CAT | The Blog Itself
I’m Nate Vack, working at Wendt Library across campus from Steve. I’m also the latest author on this blog… and I’ll do my best to post my thoughts from time to time. I’m one of the maintainers of a library statistics tracking package called Libstats as well as an institutional bibliography product called the Bibapp; I’ll post product announcements here from time to time.
Right now, I’m at code4lib. There’s some awesome stuff going on here.
As product announcements go, earlier today, Eric Larson and I released the first alpha version of the Bibapp. If you’re a huge library nerd (and a huge Ruby nerd too), go grab it.
Circulatable started as a simple blog for a few folks in library school to keep in touch with post-graduation news and thoughts on library-related events. Barry, David, Ginger and Toby have cashed in their frequent circulator miles and now have membership in the very elite and dignified Circulatable Emeritus Club.
It’s a brand new era…
27
2006Dante, Homer, Garfield, & Mother Goose!
6 Comments | Posted by Ginger in Collection Management, Reading, The Blog Itself
I stumbled across the top 1,000 titles held by OCLC member libraries in a item posted yesterday in the Comics Reporter. The author of the post was bemoaning the high ranking held by Garfield, (#15!), as possibly the comic with the widest distribution in libraries.
The first few hundred titles in the OCLC list are mainly titles we might associate with classic canonical literature, with some classic children’s lit thrown into the mix. These would be books held widely in both public and academic libraries, I suppose. Is there anything on this list that does surprise you? Did you expect popular culture items to rank higher on the list? And why did Garfield catapult to the top? Weirdness.
“It’s not common” for librarians to be described by the word “coolest”, but it is happing in Minneapolis due to librarian trading cards.
What are your super powers?
I am trying to upload images…
This is mainly to check out the linking capabilities. OCLC Research has created an online mapping tool of library data. Check it out and visualize the world of libraries…
Our blog has been upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Some of the links in the new template Connections do not do anything. Please bear with us as we iron out the details.
Well, happy New Year gang.
We started this thing back in May, and here is some of the ground we covered:
1) Kelli
2) Libraries making folks “prove their identity with a fingerprint”
3) Literary mixtapes
4) Library as compost
5) To mentor or not to mentor?
6) Job market? What job market?
7) Kelli?
Wiki vs. wookie
9) The teachable moment
10) OCLC partners with Baker & Taylor
11) Metadata in the “iPod era”
12) Anticipatory marketing for library catalogs?
13) Steve’s amazing projects
14) The “bookless library”
15) Behavior policies
16) The DaVinci Institute
17) Federal mandates to spy with our computers
18) Google Print! Oh no!
19) LITA
20) PATRIOT Act! Oh no!
21) Online news sources
22) Spyware on CDs and DVDs
23) Database international standard numbers?
24) Librarian salaries
And so much more! Thanks to you all for a provocative year. I hope to wrestle Steve (virtually) over many more issues in 2006.
I wanted to say to you all – if you read this – Happy New Year and best wishes for an exciting 2006.
26
2005Making Mentors?
1 Comment | Posted by Dave in Conferences, People, Professional Development, The Blog Itself
St. Louis was a sweltering place for a preconference, but I suppose no more sweltering than Chicago was for ALA. My trip to St. Louis went oddly well – unlike my trip last year to Virginia for Rare Book School, which was a nightmare of science fiction proportions and culminated in my lost luggage being delivered nicely, and grossly, wet.
The theme of this year’s RBMS preconference was education – both education for librarians and librarians as educators. The real focus, though, was on the former, as many plenary talks and papers and informal chat during the breaks seemed to veer in that direction.
How did library school prepare us? Was it sufficient? Will any number of degrees prepare us for the real work of working as a librarian in a special collections library? Is the LIS curriculum essentially flawed?
As you all know I was probably the number one whip wielder when I was doing my LIS degree. I lamented all of the things that many LIS students lament: the lack of rigor in the program, the dominance of the public and children’s libraries mentality, the ice cream socials. I flogged the ice cream social until it was a vanilla mess.
But at this conference I was feeling ready to defend myself against what I thought would be a loud proclamation that the new crop of special collections librarians are under-educated and, at root, unqualified to take the place of the retiring curators and directors. I even pointed out to a presenter that special collections librarians are in the minority in LIS programs (thus changing the curriculum for, say, two people would be absurd) and that we can learn a lot from talking to public and academic librarians about things like outreach, BI, and reference (where special collections are sorely behind).
To my surprise the proclamation wasn’t finger-pointing at all. The dominant idea in the end seemed to be, “What can we do to better prepare new special collections librarians?” There was a feeling that RBMS and its members were taking on the responsibility themselves to supplement what young librarians learn in LIS programs with mentoring, additional education opportunities (like Rare Book School), and internships.
And as I listened and talked with older special collections librarians, it dawned on me that I’m a professional now, and that I can help with advice and with lending a curious ear to LIS students interested in this field.
Does that mean I’m raring to contact SLIS and put my name in as a resource for students like that? I’m not sure. What do you guys think? Some of you had mentors, I know, but maybe not all. Is it our responsibility to somehow make things better for students who come after us?
Enjoy ALA, or not going to conferences at all!
[This will be my final post before the RBMS conference in St. Louis; you can expect an enthralling report of that experience when I'm home and rested!]
Recently, our library announced that it will be building a large, high-density storage area, which will make it the largest research library in the country. The plan comes 35 years after the library was originally built, and it was originally built to hold 25 years worth of books.
The storage facility – which will also include a preservation lab, reading rooms, and consultation spaces for paged items – will be complete with robotic arms that retrieve items in aisles 250 feet long and 50 feet high. It’ll store print serials, archives, and monographs from campus libraries including law, science, and humanities. The initial load will comprise 800,000 items.
In our language, this move is being consciously pitted against the dominant tendencies in libraries. For example, off-site storage. But, importantly, this is being placed against the last major library story – the Google initiative – in a simplified argument of “the book vs. the Web.” No doubt Google’s “initial load” will be books (or should I say snippets of books?) in the millions.
Faculty and students on this campus make it clear that they want their books, and they want them on-site, and they want to be able to browse them. These groups were closely consulted on the decision. “Serendipity” is a word that is well-regarded here, almost as well regarded as “excellent” (Mr. Smithers). So….
I wonder what you all think. Do libraries have to make the stance to pursue one more than the other? In a time when budgets shrink, are we forced to make a choice between print and screen?
If so, what side are you on? Do you see one stance progressing at your institution above the other?