the use of our non-current print journal collection is waning: proof provided

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

Retrieval requests of non-current journal articles from storage

Over the last six fiscal years requests for non-current journal articles retrieved from storage has dropped significantly.  The decline is most dramatic in the number of requests LMU patrons made: from 470 in FY2004-05 to 206 in FY2008-09.  The decline is also evident in the number of requests to fulfill interlibrary lending requests, though less dramatic: from 364 in FY2004-05 to 173 in FY2008-09.  It is clear that patrons overall are demanding less of our print collection.

* It is not yet known how retrieval requests for non-current journal articles will be affected by having that collection now stored locally (as of FY2009-10) instead of off-site.  As the collection was moved from off-site storage to in the basement storage area there was a six-month period when requests for journals were not filled.  In addition, as the collection moved on site the methods used to gather statistics changed.  To that end, the FY2009-10 period represented in the above graph is an estimate and only represents a six-month period.

Posted in library, management, usage statistics | 3 Comments

words in library conference presentation titles that ensure i won’t be in the audience:

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

wrangling

herding

cats

woes

2.0

adventures

what words make you twitchy?  add them in a comment below

Posted in library, titter | 1 Comment

a thorough article on how to review a manuscript

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

Rosenfeld, R. M. (2010). How to review journal manuscripts. Otolaryngol. Head Neck Surg., 142(4), 472-486. http://www.editorialmanager.com/otohns/accounts/Howtoreview.pdf

In answering the question of how much time to devote to performing a review, on p.473 he notes that, “Reviewers should not, however, devote excessive time, because spending more than three hours, on average, does not increase review quality as rated by editors and authors.”

Wondering about what to do with the awful typos or poor grammar? He suggests on p.483 that, “In general, the reviewer should not waste his or her time with extensive language corrections, which are the responsibility of the copy editors once a manuscript is accepted.” [original author’s emphasis]

This article presents a clear overview of the components of a manuscript review and offers suggestions for how to provide specific feedback to both the author and editor.

Highly recommend.

thanks to @qualintitative for alerting me to this!

Posted in articles i'm reading | Comments Off on a thorough article on how to review a manuscript

Disappearing Jobs: Staffing Implications for Print Serials Management

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

Sarah Glasser, Disappearing Jobs: Staffing Implications for Print Serials Management, Serials Review, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 15 September 2010, ISSN 0098-7913, DOI: 10.1016/j.serrev.2010.06.002.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W63-511BPHK-1/2/c4931d6dd7aa4fb4e6908c0abbab9ae6)

I find the most compelling piece of this article to be the emphasis in the author’s Literature Review section on the required change in quality of staff for tasks related to electronic resources. She quotes Montgomery, who reports that print journal tasks are accomplished via the “least-skilled and lowest-paid workers,” and that electronic resources tasks need “detail-oriented support staff who have advanced computer skills and who can adjust to continuous changes in procedures and methods….” I don’t think we have made this shift evident to library management; we’ve been approaching the transition of existing staff from print to electronic format-related tasks as a training issue. It may be a training issue at some level, but the requirements of the new job mean that some existing staff won’t make the cut.

Posted in articles i'm reading | 1 Comment

perpetual access

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

perpetual access

Posted in comic, e-resource mgmt, library, license agreements | Comments Off on perpetual access

Off-campus test from on campus or: How to be in two places at once

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Marie Kennedy

When I troubleshoot patron reports of problems accessing electronic resources they will often be off campus, attempting to connect through our proxy server.  When I troubleshoot I am often on campus, within the university IP range.  One of my first troubleshooting steps is to recreate the problem the patron is having in order to see the error message for conveying to the vendor, but I can’t recreate an off-campus problem while on campus within our IP range; the IP range allows me seamless access to our resources whereas the proxy prompts you to identify yourself as an LMU affiliate by logging in with a username/password.  I have to leave campus and go somewhere else (cafe, home) in order to troubleshoot off-campus access issues.  This isn’t so convenient for me or the patron, as you might imagine.

I asked around to see how other university librarians had resolved this issue.  Here’s how they told me they handle it:

  • go off campus to a cafe
  • test on 3G network via personal iPhone
  • have a really old computer hooked up to a phone line and a modem (works to test off-campus access as well as how well an e-resource works over dialup
  • connect work computer and personal home computer through LogMeIn
  • if the university uses EZProxy, comment out an IP address so that computer always acts as if it is off campus.  That becomes the computer used to test off-campus access.
  • subscribe to a paid service, Browsercam, which gives you access via the Web to a server farm of different computer types and browser configurations

I considered all of these options and decided:

  • I’ve left campus to test things from home in the past, making sure I’ve got someone in the office I can call to change settings in the administrative end of the databases, if possible.  What a drag that is.
  • I’ve been testing via my own iPhone, but it is not a great solution if the resource I’m testing isn’t mobile ready
  • our campus phones are connected via the Internet, so connecting an old computer to a phone line would link me to the IP address
  • my home computer is connected over wireless, and LogMeIn only allows one computer to wake another computer from hibernate status if it is hard wired.  This is too bad, really, because it looks like a really nice (free) service.
  • we don’t use EZProxy here, but may consider doing this in the future.
  • Browsercam seems like the best option for a paid service because you can simulate the exact computer/browser setup that the patron is experiencing.

I’ve put in a request for the library to subscribe to Browsercam. In the meantime, iPhone over 3G is my friend.

Thanks to my pals on friendfeed and twitter for providing these ideas.

If you use something else at your institution to do off-campus troubleshooting from on campus, leave a comment.  I’d like to know what other options are out there.

Posted in library, management, twitter | 3 Comments