Being a library, people think that we are a dumping ground for books they have lying around. They don't have to be in good condition or current, the library will take them.
I wonder if that says something about the library, do our collections look so old/tatty/moldy that people think we want their unwanted crap?
Today's case, the Agencija za Iselenistvo of the Republika Makedonija (aka the Agency of Emmigration of the Republic of Macedonia). Within a three week period I have received 2 parcels from them containing books. Not just any books, boring books. They were all in Macedonian and mostly about Macedonia. From a critique of Macedonian philosophy at a level which most of our readers would have trouble understanding (even if they read Macedonian) to an entire book dedicated to analysing the poetry of an obscure (and quite dead) Macedonian poet to the history of Macedonian fantasy fiction (which, for what it's worth, is a lot longer than I would have expected).
Firstly: They're all old-looking books. I don't know if it is the paper the items are printed on, the bland covers or the fact that they're mostly 5 or 6 years old.
Secondly: They are not suitable for a public library. I know that the concept of a 'free public library' is different from culture to culture (and, honestly, I am unsure if Macedonia has a public library system), but why on earth would you pick a small library service in the middle of nowhere to send your crap to?
Thirdly: I don't want donations! These books are all freely available for me to purchase through our suppliers. If we thought they were worthy of adding to the collection, I'd have added them to the collection.
Donations are a wonderful thing when they are done right. We receive a heap of Mills and Boon style romance books from readers who read the book once and then think "I'll never read it again". These books are immaculate and we have our own special collection of them (all catalogued with a title of "Romance paperback" and a call number of PB ROM).
Honestly, I am just a bit confused as to why a government department in Europe would be sending libraries around the world books that they may not add? Postage is not cheap, especially for heavy items like books. We've received letters from them before in the past, they never mentioned they would send us anything.
All of this aside, I did actually add a number of the books to our collection. A book of short stories, some things on Macedonia which would be of interest to ex-pats living in Australia, those kind of things.
Ah well, that's my rant for today. (Can you tell I was struggling for something to say this week?)
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Standards, guidelines and recommendations
After my whinge last week about the building audit's recommendations, I am back with yet another document to complain about this week! (aren't I great?) It's not really a complain thing, more of a comparison thing I guess.
Living Learning Libraries: Standards and Guidelines for NSW Libraries was released recently and is now available from the State Library of NSW website. The report provides target figures for different areas of libraries, including membership per capita, opening hours per capita (or per number of branches), number of internet terminals, number of programs run, etc. It gives 3 levels of figures; a baseline figure (all libraries should meet this); an enhanced figure (you're a good library if you meet this) and; an exemplary figure (you're a brilliant library if you meet this).
What is interesting about this document is that it provides you with an 'out' clause for each of the target figures. For example, if you have 4-7 library branches then you should have a total opening hours per week of at least 238 hours (we have 5 libraries and 242 so yay to us). It says that this number may vary depending on staff numbers, the location of other community services, the structure (ie central library + mobile libraries) and the size of each library and the communities surrounding them.
I had a look at some of the different targets and compared my library service's performance against them. I even followed the definitions they provided (ie an active borrower in Victoria is someone who has used the library in the last 3 years, in NSW it says 2 years). It turns out we're a tad (actually a lot) under their benchmarks in a few area but that we rock in terms of internet access and program numbers. One of our main problems is that we have a very large populace with very low literacy and mobility. Also, our residents are quite transient and will often move to our area from overseas and then find work (and better living conditions) elsewhere so they'll move there. Many don't stay long, they are just there to bolster numbers.
Part B of the document refers to guidelines which libraries should follow in order to implement the standard targets. An interesting guideline was that it recommended the Library Manager be "an appropriately qualified librarian". I don't actually believe that we actually need a librarian to run the library service, especially in an environment where you have qualified librarians managing the librariany stuff. Running a library service is very similar to running any other kind of business, the only difference is that we don't make a profit and that we share information with anyone who asks for it (instead of trying to steal it from our competitors).
