June 2010

Phew, it's been awhile.

Our little girl arrived on June 5, so I've been out of the loop for awhile. We've had family visiting, a family wedding to attend, and just regular getting to know our new daughter and figuring out how to parent 2 children instead of one.

I've found it surprisingly easy to "unplug" most of the time, but this is mainly accomplished by not going on the computer at all when the kids are up--I'll check my e-mail once in the morning if I have a specific reason to, but I've been trying to confine my online time to naptime and after bedtime. Once I do sit down at the computer, it's very easy for me to be too distracted, as a recently destroyed library book can attest to.

(I was also inspired to try to be more unplugged by this article in the NY Times, which came out just after our daughter arrived.)

In any case, I will probably be on here a little less during the 5 months remaining in my leave (a month down already, ahh!). However, I will try to get some book reviews up, if nothing else.

Cheers!

Advanced Twitter

I am hoping to teach a workshop on using Twitter later this semester--which means I need to learn more about Twitter myself (my ulterior motive!).

I have a Twitter account and I have TwitterFox installed on the computer I use most at work so I can see pop-up updates throughout the evening. We just got a new computer at home, and I will be using Safari there (my husband and I have learned that one thing we can not share amicably is a web browser--I don't like that he never signs out of e-mail and he doesn't like my bookmarks!), so I will find a plug-in to install with Safari. I know how to tweet in the technical sense, although I certainly don't have the art of tweeting effectively down. I also tweet rarely, so I linked my GoodReads account up to make automatic updates when I review books.

I know how to find and follow people, and I've done a few trials with looking up a topic and reading tweets on it.

Here are some facets of Twitter that I'd love advice on, if you have it:

• Lists--I have not explored these at all.
• The art of tweeting--I've seen some tips on this that I will rely on, but feel free to give me more!
• Monitoring Twitter in a way that's useful to you.
• Using all those mobile/texting options. This is one area where I am sure to be behind the times for awhile--I don't think our (family) cell phone has a texting plan, and I'm too cheap to invest in one, especially since I don't see using it a lot except to play around with!

Your own experiences or great resources you've come across are all welcome!

Effective Blog Reading

In December, I had a 2 week break from work (hooray!) which also meant a 2 week break from blogging (not that I am the most regular of bloggers during regular work days...). It also largely meant a break in blog reading. I checked up on some of my favorites, but I didn't read any professional blogs, and I didn't read most blogs that take longer than 5 minutes to read an entry. When I did dash online for a few minutes, I started thinking about being a good blog reader, which I think might be a prerequisite for being a good blog writer.

I'm not the most effective user of RSS or other blog feeds, because I get a little bit obsessed with "checking off" feeds as "already read" whether I read them or not. Also, most of my favorite blogs include pictures, which the feeds don't show, so I'd just as soon check the actual blog as read a feed. Still, I think a blog reader needs to be able to dip into and out of conversations, unless they are only going to focus on one or two blogs. Like the news, blogs change frequently, and it's not always worthwhile to go back and catch up on all missed entries (although sometimes it is; Doug Johnson published an excellent series on library budgeting that I missed during December).

What really baffles me is how to comment effectively. I often think of comments as I read a blog entry, but the best comments I've read are those that take part in the conversation of other commenters--which means you have to take the time to read those comments instead of just throwing your idea up on the wall and leaving. This significantly increases time needed to participate in a blog community, especially if there's a lot of conversation around a post.

Do any of you have suggestions on how you managing your blog reading and commenting time? How does it affect your own blogging?

First chat reference session!

This past Tuesday, I had the chance to sub for a shift on our statewide chat reference service. This was my first "live" experience of providing virtual reference. It went quite well.

I manned the computer from 6-8, sitting in my office (a mostly-transparent cubicle adjacent to the reference desk) while our student worker manned the reference desk. She sent reference questions on to me, but this allowed me to pay the most attention to any incoming chats, and to explain to students who came in that I might have to shift gears at a moment's notice.

