What to Write About

While this blog is directed towards professional bloggers not mere amateurs like me, his tips and ideas are creative and useful. Other ideas I use are commenting on what I've read on the Web, often found by browsing rather than searching. I also get ideas just by being observant of what's around me.

I found this article:

Ramos, M.& Piper, P. (2006). Letting the Grass Grow: Grassroots Information on Blogs and Wikis. Reference Services Review V. 34 (4), 570-574.

The main thrust of this piece was that wikis and blogs can help librarians and others communicate better, share ideas, and create instructional resources. Well, okay, but that doesn't mean that the information they contain is accurate. Wikipedia is an example. Like anything else, blogs and wikis have to be scrutinized and evaluated.

Some other good articles on this topic are:

Barton, E. & Wesmantel, A. (2006). Reflogs Now. Library Journal, 28-30.
(You can read this article here .)

and

Desai, C. M. & Graves, S.J. (2006). Instruction via Instant Messaging Reference; What's Happening? The Electronic Library 24.2, 174-189.

and

Pomerantz, J. & Stutzman, F. (2006). Collaborative Reference Work in the Blogosphere. Reference Services Review 34.2,200-212.

Oregon State University Library

I spent several hours today doing research for my classes at the OSU Valley Library in Corvallis. While I was there I took some photos.

To the left is a view of the main entrance, above is the reference desk and to the right is a photo taken from a window on the sixth floor.

Two Terrific Sites for Archivists Or Those Searching for Primary Sources

The first is Seek and Ye Shall Find ,which has links to sites with primary source documents. There's also a link to how to search the invisible or deep Web here.

The second site is Footnote with links to millions of original documents.

Great Sites I've Found Recently

The Changing 'Place' of the Library discusses how libraries can meet the needs of distance education students and faculty.

Best Tech Videos on the Net is a super directory of tech videos.

The 24 Languages Project offers electronic access to over 200 health education brochures in 24 different languages. This is a project of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, in partnership with the Utah Department of Health, the Immunization Action Coalition, AAPCHO, and many others to improve access to health materials in multiple languages.

Access My Library gives free access to millions of articles from top publications available at your library.

AMSER (the Applied Math and Science Education Repository) is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout.

Refdesk is a one-stop site for all things Internet including news, weather, sports, reference, encyclopedia (50 areas), facts on file, FAQs, tutorials, search engines and more.

E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship - v.7 no.3 (Winter 2006) is now available.

The January/February 2007 issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available.

And finally, a couple of archives related sites.

Conservation on Line or CoOL is a project of the Preservation Department of Stanford University Libraries and "is a full text library of conservation information, covering a wide spectrum of topics of interest to those involved with the conservation of library, archives and museum materials". Definitely cool!

Ready, 'Net, Go!" Archival Internet Resources, offered by Tulane University, is an archival meta index with referrals to major indexes, lists, and databases of archival resources.

Aquabrowser

The Corvallis Public Library offers an Aquabrowser, a visual catalog which offers patrons the opportunity to search for information using a traditional query box with results portrayed with visuals, such as photographs of book covers included, links to sources as well as links to reviews, annotations, and character and author information. Patrons don't have to specify whether they're searching for author, title, subject, or keyword; the search function is just one box, similar to Google. It also compares the patron's terms to the metadata in the library's catalog and creates a visual map (a "word cloud") of associations. This allows patrons the opportunity to discover new information and reformulate their query and broaden their search.

Additionally, patrons can refine their search by zooming on the details of various search options such as subject, author or category to find not only the exact information wanted but also the type of format preferred.

What a great tool!

Linn-Benton Community College Library

I work in the reference department of the LBCC library, a two-year college which serves over 5,000 students. I took some photographs late this afternoon when it quieted down a bit and there were only a few dozen students still studying.

Organization of Desks

Desk organization was the topic my group discussed in a presentation to the class on Saturday. It was based on Thomas W. Malone's article published in 1983 entitled “How do people organize their desks.”in ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS).1 #1 99-112.


I found an article in the New York Times published last month entitled
Say Yes to Mess which quoted more recent research, some of which contradicted what was in the article published over 20 years ago.

One key finding was that a messy desk can increase creativity because it allows one to see connections one might otherwise miss. I don't think I made this clear because some of my classmates misinterpreted this to mean that those people who had neat desks were not creative, which clearly is not true.

