User-centered Cataloger

Idea I hope will become trends: ask for what you want

2012-07-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

In the final installment of my ALA Annual faux-cap, I want to talk about asking for what you want.

The previous installments: user stories, communication, and assessment.

The last session I went to in Anaheim was a panel discussion about how ILS vendors were planning on dealing with the challenges and changes that RDA's implementation would inevitably cause.

When the moderator opened the floor for Q&A, a very different discussion erupted. Basically, the audience called the vendors out on their shenanigans.

Because, while the vendors had, indeed, made provisions for new MARC tags, it didn't seems as if they had really given much consideration to what a post-MARC world might look like. And that's a problem.

The discussion was...lively. Catalogers want tools and mock-ups of what a RDA-driven, post-MARC catalog might look like. ILS vendors don't seem to want to create even a beta version of such a catalog until the landscape is more stable.

What seemed most shocking to the catalogers in the room was that vendors seemed surprised that catalogers were even interested in such mock-ups. And their defense seemed to be that until and unless catalogers make their wishes known, vendors can't create the tools that catalogers want.

It seems to me like ILS vendors and libraries are having a stand-off. It's like they're playing chicken about how metadata will be represented in this post-AACR2, post-MARC world. Libraries are waiting on vendors who are waiting on libraries.

My observation about this stand-off is that if you want to affect real and lasting change when it comes to vendors, convince the people in your organization who sign-off on paying the bills that what you value is worthwhile.

So, my last and final takeaway is to ask for what you want.

At your own institution, talk to your Systems staff and UL about what you want users to be able to do with the metadata you're creating. Find products or dream up solutions to make these dreams a reality. Talk about what makes this metadata so important for users--for searching and retrieving items and for serendipitous discovery--and what would be so devastating for your users about outsourcing cataloging or accepting sub-par vendor-generated MARC records.

At conferences, visit the vendors your library works with. Ask them tough questions about what they're doing to move toward a post-AACR2, post-MARC world. Tell them what you want your users to be able to do with the metadata you're creating and ask them how they plan to make that happen. Talk to them about task forces and committees you know exist where libraries and vendors intersect and ask them what they're contributing to them.

Find your tribe and get involved. Join your state's library association or ALA. Or both. Join a committee or an interest group that's tackling these issues and get to work. Start learning to code and come up with your own solutions to these problems. Use social media to find like-minded folks and start learning about the issues.

To quote Rage Against The Machine:
"It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here?
What better time than now?"

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Ideas I hope will become trends: assessment

2012-07-02T12:18:00.001-07:00

This series is, at its core, a recap of my trip to ALA's Annual Conference in Anaheim. But I prefer talking about the practical applications of what I learned to simply recapping programs.

The first installment was about user stories and the second was about communication.

The third installment is about assessment.

I was not planning on attending LITA's Top Tech Trends panel. But, I returned back from an off-campus lunch too late to attend the session I'd hoped to catch and too early for the next round of programs.Having found myself with a few minutes on my hand, I decided to catch a few minutes of the program.

Meredith Farkas was one of the panelists and I found myself nodding in agreement when she talked about how academic libraries can't really stand on the assertion that the library is the center of the academic community anymore. Instead, academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on those they serve.

Farkas suggested that assessment tracking tools were a good way of managing data that would help libraries build stories of user impact.

But this isn't so much about what Farkas had to say as it is about what people had to say about what she had to say.

It seemed like the Twitter backchannel was musing about how difficult it was to cultivate the kind of organizational culture that breeds an interest in assessment. Basically--nobody teaches this kind of stuff in library school.

The thing is, I couldn't agree more with the notion that academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on those they serve. It's no longer enough for them to say that they're the center of the academic community. Researchers, both novice and expert, are finding other sources for information than traditional library resources. And many academic libraries grapple with how to stay at the center of the campus community--a completely different challenge.

And I also couldn't agree more with the idea that data helps libraries build stories about their impact on the lives of users.

And, while we're at it, I also couldn't agree more with the idea that creating that kind of organizational culture is really, really hard.

But it's not impossible.

So, how do we do it? How do we create organizational cultures in our libraries that embrace assessment and the data it generates?

I think we start by shifting our focus toward things that are measurable. Which means that every project or program needs to have outcomes built into it during the design phase. How else will we know if the project is successful? And, in the case of programs, how will we know if the audience has learned what we'd like for them to learn?

Academic libraries need to think critically about how adopting this kind of culture could affect them for the better. What would it look like to have data supporting your assertions about how bibliographic instruction sessions have prepared student researchers for upper-level research? It's one thing to consider gate count (which is valuable data, indeed), but it's another to show how you've created good consumers and stewards of information.

I think it's equally important for user-centered back room folks to generate, synthesize, and store data as well. If it's true that academic libraries are being asked to justify their impact on the academic community, it's equally as true that many units performing back-room functions are being asked to do the same. And, when the day comes that you have to advocate for your job, it's much easier to do so using data.

So, try gathering some usage statistics after you finish a cataloging project. Did usage of a hidden collection go up after you added it to the catalog? Did analyzing that serial prompt more people to use it? This kind of data collection can help justify some of the most important work you're doing.

Alternately, though, data of this kind can help you decide what to let go of when budgets are tight and time is fleeting. You can see what your users value most and what they can live without and make decisions about resource allocation accordingly.

So...start with an outcome and measure your success accordingly. And let the data do the talking.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Ideas that I hope will become trends: communication

2012-06-29T13:40:00.002-07:00

If you missed the first post in this short series, you can catch up here. The first post was about user stories and focused on a presentation that I saw at the Heads of Technical Services IG meeting.

