Daily Thoughts 1/13/2010

Poster promoting reading by Charles Dickens in Nottingham1869

Daily Thoughts 1/13/2010

Based on my wanderings through the interweb, I found out that China Mieville has a new book coming out in June 2010 called Kraken. An urban fantasy about a giant squid. I wonder what he is going to do next.

Every single day I read about how ebooks are going to change the publishing world. There is an obsession with ebooks. The real game changer has not been ebooks. It is print on demand combined with self publishing. The only sector of the publishing world which has grown continuously has been the print on demand sector. It is easier and easier to get print on demand books from distributors like Baker and Taylor or Ingram. Ingram owns Lightning Source which is the largest print on demand service for books.

There are also many self publishing options that allow people to easily cut out the middle man. Companies like http://www.lulu.com/ and http://www.smashwords.com/ are growing in popularity. On our end we are getting many more local authors coming into our library wanting to have their books added or do readings. Big publishers are less and less willing to support author tours. It has become easier for us to look for authors websites on the internet and ask them to come to our library than for us to go to publishers.

Many of these authors are self published. It is kind of exciting to have a local poet come in and read from their book. Some of the work is better than expected because a lot of people who might have been previously published by the big houses are finding it hard to get there.

In addition, there are experiments with print on demand at the bookstore level. Some bookstores have even used The Espresso Book Machine as a tool for print on demand for local authors. I see print on demand continuing to expand and create new opportunities for authors much quicker than ebooks.

This morning we had our reference sharing meeting where we discussed different reference books. I discussed Writers Market 2010 which is a good basic tool on where to submit material to get published. Another person discussed the Library of Congress Subject Headings for religion.

We also looked at several internet sites. The head of reference discussed the Internet Archive first going to the wayback machine, then looking at several different things in the archive including a recording of PT Barnum's voice, a Libri Vox recording of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a song from a Grateful Dead Concert, and the short cartoon Sergeant Snafu.

Another site discussed was http://511ny.org/ which monitors traffic and public transportation around New York. If you know how to look, it can help spot speed traps and traffic cameras. There was also a mention of http://thomasnet.com/ which is the Thomas Directory of manufacturers online. Thomas now has cad drawings online. Finally, if you are looking for a genealogy expert, you can go to Ancestry.com and get experts for a fee through their website. http://expertconnect.ancestry.com/Home.aspx .

I spent a little time this afternoon weeding the literary criticism section. I also worked on designing a flyer for a movie which we are showing for the graphic novel club on January 25, 2009 as well as an update of the flyer for the 2nd meeting of the graphic novel club. Hopefully this will go well.

On the way to work I read some of Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni. The first maxim of the book is to pay attention, and the third maxim is to listen. These always seemed to be two of the most important things to do in life. Without attention you can't learn anything and not listening leads to lots of mistakes.

I am looking at a rather silly book, Boilerplate, History's Mechanical Marvel by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett. They built a man sized robot model of a clockwork robot and took pictures of it. It is a rather silly looking thing. It is very much like Frank Reade's Steam Man of the prairies in a more modern version. There is a website with images. http://www.bigredhair.com/boilerplate/index.html

The clockwork robot has been photoshopped into a variety of historical images from all over the world. These are mostly from the late 19th century to the beginnings of World War I. There are pictures of the robot with Pancho Villa, Theodore Roosevelt, Buffalo Bill and other famous persons. Also, there are images from historical events; The Boxer Rebellion and the Russo Japanese war.

It is a mashup with pictures taking old images and adding new technology to create a different kind of book.

Daily Thoughts 3/30/2009

Photo Credit : NASA

Daily Thoughts 3/30/2009

I've started reading How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. This book is a workbook which focuses on a method of changing your goals and dealing specifically in ways to committ to change by acting on complaints.

