comment based upon your own attitudes and feelings. Including other resources makes your arguments stronger and helps provide a context for the materials you review.

The hidden value of catalogs and indices

I’ve been doing more thinking about the value of catalogs and indices for librarians, archivists, and researchers. From a librarian’s perspective, these tools help us and researchers find what they are looking for. That sounds really simple and straight forward, except that it is easier said than done. I’ve written a little about how indices are put together, where journal articles and books covering the same subject areas are intellectually grouped into the same place, and, using call numbers, can be physically placed together on the shelf.

Books in series can be placed together or separated from one another, yet co-located in a catalog. Let me give you an example. There are books written in series called “monographic serials.” They are usually on a similar topic, say mapping, or urban studies. Now catalogers can select call numbers so they are shelved together one after the other allowing the researcher to just go to the shelf and find the topic of their choice within the series. Or they can be interspersed throughout the collection, depending upon their subject matter and only brought together by the “series” title. Every library varies in its treatment of these monographic serials, and LOC no longer provides guidance as to which way to catalog them. The cataloging and MARC record contains the information that allows us to find all the books in this series which could be scattered all over the library.

My favorite catalogs are the national union catalogs. The one for the United States is NUC pre-1956. It is a series of about 750 quarto (large) green volumes that are often hidden away in libraries and cataloging areas and are rarely used today. Examining the entries you can actually trace the history of cataloging and classification. Within the volumes are lists of an author’s works, major and minor, articles in journals that some library cataloged, and even pamphlets by ministers, scientists, and humanists alike. While the holdings information may be outdated, it is fifty-five years old after all, access to series and subject information is invaluable for historians, literary scholars, and historians of the book, to name a few.

When I was researching late nineteenth century archaeological reports from Near East excavations, all the preliminary research and findings were cataloged as separate items in the New York Public Library catalogs (pre-1972). Now I could have found some of the articles / pamphlets in journal indices, but many were not published in the US or were not included in standard indices. The catalog held the clues and opened up a world of research and exploration for me.

Many of these older book catalogs are still in use. The entries have never been converted to machine readable entries, and probably never will be. Some libraries have annotated their catalogs and cards with little notes that aid the researcher or are based on evidence found by researchers in the course of their studies. The same holds true of print indices, exhibition catalogs, and subject specific catalogs that provide access to older or specialized collections. These resources are invaluable to the researcher and scholar, to the librarian and archivist working in a special collection.

So how does this pertain to information scientists today? It is important to see where the idea of organizing our printed history comes from. And it is not just printed history. There are catalogs and organizational methods for photographs, sound recordings, and even objects. These items are often arranged in acquisition order that is, when they were acquired, or by type, with subject access through a catalog. The catalog is supposed to do all the work, through access points for title or descriptive phrase, author or creator or excavator, and by subject or classification.

I have been writing about tangible items. What about all the items, websites, and ideas on the Internet? Should we bother trying to create order out of all the chaos? That’s such a huge question, that it really belongs in a course by itself. My simple answer is that the search engines that go out to the web are our, societies’, feeble attempt to provide some order and control over a vast ocean of data and information. Some search engines to better jobs than others. None compare, yet, with the way print and online ‘card’ catalogs and indices provide access to books and journals.

Our job as librarians, archivists, and information scientists is to help retrieve materials for researchers using these catalogs, indices, and search engines. Our goal is to teach our patrons to navigate the disparate catalogs, indices, and databases to find what they seek. Knowing how they work and how to make they work is half the game, the other half is to understand what our researchers need and how they go about seeking that little bit of information, that little clue that completes their puzzle. 

TV and Google

One theme of this week's readings might be TV, Google, and Our Brains - how the media affects our understanding of the world around us. While there is lots of debate about what is an authoritative source of information, these authors mostly agree that books trump other forms of media. What do you think?

If you want to read more on the topic:

Citations for Neil Postman and other books on his topic of media, critical thinking, and authority.

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death written in 1985. You might also check out his book Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Marie Winn The Plug-In Drug1967

Nicholas Carr Is Google Making Us Stupid: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” Atlantic Monthly (July/Aug 2008) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/which he expanded into a book length discussion The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains ..

Marchall McLuhan The Medium Is the Massage 1967

Walter Ong Orality and literacy: the Technologizing of the Word 1982

Organizing Information

There are three major themes for this week. There are classification schema, cataloging schema, and metadata and tagging for electronic and digital resources.  Since I got carried away with video podcasts you probably don’t want to read more about the topic this week.

