TURKEYS! 2

I posted on this before, but the story contiues.  The wild turkey hen that I saw earlier has be cruising around every morning this week during my morning commute.  She either has a death wish or is invincable.  Despite the fact that her territory includes a large section of route 502 in New Jersey she is still alive.  Four out of the past five days she has been in the road and is completely unphased by the passing cars, freight trains and honking horns.  This morning she was in the intersection near the freight train crossing, right on the line for the left turn traffic actually.  And what was she doing?  Cleaning her feathers.  A young man in a black SUV laid on his horn as he got to the line and all she did was look at him.  She didn’t run out of the way.  Luckily the light was red at the time, so he couldn’t go anyway.  The funny part was that by the time the light had turned green she just happened to have wandered over closer to the curb and was out of the way of the line of traffic.  Crazy turkey.

Users? Patrons? Students? Customers? Pick your poison.

I may have given my opinion on this before, but I cannot seem to find the post where I possibly shared my thoughts.  So much for trying to create clever and descriptive titles for my posts.  But you can see my other post on this book here.   (Guess I need more practice.)  Anyway, I thought I would share a paragraph from Jeannette Woodward’s book Creating the Customer-Driven Academic Library.  This from Chapter 10, ‘Evaluating Our Progress,’ page 178: {this is a word for word quotation}

One of the many reasons why it is helpful to use the term customers to refer to the academic community is to remind us of this new emphasis on running higher education as a business enterprise.  Many of us find this idea repugnant.  However, to survive and prosper in the twenty-first century, librarians will probably have to put aside any affection they may feel for the ivory tower library of the past.  We know that customers make demands, but we rarely think of patrons demanding anything.  Instead, the term brings to mind individuals who give rather than receive.  You might think of patrons of the arts, for example.  Their role is to support the arts, not make demands of them.  Customers, on the other hand, demand high-quality facilities, resources, and services.  They want a library that is focused on their needs, and they have no intention of going out of their way to meet the library’s needs or expectations. 

I know plenty of folks would disagree with Jeannette, and me for that matter.  I think she makes a good point.  Believe what you want, call them what you want.  But they do make demands, don’t they?  They have expectations, right?  And for those that are howling about the idea of ‘running higher education as a business enterprise,’ we can fool ourselves all we want that academia is different.  However, regardless of how many times we say it to ourselves, higher education is a business and it takes money to make it happen.  Fine!  Be upset, angry, indignant, pissed off about these things.  You have every right to disagree, but it takes money and business savvy to keep the lights on at colleges and unversities on a daily basis.  And if the students come in and find cheap fluorescent light bulbs that are broken, dim, or flicker on and off, they will complain about it and eventually go elsewhere if given a million reasons why they are like that or they don’t get fixed.  If it takes a million (Yes! I’m exaggerating.) clicks to get to that electronic resource they thought they wanted, they most likely will give up before they get there and find something else.  This reminds me of those Ally Bank commercials running right now, see them here, with the kids that are given toys to play with and then suddenly are faced with a raw deal because of restrictions, hidden information, or fine print.  Their expressions remind me of the faces of some of our customers when we start giving them these long explanations why they cannot do something, or why they have to pay for something, or the hoops they have to jump through to get access to something.  And it is not just in the libraries that this is happening.  We are finding problems pop up in the library because of services that have been set up by other campus departments and are accessible in the library, like copy machines that don’t take coins, only money off of students’ id cards.  How is this helpful??  We are a public institution and our library is open to the public.  You should see their faces when we start to explain they cannot put coins into the copy machines and why.  Regardless what we call people who come in and use our library, and our academic institutions for that matter,  and all its services, it is high time we came up with a better service model.

Non-profit publisher selling most of its journals

Read in IHE today that a small publisher is selling most of its journals to a commercial publisher.  See if this will affect your library.  (The article has a link to the publisher’s list of journals.)

Confidentiality Clauses with Vendors . . . why?