The second idea that I hope becomes a trend is open dialogue between catalogers and, well, everyone else. The genesis of this was a bullet point from the presentation that Scott Piepenburg gave at the Competencies and Education for a Career in Cataloging IG meeting.Piepenburg's presentation was about what Catalogers would need to be able to do in a post-AACR2, post-MARC world. One thing that he suggested is a must is that Catalogers need to not only understand what their ILS can (and cannot) do, but they must also be able to communicate these limitations to others.

It took everything I had not to jump for joy or to stand on my chair and cheer. I didn't, though. It was a small room and kind of crowded.

I think that catalogers do a pretty decent job of understanding the limitations of our ILSs. We spend a lot of time working with them and, as a general rule, get what they do both well and poorly. Where it breaks down, sometimes, is communicating this information to our colleagues. Whether it's our colleagues in IT or our colleagues staffing the front lines, it is our job to communicate well with them.

Having a basic knowledge of coding can help us communicate more effectively with IT staff. We don't have to be coding wizards, but we should be able to talk about how our systems do parse out data in MARC records and, perhaps more importantly, how we wish they did.

Having a basic understanding of how users search for information can help us communicate more effectively with front line staff. We don't have to spend a lot of time on the Reference Desk (though it wouldn't hurt), but we should be able to talk about how users can do more effective searching.

So, how do we become better at communication with others? I have a couple of ideas:

If you want to learn the basics of coding, Codeacademy can help. They even have a program called Code Year which will walk you through the basics of languages like Javascript. And if you're looking for support, there's a CatCode wiki whose function is to support dialogue between coders and catalogers. In this case, I suspect it's a lot like learning the language when you visit another country. You don't have to be proficient in it, but the natives appreciate that you're trying to speak their language.

Attend (open) meetings in departments other than your own. At my former place of work, there was a monthly meeting of subject librarians that was open to all interested staff. I didn't go every month, but I tried to go fairly regularly. Attending this meeting helped me understand the challenges that subject specialists faced when helping users which, in turn, helped me think differently about the work I was doing. This meeting was also sometimes the only way that I learned about issues that I could help solve but that nobody thought to tell me about--not because they were trying to leave me out of the loop, but because they didn't realize that the problem could be solved.

Get your hands dirty in projects that involve other departments. Though the bulk of my job duties involved cataloging, I taught in my former place of work's Freshman Writing Seminar. I also worked with our Digital Library Services unit and our Web 2.0 initiatives. I made valuable contacts and learned a lot about what other people the organization do.

I think the moral of the story is that it's all about relationships and empathy. Learn to speak the language of the people you work with. Be friendly and empathetic and take the time to answer questions that your colleagues have about the work that you do.

What are your suggestions about developing rapport with other units? How have you opened the lines of communication?

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Ideas that I hope will become trends: User stories

2012-06-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

One thing I have learned after attending ALA's midwinter and annual conferences is that, if you pay attention, you can spot the beginning of trends. Is there more than one program on a particular topic? Consider it a trend. Is it an idea you've heard at multiple programs? Consider it a trend.

And one thing I've preached is that after you spot a trend, you have to figure out how your library is going to deal with this trend. Maybe you find a way to implement a trend into your library's operations. Or, maybe you consider a trend and decide it's not for you. But either way, you have to consider it.

At ALA's Annual Conference, I noticed a few interesting trends that are worth considering. Over the next couple of days, I'll write about these trends--starting with the idea of user stories.

Okay, so let's talk about user stories.

If you're familiar with software development, you're probably familiar with user stories. Essentially, you interview users to find out what they need a piece of software to do. These stories inform the software's design process. It's an opposite way of thinking than the usual business of most libraries which is to offer solutions that they think will meet a user's needs.

I attended the Head of Technical Services IG and heard about how the University of Chicago used user stories to inform the catalog design they worked on. They conducted 20 interviews and, from those interviews, they identified 200 unique stories. These stories fell into categories like browsing, composition of full records, and integration with other tools.

I like the idea of integrating user stories into any major design or redesign of a library resource. Libraries often believe that they know what their users want a piece of technology to do. Whether it's a citation manager or the library catalog, we think that we know how users work. And many times, we can bring anecdotal evidence to support that. Sometimes we even do usability testing to choose between options we've identified. But none of these things give users a voice during the initial phase of designing a resource or deciding which resource to purchase. Often, by the time we ask our users for their $0.02, the decision has already been made. And we try to do our best to help users live with the decisions we made by training them on how to use the resource we've purchased. But how many times have you taught a class on a piece of technology and had to tell someone that it doesn't do what they really want it to do?

How would things be different if we let the users tell their own stories and then found ways to solve those problems for them?

We might make different choices about the technology we decide to purchase and we might find open source solutions that meet our users' needs better than vendor-supplied solutions.

We also might start asking for more from our vendors in the way of flexible implementations. Rather than purchasing the solution that comes the closest to doing what we think our users need it to do, we can approach vendors with evidence that we need them to provide implementations of solutions that do what our users actually need them to do.

So...now that you know what a user story is and have heard about someone doing it well, how will you integrate this trend into your library?

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

A thought about novice researchers

2011-09-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

This is a post that has nothing to do with cataloging. I hope that you will read it anyway.

I don't spend a lot of time working with end users or doing instruction, but I do teach one library instruction session per semester to several sections of our Freshman Writing Seminar. And that experience has taught me a lot about how students handle research problems. When I pulled "'The Rolls Royce of the Library Reference Collection:' the subject encyclopedia in the age of Wikipedia" by John W. East out of my to-be-read pile, it opened an interesting rabbit hole down which I currently find myself.