Here are some different ways to think about the topic.

One is by pointing to the physical location of an item. Classification schema do this, and the location is called a call number or shelf mark number. These numbers aggregate items together by that particular, usually dominant subject.  Dewey Decimal Numbers, Cutter numbers, Library of Congress Call numbers, SuDoc (Superintendent of Documents) Call number (for gov docs) are just a few call number schema.

There are classification schema which provide access to subjects within books and journals. These subjects are designated using fixed or controlled vocabulary found in thesauri, in Sears Subject Headings, or Library of Congress Subject Headings. Tags are the natural language “equivalents” of subject headings where users use vocabulary that is not controlled and varies quite widely. The great thing about subject headings is that you can assign many to an item while it is located in just one location in the library.  See Dr. Rubin’s example about Darwin’s Origin of the Species in the chapter

Then there are the catalogs themselves. Books, archives, and some museum collections are catalogs using MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging). Each identifiable element of a book or object is typed into a specific field. The fields are then displayed by the catalog interface. There are more fields with data than are normally shown by the public access terminal or OPAC. Other catalog encoding systems include ARC and EAD. Dublin Core is a system that allows the use of natural language to identify the various objects cataloging or held within the database. Dublin Core usually, but not always, describes digital objects.

Metadata is compiled to describe the various features and attributes of digital objects and databases. It is actually data about data and is used for organizing and controlling or keeping track of digital resources, their methods of creation, and components.

Dr. Salaba referenced this link in her talk about metadata. It leads to a metadata standards map - http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/~jenlrile/metadatamap/

There are ways to provide access points to books, journals, and other sources of data. One is an index arranged by author, title, and various subject headings. We are all familiar with this form of access method. There are indices to journals in a subject area, where subject headings and subheadings provide access to various articles written that month, year, or even decade. These have evolved into proprietary or ‘domain dependent’ databases such as Library Literature Index. Even JSTOR might be considered such an index.

Since I spoke at length about these various topics in my video podcasts, I’ll limit my explanation to those above. Let me know if you have questions, which will undoubtedly be answered more fully when you take “Organization of Information” and “Cataloging”.

Observations of libraries – common features and comments

2/17/12

 

It was fascinating to read all your observations about a library near you.  Many of you went to your local library and systematically toured the building, looking at the various departments, layout, services, and staffing. In some cases, it was the first time you actually focused on the library & the services it provided. Children’s libraries were a big hit, as were computer labs. A few of you went to academic libraries. Alas, none of you observed the goings on at an historical society or a special library. I hope you will take the opportunity to interview a professional at an institution you don’t know well or in an aspect of the field that is foreign to you.

Few of you commented about librarian / patron interactions although some mentioned experiences at the circulation desk, with self-checkout machines, or registration for new cards. This is a great method to employ when contemplating how someone new to a community sees your institution. First impressions are so important. We almost never have the opportunity to correct poor impressions.

Lack of or poor signage seems to be a serious issue in almost all libraries. How are our patrons supposed to find anything when the stacks and areas are poorly labeled or there is not signage at all? What does it mean to a community when a library neglects signage? Or lets the website go out of date with stale links and year old events?

There were lots of summaries of activities and detailed tours of buildings and collections. Some of you were very creative asking questions and setting up scenarios as first time patron to get the feel for the culture of the library. Very commendable!

One of you talked about a “gadget” gallery, where the library had various e-book readers and electronic devices that patrons could try out. What a great idea! That combines ERI and serves the patrons who are curious about what to acquire or how to use a piece of technology.

What I found most lacking was a discussion of how the literature we have read so far, or listened to, helped you set the library into context in a community. A few of you brought in references to the literature, but a very few. Pulling in the literature was an integral part of the assignment. I expect you do to so for the journal article review and for the interview.

Think about how the readings provide background to the field, to the profession or specialty.

How does the institution you visited compare with what you read about? Is it typical or different? What is offered that was surprising or revolutionary?

Life in the trenches: Words from a new librarian

Hi all, Dr. Kahn has asked me to be a guest blogger for your Week 6 lessons.

I’m Lindsay and I’m a newly minted (December 2009) librarian from Kent SLIS, and I recently began my first professional librarian job.  Feel free to email me if you want to know more about my job searching adventures (which are book-worthy!).  I had the pleasure of having Miriam for two courses while in library school – Rare Book Librarianship in the fall of 2008 and Genealogy and Local History in the spring of 2009, and she also was an invaluable resource after I graduated.

