Loyola Marymount University sits up on a bluff near the ocean, permitting beautiful views of the basin of Los Angeles. Since it’s so close to the ocean we often get fog in the morning and wind in the afternoon. Here’s a couple pictures of our foggy morning today.
The William H. Hannon Library:
A shot from the library, of Palm Walk:
See some of my other Instagram photos at http://instagram.com/orgmonkey or on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/orgmonkey/.
in an effort to be more proactively communicative about e-resources and e-services with our library patrons we have moved the previously password-protected contents of our internal wiki page, “technology issues/updates (databases)” to a publicly-available website, http://library.lmu.edu/gethelp/e-resourceknownproblems/. there aren’t many issues, which is fabulous, and the assistant to our systems librarian will update the hand-coded html page for us. win-win!
In November 2009 I put together a team at my library to choose an electronic resource management system. In May 2010 we purchased one, Innovative’s ERM. Over the next two years we developed the system and wrote new workflows. We established best practices and learned how to efficiently work in the system. In October of this year I finally released Team 3 (ERM Development Team) from their duties, with all of the necessary decisions about our ERM having been made.
I certainly didn’t anticipate the process of adding on a management system to take three full years to choose, install, and then develop, but along the way there was a lot of education, culture-change discussions, and inventive problem solving. All of that takes time, especially at an institution that didn’t have an e-resource management position before me.
We still have work to do in the system, like developing quality control mechanisms to check the work we’ve entered, to make sure the data is accurate and consistently applied, but moving forward we are definitely in production mode. It feels good to be at this place, to now have a system that is robust for our patrons.
Next up, the celebratory organization! I have three Teams worth of wiki documentation to begin archiving.
Here’s our final report:
Final report from Team 3: Development
Summary of TeamERMS
TeamERMS began in November 2009 with a discovery team (Team 1), charged with evaluating electronic resource management systems with a team approach. In March 2010 this team completed its work, suggesting the library pursue the purchase of Innovative’s ERM; Management Council supported the decision and the module was purchased. In May 2010 the implementation team (Team 2) convened to conduct the technical set-up of the module over a three-day training period. In June 2010 the development team (Team 3) convened to focus on the main patron-facing features of the ERM. This group has now completed its work, with those functions of the ERM having been addressed. This report acts as a final summary of the development team.
Members of Team 3: Marie Kennedy (lead), Charles Hillen, Ron Lewis, Meghan Weeks, Christina Hennessey, Ken Simon
Work plan
Team 3 met over the course of two years for the development of the patron-facing features of the newly acquired electronic resource management system, ERM. We used a series of brief meetings and a PBWorks wiki group to communicate, as well as e-mail for follow-up discussions. We had an agenda and took minutes for each meeting. The decisions of the group directed the technical development of the ERM completed by the electronic resources unit in the Acquisitions & Serials department.
Team 3 developed the following features of the ERM:
Future development of ERM
Now that the patron-facing features of the ERM have been considered the electronic resources unit of the Acquisitions & Serials department will begin to focus exclusively on the back end of the system, adding and maintaining license agreement information, continuing to develop the infrastructure related to usage statistics gathering, and the documentation of all of those procedures.
Documentation of decisions and minutes/agendas from all three teams will be housed in a paper file in the Acquisitions & Serials department.
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(image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vectorportal/6629690263/)
Four months ago I shared an abbreviated Gantt chart I made for myself at work, to keep my too-many tasks from getting out of control this year. Sure, I could have decided to try to do less, which would negate the need for such a thing, but apparently “doing less” is not in my nature.
I thought I’d show you what my chart looks like today. A few more tasks made it on to the list, start/end dates have been adjusted, and I’m way behind on my quality control project.
I’m really liking sharing the chart with people when they ask me to join a committee or work on a project. It’s an easy visual way to communicate when my free-er times of the year are, and when I’m totally jammed up with existing projects. If the first four months of using this kind of project-tracker are any indication, I’ll be using this kind of thing again next year.
http://librarianproblems.com/post/30066923254/when-the-power-goes-out
i was just introduced to this blog yesterday and laughed myself silly looking at the animated gifs of librarian problems. this one in particular struck me because this is exactly my reaction when our campus internet connection goes down. you wouldn’t believe the number of e-resource problem reports i get when campus internet or wireless goes wonky. at least now i’ll have this image in my head when i’m fielding desperate phone calls from patrons!
A few months ago I got an email from Linked in saying that several of their profile accounts had been hacked, and reminded me to go change my password. I thought about my use of their system and decided it was a perfect time to just delete my account. I wasn’t an active participant in their system, and it seemed just as well to let it go. Then last month I went to the Charleston Conference and five people in one day said to me, “Let’s stay in touch on Linked in!” Fine, all you Charleston Conference people, you made me rethink. I’ve recreated an account at Linked in. Let’s connect! http://www.linkedin.com/in/orgmonkey