The main assignment that our Freshman Writing Seminar students are given--the one that all of their small assignments build toward--is a final paper that analyzes a primary text through a discipline-specific lens (e.g., sociology).

One thing that has become painfully clear to me over time is that these novice researchers aren't often equipped to synthesize the discipline-specific material through which they are supposed to be viewing their primary text. The concepts and jargon are often unfamiliar to them and they are not always willing to do the leg work to figure out what they need to know.

Two important facts about the course:
1. It is required of all Freshmen
2. It cannot be tested out of.

Though the students (again...generally speaking) in these classes are conscientious learners and want to get good grades, the stakes simply aren't high enough to warrant a lot of extra work to understand the concepts.

The point of the course is to acclimate Freshmen to collegiate-level writing and the shift from regurgitation of facts to the synthesis of information. The research process does factor into this shift, but learning how to use the library is only one part of that process. I can show a class how to use an article database to find scholarly articles on a topic, but it is up to them to synthesize that material. And part of that synthesis process is understanding the concepts and terminology used in the articles.

In walks the subject encyclopedia, waving it's arms and yelling 'I can help! Hey...pick me!'

Subject encyclopedias are a great way to expose researchers to basic information about a concept. What's not to love? They cover all of the basics on a topic and provide a bibliography for finding more information.

But if I'm honest with myself, I realize that this isn't how I do research. I don't come across a concept I don't know and then refer to a subject encyclopedia to better understand it.

I go to Wikipedia.

East's article juxtaposes the quick-and-easy nature of finding information against the authority of the subject encyclopedia. And I think he makes a good point. Wikipedia is easy to access, but it isn't the most academic of sources. And he's right to point out that many instructors are nonplussed when their students cite Wikipedia as a source.

But if all a student needs is to quickly understand a concept, what's so wrong with offering Wikipedia as a way to do that?

As a librarian, I struggle with the answer to that question. I understand that you can't trust everything you find online. And I understand that the subject encyclopedia is probably better suited to give researchers the kind of support they need.

But for Freshman researchers who are often balancing a full course load against the challenges of navigating life away from home for the first time, the leg work it takes to find a subject encyclopedia to learn about a concept is often not worth the payoff they get.

I think that in this semester of Writing 1, I'm going to talk about subject encyclopedias. And I'll probably put links to a few of them on my course guide. But I also think that I'll be more conscious of telling students that context, wherever one finds it, is a valuable tool for researchers.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Citation:
East, John W. "'The Rolls Royce of the Library Reference Collection:' the subject encyclopedia in the age of Wikipedia" Reference & User Services Quarterly 50.2 (2010): 162-169.

Fixing the PR problem

2011-04-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

I tweeted this yesterday:
I've come to the conclusion that libraries, generally speaking, have a PR problem. We do a crap job of explaining to users the how and why.

The problem with our inability to explain the how and way leads to feedback from users that makes us feel especially uncomfortable. We react defensively or want to dismiss it and often our response is more ham-fisted than anything else.

There seem to be two kinds of feedback that we get that speak to this PR problem:
1. Users ask us to develop services we've already developed but haven't done a good job of marketing. Or, users ask us to better market something that we've been trying really hard (but failing) to connect with users on.

2. Users balk at a reality (usually a policy) that can't be changed because of the way we've negotiated a contract or a law that exists.

I think there are two ways to solve this problem.
1. Be transparent in all things--even the unpleasant ones.
Sometimes the response to the requests that your users make is not the one they want to hear. But, as a general rule, people want to be heard and they want to feel like their voice matters. Explain your policies clearly and without jargon. And when you have to say no, explain why in an empathetic way. Log the suggestions and complaints your users give you and respond to them in a public way. Don't make people feel ashamed to ask for what they want, even if you can't give it to them.

2. Be where your users are...not where you think they are.
If you're trying to promote a service, put up fliers in your students' dorms. If you're trying to get more people through the doors of your library, step outside your library and find out why more people aren't there. Or, even better, take your services on the road to where people do spend their time.

It's hard to get out of the echo chamber and learn to tell the stories of your users and their experiences. But part of fixing the PR problem is seeing your users face-to-face, listening to their feedback, and responding to it swiftly. Sometimes that response is a tweak to your services to make them easier to use, but sometimes the response is to explain those services (and their limitations) in language that your users can understand.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

What "fix the catalog" might really mean

2011-03-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

I often wonder what users mean when they say that we should "fix" the library catalog.

I think that there are a lot of folks who find the catalog difficult to use. It is true that our catalogs have user un-friendly interfaces. It is true that our jargon makes the barrier to entry pretty steep.

These are real issues that require much consideration and better answers than the ones we've come up with so far.

But I have come to the conclusion that "fix the catalog" can also mean one of two things:
1. I don't know how to use the library catalog.
2. The library catalog gave me wrong information (e.g., that book was supposed to be on the shelf, but it's not there).

I feel like libraries confuse these two issues with the idea that people find the catalog difficult to use. They buy discovery layers and web-scale discovery systems. They design and re-design their websites. All of this time and money, and we still hear about how we need to "fix" the library catalog.

All of this has led me to two conclusions:

1. We need to educate our users on how to get from the catalog to the stacks and what to do if the information in the catalog isn't right. A reference librarian at MPOW had a brilliant idea--teach a workshop that is aimed at Freshmen about how to find a book in the catalog and then locate it on the shelves in the library. We've created many video tutorials on how to come up with keywords, how to search the catalog, and how to request books from other libraries. Make your users good at using your catalog is more difficult than buying a new ILS add-on to make your catalog user-friendly. But it also pays rich rewards.