I saw this little blurb in  the IHE update from June 8, 2009.  The blurb is titled ‘Fighting Confidentiality in Library Contracts’.  And it is about ARL adopting a policy that encourages libraries not to sign contracts that include confidentiality clauses with publishers and vendors.  I know for some this is a hot button issue, but I support ARL’s decision.  Seriously, what is the problem with us knowing what other libraries pay for a service or product?  If we knew this information I think we could make better decisions about what to buy.  It would also force vendors and publishers to make more of an effort to make their products more attractive and useful to their customers.  And maybe there would be a little more healthy competition between all those vendors.  And maybe, just maybe, some of the stuff we bought wouldn’t be so expensive and we wouldn’t have to cut the book budget so much!  OMG!

Oh boy! We’ve got signage!

Day three, post SUNYLA conference, and the library is pretty quiet.  I think the rainy weather here in the northeast has really dampened people’s spirits.  I think some have gone back into hibernation until they hear the sun is finally out.  Unfortunately, our recurring leaks don’t want to go away.  We do not yet have windows on the front of the library, still just scaffolding and plastic draped over that. (I wonder what that is doing to our air conditioning bill).  On the up side of that, we have an inordinate amount of flies visiting the library.  Well, really just a few here and there, but they are getting in because of our lack of windows.  Thankfully we haven’t seen any more birds since about two weeks ago.  So, when are the windows coming?  Who knows! 

Anyway, the title of this post refers to signage.  Yes, folks, we are in the process of getting our signage installed.  And it is all really cool.  Basically it is just vinyl-type lettering that is is applied to surfaces (walls, glass, columns, etc.), so nothing to mount onto anything.  They are like big colorforms (if you are old enough to remember those) or rub on decals (again if you are old enough), or iron-on images (if you are old enough to remember them) or temporary tattoos (except they are permanent).  So a big “Alleluia” for the fact that our funding for signage is no longer stuck in Albany, especially since they are being oh so productive these days, and to knowing that our patrons will be a little less confused around here (providing they actually read them).  Although . . . I would like to say, some of it will be out of date very soon (of course people! can’t expect it to all go perfectly!).  I was reading the directory in the front lobby and it places certain things in our lower level, which is where they are now, but we already know that those things will be moved to the main level very shortly.  Hope they can ‘edit’ the signage . . .

Scholarly Presses Recognize the Need to Move to Electroinc Formats

Jennifer Howard in the Chronicle of Higher Education today wrote about the Association of American University Presses annual meeting in an article titled: “Scholarly Presses Discuss What It Takes to Survive”.  It talks about how the scholarly presses recognize the need to change and move towards mostly electronic publishing.  In that discussion, publishers also observed the need to work closely with libraries (their largest customer base) to make sure the presses understand what libraries need and want. 

Ok, so here is what I want from scholarly presses, and for that matter, all presses.  If you are going to go largely electronic for books, how are you going to make these available to libraries who do resource sharing/interlibrary loan?  This is my #1 question these days.  Yes, I know, the publishers/presses would prefer that everyone owns a copy of each e-book.  But come on people, every library is not going to buy every e-book in the world, just because the publishers want them to.  But, the ones that we do buy, well, well, well, if the e-book interface and our license for the use of that e-book does not allow any interlibrary loan functionality, we should be saying thanks but no thanks.  If we are not allowed to lend these materials they are not really that valuable to us.  Yes of course our users may use them, just like they may use our physical collection.  But publishers have to understand what interlibrary loan/resource sharing is and means to libraries.  Resource sharing is not just about borrowing and lending books, copy and sending articles, or even consortial agreements to access databases.  Resource sharing is about collegiality.  And it is that collegiality that ensures that libraries will be able to acquire (if only temporarily) the materials their users need.  In some intances that collegiality (or lack of it) is what can make or break relationships between libraries.  If one library won’t lend their electronic resources than other libraries will eventually withhold their electronic resources from that one library.  And where does that leave the users?  Probably leaving the library to find a place that will give them what they want, probably online.  The potential ripple effect of not having resource sharing abilities built into e-book licences could be catastrophic.  So tell your publishers exactly what you want written into the licences and make sure the interfaces you get have the software built in to allow e-books to be shared through interlibrary loan.  There is an easy solution to this concern, it is just a matter of doing.  The complicated part is to get all the parties involved talking to each other.