A bit more about my background…I have a BS in Biology and worked several years in biomedical research before starting my MLIS, luckily realizing before getting too engrossed in a PhD program, that I needed to be in a field where I was able to regularly interact with people and not waste my life away taking care of mice!  I love biomedical research, I’m passionate about it, but I definitely didn’t like getting my hands dirty.  That and I found the career opportunities for PhD candidates in my field to be almost non-existent.  So it was the dissatisfaction with my current field that drew me into libraries in the first place – and I fell in love with working in reference and teaching, focusing my career in librarianship toward reference and teaching in academic health sciences libraries.

I’m sure many of you have similar stories, either as recent college graduates in an uncertain job market trying to find a broad encompassing degree that doesn’t lock you into a single thing, or long-standing college graduates looking for a career change.

While in SLIS I started working as a substitute reference assistant at Massillon Public Library, and I completed my practicum at Case Western Reserve University's Health Center Library.  So during my tenure in SLIS I had the opportunity to work in reference in both a public library as well as an academic health sciences library, which gave me a unique understanding to the similarities and differences in reference interactions between these two distinct library types.

Today I am a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Columbia University Medical Center’s Health Sciences Library in New York City - email me if you want to know more about what it's like to work in academia or to live and work in NYC!  On a daily basis, I work directly with faculty, students, and researchers from the five Columbia University programs affiliated with CUMC: the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the College of Nursing, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Public Health, and the Graduate School of Basic Sciences; as well as clinicians and nurses from New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

I’m still a newbie here, only having started in November, and I am still learning the ropes, but I hope to give you all a taste of what it is like in the “real world” of librarianship, specifically what it’s like to be a new librarian working in the trenches.

So, I’m sure you’re all dying to know what it’s really like out there, and if what you’re learning in SLIS is of any measurable use as you begin to actually work in the field.  And I’m here to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I know Dr. Kahn has mentioned this to you, but I want to reiterate it.  Library school in general is heavily based in theory, some of which is nice to know, but most is not practical for librarians who actually work in libraries (librarians as scholars is a whole different ball game).

My advice about what to take from SLIS is this:  What you learn in many of your classes probably isn't what is going to help you in your job (understand it that most of what you will do as a professional librarian you will learn once you already have a job).  Do a practicum (especially if you do not currently already work in a library, or work in a different type of library than you want to work in).  Find a mentor (this can be a professor, a practicum supervisor, or a librarian at a local library, etc.).  Get experience (when you're in library school - many libraries hire LIS students as pages and assistants, this is a foot in the door and imperative to your success).  Find your niche (take advantage of your previous jobs and experiences, and find your "unique value contribution" that makes you stand out against every other candidate for a job).

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Having experience in both public and academic libraries, I’ll try to give you a general sense of each, the pros and cons, and what it takes to work in each setting.

Reference Librarians – Public vs. Academic

Knowledge focus:
Public libraries: General information – must be knowledgeable in many areas (e.g. literature, genealogy, medicine, and car repair) and have the skills to quickly find information.  Must be adept at using many subject databases and public resources ('tis the season for IRS.gov!!).  Though often questions can be answered with a simple Google search or with that revered scholarly resource Wikipedia (I've located DOB's for celebrities many times, needless to say).  Users usually come to the reference desk to get concrete information.  Undergraduate degrees mean little as far as specialization, and focus is on previous experience.

Academic libraries: Specialized research and teaching – must be able to carry out in-depth research and teach users to use the resources themselves.  A smaller subset of databases are needed to be known, but you must know those databases inside and out because you will often be using many of them every day.  You must also be able to be able to explain, in layman's terms, how to use the databases in complex ways, such as using subject headings to target a search.  Users usually come to the reference desk to learn how to do something.  Often a specialized undergraduate background or subject Masters is required or expected after several years of service.

Users:
Public libraries: Anyone and everyone – from children, to the elderly, to the mentally unstable, public reference librarians must be able to field questions from users from vast educational and socio-economic levels, and depending on the location of the library (urban, rural, suburban) the frequency of problem patrons.

Academic libraries: Students, faculty and staff, and researchers from the university, and depending on the institution, visitors – depending on the type of institution, academic reference librarians may have a very specialized set of users or they might deal with every level (undergraduates, graduates, faculty, etc.), but each user group requires a different type of approach and often have different needs and schedules.

