Bibliography

Originally uploaded by gadl.

The post The Strange Dynamics of Technology Adoption and Promotion in Academia on Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog and its inspiration, Resistance to Zotero? on Bruce D’Arcus’s darcusblog had me thinking about Zotero and Refworks.

Cohen and D’Arcus wonder why Zotero–a free, open source reference management tool that runs as a Firefox plugin–doesn’t get more love and support from the academic community, particularly from librarians.

As I read it, I thought “I resemble that remark!” I could see where Cohen and D’Arcus were coming from, even though I started feeling defensive at the same time. So I thought I’d unpack this a little bit here.

The whole thing kind of starts with a review of Zotero called Mark of Zotero in Inside Higher Ed, specifically a comment from Steven Bell where he points out that many academics may already have access to a similar bibliographic utility, RefWorks, due to campus-wide subscriptions. In fact, the library where I work subscribes to RefWorks on behalf of the campus.

D’Arcus wonders why librarians in particular are wedded to their proprietary solutions like RefWorks to the point of feeling like a “traitor” if they were to promote Zotero instead.

I don’t know that I would feel like a “traitor” to promote Zotero over our campus subscription to Refworks. In fact, I feel a little bit like a traitor to Zotero: I signed on early as someone interested in Zotero and they sent me a t-shirt. All RefWorks ever sent were some crummy mousepads!

But I don’t really promote Zotero, and I wondered why. It’s a very nice product, it is free, open source, easy to use, etc. Am I a RefWorks corporate tool? Here is what I came up with:

• My library has invested more than just money in RefWorks. We have invested staff time in learning how it works, developing handouts, coming up with classes to teach people how to use it, and so on. Now that we have had it for a few years, I feel pretty good that students can talk to just about anyone on the reference desk and get competent help with RefWorks. If we were to throw Zotero into the mix, we’d have a big staff education project on our hands. Zotero is nice and easy to use, but I don’t think it is immediately apparent how to use all its functions, so I’d anticipate people would be asking for help if we promoted Zotero. (Personally, I always need to click around a bit before I can remember how to actually create a bibliography from my saved citations.)

• D’Arcus seems to treat the fact that RefWorks can be acccessed via the web without installing anything from pretty much any computer is just another feature. To my mind, this is the feature that separates RefWorks from Zotero at a school like mine where students move from computer to computer all the time. Wherever they sit down at an internet-enabled computer, on- or off-campus, their data is accessible. No monkeying around with special configurations or putting Firefox and a Zotero library on a USB drive. (I should note that as I write this, I’m having trouble connecting to the RefWorks site. Curse you, gods of irony!)

• Similarly, as much as I love Firefox, it is important to point out that for many people, using Zotero isn’t as simple as “using Zotero.” It means using an unfamiliar browser and installing a plugin. Easy for me, not so easy for under-motivated students and faculty.

• I understand, I think, what D’Arcus is saying about “free as in freedom” as it relates to Zotero. It’s certainly one of many things I consider when choosing software. But I wonder if he’s not overstating his case to the point of spreading FUD when he says things like “I don’t think many people realize how crucial bibliographic data is to a scholar. A rather intense frustration can result from feeling that such crucial data is locked-in to closed products that have a history of glacial innovation.” All the reference management tools I have used feature multiple ways to export the data. I just did a quick, unscientific test export from RefWorks to Zotero which appeared to go smoothly, bringing along the bibliographic data and my notes. But maybe D’Arcus means something else, and I’m misreading him.

In the comments on the post by Cohen, D’Arcus says “I almost have to wonder rather cynically if this [promotion of RefWorks over Zotero] doesn’t have to do with some kind of organizational turf-guarding; the belief that librarians alone ‘own’ the bibliographic space?” I’m probably the wrong person to respond to that, but I think the real answer is probably less sinister. For my part, I think that RefWorks is easier to manage and support than Zotero would be, and that the web-accessibility of the program outweighs a lot of other considerations. I am resolving to use Zotero a bit more, so I’ll be better able to recommend it to students or faculty when it would be more appropriate. And if they come up with a zero-install web-based version, you can bet I will look at it very carefully indeed.