Today was another day, nothing special today. I was shadowed by one of the new librarians. I decided to go over active listening and knowledge elicitation techniques. Things like scenarios where you have more than one place to find what you are looking for (usually there are at least three places to find a common piece of information). Quid pro quo; having information ready to give a patron like flyers, small facts, bookmarks and similar things to get them to better tell you what they want. I think that quid pro quo (something for something) is actually a Roman strategy where when Roman soldiers would enter a new territory, they would send out a person with bits of information about themselves to give to the locals in exchange for local information.

Also, systematically clarifying a patrons questions, asking for support materials like homework assignments or magazine articles finding alternative search terms for what a person is looking for. This would include definitions, spellings, plural forms of words, alternate spellings of words and names, searching by publisher, mixing and matching pieces of titles, and other strategies.

I called the local YMCA director and the Friends of the Library to get them to agree to be part of the block cleanup and planting for Earth Day. I'll probably call the neighborhood associations tomorrow and visit two churches that are near us. I am supposed to have a bunch of people who want to be part of the event by the end of the week for the mayors office. The Friends of the Library head suggested I might want to get some younger people to help.

I wrote my portion of the monthly report as well as what I plan to do this week. Libraries are big on paper. We have lots of it.

I checked on the shelving in the main library. They ordered a whole new set of metal bookends which was nice to see. The library aides did a nice job of putting the books in order-- edged ( the books being one half inch in from the edge of the bookshelves with all spine labels visible) and having three to five inches free at the end of each shelf of books with a bookend placed.

It is funny how sometimes when you think you have done nothing is when you have done the most sometimes. Things just fall into place.

Safari Books Online sent me a thank you letter through the mail for trying out their online service. I was rather surprised by this. It looks like excellent marketing.

Daily Thoughts 3/6/2009

Gustave Courbet, Portrait of Baudelaire 1848-1849.

Daily Thoughts 3/6/2009

Today was another quiet day. I finished writing up the distribution of circulation by dewey decimal call number in an excel spreadsheet and sent it to our director. She was happy with it. It took me a couple of hours to finish it correctly.

I am also considering hosting a "Senior Law Day" which is a day of free programs put together to help seniors with their legal issues put together by our cities Office of the Aging. I would aim for June to do this. I like having plenty of time to plan programs so they get properly advertised.

The new librarian is shadowing me at the reference desk. I have been going over things like interlibrary loan requests, holds requests, in house holds, reference policies and procedures, email reference, and other desk procedures today. Yesterday, we walked around the building and talked about where the different parts of the collection are located; playaway audio, dvds, reference books, mysteries, fiction, urban fiction, nonfiction, cds, computers for internet, computers for typing, job information center, business reference, and all the different functions of the library.

I put the film Slam Nation on hold. It is a film by Paul Devlin mentioned in the book Words In Your Face. I am about half way through the book. It is enjoyable subway reading.

Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Advertising poster by American illustrator Louis John Rhead (1857-1926). "William Caxton made his own ink, but you can have yours made by The Ault & Wiborg Co., Cincinnati." c1896

Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Know Thing, No Thing, Nothing

I know know thing

The thing I know

Is not something

Do u know something

That I don't no

That Some Thing u know

Must be something

Full of my knows

That No Thing matches

I read some more of Words In Your Face. There is an interview with Bob Holman the founder of the New York City Poetry Calendar which is a weekly listing of poetry readings. It used to include all of the readings in the city. I would pick it up at Shakespeare and Company books when they were still open. I used to read it to find out when the science fiction and fantasy book readings were happening.

Today has been a fairly busy day. I spent some time having a new librarian shadow me at the reference desk and showing her where the different things were in the reference room. I showed her a few things which are kind of interesting. We keep a big binder with flyers from all the different community service agencies, several different files for career material and an annual reports drawer.