One of the guidelines that I understand (but find frustrating) is the guideline saying 'Based on knowledge of particular cultural needs and trends, a collection exists for a particular language when there are 500 residents speaking that language as their major language at home'. Lucky for us (with our 18 languages) we collect in a lot of languages. Unlucky for us, there are 26 languages with more than 500 speakers in our area. Some of these (ie Dinka and Samoan) have so few items published in them that there is no way we could support a collection even if we wanted to. Others (such as German and Spanish) are either leaving the area or dying off. That being said, our council area has 151 different languages spoken at home so I think we're doing well to collect in 18 of them.
The guidelines also refer to People Places, the document I complained about last week (it was the one that our building audit referred to when criticising our collection space in libraries). I actually found a copy of it online (click here to view) which, one day, I may read.
Living Learning Libraries: Standards and Guidelines for NSW Libraries was released recently and is now available from the State Library of NSW website. The report provides target figures for different areas of libraries, including membership per capita, opening hours per capita (or per number of branches), number of internet terminals, number of programs run, etc. It gives 3 levels of figures; a baseline figure (all libraries should meet this); an enhanced figure (you're a good library if you meet this) and; an exemplary figure (you're a brilliant library if you meet this).
What is interesting about this document is that it provides you with an 'out' clause for each of the target figures. For example, if you have 4-7 library branches then you should have a total opening hours per week of at least 238 hours (we have 5 libraries and 242 so yay to us). It says that this number may vary depending on staff numbers, the location of other community services, the structure (ie central library + mobile libraries) and the size of each library and the communities surrounding them.
I had a look at some of the different targets and compared my library service's performance against them. I even followed the definitions they provided (ie an active borrower in Victoria is someone who has used the library in the last 3 years, in NSW it says 2 years). It turns out we're a tad (actually a lot) under their benchmarks in a few area but that we rock in terms of internet access and program numbers. One of our main problems is that we have a very large populace with very low literacy and mobility. Also, our residents are quite transient and will often move to our area from overseas and then find work (and better living conditions) elsewhere so they'll move there. Many don't stay long, they are just there to bolster numbers.
Part B of the document refers to guidelines which libraries should follow in order to implement the standard targets. An interesting guideline was that it recommended the Library Manager be "an appropriately qualified librarian". I don't actually believe that we actually need a librarian to run the library service, especially in an environment where you have qualified librarians managing the librariany stuff. Running a library service is very similar to running any other kind of business, the only difference is that we don't make a profit and that we share information with anyone who asks for it (instead of trying to steal it from our competitors).
One of the guidelines that I understand (but find frustrating) is the guideline saying 'Based on knowledge of particular cultural needs and trends, a collection exists for a particular language when there are 500 residents speaking that language as their major language at home'. Lucky for us (with our 18 languages) we collect in a lot of languages. Unlucky for us, there are 26 languages with more than 500 speakers in our area. Some of these (ie Dinka and Samoan) have so few items published in them that there is no way we could support a collection even if we wanted to. Others (such as German and Spanish) are either leaving the area or dying off. That being said, our council area has 151 different languages spoken at home so I think we're doing well to collect in 18 of them.
The guidelines also refer to People Places, the document I complained about last week (it was the one that our building audit referred to when criticising our collection space in libraries). I actually found a copy of it online (click here to view) which, one day, I may read.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Building audit
The Building Audit of Victorian Public Libraries 2007 was a report created to get an overview of public library buildings in Victoria. At 258 pages it's a bit lengthy so I must admit that I just read through the presentation available at http://www.libraries.vic.gov.au/cgi-bin/infonet/org.cgi?detail=1&id=40 and attempted to formulate some ideas.
The report uses a benchmark (People places) to identify where we're going wrong.
One of the things that got my goat about this report was that it bemoaned the fact that our collection areas in general are too small. I think this is very backwards thinking. Sure, a library has a physical collection. People come in daily to browse through our shelves and pull off what they want to borrow. But we are so much more than that. We have a virtual collection (which doesn't need floorspace). We encourage people to meet in our libraries by providing community spaces such as tables and chairs, lounge areas, cafe areas, study areas. Why on earth would we want to be increasing our collections at the expense of the things that draw people in?
At a time when traditional library usage is declining, I honestly don't believe that we should be limiting ourselves in this way. We don't have a huge amount of people coming in these days to ask us reference queries (of course, with the demographic of my library community, we probably never did). More people come to us because they can borrow (for free) movies and reading material for pleasure. To get people to borrow our items we are offering other services: a safe space; a friendly ear; someone to help you with finding information to solve your problems.
