my library is in on a university campus in southern california. some of our students get around campus on skateboards. the library has day-use lockers tall enough to store them, but most people just lean their skateboards up against the table they’re working at, or against the wall.
It seems like this year all content providers have decided to rethink their user interfaces, and since June we’ve managed the migration of five (Five! Count ’em!). Any migration is a pretty serious undertaking for us because I make sure we’re thorough, checking *everything* about the new interface when we make a change. If there are bugs, I want to find them before our users do. It’s quite a bit of work and it’s important work because I want our patrons to know that they can trust that we’re working on their behalf. As I’ve mentioned before (http://orgmonkey.net/?p=1382), if our patrons find the problems first, that breaks their trust with us. By providing consistently accessible e-resources I feel like I’m silently communicating to our patrons, “you can trust us.”
I wonder if any of you out there think about trust and the growing online delivery of library content? I’m beginning to read widely on the topic, especially related to marketing, starting with the following:
David C. Arnott, (2007), “Research on trust: a bibliography and brief bibliometric analysis of the special issue submissions,” European Journal of Marketing, 41(9): 1203-1240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03090560710773408
There are 643 references in that article, so I’ll be reading a while. If you’ve got other articles/books to suggest, please leave a comment.
the following scenario has happened enough in the past year for me to know that while i’m at work i have open the following social platforms all day: twitter; facebook; friendfeed.
while having coffee this morning i scrolled through my facebook stream, to catch up on who was doing what. i noticed the gale page (http://www.facebook.com/GaleCengage) had posted they were having problems with their site and were working to resolve the issue. a few minutes later, as i moved on to view the library society of the world stream on friendfeed (http://friendfeed.com/lsw), i noticed @awd posted a query to the group, to see if others were having problems searching/retrieving in gale. having just seen the posting on facebook i was able to respond to @awd that they were having problems and were working on it. a few minutes later, as i viewed my twitter stream, i noticed that gale (https://twitter.com/galecengage) reported that their technical issues had been resolved. i posted a quick update to @awd on friendfeed.
if you walk by my desk you may think i’m fooling around (facebook and twitter as tools for work?!), but i’m actually building my community. e-resource librarians are often the only one in their library charged with monitoring the availability of the library’s e-resources, which means that we connect to others like us via social media. that community is pretty tight, i’d say. we help each other out like this all the time. i don’t think i could do my job as well if i didn’t have consistent access to all these social tools, frankly. remember when ebscohost went down a couple months ago and nobody from ebsco told us what was going on? i was able to let our patrons know what was what, thanks to information i found via my social contacts.
if you’re an e-resources librarian, are there other ways you connect with other e-resource librarians? is anybody using instant messaging for this kind of community building? i’ve not really used i.m. before but if you’re out there lurking i’d happily join in.
Kennedy, Marie R. and Kristine R. Brancolini. 2012. “Academic Librarian Research: A Survey of Attitudes, Involvement, and Perceived Capabilities.” College & Research Libraries 73(5): 431-448.
Abstract: This article reports on the development and results of a recent survey of academic librarians about their attitudes, involvement, and perceived capabilities using and engaging in primary research. The purpose of the survey was to inform the development of a continuing education program in research design. It updates earlier studies of academic librarian research; with the introduction of a confidence scale, it also contributes new insights regarding how prepared librarians believe themselves to be with regard to conducting research. The authors found that confidence in one’s ability to perform the discrete steps in the research process is a statistically significant predictor of a librarian conducting research and disseminating the results. The analysis of the responses to the confidence scale and other survey questions suggests several paths for future research about academic librarians and their research agendas.
One usually thinks about technical services jobs in a library as back-of-house, away from people. My job as e-resource librarian is certainly a technical job, but some days I get home from work and realized I’ve talked all day long. When I have a meeting in my office the visitor often sits in this chair, which is to the side of my workspace:
If I had my office set up like others in the building I would need to invite my guest to come stand behind me if I wanted to show something on my computer. Instead I put my computer onto a Lazy Susan so we can both be seated comfortably and share the monitor. I rotate the Lazy Susan so we can both see the monitor. It’s a simple thing, but it’s really helped me achieve the collaborative spirit I was hoping for in my office.
I mouse with my left hand, so this gives my guest an easy opportunity to “drive” with his/her right hand while we’re working.
much of what i do in my job day-to-day is locked in and focused. i tend to hold a lot of things in my brain at once to solve problems or think through how to do things better. as you might imagine, most of that is sedentary work. my physical therapist told me to “keep on moving,” so i’m making an effort to do that. i walk laps in the library building during the day and do some kind of activity at home, like running, walking, or yoga. occasionally, though, i grab hold of my childhood and go roller skating on the venice boardwalk. at 6:30 am it’s just me and the crazy morning surfers.
there are a few more of my morning beach photos at flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orgmonkey/sets/72157604763056931/with/3331038172/
