Twelve Steps to Library Fitness

Twelve Steps to Library Fitness


Listen/observe: Library users are always sending us ideas through their demonstrated uses of our resources and services, as well as their casual observations and outright complaints. For example, a user stops by the reference desk and asks the librarian why it’s not possible to text some catalog information to his or her smartphone. That’s an opportunity to create positive change. But if we fail to have our antennae up so we can pick up these signals or if we assume we know more about a great library experience than the users do, some great possibilities will be missed.

Ask the water-line question: Even the best fitness routines require occasional change and some innovation. But innovation often involves risk taking. Excessive risk taking can be dangerous to your personal fitness but catastrophic for organizational fitness. One way to think about mitigating risk is to ask the water-line question. Think of a ship on the open water. The captain wants to take a risk, but is it an above- or below-the-water-line risk? If the risk blows a hole above the water line, the ship can make the repair, survive, and continue. But if it’s below the water line, well, it may be the end of the ship. Whether it involves money, personnel, or other resources, think about where a failure may hit your organization—above or below the line.

Go local: Libraries of all types are in tune with their local community. Academic librarians and school media specialists know their faculty and students and the work they do. Public librarians know what’s happening in their communities. Rather than worrying quite so much about competing with search engines and whatever technologies follow them, we may be better off concentrating our energies on knowing and serving our local communities. By focusing on them we can meet their needs far more powerfully than with services that try to be everything to everyone.

Engage the user: It’s important to understand our users, be aware of their expectations, and keep their needs in mind when designing services. But we can do more by connecting with our users in places and spaces we may have ignored in the past. More librarians are roaming the stacks to help confused patrons. Staff are going out to offices and public and private places where community members gather. We learn more about our users when we engage them, and that helps us better understand their expectations, what they want that we have yet to offer, and how we can keep them coming back for more.
Fix what’s broken: A favorite video presentation is Seth Godin’s “Seven Reasons Why Things Are Broken.” He explains why we tolerate broken services and processes in our organizations. If we can’t identify and remedy what’s broken in our libraries we may not deserve to have a future. The challenge is finding out what’s broken. Day-to-day we may be unable to spot the things that fail our patrons. To future-proof, we need to make finding and fixing what’s broken part of our routine operations. That involves efforts to see things from the outsider’s perspective. Would you patronize a retail operation where many things failed on a regular basis? Why should we expect library users to act any differently?

Master adaptability: Leslie Crutchfield, coauthor of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, encouraged librarians at an OCLC Forum held in 2008 to master the art of adaptation. Crutchfield emphasized the importance of knowing the library’s mission and doing whatever it takes to accomplish it, but mostly she encouraged librarians to commit to change and try new things, even those not considered mainstream. Libraries that can achieve flexibility will be better adapted for the future.

Keep up: Whether you call it environmental scanning, trend watching, or simply staying up-to-date, library fitness depends on knowing what’s happening in the library community and beyond its borders. Just like personal fitness, keeping up requires discipline and the development of a regimen of activity. It works best when you commit to devoting a specific amount of time each day to covering a specific number of resources. There are multiple technologies that help support keeping up, be it RSS feeds or web-page change-detection services, and it doesn’t matter much what you use to keep up—as long as you’re committed. The best regimen will include resources from outside of librarianship, but the most important thing is establishing a keeping-up habit and sticking to it.
Create passionate users: A few years back, a blog called Creating Passionate Users preached the benefits of stimulating a customer’s passion for products or services. Passionate users are loyal users. Passionate users try to convert their friends. Library resources sometimes involve complexity. Making things simpler would help, but library users are capable of not only learning to use, appreciate, and even thrive on a complex research database, but can actually develop a passion for it. To create passionate users we must first gain their trust so they are willing to invest their time in learning how to use the resources. That means establishing relationships and taking time to educate users. The reward is a network of users who will stand by and support the library in good times and bad, no matter what the future brings.

Be a problem-finder: It’s all too easy to ignore problems or to come up with uncertain, inadequate solutions to them. Future-proofed library organizations have the capacity to solve their problems the way that designers solve them. That means first understanding how a problem affects the users and then applying that knowledge to improve services. It also means asking questions and not accepting that everything is all right. Everyone wants to be a problem-solver, but the key to a future-proofed library is having a team of good problem-finders.