I know I have brought this up before, I will bring it up again, this has to get done folks.  Talk to your vendors, talk to the publishers, talk to your interlibrary loan staff, talk to OCLC, Atlas Systems and all the other interlibrary loan related vendors.  If e-books are our future we are all going to be in a very serious situation if we suddenly find we cannot share our collections.

Not a good meeting

Just got out of a meeting with YBP and my fellow librarians.  We will be adopting approval plans as part of our collection development processes.  However,  none of those plans will include any of the subject areas I collect in.  The YBP rep will be here today and tomorrow to do a general presentation and meet with selectors that have areas that will be included in the approval plans.  So, I asked my director whether it was useful for me to go to the introductory meeting.  Yes, it was suggested I attend, I may get something out of it.  Forgive my complaining here folks, but there was really no reason for me to go to that introductory meeting.  I did not learn anything useful.  It was all about how YBP sets up the plans and who is involved on their end in keeping this process going.  On top of all that, and I’m sure the YBP rep is very knowledgeable in what she does, but it was frustrating to see her struggle to bring up her Power Point slides.  We have latest version of Windows and she didn’t know how to get to the slide show, we had to help her.  Then early into the presentation a light over my head started to randomly blink on and off for the rest of the time we were in there.  And then . . . yes folks, there is more, this warning came up on the projection screen that said: ‘Lamp may fail soon!  Replacement suggested!’  Naturally that warning was there for the rest of the presentation, obscuring her slides and being a huge distraction.  Buy then I was ready to walk out, but I stayed because I was asked to attend.  Well, I hope the rest of the meetings go well and the approval plans are useful for us, I’m just glad I don’t have to attend any more of those meetings.

SUNYLA Conference . . . the end

Moved out of my dorm room around 8:15 and found that the guy to collect the keys wasn’t there yet.  Heard later that he was at Dunkin Donuts when someone called him.  I guess he didn’t get the memo that check-out was from 8-1.  Grrr.  So, instead I ran off to get breakfast and go to the Resource Sharing SIG.  I was very happy to find breakfast burritos.  Whoo Hoo!  Had a quick conversation with Dan Spect from Atlas Systems too.  The Resource Sharing SIG turned out to be all IDS Project members and one Nylink representative, the hope was some non-IDS folks would come but we had a good discussion anyway.  We talked about purchase on demand: who’s doing it and how.  For the first session of the morning I went to one titled ‘Learning More About Our Students: Librarians’ Adventures in the Land of Academic Advising and Writing Consultation’.  The presenters were from the University of Rochester.  Did you know they have 5,000 students and 30 librarians?  That’s crazy!  I wish we had a comparable number of librarians on our campus.  Anyway, it was a very good session.  By being advisors they have learned so much more about their students and about how things run on their campus.  As a result they have found ways to modify and improve their services and instruction sessions to better serve the students needs.  On our campus we are faculty and we do not do any advising, which is kind of puzzling to me.  Even more puzzling is that the University of Rochester librarians are not faculty.  I wonder if we could do some advising at our school, it has crossed my mind in the past, now I really wonder if it could be a possibility.  The second session I went to was the Dialogue on Future Directions with OLIS.  For me, it was a mistake.  The discussion immediately focused on ALEPH.  As I am not a systems librarian and am not involved in the decisions about ALEPH in our library the conversation was not relevant to me at all.  So, I left early, partly because it was not relevant and partly because I, and my two colleagues, were presenting in the last session block of the conference.  Our session was titled ‘Teaching Faculty and Staff How to Be “Social”: Reinventing the Drop-In Workshop’.  The three of us agreed that it went really well, but I think I will defer to others to give a proper evaluation.  But I have a feeling most would say it was good, especially since it was the last session and we had 38 in attendance.  And then it was all over and everyone was off for home.  I had to hand in my dorm keys but that only took a few minutes.  The drive down 81 and 17 was fine, although driving on 5 hours of sleep afforded me a few scary moments.  A cup of  coffee soon helped with my sleepiness.  Close to home I stopped at a rest stop to stretch my legs and ran into some of the librarians from Nassau Community College who were at the conference and we chatted a few minutes before I drove the rest of the way home.  I unloaded the car, returned the rental, and was relaxing by the pool at the apartment complex by about 6:00.  The conference was pretty good overall and it seemed as though everyone enjoyed it.  The Twitter conversation was really good too, we even picked up some non-attending followers.  So, next year . . . SUNYLA will be at SUNY Brockport.  See you there?  Remember, you don’t have to work at a SUNY school to go!

