Sunday, April 29, 2007

Information Seeking Behavior - Quote of the day



"In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle" Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973), U.S. biographer.
source: http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/infoseek.html

see also related post from my other blog:

  • Information Seeking Behavior of the Believers
  • more Library & Information Science Quotations
  • Monday, April 23, 2007

    SHARP 2007 - Open the Book, Open the Mind


    Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)
    July 11-14, 2007 (pre-conference activites July 10), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

    The conference theme, “Open the Book, Open the Mind,” will highlight how books develop and extend minds and cultures, and also how they are opened to new media and new purposes. However, individual papers or sessions may address any aspect of book history and print culture. Continue reading

    PS. Info courtesy: Sarah @ Beyond the Job

    Saturday, April 07, 2007

    Nine Questions on Technology Innovation in Academic Libraries

    In February, 2007, an invitation to an informal survey of "Nine Questions on Technology Innovation in Academic Libraries" was posted to the WEB4LIB, NGC4LIB, LITA-L, COLLIB-L, ACRL-NJ and New Jersey academic library listservs, and it was mentioned in the national ACRLog blog.

    The following is a brief summary of the informal survey results with links to more complete information:
    ***
    The survey received 136 responses in total, and 75% said that their library is not the center of technology innovation on campus, while 23% identified the library as the center of technology innovation on campus.

    Overall, the majority responded that:

    *Recent technology innovations in the library included blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, IM reference, and digitization projects.

    *The driving force behind tech. innovation is student needs, followed by an Information Tech. Chief or Dean with vision, and the initiative of individuals.

    *The biggest obstacle to tech. innovation in libraries is lack of money, staff, and time, with an unsupportive administration cited as one of the top four obstacles.

    *The Library's approach and the Library staff's approach to technology innovation were both overwhelmingly described as "cautious but willing," though the staff were more often described as "resistant and blocking" than the Library itself.

    *Faculty and librarians were most cited as the introducers of disruptive technology on campus, followed closely by students.

    *The most disruptive technology for academic libraries today is "Web 2.0" or Social Computing technologies with Google/Google Scholar coming up second.

    *The Top Ten Models of Technology Innovation cited by the libraries that answered that their libraries are centers of technology innovation were very similar to those cited overall. The Top Ten Models identified were:

    1) North Carolina State University – Endeca Project
    2) University of Pennsylvania - PennTags
    3) MIT – DSpace
    4) University of Michigan – Digital Library Production Service (DLPS)
    5) University of Minnesota – Primo library system
    6) Cornell University – Digital Library Research Projects
    7) University of Virginia – Fedora Open Source Institutional Repository 8) University of California – California Digital Library (CDL)
    9) University of California, Santa Barbara - Alexandria Digital Library Geospatial Network
    10) Oregon State University – LibraryFind Project

    For more information on these Top Ten Models of Tech. Innovation in Academic Libraries, links and abstracts are posted on the ACRL-New Jersey Chapter Website
    Separate analyses for the libraries that answered "yes" they are the center of technology innovation and the libraries that answered "no"
    The overall quantitative results of the survey and the text of the nine
    questions are posted online


    NB. Info courtesy: Mary A. Mallery @ [Web4lib] & College Libraries Section [COLLIB-L@ala.org ]

    Technorati tags:
    ACRL
    college and research libraries

    Friday, April 06, 2007

    Mattering in the Blogosphere


    "American Libraries asked 16 much-visited librarian bloggers why the medium continues to appeal to them and what keeps them posting. The 10 who replied are, in alphabetical order:"


  • Blake Carver, LISNews
  • Nicole Engard, What I Learned Today
  • Rochelle Hartman, Tinfoil+Raccoon
  • Sarah Houghton-Jan, Librarian in Black
  • Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian
  • Kathleen de la Pena McCook,Librarian at the Kitchen Table
  • Mary Minow, Library Law
  • Joshua Neff, Goblin in the Library
  • Jack Stephens, Conservator
  • Jessamyn West, Librarian.net

    PS. All-of-the-above information courtesy: Tinfoil + Raccoon's Blog
    American Libraries, March 2007
  • Tuesday, April 03, 2007

    Blog Taxonomy

  • Annoyed Librarian Library Blog Taxonomy
    Walt Crawford is preparing his new study of library blogs, and that got me to thinking about the wonderful world of bibliotekblogging. Inspired by his example, I thought I would come out with my own taxonomy of library blogs. I'm sure his study will be thorough and insightful, because he likes to work hard and do useful things for the profession. I, of course, don't. So what follows is my exhaustive analysis and classification of library blogs, arrived at by carefully scrutinizing Walt Crawford's Bloglines subscriptions for about 10 minutes.

    [view these taxonomies]
    Library Blog as Personal Diary
    Library Blog as Personal Diary Written by Andy Rooney
    Library Blog as Professional Therapy
    Library Blog as Personal Cry for Help
    Library Blog as Pathetic Cry for Attention
    Library Blog as Counter-Librarian Blog
    Library Blog as Professional Self-promotion
    Library Blog as Serious Library Report
    Library Blog as Witty Library Report
    Library Blog as Book Review Medium
    Library Blog as Book Free Zone
    Library Blog as Librarian Cheerleader
    Library Blog as Cynical Library Critic
    Library Blog as Informative Library Analysis
    Library Blog as Unpaid Technology Advertising
    Library Blog as Informative Technology Selection Tool
    Library Blog as Future Manifesto
    Library Blog as Business Manifesto
    Library Blog as Left-wing Propaganda
    Library Blog as Right-wing Propaganda
    Library Blog as Fair and Balanced Political Analysis
    Library Blog as Inoffensive Satire
    Library Blog as Offensive Satire

  • BoleyBlogs! » A Taxonomy of Legal Blogs
  • A Taxonomy of Legal Blogs

    My previous posts:
  • Citing a Blog, Wiki - Style for bibliographic notes and references
  • Blog As A Teaching Tool
  •