Build relationships: In the short term, giving people stuff—whether it’s some type of consumer good or boatloads of digital content—may work in quickly building a following. But eventually, a library user will likely find a more convenient source for the same stuff. To build a truly loyal following takes something more substantial, something that delivers intrinsic meaning to people. That’s what building relationships is all about. It is through relationships with librarians that community members establish a lasting connection with the library. One piece of advice we hear again and again is that good relationships are essential for our mental and physical well-being. Fit libraries need to build good relationships too.

Internalize core values: Physical fitness trainers will readily tell you that the most essential part of being in shape is having a strong core; everything else is attached to it. Without a strong core, other body parts—the back, chest, or neck—are more susceptible to injury or weakness. Organizations are no different. Each library benefits when all staff members internalize an agreed-upon set of core values. These values establish what we believe in and how we will behave. Our core values define us as an organization and guide how we conduct ourselves and respond in challenging situations. Some might even say that it is with the core values that all library fitness begins.

Think like Collins: In his latest book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins explores how corporations go from fit to flabby. In doing so they fall through the five stages of decline toward obsolescence. Collins offers quite a bit of advice, but three points seem most relevant to organizations that want to future-proof: 1) be paranoid, 2) look at the metrics, and 3) steady as she goes. He claims a bit of healthy paranoia keeps organizations on their toes and less likely to rest on their achievements; an occasional look over the shoulder may prevent being run over by the latest disruptive technology. Just as we keep fit by regularly monitoring our weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and other vital signs, fit libraries need to collect and analyze operational data as well as assess services and programs such as the information literacy initiative, to make sure progress is being made and strategic objectives are accomplished. And while change is good, too much constant, spontaneous, and radical change all have the potential to drive an organization into the ground. At the height of its success, Rubbermaid committed to creating a new product every day of the year, and efforts to constantly introduce something new ultimately weakened the entire company. Motorola, a successful cell phone provider, thought the next big thing was satellite communications and started its own network called Iridium. This change cost billions, distracted Motorola from its core business, and eventually cost the company its industry dominance. We need to change when appropriate, and for the right reasons at the right time.

Fitness makes the difference

Collins’s book is full of similar stories of firms that, for one reason or another, squandered their fitness. They went from being much admired to barely desired. So it’s easy to see that no organization, not even a library—especially in our challenging mobile, electronic world—can afford to stop paying attention to its fitness regimen. None of us can predict the future, just as none of us has any sense of whether our good health will hold up. But as Collins also says, barring any unexpected and unusual catastrophic event, establishing a fitness program is about as close as any of us can come to future-proofing ourselves and our organizations—and it can work. The hardest part is taking the first step. But now you have 12 different actions to start with, and any one of them will move you closer to library fitness. The rest is up to you.

By STEVEN BELL,  associate university librarian at Temple University
Source: http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/

ALA Guidelines for Preservation, Conservation, and Restoration of Local History and Local Genealogical Materials

Prepared by the Genealogy and Local History Committee of the History Section of the Reference and Adult Services Division of the American Library Association.

Reviewed by the ALA Standards Committee and adopted by the Reference and Adult Services Division Board of Directors, June 1992.

1.0 Introduction

Libraries have a responsibility to preserve, conserve, and, if possible, restore their local history and local genealogical materials. These guidelines address the preservation, conservation, and restoration of heavily used, fragile, and rare local history and local genealogical materials.

These guidelines are intended to assist libraries with preservation, conservation, and, when possible, restoration of their heavily used, fragile, and rare local history and local genealogical materials in printed, microform, machine-readable, audio, or video formats. Local history and local genealogical materials should include, but should not be limited to, city, county, and regional histories; biographical directories; cemetery and sextons' records; church records; family histories and genealogies; naturalization records; newspapers; census schedules; probate records; wills; tax lists; city and county directories; telephone directories; vital records; civil and criminal court records; land records; county atlases; county land ownership maps; fire insurance maps; and photographic prints and negatives.

The terms preservation, conservation, and restoration as used in these guidelines are the simple definitions used by Wesley L. Boomgaarden:

Preservation: ". . . action taken to anticipate, prevent, stop or retard deterioration. "

Conservation: the maintenance of each item in the collection in a usable condition. "

Restoration: ". . . the act of returning the deteriorated item to its original or near-original condition."1

Generally accepted methods of preservation, conservation, and restoration are described in the works cited in the references and bibliography of these guidelines.