2. Allocate more resources for circulation services like shelf-reading or circulation inventory. One of my first job duties as a library page in a public library was to shelf-read the sections that I was responsible for shelving. It was amazing how many books we had decided were lost that were actually hiding out in another area. When I worked at a middle school library, we did circulation inventory at the end of every school year. We found many books on the shelf that we'd either considered lost or still checked out.

I think that we need to be mindful of the ways in which our catalogs work. But I also think we need to listen to our users and really figure out what they're trying to tell us about our resources. It's wise to remember that the quickest (and easiest) fix isn't always the best one.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Organizing your time when everything seems urgent

2011-02-23T07:27:00.000-08:00

In my current job, I work almost exclusively with electronic materials and it's caused a problem for me that I never had in my previous job where I worked almost exclusively with physical materials.

The problem stems from the fact that these materials often come to me in the form of an email from someone in our Acquisitions Unit. For some reason, these materials seem more urgent than a physical item that has been ordered and which goes into our backlog until someone has the time to catalog it.

In short, electronic materials can't be put on a truck to get to them as you have time. And when "ordering season" is in full-swing, I can get as many as 10 emails in a day.

I sometimes let ongoing projects or low-priority projects languish for weeks on end while I deal with these electronic materials, mostly because I give the electronic materials priority when they aren't materials that are urgently needed by users.

Luckily, this is merely frustrating and not terribly harmful to our users. I hate being a slave to my email. I want to get out of the I'll do it later mentality and work on the things that I really need to get done in any given day.

I've identified three things that can help me do this:
1. Use the "work offline" feature in Outlook if I need to be in my email, but don't want to see new messages. I often find myself stopping what I'm doing when getting new messages while working on a task that arose from an email. It's easy, I think,I'll just dash off a quick response. What I've learned, though, is that dashing off a response is rarely quick. I end up jumping down rabbit holes and before I know it, I've worked on a problem for much longer than I expected. Using the "work offline" feature lets me be in my email, but also lets me address new messages when I'm not distracted.

2. Evernote. Oh how I love thee, Evernote. I love how seemlessly it moves from my work computer to my iPhone to my netbook. I can keep track of everything I want to do, read, blog about, or listen to. For work, though, my favorite feature is how I can make Notes out of emails and flag them as to-dos or as things awaiting a response from other people.

3. My week-at-a-glance worksheet. I made this worksheet that has boxes for each day where I can record meetings or appointments and my "Most Important Thing." The MIT is the one task that I really want to get done and which takes priority over all other tasks. I ususally work on that after checking my email in the morning. I put all of the to-dos from the morning's email in a cleverly named "To do" folder in Outlook. I do my MIT and then go back and work on things in my "To do" folder.

3a. I've started giving each day of the week a designation.
Monday = Plan your week
Tuesday = Electronic stuff
Wednesday = Committee work (non-cataloging work that I need to do)
Thursday = Junky stuff (these are projects that have landed on my desk which are...messy)
Friday = Wrap-it-up day (wrap up projects, update Evernote, send emails, etc.)

These daily designations are on my worksheet and govern how I spend my afternoon. I usually spend the morning answering emails, doing my MIT, and working on some urgent-ish to-dos. So I spend the afternoon working on projects that correspond with my daily designation.

This 3-part system has made all the difference for me. I'm able to do the most urgent task for every day and make sure that no project languishes for more than a week. It's made me more productive and less stressed out.

I think that whatever organizational system you use, it's important to find one that works for you. Having an idea of how you want to spend your time means you're less tied to email and less busy doing work that is important to other people, but not urgent.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Patron-Driven Acquisition, MARC records, and you

2011-02-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be all Ranty McRanty-Pants for just a minute. But I've got a point, so stay with me.

You know how Patron-Driven Acquisition is the Big Thing now in libraries? If you don't, check out this post from June 2010 at Go To Hellman's blog for a thorough, yet entertaining explanation of the situation.

Here's the thing:
In order for a Patron-Driven Acquisition program to be successful, the books have to be found in your catalog. If the MARC records aren't good, they become a barrier to findability.

Here's the other thing:
As far as I can tell, Vendors aren't invested in giving us good MARC records. For them, the records are like one of those gift-with-purchase makeup bags you get when you buy $50 worth of cosmetics at a department store. You pay for access to the e-books and get the records with them. And since the records themselves aren't worth a lot to the vendor, the quality of those records is sometimes sketchy.

The idea that we can put sketchy MARC records in our catalog and expect people to find the books in our Patron-Driven Acquisition program seems misguided at best and seriously problematic at worst. And as libraries are considering implementing Patron-Driven Acquisition programs as part of their collection development budget, it seems like this issue is coming to the proverbial tipping point.

Before you accuse me of wanting "perfect" records, let me be clear. I'm not advocating that vendors give us lovely, hand-crafted records. I'm merely advocating for things like correct titles, correctly formatted authority records for authors, and reasonable subject access.

I know that, in many people's eyes, days are numbered for our friend the OPAC. But for many users, the online catalog is an important tool for finding known items and discovering new resources. To rest an acquisitions model on the shoulders of records that aren't the main concern of the vendor selling them to you does your users a great disservice.

So what can you do? Two ideas:

1.) If your library has a team or committee overseeing the Patron-Driven Acquisition project, volunteer to be on it. Educate your colleagues (in a nice way, of course) about the importance of MARC records as an aid in findability.