Pfft to reports trying to make us into scary places with tomes of wisdom.
The report uses a benchmark (People places) to identify where we're going wrong.
One of the things that got my goat about this report was that it bemoaned the fact that our collection areas in general are too small. I think this is very backwards thinking. Sure, a library has a physical collection. People come in daily to browse through our shelves and pull off what they want to borrow. But we are so much more than that. We have a virtual collection (which doesn't need floorspace). We encourage people to meet in our libraries by providing community spaces such as tables and chairs, lounge areas, cafe areas, study areas. Why on earth would we want to be increasing our collections at the expense of the things that draw people in?
At a time when traditional library usage is declining, I honestly don't believe that we should be limiting ourselves in this way. We don't have a huge amount of people coming in these days to ask us reference queries (of course, with the demographic of my library community, we probably never did). More people come to us because they can borrow (for free) movies and reading material for pleasure. To get people to borrow our items we are offering other services: a safe space; a friendly ear; someone to help you with finding information to solve your problems.
Pfft to reports trying to make us into scary places with tomes of wisdom.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The acronyms of doom, part 2.
I may have fallen asleep in a lecture or two at university but I don't recall ever snoozing during a professional conference. Unfortunately the recent ACOC conference seemed to have that effect on a few people in the audience.
It was hard going. There was an expectation that everyone understood FRBR (either pronounced "Ef Are Bee Are" or "Fur-burr") and not everyone did. In fact, I think a lot of us didn't. If you didn't understand these core principles then the rest of what they said made little sense.
I went along as a representative of the public library sector, there weren't many of us there. Cataloguing seems to be the domain of the academic library. It's like the Hindi caste system.
Brahmin = national and state library cataloguers (all hail us)
Kshatriya = academic cataloguers (if you want to be a REAL cataloguer, you should work in a university)
Vaishya = vendor & special library cataloguers (our cataloguing is of decent quality and we know what we're doing...in our own special way)
Shudra = public library cataloguers (me! the unwashed masses who use the beautifully created records of the upper-classes).
I suppose at least I'm not an untouchable (the highschool and primary school cataloguers, cataloguers whose opinion seems to mean little to those of our upper castes). Bah.
Anyways, rant aside, the conference was hard going. I thought I knew what was going on until just after afternoon tea, then it all fell apart in my head.
In my last blog post I talked about the 4 levels of RDA - work, expression, manifestation and item. I found out at the ACOC conference that all catalogue records being created were at the manifestation level with extra details from work and expression levels. I glossed over the fact that there were two types of MaRC records, one for catalogue records and one for authority records.
According to the powers that be of RDA, there will still only be two types of MaRC records, one for catalogue records and one for authority records. How on earth does that work when there should be at least 4 levels of records? There should be a MaRC format for authority records, that is seperate. There should THEN be a MaRC format for each RDA level; work, expression, manifestation and item. There won't be...just the one MaRC file which will include everything.
I know I'm not explaining myself well, but I am:
a) Venting
b) Confused myself
c) Aware that noone reads this
It was frustrating sitting there and aware that I understood the theory of FRBR and even the theory of RDA...the implementation just didn't seem like it would follow the theoretical model they were proposing. Maybe I missed something.
End rant.
It was hard going. There was an expectation that everyone understood FRBR (either pronounced "Ef Are Bee Are" or "Fur-burr") and not everyone did. In fact, I think a lot of us didn't. If you didn't understand these core principles then the rest of what they said made little sense.
I went along as a representative of the public library sector, there weren't many of us there. Cataloguing seems to be the domain of the academic library. It's like the Hindi caste system.
Brahmin = national and state library cataloguers (all hail us)
Kshatriya = academic cataloguers (if you want to be a REAL cataloguer, you should work in a university)
Vaishya = vendor & special library cataloguers (our cataloguing is of decent quality and we know what we're doing...in our own special way)
Shudra = public library cataloguers (me! the unwashed masses who use the beautifully created records of the upper-classes).
I suppose at least I'm not an untouchable (the highschool and primary school cataloguers, cataloguers whose opinion seems to mean little to those of our upper castes). Bah.
Anyways, rant aside, the conference was hard going. I thought I knew what was going on until just after afternoon tea, then it all fell apart in my head.