[We] are looking for an article, I think from the atlantic, more than
a few years ago. It’s called ‘beautiful ruins’, or something like that,
about looking at ruins not as the remains of something else, but as
something with aesthetic value in themselves.

If you could locate it and shoot it to us electronically, it’d be an immense
help.

After banging on EBSCO Academic Search Premier for a while, I sent ‘em back this:

The closest I have found is the attached review of Christopher Woodward’s “In Ruins” from the New Republic:

Pleasing Decay., By: Gurstein, Rochelle, New Republic, 00286583, 2/23/2004, Vol. 230, Issue 6

With the full text attached.

And got back from them:

Thanks Steve. This is it.

Heh.

For some reason, I checked the thread again last night and saw that Derek Wolfgram, Denver Public Library Circulation Manager, had commented a few days ago to thank the original poster and to say that the library agrees that a ten-day wait for an email overdue notice is a bit much.

Derek explains a bit about what is going on: the library would like to allow users to customize the kinds of notices they receive, but they haven’t found the right product yet. For now, they have made some adjustments to make it work as best they can.

And he finishes this way:

So remember, if you notice something broken, be sure to report it to
the responsible institution. They might be listening, and they might
even take your concern seriously and try to do something about it.

That is cool. Contrast Derek’s attitude with that of “GreatWesternDragon,” the circ manager upthread.

Derek Wolfgram is my new public services hero.

Jessamyn West linked to This is Broken – Denver Library notice, a blog post about how the Denver Public Library sent the poster an email overdue notice after the book was already 10 days overdue. The poster noted that the Colorado Springs Pikes Peak Library District sends the email the day before the item is due. (PPLD is my hometown public library. It is a really excellent public library, from this patron’s perspective.)

I wasn’t familiar with This is Broken, but the tagline is “A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it.”

So here we have a guy saying not “I don’t think libraries should have fines” or “I don’t want to pay fines,” (though he does draw the surely erroneous conclusion that the library does this to increase revenue from fines), but that it would be better for him and for the library and for anyone else who wants the books he has checked out if the library could email him before the books are due.

In the comments, though, a circulation manager and a person who says that he or she has been “running public libraries for over 20 years” take the opportunity to lecture the poster on personal responsibility. The comments on librarian.net similarly feature two commenters claiming the poster is ducking his responsibility.

This, in my personal opinion, is just nuts. (And I said so in the comments. Here is my comment on librarian.net; my This is Broken comment is the one by “hatchibombotar”).

Here is a person saying that his experience using the library would be better if the library changed their email notifications, and the representatives of the library community tell him he is an irresponsible twit. (I should note that the commenters aren’t from the Denver Public Library, whom, I’m sure, would handle the complaint/suggestion with more tact.)

The point is that our beloved Integrated Library Systems should know better than anyone who has what checked out and when it is due. Why expect patrons to hang on to those irritating little receipt print-outs from the circulation computers when the system could just send them a courtesy email? Sure, before the age of computers and email, I probably would have had to carefully keep the dozen almost-identical books on rockets that my son currently has checked out in little piles depending on what day they are due, but why make the patron do that when the computer can do it better?

A more serious problem is mentioned by commenters at both This is Broken and librarian.net: some ILSes don’t do this properly. In some cases, patrons can choose email, phone, or mailed notices. Obviously, libraries don’t want to snail mail thousands of courtesy notices at cost to the library, when most of those books will come back on time anyway. But their ILS can’t differentiate between print and email notices. I.e., they can’t set up a system where “email patrons” get courtesy notices, but “snail mail patrons” only get the overdue notices.

This is worse than nuts. This is pathetic.

Doing a little logical exercise such as “IF the patron gets email notices THEN send a courtesy notice; IF the patron gets snail mail notices, THEN wait to send overdue notice” is the kind of thing a computer should be great at. That a library would have to wait for a future release or custom programming strikes me as ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m right, they are wrong, and get off my lawn. (Right? I mean, it’s not me, it’s them. Right?)