2.) Going to a conference? Make time to talk to vendors about MARC records and make quality MARC records a must-have item in any Patron-Driven Acquisition project you pilot.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Great expectations

2011-02-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

When I read Seth Godin's musings about how the space where you do "what you do" impacts what gets done, I immediately thought of the room at MPOW where we have nearly all of our meetings.

We have informational all-staff meetings there. We have committee meetings there. We have brainstorming sessions there. We have big meetings there. We have small meetings there. Basically, if it happens at MPOW, there's a good chance it's happening in this room.

If you ask me to describe this room, I would say this about it's physical attributes: it's well lit with sturdy tables and reasonably comfortable chairs. It has a pretty good AV setup: computer, overhead projector, screen. I would also say that it's also usually always cold.

In the closing lines of his post, Godin says "I think we can train ourselves to associate certain places with certain outcomes."

I think Godin's right. If I'm honest, I associate this particular room with certain outcomes and that colors how I feel when I go there.

An anecdote:
One of the meetings that I attend regularly has met in this particular room, or it's Far Campus equivalent, for as many years as I've been going to the meeting. One day, we when we tried to use the Far Campus room, we found that we had been displaced by another event. The meeting moved to a "lounge" that had no tables and couches and wing back chairs.

You would not be surprised to learn that the meeting had an entirely different feel.

Godin's nugget about places and outcomes made me think about how when we want to innovate, we shouldn't meet in the same room where ideas go to die by committee.

So try a new space or a new place. Or, maybe take a baby step and start by rearranging the furniture in your meeting space. Shake things up and, in the process, change people's expectations about what the outcome will be.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Listen. Just listen.

2010-11-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

There is this meme that is currently circling the part of the Internet that is ruled by librarians: librarians get no respect.

People far and wide have linked to Molly Kleinman's blog post as evidence for their Dangerfield-ian cry.

It stings to read that the perception of librarians in academia is that they are risk averse.

If you're a cataloger, you feel this pain even more acutely when you read the part in Kleinman's piece where the computer science professor called author, title, and date information "useless metadata."

It feels really grim when you put these two arguments together, right?

Risk averse catalogers who are obsessed with metadata.

*shudder*

There has been a call-to-arms that catalogers will get street cred by being more outspoken among their colleagues about what they do. The logic seems (to me, anyway) to be that if we tell people why what we do is important, they'll value the services.

I heartily agree with the idea of getting out of our echo chambers. In fact, I advocate regularly for catalogers to get as much face time with public services staff and end users as possible. How else are you going to learn about the needs of the user?

I think that the best way for us to advocate is to join in the conversations that our front-line staffs are already having.

Maybe it's hard to see how user experience or assessment or information literacy affect you as a cataloger. But think about how much you can bring to these conversations. Who knows the catalog better than you? Who uses it more than you?

I would suggest starting by figuring out what is important to your front-line staffs right now. Maybe it's patron-driven acquisition or scholarly communication. Start by attending a meeting that you've never attended before and listen. Just listen.

Then, educate yourself on these topics so that you can speak intelligently about them with the staff you hope to connect with. You don't have to become an expert on the topic, but at least learn what the core issues are. Even if learning about instructional design won't make you a better cataloger, it will help you make in-roads with the reference librarian you've been hoping to work with.

We, as catalogers, own the perception that people have of us. And we have the tools to change it.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Goals and road maps

2010-11-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

I spent about 30 minutes this morning mapping out my 12 month goals for a committee that I co-chair. And, as boring as it sounds, it felt kind of rewarding. This committee needed both a vision for the future and a road map for the "now," and I'd come up with all sorts of reasons why I didn't have time to do it.

I was tired of having this item languish on my to-do list, so I tackled it this morning. And in less than an hour, I had short-term, middle-term, and long-term goals for the committee.

As an aside: I feel like I could write an entire post about how to-do lists just don't work for me. I know that my life lacks focus and vision, though, when I require one to figure out what projects have parts still moving and what's coming up for me on the horizon.

The act of developing a plan for this committee got me thinking about how I should be doing this very thing for my professional life. I have to write goals as part of my self-evaluation process, and those are very useful. They give me a road map for what projects my supervisor and I have both agreed carry importance.

They're often very specific to my unit, though, and don't always encompass the ways in which I want to stretch myself in any given time period.

I don't know about you, but I get caught somewhere in between the daily minutiae (and not getting overwhelmed by it!) and the pie-in-the sky goals for my career. Rarely do I consider where I want to be, professionally-speaking, in 12 months and then craft a plan to get me there.

When I consider who I want to be at the end of the next 12 months, three questions come to mind:
What topic do I want to learn more about? What skill to I want to possess or hone? What organizations or projects do I want to get more involved in?

I feel like the answers to these questions can help construct a road map by which I can develop professionally.

There's no time like the present, I suppose.

I will reflect on these questions today, and use my answers to construct a professional development road map that exists separately from my self-evaluation goals.

Have a plan? Use it to be awesome! Don't have a plan? Join me in making one today!

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Creating change by directing elephants and riders

2010-08-24T07:44:00.001-07:00

For some reason, I've been reading a lot of "business books" lately. I read Re:Work a couple of weeks ago and I just finished Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

My short review of both books: Both of them were well-written, thought provoking books that will change the way you perceive work and change respectively. Do yourself a favor and check them out, but only if you're ready to have your mind blown and your way of doing things forever altered.