Typical work:
Public libraries: Long and busy desk shifts with occasional other duties – public reference librarians tend to spend a significant portion of their day (at least at the entry-level) sitting on the reference desk and assisting patrons.  Their shifts on the reference desk, usually from 4-8 hours at a time, are often a busy mix of in-person, phone, and email requests, so multi-tasking is imperative.  There will be times where you will find yourself with 3 patrons in front of you and the phone ringing off the hook (I’ve been there…multiple times!).  It’s a matter of being courteous and efficient, but at the same time knowing your own limits and spelling those out to your patrons.  If worse comes to worse let the answering machine pick up the phone calls!  Some reference librarians will be required to teach a class here or there, or even work at the circulation desk at times.

Academic libraries: Short and quiet desk shifts with significant other duties – academic reference librarians generally spend only a small portion of their day on the reference desk, perhaps only a couple hours a day or a couple days a week (I currently work on the desk for 2 hours twice a week, and then whenever a colleague might need someone to cover).  Reference desk shifts can, depending on the time of the semester be very hectic (around finals or when term papers are due), or unbearably silent (beginning of semesters, summer, etc.).  The rest of your day will likely be spend preparing for classes, teaching, and doing consultations with users.  And depending on the institution/library, some academic librarians are “embedded” meaning they work within the departments that they serve, directly interacting with their core users.  These types of librarians are typically are referred to as “liaisons”.  Regardless of the type of reference librarian you are, one of your primary duties will inevitably be marketing your library and your expertise to your users and your administration.

Types of questions:
Public libraries: Most questions are ready-reference, few teachable moments – the phone number to a local store, finding a specific book or DVD, facts and figures, or downloadable forms.  More in-depth questions may revolve around genealogy and local history, or help finding research information.  I found that I had many users who came from some of the local colleges/technical schools, and joked that I should get commission for directing many of their own students to their libraries!  Finding teachable moments in public libraries is sometimes a bit harder to come by.  It becomes a skill in reading a patron to determine if they can comprehend enough to actually learn the concept as well as if they have any desire at all to learn that skill.

Academic libraries: Most questions are in-depth, significant teachable moments - generally you may only have one or two reference transactions in a two-hour shift (and I’ve gone many a shifts with no questions at all!), but the transactions may take considerable times, as they often require in-depth searching or a complex problem.  In some of these transactions, teaching is highly effective.  A student or faculty member who is trying to find articles on a topic or comes in with a problem – this is where you can turn a reference question into a teachable moment and leave that user feeling more empowered to do their own research and appreciative of the knowledge and expertise that the librarian was able to provide for them.  Not only is teaching great because they learn something new, but it’s a valuable PSA in the worth and necessity of academic libraries in an era when administrations are trying to find places to cut funding.

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In any case, public or academic libraries, you might find yourself in a position with a patron, where they are asking for something that is completely outside of your knowledge or expertise.  I had many questions while working at the public library, where patrons came in with questions about legal documents.  The plus was, once I learned what reference book there were copyable dissolution of marriage forms, I was pretty good, but nonetheless I still got questions that I either had no idea what the patron was talking about, or even if I did I ended up with the proverbial deer in the headlights reaction. The best thing to do is to stop, take a breath, and try to ask the patron more questions to get an idea what they're talking about.  In academic libraries, you might have a user who has a research question that is completely out of your repertoire.  And while often the searching skills are the same, often there are specific databases or jargon that is necessary.  Sometimes the best thing to do with academics is to ask them more questions about their research, and be honest that you don't have any expertise in that subject area but if they can inform you you can do the best to help them.

In both cases, often the biggest hurdle is that the patron really isn't sure what information or help they need.  Case-in-point...I was trying to help a graduate student and he came to me and gave me what appeared to be his unabridged defense and after suffering through what seemed like hours of incomprehensible gibberish, I asked a few seemingly simple questions, and it turned out that all he needed to know was how to change the style format of his references for his advisor, but when his advisor told him what he needed to do the advisor make it sound like he needed another PhD to accomplish it!  It's like playing telephone, only with academics.  If you can get to the bottom of what the user needs, why they need it, and what they intend to do with, you almost always can determine a course of action and find an answer or a solution.

These same questions are also what we can ask ourselves when we find that we are unsure what to do in a reference transaction.