SUNYLA Conference continued . . . Thursday afternoon to early Friday

Left the Copyright session a little early, all good and useful stuff.  But honestly, if I spent all my time worrying about the details of copyright . . . I really would not have time for anything else!  Lunch followed that session.  It was a nice buffet in the student center.  And I want to thank the conference planners for not having a speaker, it kept things fairly short.  Having a speaker and all those raffles would have been too long.  No, I didn’t win anything.

I started the afternoon off with ‘The Show Must Go On: New Librarians Take Center Stage’.  It was about a new librarian (of course) getting more upper level instruction courses and how one veteran librarian gave up some of her classes to allow him to gain experience.  An interesting presentation, but it didn’t really give me any new information.  After that session I went to ‘Professional Development Programs on a Limited (or Non-Existent) Budget’.  This was an excellent session with a lot of great ideas for professional development sessions.  I got a lot out of it and hope the presenters post their materials online, they were Christian Miller and Susan Kendrick, both from Cornell.  By the end of that session I was pretty fried, so I skipped any of the final sessions of the day (sorry folks) and went back to my dorm room for a bit of R&R and to make some phone calls before dinner.  Although, I just couldn’t stay off Twitter!  One of the final sessions of the afternoon was on Twitter, so I was following some of the conference activity on the site during the session.  Pretty interesting, but apparently they had some technical difficulties for a short time.  Oh the irony!

5:30 came up quick and we caught the bus to MOST for some Dinosaur Barbque.  We got a couple drink tickets to go with our meal too.  I was disappointed though, I wanted a portabella mushroom in addition to my pork sandwich but the server said they were for the vegetarians.  Well, the sandwich with their sauce was ok, as for the mushrooms, they had tons left over, so I don’t see why I couldn’t have had one.  After dinner we walked around in the museum a bit and then took off.  They were showing an IMAX film, but as I am prone to motion sickness I figured I better not see it.  We ended up walking around the Armory District, went in an Irish pub for beers and great live music by Searson.  At one point they even put on their tap shoes and danced for us.  Awesome!  Then we went back to Al’s to hang out, drink, play pool, etc.  I will have to admit though, I was ready to go back to the dorms around 11:00.  We didn’t get back until 1:00 am.  Today is going to be a rough one with an 8:30 SIG and two sessions all before our presentation and then a four and a half hour drive home.  UGH!  I think I need toothpicks to hold my eyelids open.

SUNYLA Conference so far . . . Thursday morning

Got to Syracuse for the 2009 SUNYLA Conference yesterday afternoon.  Went to a preconference on whether to serve the students or serve the students needs.  Unfortunately it was a bit of a flop.  The concept for the discussion was a good one, but the actual conversation didn’t go anywhere.  It ended early. 

The evening social was good.  Lots of vendors, food, wine and diversions.  But a few of us left around 7 to go out to dinner in Syracuse.  We ended up with a drink at the Renaissance, then sushi at Ambrosia, and finally drinks, pool, live music, and darts at Al’s.  Overall a great night out, except for the rain.  Then our cab driver proceeded to tell us he had been robbed two nights ago.  Apparently crime is up in Syracuse, and he had even used pepper spray on someone last night!  Uh, yikes!  He is thinking about getting a gun.  He figures if ‘they’ are going to carry them so will he.  He was nice, but when we got out of the car he said, “If you come back next year for a conference I will show you my gun.” 

Because we got back to the dorm late last night, this morning has been a struggle, still pretty tired.  Keynote speaker, David Lankes, is a very good speaker, very entertaining and inspiring.  But I don’t really think his presentation had a lot of substance, but I think most folks who where there would differ.  Currently in a copyright presentation.  Interesting, but the room is dark and I’m still sleepy . . .

I’m twittering as much as I can, if you want to follow me or the conference go to either oelibrarian or #sunyla09.