In Shift, the Heaths talk about how our brains are divided into two distinct parts: the rational part (the rider) and the emotional part (the elephant). In order to create change that sticks, you have to make a compelling case for change to both parts of the brain. Additionally, the Heaths assert, you have to shape the path for both the elephant and the rider to be successful.

Change, the Heaths assert, doesn't happen until you can do all three things.

I thought of a lot of ways that I could apply this to my life. Then I started thinking about how this process works (or doesn't work) in libraries.

Despite how often you hear librarians complain about the glacial rate of change in libraries, I don't think that libraries are uniquely dysfunctional when it comes to change.

There area lot of people who have been doing certain things for a long time and are deeply invested in those processes--even when they don't work anymore. This is true in every area of the library, but let's focus on cataloging since this is a cataloging-related blog.

We've been doing the same process for at least 30 years, right? AACR and AACR2 have switched up the game some, as have advances in technology, but we've been producing bibliographic metadata for a while now.

Think about how many things have changed--shelf ready processing, programming languages that allow us to repurpose publisher metadata, web scale discovery systems--and then think about how resistant we, as a group, are to change.

This will never work. We can't do that here. It's too expensive. It doesn't meet our needs.

Sound familiar?

We are so invested in the way of doing things that work for us, that getting the elephant and the rider down the new path seems far beyond what we can do. Even if my elephant and rider say 'let's do this!,' I still have to convince the riders and elephants of everyone else in my department.

Change is hard. I know it, you know it, and the Heath Brothers know it. But that doesn't mean that change isn't worth doing. In fact, I would argue that change is the only way that we, as catalogers, are going to stay relevant.

Take the time to evaluate which changes make the most sense for your organization and then create a compelling argument for making that change. Make sure your argument appeals to both the rider and elephant of those you have to convince.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome

Lifelong learning makes you valuable

2010-08-13T09:49:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Carlen Ruschoff's column entitled "Competencies for 21st Century Technical Services." Published in the Nov/Dec 2007 issues of Technicalities, it's an 'oldie but goodie.'

One of the cornerstones that Ruschoff suggests we need to build upon is the commitment to being lifelong learners in both formal and informal ways.

She writes:
The person who seeks out opportunities to grown and change is truly valuable, indeed. The person who integrates what has been learned into his or her work is priceless!

As the field of cataloging changes(and man, oh man, is the field changing!), the commitment to being lifelong learners increases in importance. We have to stay engaged in the conversation about the future of Technical Services, but we can only do that if we're in-the-know about current and future trends.

The good part is that webinars and other free resources like blogs and freely available journal articles make it easier than ever to stay informed. The bad news, for some anyway, is that this increased access to free information makes it harder than ever to disengage.

But don't just learn new things, put them into action! Change your workflow. Teach a class. Improve your cataloging. Ask your supervisor if you can incorporate a new format into your work.

Showing both the initiative to learn something new and the willingness to incorporate what you learned into your existing workflow raise your stock in your library. You become someone who takes initiative and someone who is not afraid of change.

Up until my current job, I worked exclusively with Dewey. Every job, from the shelving job I had as a teenager to the paraprofessional cataloging job, was in a public library. So when I started my current job in a library that uses LC Classification, I felt more than a little bit lost.

I love my work and I'm good at it, but using LC Classification has always been my weakest skill.

I got a new supervisor recently, and we started setting my goals for my six month evaluation. I told my new supervisor that I really wanted to be more comfortable with LC Classification. I came up with a plan on how I would do that and she signed off on it.

I'm working my way through Learn Library of Congress Classification (for the second time) and doing some copy cataloging to learn more about how LC Classification works. Hopefully, by the end of the six month period, I'll be a LC Classification-using fool.

My point is, there's always something new that you can learn and always some way in which you can incorporate these new skills and knowledge into your work. And doing both of those things make you more valuable to your library.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Gorman's "Drift down" theory and Good Enough

2010-08-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article and came across the "drift down" theory which goes something like this:

Librarians shouldn't do a job that a paraprofessional can do. Paraprofessionals shouldn't do a job that a student can do. No person should do a job that a machine can do.

I was curious about the origins of this "drift down" theory, so I tracked it back to Michael Gorman. Apparently he debuted it in 1982 in a book chapter entitled "A good heart and an organized mind."

Consider for a moment how terror-inducing this is for modern-day Technical Services librarians and then consider how scary it must've been in 1982. Moreover, think about how forward-thinking that must've been.

It seems like everyone these days is preaching how Technical Services Units need to shape up, slim down, and streamline as much as possible. This time of turmoil is a perfect place for the "Drift down" theory to take hold, right? The best way to streamline your bulky Technical Services Unit is to examine everyone's daily tasks and workflows and see where projects and processes can be whittled down and passed on to someone further down the line to do.

In some ways, I am totally on board with this. Why do the costly double checking of reports when you rarely find errors?

There's part of me too, though, that worries that this zeal for streamlining our workflows and processes has the potential to be costly for users.

I am a big fan of Good Enough. I am a fan of considering what else you could be doing with the time you spend making that catalog record 'just so,' when very few people will notice the work you did. I am a fan of uncovering hidden collections and of doing special projects.

But I'm also in favor of not cutting corners when the trade off between staff time saved and value for the end user is too large. Sometimes it makes sense to have a Librarian do what a machine could could do.

The point is, when you're making decisions to streamline your workflows, slash with a pencil and not a red pen. And keep your users at the center of all of these cost-saving and time-saving measures.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Becoming more visible: a 3-step plan

2010-08-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Bradford Lee Eden's article entitled The New User Environment: The End of Technical Services?