In my last blog post I talked about the 4 levels of RDA - work, expression, manifestation and item. I found out at the ACOC conference that all catalogue records being created were at the manifestation level with extra details from work and expression levels. I glossed over the fact that there were two types of MaRC records, one for catalogue records and one for authority records.
According to the powers that be of RDA, there will still only be two types of MaRC records, one for catalogue records and one for authority records. How on earth does that work when there should be at least 4 levels of records? There should be a MaRC format for authority records, that is seperate. There should THEN be a MaRC format for each RDA level; work, expression, manifestation and item. There won't be...just the one MaRC file which will include everything.
I know I'm not explaining myself well, but I am:
a) Venting
b) Confused myself
c) Aware that noone reads this
It was frustrating sitting there and aware that I understood the theory of FRBR and even the theory of RDA...the implementation just didn't seem like it would follow the theoretical model they were proposing. Maybe I missed something.
End rant.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
RDA and the acronyms of doom
It's like a brand new Harry Potter novel: Harry Potter and the acronyms of doom.
Synopsis: Harry is forced by his evil muggle foster parents to attend a cataloguing conference provided by ACOC, one of the older acronyms of doom. Whilst there he learns about RDA, FRBR, JSC, FRAD, FRSAR and the other new acronyms of doom. He witnesses a fight between the new acronyms of doom and the old acronyms of doom (MaRC, AACR2, CAVAL, NLA) and realises that whoever wins, everyone loses. Can Harry overcome the evils of acronyms or will he be defeated by his archnemesis, He Who Must Not Be Catalogued (otherwise known as HWMNBC)?
*insert dramatic musak*
Tomorrow I will be in amongst the acronyms of doom at the latest Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC) conference in Sydney. There I will find out all about Resource Description and Access (RDA) which is the brand spankin' new cataloguing structure all of us poor little cataloguers will have to follow. The goals are admirable. A record's linkages will be logical with each record having four levels.
Example (errors are my fault, sorry!)
Work: The Bible.
Expression: English Language version of the King James Bible.
Manifestation: 2003 printing of the King James Bible, Large print edition.
Manifestation: 1999 audio copy on 12 CDs of the King James Bible.
Item: The copy I have in my hand.
This is how I understand things. That means, if I want to reser
ve a bible (any bible) then I can reserve at the Work level. If I want to reserve an English language version of the King James Bible then I can reserve at the Expression level (I may receive a printed copy, I may receive an audio copy...there may be a way to set this by format, I guess it depends on the system's implementation). If I want to reserve a particular manifestation (ie the 2003 printing only) then I can reserve at Manifestation level. If I want to receive the copy where I highlighted the passages that I needed then I'd reserve at the Item level.
All very nice. Unfortunately we've had a good 20-30 years of having a catalogue record (an amalgamation of the Work + Expression + Manifestation) and a holding record (the Item). This means that every system we use is geared towards this two level structure and will need to change. I don't really seeing that being cheap. If all of the major institutions (State Libraries, National Libraries, Library of Congress, etc) all implement this and force their vendors to allow it to be implemented then MAYBE us libraries with poor vendor systems will get the trickle down effect...maybe not. There are still library systems out there that don't use MaRC, the main exchange format for library records.
Let that bun-fight begin!
Image courtesy of http://www.imagesofthepast.co.uk/ , (c) 1902
Synopsis: Harry is forced by his evil muggle foster parents to attend a cataloguing conference provided by ACOC, one of the older acronyms of doom. Whilst there he learns about RDA, FRBR, JSC, FRAD, FRSAR and the other new acronyms of doom. He witnesses a fight between the new acronyms of doom and the old acronyms of doom (MaRC, AACR2, CAVAL, NLA) and realises that whoever wins, everyone loses. Can Harry overcome the evils of acronyms or will he be defeated by his archnemesis, He Who Must Not Be Catalogued (otherwise known as HWMNBC)?
*insert dramatic musak*
Tomorrow I will be in amongst the acronyms of doom at the latest Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC) conference in Sydney. There I will find out all about Resource Description and Access (RDA) which is the brand spankin' new cataloguing structure all of us poor little cataloguers will have to follow. The goals are admirable. A record's linkages will be logical with each record having four levels.
Example (errors are my fault, sorry!)