I had 3 chat questions over the two hour period, which was good for a first shift (not trying to balance several questions at once, for example). They were all fairly simple to answer; the most nerve-wracking part was accessing the patron's home library information (each patron that signs in comes from a particular library's portal--the librarian staffing the service can get information about that library, including how to access the catalog, how to get the patron access to databases, etc.). It went very smoothly, but I was nervous about messing that part up. All 3 patrons were community college students, so their questions were similar to the questions my regular students have (I need articles/books to do a paper on x, I need to cite x source in MLA/APA style).

I was also happy not to have any "emergency" questions. On a fairly regular basis, (public) librarians will get medical or legal questions, to which we can offer sources or referrals, but not advice. Every now and then, one of these questions will be more urgent--I brushed up on some state emergency referral services/hotlines just in case, and was happy not to have to use them!

Overall, it was a good experience, that I hope will help pave the way for offering our own virtual reference. One challenge will really be staffing levels--when there aren't any incoming chat questions, I can help in-person patrons just fine, but once the computer dings, I have to give it all my attention. This means we may often need "double coverage" for the chat reference and the reference desk--maybe a good chance to pull in library students?

Library H3lp is back! (maybe)

I scheduled a LibraryH3lp practice Monday, and actually had 3 participants who had not used it before (yea!). It went fairly well--we actually spent most of the time practicing adding buddies and chatting across the librarian interfaces rather than fielding practice questions. However, it was very useful for giving the staff practice to how chatting works.

Unfortunately, we've just had a few major projects come up, and I think virtual reference is going to be placed on a burner that's even further back than the one it was already on. Part of the problem is that it's just hard to coordinate schedules enough (especially among public service people, who are the ones who will be on the front lines chatting!) to get in practice. And it's pretty clear that we all need more chatting practice. The other part is that I'm just not sure how many people are really interested in offering the service, at least to the point of helping to make it happen. Our best bet may be taking a staged approach--offering a couple hours a week of the service until it catches on.

An additional update is that the coordinator of the state virtual reference program has created LibraryH3lp accounts for us so that it will be easier for us to integrate with the program when and if we are ready. This is great both for that reason and because it gives me an automatic back-up person who I can call for help.

I'm trying to keep this more on my personal front burner than I have before (another reason why it's so far back!), and I will try to continue to update!

Making haste slowly

We have some progress on the virtual reference front!

As I mentioned after our big presentation meeting, our library director would like us to get our feet wet in the virtual reference world by working through our statewide, co-op like virtual reference service. We now have two training sessions set up with the NC Knows coordinator, so all the reference librarians will get trained. This involved a little bit of eating crow on my part, as our group originally set up a date for those of us who presented the idea to begin with. Our idea is now "out there," and we have to remember to work with everyone! Thankfully, it was a relatively easy situation to solve.

Once we're all trained, we'll be able to take on some hours of monitoring the service. After that, who knows...

Vanity, vanity...

Yep, that's what this post is about. Mostly.

I follow the Blue Skunk Blog, which is an awesome technology/school library/education blog. I especially like keeping in touch with the K-12 world, since I hope to work there again someday. Additionally, the blog's author, Doug Johnson, often touches on issues that are just as relevant to higher ed as to K-12. I find that Mr. Johnson is adept at balancing an exploratory mindset toward how technology can help students with healthy skepticism about "the next big thing."

I have occasionally commented on his posts, and I sent an e-mail to him about a recent series of posts that imagined the school library of the future. He shared my e-mail (with permission!) on a recent post and I have a thrill of excitement over this.

So I am being vain and sharing that fact here.

Reflection

Having a little more distance on my Skype conference call class, here are some points I noticed for making possible future distance classes (just now noticing that the first use of "distance" could have been a clever pun; unfortunately, it wasn't!) better.

Things that went well:

• The technology worked!
  