I also spent some time with Westlaw. Apparently a lot of libraries are restructuring their law collections. Computer databases are replacing a lot of the law digests. Keyword searching in Lexis and Westlaw are much easier than in the legal encyclopedias. Westlaw is finding itself in a facing lots of library budget crunches. My understanding is that on average the cost of law books goes up 12% per year or more and law databases go up in price 3-5% per year. Westlaw is making the books less and less affordable. They told me that they were cutting prices everywhere.

Other than Westlaw, I have been looking at places that offer grants. I thought this was interesting. This place sends free art books to libraries. http://www.ducprogram.org/orderform.php

Random House is opening a free library for science fiction books. I rather like this. More for me to read, and a little competition with the Baen Free Library. http://www.suvudu.com/

Thoughts for Today

This morning, I read through Reference and User Services Quarterly, the magazine of the Reference and User Services Association. There was not much that was new that was striking. There were a few new reference books worth looking at. I have a late day so, I won't be leaving for work until 10 a.m. This gives me some latitude to relax for a bit.

Unfortunately, I could not get into reading A Writer's People Ways of Looking and Feeling by V.S. Naipaul. The writing was crisp, clear, and understandable. However, the subject and voice distracted me. A lot of the early book was about the literary life in Trinidad. I am sure this will fascinate some people. Unfortunately, it did not fascinate me. There is some material on the development of literature in the Caribbean. I put it down after a while. The point I put it down was when V.S. Naipaul was describing his life living on the margin in England, starting his career as a writer.

The Reader Over Your Shoulder is turning out to be a much better experience. It gives some excellent examples on how to write clearly, eliminate bureaucratic language, and get rid of ambiguity.

Goblin War by Jim C. Hines came for me as a reserve today.

I put The Man On The Ceiling By Steve Resnick Tem and Melanie Tem on hold. It is a horror novella of sorts. It is supposed to be a little bit different.

I ordered some more law books for reference this morning and read the latest issue of Booklist magazine.

I also printed a bunch of the short poems which I wrote on this blog to read tomorrow at the poetry open microphone at my library.

In addition to Invincible which I reviewed today, a few other graphic novels came in. One manga which a lot of teenagers read is Azu Manga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma.

More Morning Thoughts

I am finding it easier to read The Kite Runner as I read further into the book. There is more sadness than most books I have read. I am a little over halfway through the book. A lot of it deals with the impact of contemporary history in Afghanistan on ordinary people.

I tried to read more on the train this morning, but the train was too full. There were several trains backed up on the line. I ended up standing for most of the ride. It is very hard to read a large hardcover book standing. There were people standing reading the paper while they were standing. This is a lot easier, especially if you read the paper a section at a time. I didn't get the paper in the morning because I thought I would read my book.

Hopefully, I will learn to make bookmarks in Microsoft Publisher sometime this week. I am very interested in learning to use Microsoft Publisher so I can make a variety of things like cards, bookmarks, and other ephemera. I found a copy of a boomark in the book, The Kite Runner, it says "In Theatres December 2007". I also was given a small stack of Nikki Grimes poetry bookmarks. When I go to conferences like the New York Comic Con on April 18, 2008, I try to pick up bookmarks as giveaways for programs.

A large portion of the morning was spent reading through ARBA 2008 -- American Reference Books Annual. I was looking for items to suggest for ordering. It lists most of the new reference books which come out every year by category.

Leviathan The History of Whaling In America by Eric Jay Dolan came in today for me to read. I will start on it when I finish The Kite Runner.

I picked the March 15, 2008 copy of Library Journal. There is an article called After Oil on Pp. 28-31 which talks about the end of oil. It is quite interesting. We already are beginning to see some of the impacts locally. It costs more to deliver books and there are more people who are coming in on public transportation to visit the library.

This article cites a famous book by Howard Kunstler called The Long Emergency. There is a link to a 2005 article on the book, http://longemergency.notlong.com . I think this is an honest assessment of our current energy predicament. The Long Emergency is a book I definitely plan to read.

I also found a review for Michael Chabon's new collection of essays, Maps And Legends Essays on Reading And Writing On The Borderlands, McSweeney's c2008. None of our libraries have the book yet. I will be waiting to get this book.