You can read it here (you need a username and password): http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/ital/292010/2902jun/toc.cfm

This isn't actually a post about Eden's article, though. What really resonated with me was a quote that he used that came from a 2007 article by Sheila Intner.

She wrote:
Part of the trouble is that the rest of our colleagues don't really know what technical services librarians do. They only know that we do it behind closed door and talk about it in language that no one else understands. If it can't be seen, can't be understood, and can't be discussed, maybe it's all smoke and mirrors, lacking real substance.

I think that Intner points out a real weakness for people in Technical Services. We often end up sequestered in back rooms, removed from both library users and our colleagues. When we do get face time with our front-line colleagues, the burden is on us to show them the impact of our work. It's hard to do if, when we have the chance, we bore our colleagues to death with jargon.

For better or worse, I think it's the job of Technical Services Librarians to make their work seem relevant and important. We need to take away the smoke and mirrors and show the substance of what we do in a way that anyone can understand.

To that end, I offer you a three-point-plan:
1. Be more visible
Attend as many meetings as your schedule allows without neglecting your primary job duties. Does you library have an all-staff meeting? Go! A brown bag lunch series? Go! Use the opportunities to network with your colleagues, especially if your back-room office is at a remote part of the library where no one ever sees you.

Being more visible means that people know your name when you call or email them with a question. It also helps you seem more well-rounded, especially if you attend meetings on topics that don't seem to immediately connect with your work in Technical Services.

2. Create an 'elevator speech' about what you do
Say you sit down next to a Reference Librarian at one of those meetings and you have a few minutes before the meeting starts. If you've taken the time to craft a short explanation of what you do and how you can help that person, the time before that meeting will be more productive than any all-staff email or presentation you might give.

When you're coming up with your elevator speech, lose the jargon. Don't assume that the person you're talking to knows--or cares about--the acronyms that are second nature to you. Your elevator speech should be easy to understand and should focus on how you can make a difference in the life of the person you're talking to.

3. Find an front-line ally who is willing to help you raise your visibility with front-line staff.
In my experience, making a difference in the life of a front-life staff person is the easiest way to forge the kind of alliances that I'm talking about. If you can work a miracle for someone, they'll likely sing your praises to their colleagues.

I think that if you are willing to be visible and to forge relationships with front-line staff, the smoke and mirrors will dissipate and your true value to your organization will shine through.

Be proactive. Be visible. Be awesome.

Technical Services Librarians and the theoretical user

2010-08-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading Rick Anderson's op ed from September 2005 about the Patron-Centered Technical Services Librarian.

Even though it's nearly five years old, I highlighted most of it and kept shouting 'yes! That!' in my head to nearly everything he wrote.

Anderson's premise is that the ultimate goal of libraries should be "to get the best possible information to our patrons as quickly and effectively as possible, and to do in a way that works best and makes most sense for our particular patrons."

He goes on to say that because of the day-to-day tasks that Technical Services staffs perform, it is easy to think that the ultimate goal of librarianship is a well-managed collection.

I suspect that most front-line staff would say something to the effect of 'well...duh' to Anderson's assertion about the ultimate goal of librarianship. I also think that one point that Anderson doesn't make is that Technical Services Librarians often lose sight of this 'ultimate goal' because they rarely see a library user. Being at least one step removed from end users has the potential to cause the kind of myopia that Anderson discusses.

When you work in Technical Services and don't have day-to-day (or even more intermittent) contact with end users, they start to become theoretical. I know that I have the tendency to start guessing what's best for users when I don't spend time with them. And since I'm a librarian and have librarian-strength searching skills, I probably shouldn't being going all Lorax on our users.

Let me tell you a story...
For the past two semesters, I've worked as one of the class librarian for my University's Freshman Composition program. I am one of about 25 librarians from across our library who volunteers to do this. There are subject librarians, paraprofessional staff who are in library school, and Technical Services librarians who offer a few hours of their time over the course of a semester.

Serving as a class librarian is a low intensity way for me to spend a little time with library users. It's not explicitly listed as one of my job duties, but it's some of the most rewarding work I do.

I teach Freshmen how to search for articles and books on their paper topics; they teach me how the user's mind works. It's awesome.

This past Spring, both of the instructors I worked with asked me to have one-on-one sessions with their students. Over the course of two weeks, I spent 30 minutes with each student.

Boy howdy did I learn something about library users!

That face-time with end users was invaluable to me. I learned how they think, how they search, and what they value. They were no longer theoretical but were, instead, real people with real problems.

My point is that Anderson is right about it being easy to lose sight of the fact that our goal should be to get good information to our users in the way that makes the most sense to them.

The good news is that there are concrete ways to stop yourself from falling into that trap:

Offer to work a shift at your library's reference desk, sit in on a colleague's library instruction session, offer to teach an introductory library instruction session yourself.

Be visible. Be proactive. Be awesome.

Amazoogle Fail?

2009-07-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

The May 2009 issue of Computers in Libraries has a really interesting article called "OPACs and the Mobile Revolution."

The author, Samuel Liston, looked at how catalog interfaces from SirsiDynix, Innovative Interfaces, and AquaBrowser display in various kinds of mobile devices. He tested a ~~Crackberry~~ Blackberry, a Windows Mobile device, and an iPhone.

The test in each was:
1. Does the library own a specific book? (Search from the library's main page)
2. Does the library have a current copy available? (Look at the results page)
3. What is the call no. of the copy? (Look at a full-record view for the title in question)

My short (and snarky) summary of this article is two-fold:
1. iPhones do the best job of displaying at each step in the test.
2. If your users don't have iPhones, they're screwed.