• At least, mostly. There were a few technological glitches. Various callers were inexplicably put on hold at times (including me)--but that's better than a total cut-off. Several people didn't have microphones, so mostly had to listen, but the messaging aspect of Skype minimized the difficulty that caused. Finally, toward the end, sound kept cutting out a lot--I eventually reverted to messaging. Still, for my first ever use of Skype, and the additional complications of doing a conference call, I think the technology side of things went quite well.
• I did remember to keep pausing (and waiting) for questions and student input.
• I could have waited even longer and figured out where I was going to do this more, but I was able to get some input, and definitely questions when we were walking through a database.
• I successfully attended to both spoken and typed comments.
• I was able to answer questions coming in both ways, although I think this made my talking a bit disjointed (more so than it was already with nervousness).

Things that didn't go well:

• I tried to do too much. I do this often with face to face classes, too, but the mechanics of doing it via Skype amplified the effect.
• I relied too much on students being able to access databases from their computers.
  
• I knew some were having trouble getting in, but didn't really have other options. I don't think this is something where anyone was at fault (we didn't know exactly what platform we'd be using until last week), but I need to learn more about tools that allow for co-browsing. Or prepare slides and load those (blah!).
  
• I didn't get someone to cover the desk!! Bad!
• In my defense, Sunday nights in the summer have been very quiet. When I mentioned this excuse to my husband however, he reminded me of Murphy's Law with nothing more than an eyebrow raise.
• I must remember to treat online classes like in-person classes in this case.
• I'm sure I spoke too fast. I was quite nervous.

Other observations:

• I was WAY more nervous than I usually am in face to face classes. This was partly because of the technology, but also because of the subject matter.
• I should have geared more of my information toward public librarians.
• For this, I take no blame, because based on the syllabus and information I had, it was a class centered on science research in academia. I did notice that many students were working in/interested in public libraries when I read their class introductions on Blackboard, but it didn't also occur to me that the class was being tailored toward those interests. Still, it's a good reminder about knowing my audience.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased that I got through the class semi-successfully. I would really appreciate any input from those who teach or otherwise work with distance ed.

My last reflection is that I am able to reflect. During my undergrad study, I minored in elementary education at McDaniel College, and the first part of the education department's mission was to develop "knowledgeable, caring, and reflective practitioners." I was definitely taught how to reflect there, but working in libraries gives me the time and space to use reflection in practice.

New tech OVERLOAD

Hi Laura! Hi Astra! Hi Ellen!

This has to be a super-short post, but WHOA, I just had a major tech learning experience. My science and technology resources class visit was this evening. We used Skype (oh, and I just signed up for a Skype account for the very first time this afternoon, thank you!) and, for the most part, it went ok. I had bought a brand-new, shiny (but cheap) microphone for the occasion, and it worked well. I relied on my computer speakers, which was fine for me, but not so good for all the students using the reference room (I closed my office door, but since our offices are mostly glorified cubicles, I'm sure they could all hear). I spoke a lot and then listened to long silences, then some peeps of talking with lots of static in between. I posted a "please interrupt me" sign on my door, and someone DID. I ended up reverting to Skype's chat function near the end because the talk was breaking up so much. It was exciting and terrifying and, mostly in retrospect, fun. My stomach is still churning a little.

Reflection for another day, since I have to get ready to close the library!

Today is a good day to work!

Why?

• I had enough work to keep me busy for the whole day, but not so much that I couldn't steal a few minutes to read.
• I resolved a scheduling conundrum without making anyone mad (ok, so it turns out that in the end there was no real conflict of interests, but still!).
• I got the librarian who I least expected to have any interest in LibraryH3lp to practice chat with me, simply by providing her with log-in information and the information that I'd be online for several hours...AND she said it was FUN!!

And if you like the Star Trek reference, you should totally buy this shirt from www.unshelved.com.

(I am putting it on my Christmas list--which I start compiling not long after my birthday in March...it's scary how materialistic I sometimes am.)

Annual Goals

I meant to post today and couldn't think of anything post-worthy until now, when I have about 5 minutes before I need to start herding patrons out of the building (ok, I only actually herd when it's ALREADY closing time and they are doing "one more thing" on their computers).

