Northwest Archivists Student Scholarship

I received a letter today informing me that I've been awarded the 2007 Northwest Archivists At-Large Student Scholarship. The Northwest Archivists is a regional association which includes the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Oregon. I will use my award to take distance learning classes on archival topics through SOLINET . Some classes I may be interested in taking are Preservation of Photographic Materials, Metadata for Digitization and Preservation, Preserving Oral Histories, Emerging Technologies, and Caring for Scrapbooks.

2007 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

Another of my long-time interests, along with time and how we view it, is linguistics. Linguistics, the science of language which answers questions about how languages are alike and how they are different, gives us insights into how the mind works.

Pieter Bruegel's (1563) Tower of Babel

The inaugural of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, funded by the National Science Foundation, will be held later this week at several Eastern U.S. locations-- Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Ithaca, N.Y. --and on the Internet, allowing people to solve puzzles that test analytic skills and demonstrate the diversity of languages. That diversity is shrinking. During the past 200 years, the number of languages spoken on Earth has shrunk from 15,000 to 6,000.

For more information about the Olympiad, check out their website here.

Fall Term Classes

These are the classes I've registered in to take this Fall:
LI827 - Preservation Strategies
LI861 - Current Issues in Information Transfer: Advanced Preservation
LI837 - Teaching in the Information Profession
LI 835 - Information Transfer in Disciplines
LI 870 - Practicum

Portland State University Library

I've just returned from a week-end in Portland. This class was on reference and we spent Saturday at the Portland State University Library . The library is closed this week-end because of Spring break but the instructor works there and arranged to have it available for us to use. This is a gorgeous library and I loved spending the day there.

Summer Term Classes

I'll be taking the following classes this summer:

LI 806 - Global Information Infrastructure
LI 819 - Repackaging Information
LI 863 - Project Management

Because I am a part-time LBCC employee, the college will pay the tuition cost for up to 3 credits a term (a deal I can't ignore!). I'll be taking classes Spring term in powerpoint presentations (I'll be making a presentation at the OLA staff support conference in July), Excel (I need to learn a lot more about this software!), and grant writing.

Invitation

I was recently invited to serve as a virtual member of the ALA Membership Committee for a two-year term beginning at the close of the 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC and expiring at the end of the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, IL.

The "virtual" part of that is important as it's unlikely I'll be able to attend all the meetings. I accepted the invitation and am very honored that it was offered to me.

Meanwhile.....

I haven't been writing about what I've been doing at the LBCC library. Many of my tasks have to do with weeding as we are getting ready to move so that the library can be remodeled.

Here's a brief summary.

** Preparing spreadsheet of journals in reference section listing which we have in print, which are in the electronic databases, the years we have them for, and if any of those we have in print are available in databases or online.
** Preparing spreadsheet of reference titles with information similar to above plus reading reviews in Choice to determine which are outstanding titles and which may have duplicated information.

I've also been attending and contributing to remodeling and staff meetings, working the circulation desk, answering reference questions, helping students with software and printer problems, and preparing bibliographies as well as answering the ubiquitous directional questions.

I have the next two weeks (finals week and Spring Break) off but only from this position. When I return I'll be responsible for offering the materials we are weeding out to other libraries, preparing and then shipping them.

As for the next two weeks, I'm finishing up a project for a class due on Monday and attending an all-day workshop in Salem on the Basics of Archives sponsored by The State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB), headed by the Oregon Secretary of State- Archives Division on Wednesday. I'll be working at the OSU Archives on Wednesday and Thursday nights and on Friday I'll head up to Portland for a week-end class.

During Spring Break I'll be working at the OSU Archives half-days and working on a couple of scholarship applications.

Another Archives Project

Another archives project I've taken on is locating and pulling photographs of selected Oregon State University basketball players from different collections for a researcher. I was given a good, detailed research strategy to use beginning with using the photograph collection card catalog index and then searching the inventories of specific collections.

New Project at OSU Archives

I began working on a new project yesterday. I'm determining browsing terms for the Oregon State University Archives collections listed in the Northwest Digital Archives . The NDA provides access to archival and manuscript materials in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington through a union database of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids.

This means I am reading detailed descriptions of the collections and determining which browsing terms from an approved list might be appropriate to use. For example, one collection has documents from the Oregon Board of Regents 1886-1929 and includes correspondence dealing with problems at what is now Oregon State University of feeding students, a decree that students should be made to live on campus unless they have written permission from parents or the college president, a petition from students complaining about a professor (who was later fired), a complaint from students about the lack of heat, and another complaint from students, this one complaining that they are not receiving individual attention in classroom work. The browsing term I added was "student life".

Oregon Library Association Staff Support Conference

I'm going to be presenting at the Oregon Library Association Staff Support Conference in July. My topic will be about developing volunteer programs for libraries. I've organized a variety of volunteer programs--church, community, school (both individual schools and district-wide) during the past twenty years or so and I'm working on developing a volunteer program for LBCC so I feel pretty confident about being able to handle a one hour presentation by myself.

I'm preparing by reading books and websites about how to set up such programs and I also plan on interviewing the volunteer coordinator at the Corvallis Public Library .

A Collection of Librarians

There are collective nouns for groups of animals--a sleuth of bears, a mischief of mice, a pounce of cats, a crash of rhinoceri, a shiver of sharks, a tower of giraffes but I think the birds have the best ones-- a charm of hummingbirds, a piteousness of doves, a murmuration of starlings, a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, and an exaltation of larks.

But what's the collective noun for a group of librarians? This was discussed on 50 books recently and then on Librarian Avengers .

My favorites were a hush, a stack, a collection, a catalog, an index, and a Dewey.

Dr. Seuss' Birthday

Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday, an event we celebrated a few times with parties when my sons were very small but "A person's a person, no matter how small". We had fun. "Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow there's another one." All the boys loved Dr. Seuss. My favorite of his books was Green Eggs and Ham and yes, I remember fixing that at least once for breakfast on Dr. Seuss' birthday.

I believe it's true that "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Sometimes I miss my little guys. "My goodness how the time has flown. How did it get so late so soon?" but "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.”

Links to My Essay

Some sharp-eyed classmates noticed links to my essay and sent them to me. One is AL Direct , an electronic newsletter sent to American Library Association personal members by e-mail (I think the link will work only if you are an ALA member), and the other is the U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition which can be found here.

Oregon State Library Photo Website is Live!

Merrialyce Blanchard, the Special Collection Librarian at the Oregon State Library, sent me an email to say that the Oregon State Library Photo Website is now available for viewing. You can see it here.

The photo on the homepage is the very first one I entered into PastPerfect last summer and looking through the collection was like finding old friends.

March of the Librarians

If you're having a stress-filled week take a look at March of the Librarians . Filmed at the ALA Mid-Winter Convention in Seattle last month, this is a take off on March of the Penguins.

Library Student Journal Essay

My essay has been published in the February, 2007 issue of the open access Library Student Journal .

Oregon State University Library Archives

I've been offered and accepted a position working part-time at the Oregon State University Archives located in the Valley Library in Corvallis. I begin this week and will be working there Wednesday and Thursday evenings and the Saturday afternoons I'm not attending class. This is in addition to my position at the LBCC library and my volunteer work at the senior center. My duties in the archives include data input, creating html-encoded documents, scanning photographs and other historical materials, and providing reference services to researchers using the Archives’ collections and the Libraries’ Map Collection.

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.