Work: The Bible.
Expression: English Language version of the King James Bible.
Manifestation: 2003 printing of the King James Bible, Large print edition.
Manifestation: 1999 audio copy on 12 CDs of the King James Bible.
Item: The copy I have in my hand.
This is how I understand things. That means, if I want to reser
ve a bible (any bible) then I can reserve at the Work level. If I want to reserve an English language version of the King James Bible then I can reserve at the Expression level (I may receive a printed copy, I may receive an audio copy...there may be a way to set this by format, I guess it depends on the system's implementation). If I want to reserve a particular manifestation (ie the 2003 printing only) then I can reserve at Manifestation level. If I want to receive the copy where I highlighted the passages that I needed then I'd reserve at the Item level.All very nice. Unfortunately we've had a good 20-30 years of having a catalogue record (an amalgamation of the Work + Expression + Manifestation) and a holding record (the Item). This means that every system we use is geared towards this two level structure and will need to change. I don't really seeing that being cheap. If all of the major institutions (State Libraries, National Libraries, Library of Congress, etc) all implement this and force their vendors to allow it to be implemented then MAYBE us libraries with poor vendor systems will get the trickle down effect...maybe not. There are still library systems out there that don't use MaRC, the main exchange format for library records.
Let that bun-fight begin!
Image courtesy of http://www.imagesofthepast.co.uk/ , (c) 1902
Thursday, October 9, 2008
MODS
Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) is a schema for a bibliographic element set that may be used for a variety of purposes, and particularly for library applications. The standard is maintained by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress with input from usersIt is funny, I recently joined an Australian listserv for librarians interested in library systems and library technology - aliaLIBSYSTEMS. It was thought that all the other standard listservs were aimed more at US librarians and US libraries and that we needed something specific to us. I think they're right.
Of course, just after I signed up to this, one of my other listservs, NGC4LIB simply exploded with discussion. NGC4LIB (or Next Generation Catalogs [sic] for Libraries) talks/complains/discusses/bemoans the new generation of catalogues and opacs that are available for libraries to use. Mostly I just watch them all complain about how noone does anything and then they have discussion on ways we could fix stuff and then it peters out and starts again. The past little while has had an absolute heap of emails revolving around how MaRC is an antiquated format and should be bought into the new era (and why it hasn't been and etc etc).
Being a cataloguer I am aware of what MaRC's history and how it has (or hasn't) evolved. What I really wasn't aware was of some of the projects out there to 'modernise' MaRC and bring it into line with what the world is currently using, xml based schemas. The currently MARCXML scheme is a tad crap.
100__$aWest, Christian,$d1982-.Becomes:
245__$aThis is my title /$cChristian West
650_0$aBiography.
<record>Which, logically, makes sense. It's just HUGE, sizewise, in comparison to the MaRC part and rather hard to read if you're not a computer (MaRC is also hard to read if you're not a computer, just not as hard as the MARCXML bit).
<datafield tag="100" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
<subfield code="a">West, Christian,</subfield>
<subfield code="d">1982.</subfield>
</datafield>
<datafield tag="245" ind1=" " ind2=" ">
<subfield code="a">This is my title /</subfield>
<subfield code="c">Christian West.</subfield>
</datafield>
<datafield tag="650" ind1=" " ind2="0">
<subfield code="a">Biography.</subfield>
</datafield>
</record>
MODS is a way of simplifying this by using actual terminology in the tags rather than the MaRC numbers which, although nice for their day, are a bit passe in terms of the way we currently code.
From what I gather, the MODS record will look something like the below:
<titleInfo>This seems a bit easier to me to read, especially if you're a programmer. You don't have to worry about what all the numbers and indices refer to. This wouldn't matter if you were programming in a vacuum, but if you want your records to be used by nerdy young people programming at home, this is probably the best way to go about it. You instantly know that the 'topic' of my book is Biography. You many not know what the lcsh 'authority' for it means, but you get the general gist of the whole thing. It is still pretty big, granted, but it is a lot easier to understand.
<title>This is my title /</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart>West, Christian</namePart>
<namePart type="Date">1982-.</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm type="text">creator</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<subject authority="lcsh">
<topic>Biography.</topic>
</subject>
Anyways, that is my rant for today. I was just very fascinated when I had a look at MODS and thought I'd share.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Library Science collection
A bit off topic for this week I guess (seeing as it's not to do with my website project) but I am currently weeding our library-science collection and, well, I am starting to wonder what other libraries have in their collections.