My post-worthy thought: I had to complete an annual report (this sounds very official, but the actual drafting of the report felt much less official, since I don't have to provide statistics or fill out a specific form), and as part of that, had to set goals for the next year. Here they are (mostly verbatim, although I changed them from a narrative paragraph--admittedly not a very good one--to a numbered list, because I think lists are more readable on blogs):

1. Increase program offerings during evening hours, by planning, marketing, and implementing at least three open workshops each semester, including introduction to such tools as databases, RefWorks, and InterLibrary Loan.
   
2. Continue learning LibraryH3lp and assist with the possible implementation of this service at {My} Library.
   
3. Find additional ways to work with psychology faculty; thus far, I have found offering services that are helpful to history faculty quite easy but learning what the psychology faculty needs to be more of a challenge.
4. Continue keeping up with trends in academic librarianship through both reading and trying out new technologies.

I will also use this opportunity to list some of the steps I see arising for the next stage of getting virtual reference here:

1. Give other staff members accounts and get them to start chatting, just to get used to the feel of chat conversation.
2. Receive training for, and begin working with, NC Knows chat service (this is at the request of our supervisor, who wants us to have this training before we strike out on our own--actually a pretty good idea since few of us have really done chat reference before. My own chat reference experience involves 1 reference class--thanks, Pam and Tommy!--and conversations with myself when testing LibraryH3lp).
3. Have as many test conversations as possible to figure out "bugs" in our use of LibraryH3lp.

Admittedly, these steps are not very nice and concrete, so it will take some creativity on my part. Any ideas for getting regular chats going? Any ideas for other goals I should pursue in the next fiscal/academic year?

The meeting...

...went fairly well.

On the downside, our chat "demonstration" didn't go so well--partly because LibraryH3lp was having an emergency fix-it day, but also because I don't think we practiced quite enough. And I think I should have left off the gateways and just shown the service with the widget. We were also presenting information about doing coursepages, and got more bogged down than we expected explaining the purpose and mechanics of these.

On the upside, it seems like there is agreement that we need these services. I think implementation will be slow--our director indicated an interest in starting by fall, but also wanted us to start by using the state-wide service. This will really slow things down, because we'd all have to get state training and sign up for question-answering time, which will take more time away from learning the LibraryH3lp system.

But it's a start.

I don't know exactly what my next LibraryH3lp steps will be. I think I'll need to create some more accounts and set up some practice chats--first just keep it librarian to librarian to get people used to chatting at all, then introduce some "patron" chats. I've also realized that I very much need a GoogleTalk gateway, since our students' e-mail accounts have recently been converted to Google Apps.

I've been remiss in posting lately, but will make up for it by adding 2 posts tonight--I have one that's been in draft format for awhile and just needs to be finished and posted!

Gearing up and gateways

Well, we have a date to present LibraryH3lp (and other project ideas) to our library director...June 4, 2009 at 2:30. Exciting! Of course, this now means I need to hurry up and get what I know about LibraryH3lp organized into presentable format (especially since I'm going on vacation all next week).

So, today, I created a handout detailing what LibraryH3lp is, how cheap it is (I figure given our current budget status, this needs to be a big point), how it works, what the challenges of implementing it are (best lesson of my 9th grade English class was that when making a persuasive argument, concede the opposition's best point and then go from there), and why we should do it. Next up is to figure out the best way to demonstrate the service during our meeting.

In line with demonstrating, I set up two new gateways today--Yahoo! Messenger and Meebo. They both seem to work fine (especially after I belatedly read the instructions to toggle your queue's online/offline status once setting up a gateway before continuing), except for one thing. From the "librarian side" of chatting, I can't see the patron going offline when I sign out of the "patron" account. I need to find out if this is because I'm exclusively using web-based chat widgets for testing, because I'm testing on just one computer, or what. Obviously, more testing is needed. I don't think I'm going to set up many more gateways before the meeting (maybe MSN if someone has an MSN account to test with--I'm slightly weary of setting up extraneous accounts for testing purposes), but this should give a picture of the range.