“Law library studying” by zalgon on Flickr

I received two thoughtful comments on my last post (including my first comment from a Colorado College faculty member; welcome, Laura!), and I thought I might continue the conversation in a new post. So here we are.

Jessy comes at this question of how to help students better use the books and articles they find at the library from a librarian’s point of view:

I know what you mean, and I tend to freeze up when students want me to stray into faculty turf and advise them on writing the paper. I’ve always considered that to be a good thing, but maybe it isn’t. It’s not like we don’t want faculty to ever, ever help students use databases — we just want them to involve us. So maybe it’s okay if we help them think about their argument.

I certainly think it is OK if we help them think about their argument. I think we often do that subtly just in the course of a typical reference interview: when they say “I’m looking for information on the French Revolution” and we say “well, what is it you would like to know about the French Revolution?”, we are already giving them a little nudge to be able to explain their argument (or at least their problem or research area).

The longer we work with an individual student, the more opportunities there are to connect a few dots along the way (e.g, “Now from the abstract, it looks like this author is saying that the main cause of the French Revolution was X, while the article we were just looking at said it was Y, so you might have to consider both of those points of view, even thought you said you want to argue that the cause was Z.”).

I wouldn’t consider any of that fairly ad hoc help to be treading on faculty toes. I have no desire to usurp the faculty’s role in advising students on writing the paper, but I would love to work more closely with faculty to help students get a better grasp on the research process.

Which brings us to the faculty perspective, provided by Laura, a new faculty member at CC in the English Department:

One of the more difficult parts of teaching literature is giving students a sense that there is this broader conversation going on outside the classroom. … In that situation, I hope that a student would bring the article to office hours, at which point we could discuss how to make use of the critical discourse without parrotting it. I would ask the student to explore the limitations of this line of thought: how old is this article? Is it manner of thinking outdated? Does it ignore critical elements of the novel? Who are the scholars that this author is engaging?

Rereading my post, I see where it might sound like I think that working with students on entering this critical conversation is properly the librarian’s job. I don’t think that. I would hope that librarians and faculty could work together to give students a better picture of the entire process of researching and writing the paper.

Not to put too much emphasis on my own case, but I don’t think I ever heard a faculty member talk about research and writing in the way Laura does when I was in college. I seem to recall “write a fifteen page paper on some aspect of what we have been talking about in class.” End of discussion.

What I am more concerned about is that libraryland’s conception of information literacy research education often seems to lack much consideration for how students actually use all the swell stuff that we help them find. I don’t really care if students are learning how to incorporate these sources into their own writing from librarians or faculty, as long as somewhere along the line they are picking up some skills and strategies.

I suppose a lot of this boils down to me working through something that perhaps should be obvious, but that I tend to lose sight of: when I help students find books or articles that are relevant, scholarly, and available, I feel like my work is done. But the students’ work is just beginning as they read the material, come to some sort of understanding of it, decide what they want to use in their own writing, decide how they want to involve themselves in the critical conversation, and then do the actual work of writing.

Tags: instruction, information_literacy, academic

When I was a college student, I spent a fair amount of time in the library. I wasn’t really burning the midnight oil studying (I was a theatre major, after all!), but when I had some time to kill in the middle of the day, I would often head over to the library and browse the literature or art or theatre stacks, or read in the periodicals room.

This particular quarter, I was in a class where we were reading Sense and Sensibility and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to write my paper on.

In browsing the Austen criticism, I came across an essay on Sense and Sensibility that seemed to cover some of the same ground that I had intended to cover in my essay. As I read more, I saw that the author was arguing essentially the same points that I wanted to argue, coming to the same conclusions, and even citing some of the same passages I had in mind in support of her argument.

I was thrilled! Here was an actual scholar, giving voice to my half-formed theory! I felt validated, reassured.

Until I realized that I had to stop reading. How could I now pass these ideas off as my own, when someone else had already published them? I felt worried, tainted, as if–simply by reading a few pages–I had committed some bizarre act of retroactive plagiarism. I thought if I put the book back and never thought about it again, I might get through OK. I had no conception of how to take a secondary source and engage with it through my writing.