A list of some of the less relevant things I have:
I'd love to know what other libraries have in their collection though. So far I have kept a single book on building a library (it goes through how much space you should assign for each collection and I really haven't seen much else on the topic before) and reports that staff refer to frequently such as our annual report and a couple of years' worth of the survey of Victorian public libraries. Most everything else is available online, it's not like we need much of the book trends stuff in hardcopy anymore.
A list of some of the less relevant things I have:
- Library Service in Victoria produced by the Library Council of Victoria in April 1970 (and purchased later that year). Rivetting stuff. Highly relevant to a library in 2008.
- Stress Control by Steve Bell. We actually have a large number of books on controlling stress, it doesn't really invite confidence in me having a good working environ here does it?
- The Publishing and Review of Reference Sources which was published in 1987. Again, highly relevant, especially with the chapter on modern publishing methods such as the optical disk and those expensive online databases such as DIALOG.
I'd love to know what other libraries have in their collection though. So far I have kept a single book on building a library (it goes through how much space you should assign for each collection and I really haven't seen much else on the topic before) and reports that staff refer to frequently such as our annual report and a couple of years' worth of the survey of Victorian public libraries. Most everything else is available online, it's not like we need much of the book trends stuff in hardcopy anymore.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Gulliver's travels
Guess who will be speaking at the Gulliver Forum this Thursday? That's right, it's me! By speaking I mean I'll be doing a short presentation on how I found the Learning 2.0 program. By presentation I mean some powerpoint slides whilst I cower behind the lecturn. (I hope there is a lecturn).
I probably should have written this earlier so you could all organise to come and listen to fantastic me. Ah well, I'd actually prefer there weren't too many people there, my public speaking skills are a tad rusty.
I am probably going to speak about how I enjoyed the program but, as an organiser for my library, found that most of our staff were either slightly under-confident about their skills or found it difficult to get time at work to do the program. In fact, the vast bulk of people who completed it did the majority of work from home.
Anyways, just thought I'd let you all know. The forum will be held at the Rendevouz Hotel in Melbourne on 31 January to 1 February from 9.30 onwards. I will be speaking the afternoon of the 1st (again, by speaking, I mean 5 minutes of me bitching about the negative aspects of the program and then closing on an inspirational statement about how it was all worth it because RSS rocks!)
I probably should have written this earlier so you could all organise to come and listen to fantastic me. Ah well, I'd actually prefer there weren't too many people there, my public speaking skills are a tad rusty.
I am probably going to speak about how I enjoyed the program but, as an organiser for my library, found that most of our staff were either slightly under-confident about their skills or found it difficult to get time at work to do the program. In fact, the vast bulk of people who completed it did the majority of work from home.
Anyways, just thought I'd let you all know. The forum will be held at the Rendevouz Hotel in Melbourne on 31 January to 1 February from 9.30 onwards. I will be speaking the afternoon of the 1st (again, by speaking, I mean 5 minutes of me bitching about the negative aspects of the program and then closing on an inspirational statement about how it was all worth it because RSS rocks!)
Sunday, October 7, 2007
And here's to you Mrs Robinson...
Guess who is pregnant? That's right, it's Mrs Robinson and she's pregnant to me!
I love library gossip. Let's see some of the things I've been gossiped about since I started working in libraries.
1. Who I sleep with (men, women, no-one).
2. That I'm a virgin.
3. That I'm a giant ho (same person who thought I was a virgin changed their mind and decided I was a ho).
4. That I'm dating/sleeping with:
a) Monica (Library Tech Extraordinaire)
b) Tracy (bet ya didn't hear that!)
c) Ruth (80 year old Doveton woman)
d) Perren (a friend from highschool)
e) Paul the shelver
f) Steven the lecturer
g) Suzie (cataloguer at Latrobe Uni)
h) Eda the fashionable librarian
i) Mrs Robinson
Actually, that's about it. Why do library staff need to know who I'm sleeping with? It's not any of them! (I have a policy of never dating a co-worker).
