Organization Monkey

ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents Service

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

i started using ticTOCS this weekend since my library doesn’t subscribe to Current Contents Connect (frowny face). i needed something that would keep me current with what’s being published in my field, something as unobtrusive as possible. i registered at the ticTOCS site and did a subject search for “library.” this retrieved 56 titles. i selected all the titles, exported them as an opml file, imported them into my google reader and started reading. as i find an article i want to read i can click on the link and be connected to the full text if my institution subscribes to the journal. those that aren’t subscribed i can request through interlibrary loan. i figure that i’ll probably delete some of the titles as i find the articles not relevant for my interests but in the meantime i’m reading everything to get a better sense of what’s being published on the whole for my field.

let me know if you want help with any of the technical steps to get this service into your feedreader. it is a goldmine of a way to stay current with the literature in our field in a very quick way. i should note that you don’t have to register to use the service, but you’ll need to if you want to save your customized list of titles.

topic index of the program of the AAA

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

a quick look at the american anthropological association’s (aaa) topic index for their latest annual conference presentations has me on the floor laughing. a topic index usually organizes key words in alphabetical order and points the reader to the pages in the text where those key words may be found. the aaa must have asked presenters to provide key words and created the index directly from those words, without looking to see if there were slight variations that could have been combined into one term. they even decided to keep the misspellings! here are a few samples pulled from the index:

activism
activisms

art
artist
arts

conumdrum of interpretation

food, nutrition, health [this was entered as one index term]

politcs

wellbeing
well-being

the point of an index is that it should be helpful. the aaa index of presentations is not helpful, but it sure is funny! i could continue to poke fun at this thing, but really, the aaa should get their act together. they’re a professional organization and should honor the work of their members by making that work findable in their publications.

a quick search on the internet points to many links to instructions on how to create an index. i found a particularly good one by a technical writer at how to create a usable index (http://www.idratherbewriting.com/2006/10/20/how-to-create-a-usable-index-john-mcghie/).

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you’ve got your acquisitions on my collection development!

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

no, you’ve got your collection development on my acquisitions! (anybody out there remember this old reese’s commercial?)

an acquisitions department is usually clearly defined from a collection development department, meaning those units act independently in a library. loosely described, a collection development librarian will decide what to purchase because he is familiar with what is being published in a particular area, and the acquisitions librarian places the order, pays for it, and waits by the mailbox until it is received.

at my new place of work these departments work a little more closely than i’ve seen before, with some retention decisions being granted to us in acquisitions. i think some of this has to do with a change in an old policy of retaining important subscriptions in redundant formats. now that we’re moving away from preferring microfilm as our standard archival format in favor of full-text electronic archives, acquisitions is playing a more prominent role in providing pricing information, as well as negotiating licenses and discussing usage statistics.

it’s a comfortable marriage of the two departments in this small library, and i imagine i’ll find more blurring of traditional departmental boundaries as i learn more about the library and its traditions.

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Welcome to your new job!

Posted on December 2, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

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evernote for organization

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

i’ve been experimenting with a free online organizational tool called evernote. i’m using it to plan all the details of our trip up the coast of california so that we can have paper-free travels. when you sign up for the service you’ll be given an email address so that you can email stuff to evernote; i used it to forward email confirmations i’d received from hotels so that i had all the confirmations/phone numbers/hotel addresses in one place. i created a spreadsheet of dates and the places we’d be visiting every day; i pasted that into a note in evernote and titled it, ‘trip schedule’. i found a map of napa wineries (a pdf) and dragged it from my desktop into the program. i used google maps to plan our route and grabbed screen shots of the maps and pasted them into a note in evernote, along with the driving directions.

i’m pleased with how easy the program is to use. i downloaded the program onto my mac at home, made changes to some notes through the web version, and will plan to access evernote while on the road through my iphone. lovely!

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be happy today

Posted on November 11, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

saw this on my commute to work today, chalked onto the sidewalk. seems like good advice!

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