If that doesn't work, sometimes the most effective solution is to ask.  You can't know everything, and no one expects a freshly new librarian to have all the answers, know every database, and be able to handle every question that comes their way.  Let your colleagues help you.  Learn from them, most librarians are eager to pass their knowledge onto new librarians both among their own co-workers as well as others in the field.  Often, it's the simplest most dull questions that trip you up.  I remember the first time someone asked where the restrooms were at CUMC and I froze!  We have staff restrooms in the back, but I was completely unaware as to where the public restrooms were!  Another example is I sit on Columbia University Libraries' Ask A Librarian chat reference desk for an hour a week.  It's fun, but can be quite exhausting at busy/peak times, and can make a new librarian feel very vulnerable.  First off, I work at the Health Sciences Library at the medical center, 52 blocks uptown from the main campus and only loosely connected to the rest of the CU campus.  I don't even know where all the different libraries at main campus are, let alone intimate knowledge about their collections and policies!  Second, I have no experience or knowledge of subject specific databases, like Bloomberg (a law database that is only available to law students).    Several times I've had to run out of my office to a colleagues' and quickly ask them the question!  Working on v-ref has literally been a crash course in Columbia University's libraries, collections, and policies, and has taught me many new things.

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So that’s my “lesson” here in this guest post.  Now I’ll tell you a few anecdotes, to help give you a more real image of what we are actually doing out there.

Working in a public library you will quickly learn about “certain” patrons.  And while some are real problem patrons (I had the unfortunate experience of having my purse AND my car stolen by some young girls while at work at MPL...long story, and luckily something I can now laugh about!!), others are just quirky or more often than not, off their rockers.  There was one patron that was notorious at MPL, and during my first interaction with her my supervisor neglected to tell me her story.  I patiently assisted her in locating the phone number to the Monte Carlo Film Festival because she had heard that a certain member of the Royal Family was seen there…don’t ask how she was going to call Monaco, or why she was calling to talk to the Prince when according to the tabloid he had been there a week earlier.  And as I struggled to decipher French websites, keeping my frustrations and confusion at bay, I later learned (from an uncontrollably laughing supervisor) that this patron was infamous among the staff, harboring a stalking fixation on the British Throne and requested all sorts of bizarre information.  My later exchanges with this patron included reprimanding her for pushing me off my own reference desk because she refused to wait in line behind the other patrons, and reading through dozens of tabloids.  Needless to say, working in a public library is never a dull moment!

While at CWRU, my favorite student got that designation for a certain unique way of showing her appreciation for my help.  I always say, it’s nice when patrons’ thank you for helping them, but actions speak louder than words.  And this first-year medical student gave me the most memorable thank you.  The next time I was at my practicum she brought several of her friends and told them that I could help them with their research papers.  It’s moments like that when you realize what an impact you are making on your patrons.

All my life I have used Macs, and while in many aspects of your professional career this can be problematic, as most institutions work solely with PCs, in my case it turned out to be a hidden gem while at CUMC.  Even though it was not part of the job description or anything that even came up in any serious degree during my interviews, I stepped into a job where I was able to take up a role and a direction that was not imagined by the rest of the staff.  I have become the “Mac Guru”.  Which is a very necessary job title, as more and more of our users are toting their MacBooks, and iPads, and iPhones around, and wanting to use them to do their research and locate and store information.  As luck would have it, there was an unused Mac Mini that magically appeared on my office desk, so I had the bragging rights of two computers in my office!  But it was what I was able to do with that Mac that has made all the difference.  I have created classes specifically teaching resources using a Mac, and when our director purchased several iPads for staff use, I had constant knocks on my office door from colleagues unsure how to work the tablet and taught an impromptu lesson to several of the reference librarians during some down time at the desk on the basic functions of the iPad.

Your job is what you make it, and whether you're working as a para-professional in a library, doing a practicum, or working in your first professional position, you're going to have experiences that will easily lend themselves to learning and growing.  Make sure you do learn and grow from them, to make yourself a better librarian, a better provider of information, a better resource for your users.  Find opportunities to take a risk, step out of your comfort zone, and take on new tasks.  Get involved as students in professional organizations.  Network.  Learn.  Use the librarians you meet as a sounding board.  Ask them about their jobs, their experiences.  Ask them to critique your resumes/CVs.  Ask them to connect you to others.  Realize that every person you meet is going to give you more knowledge and experiences and ideas.


Well, that's all for now.  I'm happy to answer any questions from you guys and Dr. Kahn has my permission to forward any pertinent discussion onto me.  My email address is: lg2683@columbia.edu, consider my inbox an open door invitation.