Although, finding out that Mrs Robinson is pregnant was new. And if she's pregnant, I must be the father because we've talked on the phone and I called her Honeypie (Lucy, if you're reading this you'll know that my swear-jar is empty if I'm honeypie'ing people). Just for everyone else, honeypie is what a former co-worker used to call people who irritated her on the phone.
Example:
"Look Honeypie *grinds teeth*, if the power is out then your computer will not work no matter how much you yell at me...no, not even if you plug it into another powerpoint".
I love library gossip. Let's see some of the things I've been gossiped about since I started working in libraries.
1. Who I sleep with (men, women, no-one).
2. That I'm a virgin.
3. That I'm a giant ho (same person who thought I was a virgin changed their mind and decided I was a ho).
4. That I'm dating/sleeping with:
a) Monica (Library Tech Extraordinaire)
b) Tracy (bet ya didn't hear that!)
c) Ruth (80 year old Doveton woman)
d) Perren (a friend from highschool)
e) Paul the shelver
f) Steven the lecturer
g) Suzie (cataloguer at Latrobe Uni)
h) Eda the fashionable librarian
i) Mrs Robinson
Actually, that's about it. Why do library staff need to know who I'm sleeping with? It's not any of them! (I have a policy of never dating a co-worker).
Although, finding out that Mrs Robinson is pregnant was new. And if she's pregnant, I must be the father because we've talked on the phone and I called her Honeypie (Lucy, if you're reading this you'll know that my swear-jar is empty if I'm honeypie'ing people). Just for everyone else, honeypie is what a former co-worker used to call people who irritated her on the phone.
Example:
"Look Honeypie *grinds teeth*, if the power is out then your computer will not work no matter how much you yell at me...no, not even if you plug it into another powerpoint".
Friday, October 5, 2007
#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...
I found this exercise fascinating. The very first thing I noticed was, of the five speakers listed in the exercise, only one was female. For a female dominated industry, I find that quite sad. Why aren't more females spouting the crap that us males spout? Equal rights rah rah. I find it even more pathetic because all of the strong advocates of Web 2.0 technologies in libraries that I know are female. I liase with librarians in New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria, and only two male librarians spring to mind who advocate this, the other 20 or so are female. (Maybe it's because the only people talking about this are either academic librarians who have to justify their employment with innovative research or upper management of IT companies wanting us to use their products...or is that just my jaded view?)
Back to Library 2.0. The most interestesting article to me was 'To better bibliographic services' by John Riemer. As a cataloguer, he talks about using existing metadata (our library catalogues) to enhance our collections. This is something close to my heart, I believe that all libraries do way too much duplication and that there should be easy ways of acquiring all kinds of things. Book data is very easy to acquire (log in to LibrariesAustralia, edit my holdings and ta-da, I have a catalogue record for my library) but data for other media are lacking. Even something as commonplace as a Naruto DVD required me to make the record myself (we are a small, poor public library, we do title cataloguing for such works and I wouldn't even bother making it available to everyone else, it would be lovely if someone did full cataloguing with tables of contents, etc). Even better would be linked tables of contents/chapter listings. With audio this would be brilliant and could link to snippets of the music that are available on various CD sites. I understand there'd be copyright implications, even for 10 second snippets of music, but it would still be nice.
Sorry, got distracted (it happens so easily). Actually, the distraction works for me. One of his 'hints' is to adopt web features...things like linking in to data that is already available (ie snippets of music). Maybe even link to reviews. We're hoping to get something similar working at Brimbank Libraries with a link to LibraryThing. Hopefully, we'll be able to get LibraryThing to connect to our data and give suggestions for other books to read. This is currently available in things like Bowker's FictionConnection but, well, this doesn't integrate as easily as LibraryThing would (and costs a crapload more).
I also thought Wendy Schultz's article 'To a temporary place in time...' was interesting, mostly because I don't really agree with her forecasting. Firstly, she assumes that libraries will be a quiet place in the future (ha! I wish they were quiet now...has she ever been in a public library?) and that just got my goat. I don't want my library to be quiet. Quiet areas, yes. Comfortable, yes. Quiet everywhere? No. I'd rather my public library be comfortable and cosy, like a living room. I want couches. I want a fireplace. I want someone to serve me a hot chocolate and bring me the latest Who Weekly and call me sir. Personally, I think libraries are going to end up as entertainment only venues. We'll have free gadgets (virtual reality spaces), free reading material (the latest Virginia Andrews books, sure she'll be 986 years old and dead for 900 of them but she'll still churn them out) and somewhere you can dump the kids whilst you go shopping (storytime 7.1). Our specialist skills will all fall flat, very few people go to a public library to get research done. Academic and school libraries will still exist (if only to help teach scholars proper was to search the Googlenet) but public libraries won't be for that kind of stuff.