Thoughts for the Day

The Last Whale blog http://thelastwhale.blogspot.com/ asked me to read a book on his subject, so I put a book on hold called Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin. It should be interesting.

Today has been pretty slow, more weeding of reference and producing bookmarks for distributing to other libraries. Nothing particularly exciting.

I've been looking over the RUSA-- Reference and User Services Association guidelines for libraries. It might not be that interesting to most people. We have been asked to make long term plans so I am looking at the guidelines so I can get a better sense of where we might be going. This is pretty thick stuff. It says a lot without saying anything at all. I have been looking at the New York State library guidelines as well. There isn't much there. But, there is a subtext about expectations in libraries.

http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/protools/referenceguide/guidelinesinformation.cfm

I am a member of the American Library Association, my professional association as well as RUSA. I have found RUSA to be much more useful for me than ALA. I do a lot more work with Reference than anything else.

Random Thoughts.

Andrew Carnegie, Patron of Libraries

I am going to start reading the Djinn In The Nightingales Eye by A.S. Byatt on the way home on the train tonight. Hopefully, it will be well written like most of A.S. Byatt's work.

Today is library tour day. I had to walk a couple people around the building and show them things. I showed the whole building top to bottom. This includes all the nooks and crannies. Where I work is a very old building it was built in 1904, it is a giant old Carnegie building which has truly seen better days. If you walk downstairs we have two floors of mezzanine with many last copies of books from the last hundred years. The building has a kind of creaky character all of its own.

The train is on a repair schedule, they are putting in new signal equipment, so I have to leave a little early today. It gives me a longer time to read, but it also takes longer. I can't stand it that they have to repair things while people are on the same line. The conductor announced the train will be continued to work on until February 29.


I put in my professional association memberships. ALA-- American Library Association, with the subdivisions RUSA-- Reference and User Services Association, IFRT-- Intellectual Freedom Round Table. I also joined my local library association. I am debating whether I should shell out money and pay for the CBLDF-- Comic Book Legal Defense Fund membership http://www.cbldf.org/ . It is a rather unusual organization. Their website is really interesting. They document all of the legal cases against comic books which are occurring all over.

Of the organizations, I have found RUSA to be the most useful. They have a nice magazine which they put out every quarter-- Reference and User Services Quarterly, and they also have various online classes for improving reference and collection development skills that are inexpensive. My particular strengths in librarianship are reference and collection development.

I really enjoy looking through catalogs of books to order. I like the feeling of looking in the Baker & Taylor ordering system. Book catalogs have a nice glossy feel to them.

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Today, I am trying out a new advertising system. I wonder if it will work. The advertising is based on bidding for spots on my website. I put four spots up. The site is called Project Wonderful. Currently, the ads at this point cost nothing.

Right now, like most of the stuff I have for advertising purposes it is in the experimental stage. I am cheering for an initial 75 cents so I can buy a can of selzer from the staff vending machine.

Some Thoughts on Reference Interviews.

Good morning,
I started reading a Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin. It is off to a good start.

Anyways, I am thinking of the concept of the "Reference Interview" which we learned in library school. It is basically, a way of asking people what they want to find. In a similar manner, there is the literature request form which you are supposed to use to find out what people want before you sign in to a database. Databases used to charge by the hour. Luckily, this is no longer true. I think people place too much faith in expensive databases.

The primary feature which is missing from most reference training is the art of elicitation getting people to give you information. This is one of the most important skills in reference work. Quite a bit of the time people don't know what they really want.

Here is a nice definition:

noun
stimulation that calls up (draws forth) a particular class of behaviors; "the elicitation of his testimony was not easy."

Princeton University, Wordnet 3.0, c2006

There any number of missing features. One of the most important thing to do with most reference interviews is to start by clarifying the question presented to you so you have an idea where the question is coming from and what the library patron or customer is after.