Some also seemed unable to distinguish between neatness/messiness and organized/disorganized. It's very possible to have a neat desk which is disorganized if the files are ambiguously labeled or disorganized within the file drawer, for example. The desk may look neat but it's actually hiding the fact that it would be difficult to find what one is looking for. It's also possible to have a messy desk which is organized but perhaps not in a way that word is conventionally used. Papers may be piled in stacks or arranged in ways which, to the casual viewer, may appear to be haphazard but the desk owner may have a very specific and unique way of organizing that is not easily apparent to others. Organization is important but messiness or neatness is not what one should be examining. Michael did make a great point, however, that it is easier to access materials in someone else's desk if it is organized conventionally; people would have trouble finding what they needed if they didn't know or understand one's personal organizing style.

Portland Art Museum Visit

Our first class, Theory of Organization of Information, met this weekend in Portland. It was clear and very cold with high temperatures in the low 30s and lows in the lower 20s. Saturday morning we went to the Portland Art Museum to meet a couple of the registrars. The registrars are those responsible for maintaining and safeguarding the art collections, both those belonging to the museum and those on loan. Some of their duties include:

- Register incoming and outgoing collections.

- Accession and catalog new items insuring that all documents are properly processed.

- Maintain detailed inventory and historical files of each item in the collections, including card catalog and photograph file.

- Develop and maintain record systems to identify and locate art works that belong to the museum.

- Oversee storage of the collection to ensure that it is safe and accessible.

- Implement an inventory cycle as stipulated by the museum's Collection Management Policy.

- Serve as risk manager for the art collection and administer the museum's fine arts policy.

- Oversee computerized collection management system.

- Assess conservation proposals with the curators; identify conservation resources.

- Maintain statistics that relate to the collection.

- Implement deaccession policy including determining objects' legal status, tracking the deaccession process and coordinating the disposal of deaccessioned objects.

- With curators, assess loan requests for art works in the museum's collection.

- Generate and maintain all documentation pertaining to incoming and outgoing loans including exhibition contracts, loan agreements, receipts, shipping documents, and condition reports.

- Arrange for appropriate shipping and crating for incoming and outgoing loans.

It was a fascinating inside view.

Some Links

In between writing papers for publication, reading and doing course assignments for my first class this term (next weekend), taking down Christmas, preparing myself for going back to work on Monday, spending time with John and the guys, and knitting--whew!--I've been perusing the Web reading other people's blogs. This is a bit of what I found:

This great link has a list of blogs by archivists and archivist students.

This blog, written by Richard J. Cox who is a Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences, is especially useful.

And then there was this--Skills for the 21st Century Librarian-- a
post which listed what the writer felt were the most important skills a librarian should have.

Time

I found this essay on time entitled Stop all the clocks: Julian Baggini on the tyranny of time published in The Independent. I recently wrote about time in a post entitled Vorfreude, a German word meaning "pre-delight" or "before joy".

The concept of time and how it's viewed and valued in different cultures has long been a fascination of mine. One of my favorite non-fiction books is Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams. Read more about this book here. It also brought to mind W.H. Auden's poem Stop all the clocks, the saddest and most poignant poem I've ever found on how it feels to lose someone to death.

American Memory

I came across this site and though I'd share it.

American Memory

"The Library of Congress offers this comprehensive site with digital collections from the National Digital Library. The site is easily searchable--by topic, time period and place--and many collections provide time lines, picture galleries and narrative text, as well as suggestions for outside reading and links to related collections. You'll find information on popular culture ranging from the Emergence of Advertising in America to Baseball and Jackie Robinson, as well as more standard historical features. There are extensive documentary photos in many categories ranging from the Spanish-American War to San Francisco's 1906 earthquake."

Classes for Spring, 2007

The classes I'm enrolled in next term are:

LI804 Theory of Organization of Information
LI813 Basic Print and Electronic Information Sources
LI849 Records and Information Management

Some of My Favorite Children's Christmas Books

These are some of my favorite Christmas books. I gave copies of them to my sons when they were little boys and I still enjoy reading them every year.

My Desk

This is a photo of my messy desk. One of my goals during the break is to organize it a little more. I also need to look at what I have on my bulletin board as I think some of it is out of date and I have a little stack of new items that need to be up there as reminders and inspiration.

Lunch with an Archivist

On December 9th, ten students in the ESU Oregon-7 cohort and our advisor, Perri Perise, had an informal lunch with Mary Jo Pugh, the editor of the American Archivist. The Society of American Archivists is the oldest and largest archival association in North America.

Overview
Mary Jo began with defining archives as records of continuing usefulness with the idea that they will be accessible. They are not "old dusty, musty" but are records created in the course of business. They are "what your record managers leave you". Record management is analyzing how long to keep items (retention schedules).

There are two kinds of archives: those which are born digital and analog records. They can be kept by collecting institutions, such as the Oregon Historical Society, which don't create but identify and make records available, and by institutional repositories, such as Portland State University.