2.0 Preservation

2.1 Assess Collection Preservation Needs
2.1.1 Evaluation of heavily used, fragile, and rare local history and local genealogical materials should be made to determine what materials need to be preserved.
2.1.2 Fragile materials are most often works printed on acidic paper and usually include most newspapers, city directories, telephone directories, and some books.2 Damaged bindings with inside margins too narrow to rebind may also be considered fragile materials.
2.1.3 Rare local genealogy or local history materials are usually works of which a limited number of copies were printed and/or the monetary value has escalated since their publication. Most land ownership maps and manuscript copies of fire insurance maps fall into this category.3
2.1.4 Photographic prints and negatives require special attention as they may be damaged by their emulsions, bases, mountings, display, or storage.4
2.1.5 Materials in machine-readable, audio, or video formats require occasional use and need special care.5

2.2 Develop a Preservation Plan
2.2.1 A priority list of heavily used, fragile, and rare local history and local genealogical materials should be prepared for materials in need of preservation.6
2.2.2 In locales where more than one library may be collecting the same materials it is advisable to develop cooperative preservation programs.7
2.2.3 Bibliographical searches should be made of sources and databases that include microforms: Guide to Microforms in Print, Register of Microform Masters, Out-of-Print Books: Author Guide (University Microfilms International), CICLC, WLN, RLIN, and other databases that include microforms. (Included in these sources are many opaque microforms such as microcard, microprint, and the ultra-microfiche collections that require special reading machines not available in all libraries.)

2.3 Choose Appropriate Preservation Techniques

2.3.1 Micro duplication, either as microfilm or microfiche, generally is the least expensive method of preservation; however, the original may be damaged in micro duplication. Firms that provide micro duplication service are listed in the yellow pages of most telephone directories under "Microfilming Service, Equipment & Supplies." However, care should be taken to see that selected firms meet the quality control and standards of the industry.8
 2.3.2 Most photoduplication can be done by carefully trained library staff members and should be done on acid-free paper and bound in library Class A binding.9
2.3.3 Electronic media reproduction may be useful and preferred for service copies of some materials
2.3.4 Deacidification and/or encapsulation may be desirable for some materials.10
2.3.5 Restoration, see "Restoration" below.
2.3.6 Duplication in microform or photoduplication and restoration may be possible in some cases and should be done when possible.

2.4 Obtain Copyright Clearance

2.4.1 Under most circumstances it is necessary to obtain copyright clearance in order to duplicate local history and local genealogical materials in any form for library use or preservation. Some authors of local history and local genealogical materials may be willing to provide copyright clearance for the preservation of their work(s).
2.4.2 Suggested provisions under which out-of-print materials may be photoduplicated without permission are provided in Mary Hutchings Reed's The Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators.11
2.4.3 Legal advice should be sought when questions arise.

2.5 Funding

2.5.1 Libraries should establish adequate funding for preservation, conservation, and restoration.
2.5.2 Federal, state, and private grants are available for preservation, conservation, and restoration, particularly to libraries with long-range preservation, conservation, and restoration plans. Additional consideration should also be given to requesting grants from local businesses and industries.

3.0 Conservation

3.1 Procedures, Facilities, and Conditions
3.1.1 Every attempt should be made to follow sound procedures of conservation and provide adequate facilities and conditions (temperature control, humidity, security, fire protection, and instruction for staff and patrons concerning proper use and handling) for the conservation of local history and local genealogical collections.12
3.2 Disaster Plan
3.2.1 Conservation of local history and genealogical materials should receive a high-priority rating in the library's disaster plan.

4.0 RESTORATION

4.1 Pros and Cons

4.1.1 Restoration is the most expensive and in many cases the most desirable alternative, but no additional copies are created, thereby losing one of the desirable aspects of preservation.

4.2 Conservators

4.2.1 Consult the AIC Directory (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1977/78- ) or contact the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1400 16th St. NW, Suite 340, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 232-6636 for the names of professional conservators in your locale.
4.2.2 Consult, evaluate, and screen (including letters of reference) conservators selected from the AIC Directory.