After the question is clarified it is important to ask for background material, what they have read, where they got the information from, and if they have the information source with them.

If necessary take the time to rephrase the question. Don't be afraid to find other words for what they are asking for. Keywords are often quite irrational. Breaking up a question into three or four different search terms is generally a good idea. Whatever keywords they are using, when talking to people try not to talk about keywords, rephrase the terms as "natural language."

If they have the information request they are seeking, it could be the last book they read, an assignment sheet, a newspaper clipping, or the remembrance of hearing about a book on the radio, it is important to examine the question to see if it is matching with the information source. Sometimes people misinterpret what they are reading or hearing. Paying attention to things is always difficult.

Now you have the information that they are seeking. If it is simple direct them to the source and tell them if they can't find it come back and you will help them locate it. If you do not say this, people often will leave unsatisfied.

If it is complex, it is often best to go with the library patron to the source so you can compare what you have with what they want. This is true for a bookstore as well. Comparing allows you to become more focused on what the patron wants.

If you don't have what they want, you can know what to request because you have compared the material with the question being asked. Clarity is very important in answering peoples questions. Being prepared to refer people to other places is just as important. Also be aware of what you can and can't do in your setting, as well as what you have to offer. If you know the rules you can work within them.

If there is any question about whether they understand what they are looking for, it is best to clarify. This may annoy some people, but it will save a lot of time.

If you are in an information brokerage type situation or just want to show competence, at the point the question is answered offer to expand the format of sources. Would you like to help you find this information in a database, on the internet, in a magazine, in a newspaper, or in a document.

Expanding the format of the answer increases your fee and sometimes improves customer satisfaction. Information is information whatever format it is in.

While you are conducting the "Reference Interview" it is important to remember the primary purpose is to answer the persons question. Remember, the "Reference Interview" is usually very short, this means listen and pay attention. Look at the person being interviewed, and show that you are paying attention in small ways. Don't talk while they are asking a question.

Be aware of the "Observers Paradox", the more you interpret their question, the more you will change what the person is looking for. Try to stay focused on what the person originally asked for. This makes it less likely they will come back dissatisfied. Often a person will not realize they are getting something they didn't originally ask for.

Also be aware that when you are searching for something that makes you uncomfortable, you don't know why they are searching for it. Asking about it can lead to unnecessary friction. There are very legitimate reasons for searching for things on serial killers, abortion, sex, prostitution, censorship and other very touchy subjects...

There are a number of formats for material now, don't just search printed material, there are videos and audio as well. If someone asks for Martin Luther King's speeches, listening to the speech can be far more important than reading a transcript of the speech. Also some language is quite hard, Shakespeare is very hard for teenagers, so is Beowulf. The film or the audiobook can help them understand the material.

You don't know everything. Be prepared to hand off the question to someone who knows more than you do. Putting your ego aside often is hard when you want to help someone. Your position in answering a question is often that of a go between.

Be relaxed, you want people to want to come up and talk to you. Being distracted, angry, or stiff makes it hard for people to talk to you.

Some Methods from Elicitation that may apply to Reference Interviews:

Quid Pro Quo is one of the oldest methods used by spies and social engineers. It involves simply offering something-- a bit of information in return for an answer. It is very easy and natural to do this.

Be considerate, simply letting a customer or patron know they are appreciated will make them more open to talking to you.

If you provide small facts during the Reference Interview, people will think you know something and will be more open to providing the question they need.

Be prepared to offer a hypothetical situation around the question. This sometimes creates better clarity for the customer or library patron.

It is not good to be distracted, ask people not to use cell phones or other electronic devices, don't take notes during a reference interview unless they are asking for something simple like a phone number or address. More complicated information than that should really be printed up or stored to disk.

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On another front, I have been asking people to review my site at various newsgroups and at Fuel My Blog. People have started giving me feedback which makes me happy. If you write feedback, I'll take time to look at your site as well.