I was interviewed recently as part of a research project looking into the library services for Baby Boomers and I think I'm quite jaded. If the physical library exists at all in 100 years, it will be as a data storage centre. Although people say they can't live without books, in all honesty, they're going to all die off soon enough (myself included) and new technologies will emerge that supercede paper. They can already create a screen that is as thin as two credit cards, and technology will only get better. I'm fairly certain that I'll see something that supercedes paper as a reading medium in my lifetime. After all, I'm young enough that I don't need a book to do anything really, sure I don't like reading for fun on a computer, but I'd much rather read a recipe on one than store 600 cookbooks on a shelf in the kitchen.
Maybe I'm just too jaded today.
/end rant
Back to Library 2.0. The most interestesting article to me was 'To better bibliographic services' by John Riemer. As a cataloguer, he talks about using existing metadata (our library catalogues) to enhance our collections. This is something close to my heart, I believe that all libraries do way too much duplication and that there should be easy ways of acquiring all kinds of things. Book data is very easy to acquire (log in to LibrariesAustralia, edit my holdings and ta-da, I have a catalogue record for my library) but data for other media are lacking. Even something as commonplace as a Naruto DVD required me to make the record myself (we are a small, poor public library, we do title cataloguing for such works and I wouldn't even bother making it available to everyone else, it would be lovely if someone did full cataloguing with tables of contents, etc). Even better would be linked tables of contents/chapter listings. With audio this would be brilliant and could link to snippets of the music that are available on various CD sites. I understand there'd be copyright implications, even for 10 second snippets of music, but it would still be nice.
Sorry, got distracted (it happens so easily). Actually, the distraction works for me. One of his 'hints' is to adopt web features...things like linking in to data that is already available (ie snippets of music). Maybe even link to reviews. We're hoping to get something similar working at Brimbank Libraries with a link to LibraryThing. Hopefully, we'll be able to get LibraryThing to connect to our data and give suggestions for other books to read. This is currently available in things like Bowker's FictionConnection but, well, this doesn't integrate as easily as LibraryThing would (and costs a crapload more).
I also thought Wendy Schultz's article 'To a temporary place in time...' was interesting, mostly because I don't really agree with her forecasting. Firstly, she assumes that libraries will be a quiet place in the future (ha! I wish they were quiet now...has she ever been in a public library?) and that just got my goat. I don't want my library to be quiet. Quiet areas, yes. Comfortable, yes. Quiet everywhere? No. I'd rather my public library be comfortable and cosy, like a living room. I want couches. I want a fireplace. I want someone to serve me a hot chocolate and bring me the latest Who Weekly and call me sir. Personally, I think libraries are going to end up as entertainment only venues. We'll have free gadgets (virtual reality spaces), free reading material (the latest Virginia Andrews books, sure she'll be 986 years old and dead for 900 of them but she'll still churn them out) and somewhere you can dump the kids whilst you go shopping (storytime 7.1). Our specialist skills will all fall flat, very few people go to a public library to get research done. Academic and school libraries will still exist (if only to help teach scholars proper was to search the Googlenet) but public libraries won't be for that kind of stuff.
I was interviewed recently as part of a research project looking into the library services for Baby Boomers and I think I'm quite jaded. If the physical library exists at all in 100 years, it will be as a data storage centre. Although people say they can't live without books, in all honesty, they're going to all die off soon enough (myself included) and new technologies will emerge that supercede paper. They can already create a screen that is as thin as two credit cards, and technology will only get better. I'm fairly certain that I'll see something that supercedes paper as a reading medium in my lifetime. After all, I'm young enough that I don't need a book to do anything really, sure I don't like reading for fun on a computer, but I'd much rather read a recipe on one than store 600 cookbooks on a shelf in the kitchen.
Maybe I'm just too jaded today.
/end rant