Now, when I think about this, I think of how I approach my job in working with students in the humanities. I usually feel that if I help them find a few good articles or books on their topic, I have done my job. How they read, think, or write about those sources isn’t my concern.

And perhaps that is true. Perhaps it is up to my colleagues on the faculty and in the writing center to teach the students how to engage with those writers and critics in a meaningful way. But I think it is an impoverished idea of “information literacy” that usually ignores what people actually do with the information, or talks about the issue in bloodless, meaningless phrases such as “Integrates the new and prior information, including quotations and paraphrasings, in a manner that supports the purposes of the product or performance.” (that’s Standard 4, Outcome 1C for the benefit of those without a scorecard).

Tags: instruction, information_literacy, academic

I thought y’all would enjoy this from Dan’s latest post, where he runs down a list of things he has been able to do for himself since settling in to Ankara:

11. Procured a library card (and oh, was THAT an ordeal—seven different forms stamped by seven different offices, and I can still only check out books–“DVDs yok”– no DVDs. I recall it is this region that gives us the English word “Byzantine”).

So whenever someone accuses your library of not being customer-centered enough, you can say “hey, you should try to get a library card in Ankara sometime! This is Nordstrom’s compared to that!”

Anyway, I had five minutes to speak and used about two minutes. I said something like this:

Hi! I’m Steve, I’m a librarian, and I’m proud of it.

I’m sure that while you are on your trip, in a soup kitchen or around the campfire, some first-year student will turn to you and ask “how many journal subscriptions does the library have?”

Really, what I hope you will tell them about the library is that it is the librarians’ job to help students. That is what we do. And we have these jobs because we like working with students. So encourage them to ask for help early and often. Let them know that we are here to help them succeed.

Any questions?

No questions. What more is there to say?

Tags:
library,
coloradocollege

But today, I have two little observations of library lessons learned in non-library places that have been kicking around in my head for the past few years (really!).

How not to give a reference interview at the DMV

Waiting at the DMV

Originally uploaded by StickBus.

About ten years ago, I needed to renew the registration on my car in Denver. I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office downtown, and looked for the proper window or line to take care of it.

When I couldn’t tell immediately where to go, I walked up to one clerk and asked about renewing my registration. She told me to see the security guard about getting a number, and then I should wait for my number to come up. I thanked her, and went over to the guard.

Me: Hi, could I have a number?

Guard: What do you need?

Me: I need a number, please.

Guard: What do you need?

Me: Um, the woman at the counter said I should ask you for a number. So I need a number.

Guard: [visibly exasperated] No, I mean what do you NEED?

Me: [...?] To renew my registration?

Guard: There you go!

The people around us laughed and I did, too. I don’t recall if the guard laughed. I think he thought I was the dimmest bulb ever.

I was thinking about that experience today on my way to the DMV in Colorado Springs and thought that if I ever taught the reference interview to library students or staff, I would use that story as a negative example.

Usability and the drive-thru window

Shot @ Sonic, Roswell Menu

Originally uploaded by clanlife.

One year ago yesterday, my son Nicholas was born (happy birthday, Nickel!). One year ago the day before yesterday, my wife Shanon was in the hospital waiting for her labor to be induced, and I was dispatched to get fast food.

Shanon wanted me to get her a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate milkshake from Sonic. I don’t get fast food very often anymore, but for most of the major chains, I know exactly what I usually order. Not so with Sonic; I know they have tater tots and milkshakes, but when it comes to ordering a meal, I don’t really know the menu.

So I went through the drive-thru lane, and pulled right up to the big menu.

Sonic: Welcome to Sonic, can I take your order?

Me: Um. [Looks frantically up and down the menu, not seeing a grilled cheese sandwich, only reading fragments of words here and there.] Um. [Sees that someone has pulled up behind. Feeling rushed, panicky, stupid. Wondering if I should try to read the entire menu from the top to bottom.] Um, do you have a grilled cheese sandwich?

Sonic: Not really, but I can make you one, no problem.