References

1. Wesley L. Boomgaarden, "Preservation Planning for the Small Special Library," Special Libraries 76 (Summer 1985): 204–11.
2. David Thackery and Edward Meachen, Local History in the Library: A Manualfor Assessment and Preservation (Bloomington, Ill.: Bloomington Public Library, 1989), 6–12.
3. Ibid., 4–6.
4. Ibid., 13–14, 18–19; Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, GeraldJ. Munoff, and Margery S. Long, Archives &Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1984); James M. Reilly, Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints (Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Co., 1986); Sigfried Rempel, The Care of Photographs (New York: Nick Lyons Bks., 1987); Conservation of Photographs (Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Co., 1985).
5. Larry N. Osborne, "Those (In)destructible Disks; or, Another Myth Exploded," Library Hi Tech 7, no. 3 (1989): 7–10; Alan A. Ward, A Manual of Sound Archive Administration (Brookfield, Vt.: Gower Publishing Co., 1990); C. A. Paton "Whispers in the Stacks: The Problem of Sound Recordings in Archives," American Archivist 53 (Spring 1990): 274-80; James C. Scholtz, Developing and Maintaining Video Collections in Libraries (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1989); J.G. Empsucha, "Film and Videotape Preservation Fact-Sheet," in Footage89: North American Film and Video Sources (New York: Prelinger Associates, 1989), A28–A30; T. Conrad, "Old Open-Reel Videotape Restoration," in Footage 89: North American Film and Video Sources (New York: Prelinger Associates, 1989), A31–A32.
6. Thackery and Meachen, 26–30.
7. Ibid., 3, 21–22, 25–42.
8. Preservation Microfilming: Planning &Production (Chicago: Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, ALA, 1989); Nancy E. Gwinn, ed. Preservation Microfilming: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists (Chicago: ALA, 1987); Steven L. Wood, "The Microfilm Service Bureau and Library Preservation," Microform Review 17 (Feb. 1988): 32–37; Sherry Byrne, "Guidelines for Contracting Microfilming Services," Microform Review 15 (Fall 1986): 253–64.
9. Jan Merrill-Oldham and Paul Parisi, Guide to the Library Binding Institute Standardfor Library Binding (Chicago: ALA, 1990).
10. Thackery and Meachen, 23.
11. Mary Hutchings Reed, The Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators (Chicago: ALA and the National Education Association, 1987), 9–10, Q17, Q18, Q19.
12. Thackery and Meachen, 15–20.
13. John P. Barton and Johanna G. Wellheiser, eds. An Ounce of Prevention: A Handbook on Disaster Contingency Planningfor Archives, Libraries and Record Centers (Toronto: Toronto Area Archivists Group Education Foundation, 1985).

Bibliography

The following additional works concerning preservation, conservation, and restoration of materials are helpful:

Library Literature under the subject headings: "Floppy discs—Care and restoration, Local history and records—Care and restoration," "Preservation of library materials," "Recorded sound archives—Care and restoration," and "Video recordings—Care and restoration."

Preservation Guidelines in ARL Libraries. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Office of Management Studies, 1987.

Darling, Pamela W., and Duane E. Webster. Preservation Planning Program: An Assisted Self-Study Manualfor Libraries. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Office of Management Studies, 1987.

Darling, Pamela W., and Wesley L. Boomgaarden. Preservation Planning Program Resource Notebook. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Office of Management Studies, 1987.

RLG Preservation Manual. 2d ed. Stanford, Calif.: Research Libraries Group, 1986- .

Morrow, Carolyn Clark, and Carole Dyal. Conservation Treatment Procedures: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Maintenance and Repair of Library Materials. 2d ed. Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1986.

Gunner, Jean. Simple Repair and Preservation Techniques for Collection Curators, Librarians, andArchivists. 3d ed. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1984.



Source

http://www.ala.org

Comments of LIS Blogs

(Article Review)

            Blogging has gained great popularity among all sorts of professionals and non-professionals around the world. Blogs and blogosphere have given ‘freedom to write’ to all those who know to use computer keyboard and a little bit internet. As of septmeber 2008, more than 133 million blogs appeared in the blogosphere (Technorati, 2008). According to NDTV there are an estimated 40,000 regular bloggers in India (The Hindu 25 June, 2008) and 3,00,000 words are blogged per minutes on the largest search engine site, Google (Times of India 28, July 2010). As any other professionals, librarians also have found their own space in the blogosphere. By the end of 1990s, some librarians launched professional blogs which focused on LIS news, emerging technologies and methods of improving library services (Stephens 2008).

            Facility to comment on the blog posts is one of the main attractions of blogging. A study about the comments on LIS blogs, conducted by Noa Aharony, LIS lecturer in Bar-Ilan university of Israel, has been published in the Libri Jounal (V. 60, March 2010)*. The study contains analysis of comments which appeared in 30 LIS blogs in August-October 2008. The researcher has conducted two phase analysis such as 1) statistical descriptive analysis and 2) content analysis. The study reveals that 18 blogs had 0-50 comments per blog, 7 blogs had the highest percentage of posts with comments 91-100%. In case of average comments per post, 26 blogs had 0-10 comments per post while 1 blog had more than 40 comments per post, further, in 23 blogs the comments were written by anonymous comment- writers.