The SAA has 4700 personal members; their journal is not yet online but the goal is that it will be. Archives Week is held in October and there is an effort to make it Archives Month.

Education
Archivists education began in the 1980's as an apprenticeship combined with directed reading. The University of British Columbia had one of the first programs. The University of Michigan is considered to have one of the best archival programs and is on the cutting edge in digital records. A good archives program has at least 2-3 tenured faculty members.

Archivists can be certified by the Academy of Certified Archivists. Certification requires passing an exam along with a year of successful experience. Certification is renewed every five years with a re-examination or a portfolio showing what one has contributed to the profession.

She discussed the difference between historians, who want to keep everything, especially those things which personally interest them, and then organize it into subjects and archivists who keep the provenance by preserving the artifacts in the order they were created and are willing to throw a lot of them away. She also discussed copyright issues and access. Having two masters degrees (in history and an MLS) can give an individual a leg up in the profession. Subject knowledge and keeping up with new technology are both important. It is also important to know who the critical players are and target who has the records as well as knowing what you're looking at when looking at records.

A mission statement or collecting policy determines what you accept or not. She stated that "the early approach was to vacuum clean anything". Criteria of what to keep and what not to keep is critical. For example, in business one would retain documents related to policy making, but not routine day-to-day documents.

Other organizations
She mentioned the International Congress on Archives as one place for those interested in archives to look at as it has many links to national and state archives. They hold a conference every four years; the next one is in Singapore in 2008. She also discussed the Northwest Archivists Association and the National Archives, begun in 1934.

Special Collections To Go Live Soon!

The Oregon State Library Special Collections Divison will soon be putting its photo collection online. I was treated to a preview and it was wonderful to see some of the photographs I'd entered into PastPerfect. It was like finding old friends again. I'm looking forward to the day it goes public. Watch this space!

Last Class of the Term

I came home this afternoon after the last class of the term. The week-end was exhausting, exhilarating, and exciting. The drive home was a long one on the freeway, with the usual Oregon winter rain and wind beating down. I am tired.

On Saturday ten of us had lunch with Mary Jo Pugh, editor of the American Archivist, the publication of the Society of American Archivists I will post a photo I took of her and a summary of what was discussed later this week.

Sunday morning we started at 8 a.m. to hear our advisor, Perri, give us information about the curriculum and classes which will be offered in the next two years. We also made individual appointments to discuss our individual class schedules. She brought several boxes of donuts to thank us for coming in early. She is so good to us!

I have a month until the next term begins but in that month I will be writing the article for the Oregon Library Association Quarterly, ordering my textbooks, downloading and printing out the articles I'll need for next term's classes, and perhaps writing a book review or two. I also received an email from Eli Guinnee, the editor of the open-access Library Student Journal telling me that he's accepted an essay I wrote on diversity in librarianship. It should be published next month.

Fall, 2006

Again, I took three courses this term.

LI 802 Theoretical Foundations of Service: Diagnosis and Customization
LI 805 Organization Theories for Administering Information Agencies

LI 812 Online Information Retrieval

I began working at the Linn-Benton Community College Library in Albany last month. Some of the things I do are provide reference and research assistance to students, work with faculty and librarians to prepare research guides and bibliographies, assist with collection development and with marketing of library resources, keep the library website updated, and provide tours and basic instruction to classes on use of the library. I enjoy this very much and I'm learning a great deal.

I also won a scholarship! I was awarded the prize in writing in Emporia State University's Rosa Parks Multicultural Scholarship Competition. The director of the multicultural center read my story at the awards ceremony and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the DVD.

My story was entitled "Traveling to the City of Angels". This story was easy to write. It was ready to be born.

Another exciting thing that happened this term was that I was told that my proposal to write an article for the March issue of the Oregon Library Association Quarterly newsletter was accepted. I will be writing it during Christmas break.

Summer, 2006

I was admitted to Emporia State University's Oregon-7 cohort in June, 2006. Weekend classes are held once or twice a month on the Portand State University campus.

This is a photo of the doors to Cramer Hall, where classes are held.


I took three classes:
LI 513 Information Technology Skills
LI 801 Foundations of Information Transfer
LI803 Information Transfer and the Knowledge Society

I began volunteering one day a week at a senior center , providing individualized computer and Internet instruction. I also applied for and was accepted for an internship at the Oregon State Library in June, a position which lasted through the end of October. I categorized documents donated by the Oregon Legislative Library , researched and updated the Oregon periodical webpage, researched and cataloged photographs, postcards, manuscripts, maps, and letters dating from 1850-1930 from Special Collections.