Me: [Slightly relieved, but still feeling stupid.] Oh, thanks. [Starting to panic again, realizing that I don't know what I want.] Um, do you have chicken?

So the guy on the other end of the squawk box held my hand and helped me order.

It occurred to me that library patrons must feel something like my sense of confusion when confronted with a library home page or list of databases: “TIGER catalog? WorldCat? Databases? Interlibrary Loan? I just want a hamburger book!”

My point isn’t that the Sonic menu or our library pages are necessarily poorly designed–when you want to present someone with a lot of choices as with a fast food menu or a library site, things are bound to sometimes be a little lengthy or complex. I just found it helpful in retrospect to be in that position of doing something fairly trivial, like ordering fast food, and being intimidated and confused by the environment. As a librarian and long-time internet user, I don’t have that “I am stupid…I can’t find anything” experience in libraries or on the web very often anymore (though see my posts on Second Life for my recent online newbie experience). But something like this puts me more in the shoes of David Lee King’s hypothetical patron who thinks the library is offering free iPods through their MySpace page or Jessamyn West’s real patrons who are put off by Yahoo! telling them to lose weight.

In a fit of enthusiasm, I suggested that I would take this particular bull by the horns and come up with a Library 2.0 skeptic’s reading list. I’m not anti-Library 2.0. I like and respect Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine and what they seem to want to do with Library 2.0 Boot Camp. I like to think of Library 2.0 as a continuing conversation about the future of libraries, and it makes sense to me to try to round up some voices that challenge Library 2.0 conventional wisdom.

Working on this little blogliography, I can understand why people are tempted to just cite Walt’s survey and leave it at that: he did a great job of pulling in a lot of different voices on Library 2.0. While his own critical perspective shines through, it’s easy to also trace other dissenting and supporting voices. And I believe some people who are skeptical, critical, or dismissive of Library 2.0 only wrote about it because Walt put out a call for comments on Library 2.0. From what I can tell, people haven’t spilled a whole lot of electrons on anti-manifestoes (with one possible exception). That is perhaps another reason why Walt is the Library 2.0 critic poster-boy: he continues to call people out and take the bait long after other Library 2.0 skeptics have stopped.

In my list, I have tried to confine myself to posts written after (or not included in) Walt’s “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 2.0′” survey, though one or two might have snuck in. I grouped the posts loosely by topic. Within each topic, links aren’t in any particular order (I know, I know: “No particular order? And he calls himself a librarian?!”). I have tried to be neutral: I don’t necessarily agree with all of these criticisms, though I think they are all thought-provoking.

Lots of interesting links after the jump.

Tags:
library2.0,
skeptics,
reading_list

Technology

Technology, Books, and the Librarian. Michael McGrorty, Library Dust

I already blogged about this post, so I won’t say much more here. Michael never mentions “Library 2.0,” but his ideas about librarian as “explicator” as opposed to librarian as “manager” is thought-provoking in terms of Library 2.0.

Questioning the Techie Mission. Rory Litwin, Library Juice

Not about Library 2.0 per se, but about the place of technology in the library blogosphere:

I think that there are definite assumptions involved in the technology advocacy posture, and there isn’t necessarily anything supporting those assumptions. In other words, the techie mission is irrational: there would be less emphasis on technology within the library blogosphere if the bloggers involved were more objective about technology.

the new library – can it provide new technology-based services? Richard Akerman, Science Library Pad

How many librarians have the technical understanding to bring about radical change?

But I am concerned at the gap between thought leaders, who are talking massive transformative disruption due to technology, and others who are talking safe incremental improvements to existing technology platforms (Library 2.0: it’s the OPAC, but users can leave comments!)

The “Ratcheting Up” of Technology. Steven Bell, ACRLog

Whether its “what’s the next big technology we can adopt” thinking taking hold of the organization, a belief that if your library doesn’t have programmers customizing lots of applications you’ll be at a disadvantage, or just an overwhelming sense that you ought to be doing more with blogs, wikis, tagging, podcasts and other Lib 2.0 type activity, are we driven to offer our user community more technology without really knowing if it would even benefit them?