That's all the news for now! I will probably post again tomorrow, but after that I will be silent for a week as I travel to Maryland to visit family. Hooray! (And Astra Libris, this last line was just for you, my dear audience of 1!)

Last week, I crashed a system...

Ok, I actually think I only crashed a couple user accounts on the part of the LibraryH3lp system that our school is using, but it's still an impressive accomplishment, n'est-ce pas?

Luckily, Pam and Eric, LibraryH3lp developers extraordinaire, had fixed the damage I'd done within a day and fixed the underlying issue that caused the crash over the weekend. So if you are a librarian who's thinking about switching VR services, I recommend LibraryH3lp even more!!

Otherwise, there is not a whole lot else to report. Testing so far has gone well, but we (that would be my fellow reference librarians/virtual reference enthusiasts) haven't taken it to another level yet. I am trying to read through documentation because we are hoping to present the service to our reference head and library director in early June, and I want to have done as much background research as possible by then. I should also mention that we are going to present a couple other service ideas, headed up by my colleagues. We are excited, but still unsure if we have enough staff to make it work. Keep your fingers crossed!

If we have any more exciting test situations, I'll let you know! (This means you, A.L.; that is, after you return from all your traveling and if you have time with your exhausting job.)

Testing with a REAL person!

Today, for the first time, I was able to do some practice chats with someone ELSE on the other end of the chat. It went quite well! I first set up two of my fellow reference librarians with accounts, and then one of them and I practiced chatting back and forth. We both took a turn as the patron (using the handy-dandy, school spirited widget!), and also practiced sending files and web pages.

I hope to do some tests with someone off-campus at some point, because I want to see how accessing protected materials (i.e. databases) will go. Will the librarian be able to send a patron directly to an article? Will they have to describe the process of remote access (shivers run down my spine--it's already complex enough via phone!!)?

Also, I'd like to try to figure out if the librarian chat client has any allowances for increasing text size--we don't want to make all our librarians go blind!!

I've started systematically reading through the documentation on the Google Group, and that has been interesting and informative. Hopefully the time expended doing this will both prevent me from repeating questions and give me some background knowledge to apply as needed.

On an unrelated note, another piece of "technology" (really it's content, but quintessentially online) that I've decided I need to explore more is Wikipedia. I came across an awesome blog post about an assignment to write and follow a Wikipedia article that makes me realize how little I understand Wikipedia myself. It may take a few weeks to get around to looking at it, so I wanted to record the intention as a reminder to myself (I have to write down everything in order to remember it).

Back to chatting

I worked with LibraryH3lp again today, and was able to do the following things:

• Use the customized widgets (the chat boxes with school colors) on a different computer, so the "patron" was chatting directly through the widgets instead of through AIM or another chat service.
• Send files using that function.
• Successfully transfer a patron from one librarian to another.

Here are some things I'm still confused about:

• Sending webpages/links.
• How the different web browsers affect the LibraryH3lp functions.

Tomorrow (end of semester crunch is basically over, now that we are in exams week, and students need to study, but not so much to research). I need to spend more time with documentation--less exciting, but important for getting up to speed.

Documentation, Test Chat, and Excuses

I'm going to go with the excuses first (as in, excuses for why I have neither posted to this blog nor Twitter'ed nor really played with LibraryH3lp for 2 weeks). My excuses are:

3. Accreditation--our school had our on-site accreditation visit last week, so everyone's
attention was focused on that.

2. End of semester workshop! I planned and gave a workshop on research tips for the end of
the semester, along with someone from our writing center. We had 2 participants, which I say
is better than 0, and I learned a little bit about marketing on campus (and that I need to learn
MORE about it for next semester).

AND...

1. End of semester CRUNCH. This is actually the real excuse, and I think it's a pretty good one. With the end of the semester looming near, students are coming in droves (well, at least in much higher numbers than they were before) to use the reference desk. Hooray! This is what I especially like about my job, so I am not sorry that it leaves me less time for playing with technology. However, it does, so I will be playing a lot less for the next 2-3 weeks. Just so all you pretend readers out there won't be worried.