            In case of languages, 90.29% of comment-writers use personal languages. Information like personal (34.19%), advisory (17.75%), reflective (17.72%), impressive (15.60%) and courtesy and politeness (13.70%) are being presented through comments. In addition to this, content of comments distributed among library issues (23.58%), technology issues (23.58%), web 2.0 (16.50%), general librarianship (5.66%) open access issues (2.83%) and conference (0.94%). This study reveals that most of the blog’s readers are passive and do not comment or contribute content to blog.   At the other hand, the LIS blog readers who participate and add comments to the posts took advantage of this platform and discuss topics which are relevant to librarians’ work and profession. The writing of the comments enables them rethink, reflect, evaluate, and reconsider professional issues and to share it with their colleagues. The author concludes that the current findings add a new dimension to LIS blogosphere. It is not only the LIS bloggers who deal with professional issues in their blogs, but it is also the readers who add comments, write, and discuss professional topics. It seems that both the bloggers and their readers exploit their medium for dissemination of professional information as well as for sharing their experience and thought.

*Aharony, Nao. LIS blog comments: An exploratory analysis. Libri. Vol 60, pp 65-77,   March 2010.

Author’s E-mail: aharonn1@mail.biu.ac.il

20 GOOGLE Searching Tips

1. Either/or
Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator -- or use the "|" symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke. [dumb | little | man]

2. Quotes
If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["dumb little man"] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb "little man"] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase "little man".

3. Not
If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol. [-dumb little man] will return pages that contain "little" and "man" but that don't contain "dumb".

4. Similar terms
Use the "~" symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain "funny little man" and "stupid little man" but not "dumb little man".

5. Wildcard
The "*" symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you're trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can't remember the exact lyrics. [can't * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you're looking for. It's also useful for finding stuff only in certain domains, such as
educational information: ["dumb little man" research *.edu].

6. Advanced search
If you can't remember any of these operators, you can always use Google's advanced search.

7. Definitions
Use the "define:" operator to get a quick definition. [define:dumb] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.

8. Calculator
One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It's faster than calling up your computer's calculator in most cases. Use the +, -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

9. Numrange
This little-known feature searches for a range of numbers. For example, ["best books 2002..2007] will return lists of best books for each of the years from 2002 to 2007 (note the two periods between the two numbers).

10. Site-specific
Use the "site:" operator to search only within a certain website. [site:dumblittleman.com leo] will search for the term "leo" only within this blog.

11. Backlinks
The "link:" operator will find pages that link to a specific URL. You can use this not only for a main URL but even to a specific page. Not all links to an URL are listed, however.

12. Vertical search
Instead of searching for a term across all pages on the web, search within a specialized field. Google has a number of specific searches, allowing you to search within blogs, news, books, and much more:
• Blog Search
• Book Search
• Scholar
• Catalogs
• Code Search
• Directory
• Finance
• Images
• Local/Maps
• News
• Patent Search
• Product Search
• Video

13. Movies
Use the "movie:" operator to search for a movie title along with either a zip code or U.S. city and state to get a list of movie theaters in the area and show times.

14. Music
The "music:" operator returns content related to music only.

15. Unit converter
Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

16. Types of numbers
Google algorithms can recognize patterns in numbers you enter, so you can search for:

• Telephone area codes
• Vehicle ID number (US only)
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC) equipment numbers (US only)
• UPC codes
• Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airplane registration number (US only)
• Patent numbers (US only)
• Even stock quotes (using the stock symbol) or a weather forecast regarding the next five days

17. File types
If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use the "filetype:" operator.

18. Location of term
By default, Google searches for your term throughout a web page. But if you just want it to search certain locations, you can use operators such as "inurl:", "intitle:", "intext:", and "inanchor:". Those search for a term only within the URL, the title,
the body text, and the anchor text (the text used to describe a link).

19. Cached pages
Looking for a version of a page the Google stores on its own servers? This can help with outdated or update pages. Use the "cached:" operator.

20. Answer to life, the universe, and everything
Search for that phrase, in lower case, and Google will give you the answer.