Moving, shaking, blogging, and drudging. Dorothea Salo, Caveat Lector

This is a wide-ranging post. The part I’m interested in has to do with Dorothea’s belief that many of the most important changes to academic libraries aren’t going to be on the public services side:

Recently the spotlight has been falling on the crossroads between Web technology and public service. FRBR doesn’t get the ballyhoo because it’s not a Web technology; institutional repositories don’t because they’re not public service. Frankly, I think FRBR and the wave of libraries-as-publishers that IRs are a part of bid fair to have a greater and decidedly more disruptive impact on academic librarianship (note the adjective, please) than MySpace or IM or wikis or blogs or any of the Web/Library 2.0 stuff. Over the course of my career, I expect them to change some pretty fundamental things about what a lot of us do and how we do it. (Am meditating more posts on this subject, in fact.) So spotlight isn’t necessarily the best measure of long-term importance, and vice versa.

Privacy

The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy. Rory Litwin, Library Juice

As serious as privacy concerns may turn out to be, the features of Web 2.0 applications that make them so useful and fun all depend on users sharing private information with the owners of the site, so that it can be processed statistically or shared with others. This presents a problem for librarians who are interested in offering Library 2.0 types of services. If we value reader privacy to the extent that we always have, I think it’s clear that our experiments with Library 2.0 services will have uncomfortable limitations.

Culture and Economics

Library 2.0: A View from the Third World. Perry Joy R. Lumabao, Filipino Librarian

Considering the questions above, we must note their financial capabilities if we are indeed thinking providing for a service like Library 2.0. Not all students will be able to access an on-line type of service. Not all students will be able to fully utilize and take advantage it.

Security

Library computer security 2.0?. Thomas Brevik, Librarian 1.5

Most of the skepticism here is coming from commenter Jeremy Morrow who says:

I think it’s great that people are waving the flag for Library 2.0, but they have to start documenting the security that goes along with it or us IT people are going to take the blame for the problems that will inevitably arise.

Terminology

Why Library 2.0 is Dangerous. Jeffy Barry, Endless Hybrids

As someone who has managed a lot of library technology projects, I feel that the danger behind Library 2.0 is that the message can be obscured by the terminology. Let’s concentrate on talking about and developing those services rather than getting lost in defining versions of the library or the most appropriate rubric for describing these services.

Label 2.0. Meredith Farkas, Information Wants To Be Free

Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 don’t exist. Web 2.0 is hype. Library 2.0 is just a bunch of very good ideas that have been squished into a box with a trendy label slapped on it…. I think we’re spending way too much time defining something that has existed in one form or another for quite a long time and will exist when the meme has ended.

Exasperation

Let’s make libraries better, OK?. Meredith Farkas, Information Wants To Be Free

Meredith Farkas takes stock of the situation after reading L2/”L2″:

Maybe Library 2.0 will inspire libraries. Maybe it will lead to great things. Maybe it will create false divisions where there are none (like the librarian who isn’t a Library 2.0 proponent but is change-oriented, user-focused, and info social software). Maybe the Library 2.0 label will turn people off outside of the blogosphere. Or maybe it will just get in the way of people understanding concretely how to improve their library.

A Library 2.0 hangover by me

Please forgive the self-link. My bit is similar to Meredith’s, above.

Listen: I care a lot about many of the things that people write about under the heading of “Library 2.0.” I am caring less and less about the term itself, and am certainly not interested in (a) splitting hairs about what is and isn’t Library 2.0 or (b) participating in a “with us or against us” campaign.

Evil

Library 2.0 is evil. Brian Smith, The Laughing Librarian

How could I pass up a post with that title? It’s humorous, but not without a somewhat serious point.

So, we propose a new label: Ideas Worth Stealing. That’s what everyone’s actually talking about with this Library 2.0 crap, right? Ideas others might want to steal and use. Possibly. Depending on the library’s situation. YMMV.

[Don't miss the Library 2.0 song (MP3) linked at the end of that post.]

That’s it. This will all be on the final exam, so get cracking.