Ok, now onto the other two topics.

I found a wealth of documentation on using LibraryH3lp, at both the LibraryH3lp blog (http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/) and at the LibraryH3lp Google group (http://groups.google.com/group/libraryh3lp). They each have different strengths--the blog comes straight from the developers, and is also the place where new features are announced. The Google group is great because it consists of librarians from all over, many of whom are actively using LibraryH3lp. They also have archives, although I haven't figured out if the search feature works well (yes, it's Google, but then again, it's Google). I will likely be consulting the group soon, because...

I conducted my first multi-computer test chat today! Overall, it went pretty well. I did not use the LibraryH3lp widget for the patron end (I will try that next time), but the AIM gateway worked fine (now that there is an AIM account to link to the gateway...). I did encounter a couple problems/question areas:

1. I was able to send a link from one of our databases to the "patron," but I don't know if this would work to an off-campus computer. I also don't know if this is the same as "pushing" pages, and if LibraryH3lp does the latter. The other problem with this is that, when I sent a second link and then (as the patron) clicked on that link, the new address took the place of the old one in the pop-up window. A new window didn't pop up, and I couldn't open a new tab even manually, I was using Internet Explorer to access AIM online, if this makes any difference.


2. I had trouble with the librarian on Firefox (my set up was two "librarians" on Firefox and Internet Explorer on one computer, with the "patron" on a second computer, also on Internet Explorer) getting booted out of the webchat client. I don't know if it was because this computer does not have Adobe Flash installed in Firefox (and I can't get it installed without going through our systems librarian, and maybe the IT department) or for some other reason. It happened whenever I left the computer, or even just that tab in Firefox, for any length of time.

The next time I have "technology exploration" time, I will contact the Google group with these issues, unless I figure out how to resolve them on my own. I've already shown LibraryH3lp to one of my fellow reference librarians, and hopefully I'll show it to another later this week or early next. In the meantime, I will play and post as much as the end of semester crunch will allow!

I learned something important today...

...to create a gateway to an IM provider from LibraryH3lp, you first have to create an IM account in that provider, under the name you want shown. Otherwise there's nothing to link up to.

I realize that that should be fairly obvious, but since we don't already have IM chat, I didn't think about that. So, with this major breakthrough, I'm going to call it a day in the virtual reference world. Tomorrow I will be back to learn enough to make it a comprehensible explanation for my fellow reference librarians.

Library H3lp Take 2

I am very excited. I have learned several things this evening:

• I figured out how to customize a "skin" for an embedded chat widget. Here's what I made (with school colors!):
  
  
• I learned how to save said widget for future use. This was, for me, more complicated than it probably needed to be.


• I was stumped with how to practice the code, since I don't have access to any web servers. Thankfully, a library school friend responded to my Twitter/Facebook plea for help by pointing out that I could save the html document on my local computer, then just open it with a browser to see how it looks. Brilliant!


• At that point, I generated the document, but only got the html "Chat is offline" message, and was thinking, "But I'm signed in! A librarian is available! What's wrong?" Due to this conundrum, I also finally learned that


• You have to sign into the webchat client to be online as a librarian--not just the administrative functions. I now have a better understanding of the different "faces" of Library H3lp.

My next goal is to figure out how to set up the different "roll-over" service possibilities so that, after we (hopefully) get the service up, no patrons will see the "Chat is offline" message.

I'm meeting with some of the other librarians later this week; hopefully what I've learned so far will help convince them of the feasibility of this service!

Off to a start!!

I've spent my first night trying out LibraryH3lp, and I'm very excited! I was able to create 2 users, a queue, an AIM gateway (although I'm not sure how to make that work yet) AND use the LibraryH3lp webchat feature to have a practice chat with myself:



My main problem is that my "30 minutes" easily turned into 45-50. I'm glad I waited until I finished other work, and I think that will have to be my M.O. until this becomes an "official" project.