I'm no code whiz, but I know that there is a difference between how a full website views on a mobile device and how 'mobile versions' of a site display. I know this because I can use my Windows Mobile-driven phone to check in for flights on Southwest's mobile site, but you couldn't pay me enough to load the full version on my phone.

I'm guessing, based on the article, that the catalog interfaces in question either don't have mobile versions or the mobile versions weren't tested.

The article concludes by showing how awesomely Amazon's website displays on each kind of mobile device.

(Cue the record scratch)

If libraries want catalogs that navigate more like Amazon (and wasn't that the impetus behind NextGen catalogs?), shouldn't we have followed Amazon's lead and looked at the mobile device-aspect of this equation? It seems like users don't want to be tethered to their laptops and they certainly don't want to be tethered to the machines in our libraries. Theoretically, users want to access our resources from their phones. And, according to this article, they can--but they can only do it reliably if they have an iPhone.

It seems like over and over again, libraries have excellent intentions when it comes to implementing "Web 2.0" ideas in a library setting. And it also seems like over and over again, libraries just barely miss the mark.

I haven't done any kind of research of my own beyond the article, so I'd love to be pointed in the directions of some awesome mobile catalog interfaces. I'm sure they're out there! Prove me wrong, library-land!

Another tool in the cataloger's trusty toolbelt?

2008-07-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon OCLC'S Classify by way of The FRBR blog's post about it.

Using any number of identifying characteristics (UPC, OCLC no., ISBN, ISSN or Author and/or Title), a user can identify the most frequent and most recent call numbers for both Dewey and LC Classification for a (for lack of a better word) work.

I got really excited thinking about the implications of a tool like this. I couldn't help but think that, sitting next to Worldcat Identities, that this might be the Next Big Thing for catalogers.

Upon further consideration, I wondered what exactly one might do with Classify and the use I kept coming up with was certainly not what OCLC had in mind.

Imagine being a small library without the funding or resources to purchase a copy of DDC. Imagine being able to use a freely available web resources to assign a call number to something you own.

Given the stranglehold that OCLC seems to have on DDC, this was certainly not the intended use for this technology.

But what if it had been?

In light of this argument for setting classification free, Tim Spalding's idea about Open Shelves Classification doesn't seem so radical after all.

A library's ability to catalog it's collections shouldn't be tied to how much money it has. Period. End of story.

It's one thing to choose not to catalog a collection. It's quite another to not be able to because you don't have the means to do it.

Spalding's OCS (well, our OCS, if you take adhere to the truly open nature of "open" anything) puts part of that decision back into the hands of libraries.

I still think OCLC's Classify is a neat and potentially useful tool. And it has the ability to do a lot of good if it remains freely available. But, if it goes behind the wall of subscription services, it doesn't give us a whole lot more than what we've already got or what we can get by way of worldcat.org.

OCLC's Classify: shiny toy or useful tool?

"How" versus "why"

2008-04-30T07:17:00.001-07:00

Eszter Hargittai, sociologist from Northwestern University, is interviewed in the "Wired Campus" section of The Chronicle of Higher Education. You can find the interview here.

She asserts, in this interview, that students aren't as Web savvy as we believe that they are or as they claim to be.

Hargittai makes an argument throughout this interview that loses me. She seems to be arguing that because users don't know how technology works that they are Web-skills deficient.

I read this interview think that she was trying to make the argument that it's like having keys to a car without ever having had any formal instruction on how to drive.

Students are taking their cars on the road and learning how to drive by successfully (or not) making it to their destination.

A student learns how to navigate the Web through successful (and unsuccessful) searching.

I buy that. What I don't like is that she seems to imply that the job of instructor or librarian is to to teach the student the mechanics of how a particular tool works instead of why a user should use this tool to access information.

It's teaching the user how the car works instead of how to drive it.

Hargittai says "Most students don’t know that wikis can be edited at that moment. Their eyes just open up wide when they find out."

I'm not sure the how of Wikipedia matters much to most users. Maybe it should, but it doesn't.

I think that what's more important is the why, especially when teaching students to look critically at Wikipedia as a reference source.

The how is the mechanics of the car. The why is the Driver's Ed. lesson.

Earlier in the interview, Hargittai also says "Ask your average 18-year-old: Does he know what RSS means? And he won’t."

I appreciate her question, but I think she's asking the wrong one. Instead of asking a student what RSS means, ask him if he uses Bloglines or Google Reader to read some of his favorite blogs. I suspect the answer might be "yes."

Should we spend our time, then, explaining the how of RSS? Or should we teach students the why of RSS: how to use feed readers to subscribe to sources of information that might be useful to them?

Again, it's teaching a user how the car works vs. teaching the user how to drive the car.

It is true that as librarians we might be more tech savvy than the users we serve. We should know how each part of the car works in order to help our students drive it better. But I think the burden of learning how the car works lies on us.

The truth is that even if users don't know how technology "works," they're using it. So, it's our job as librarians to help empower our users to be better consumers of information. We may never move from teaching students the why of a technology to teaching them the how, though we may aspire to.

But why, not how, is where we should start.

Courtesy matters

2007-12-04T08:46:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of subduing my blog subscriptions after not reading any of them for almost a month. I was struck by how much of a curmudgeon I must seem sometimes.

You know how Michael Stephens at Tame the Web puts up pictures of really unfortunate signage?

I was catching up on his blog when I came to an unfortunate sign about cell phone usage and I started thinking. And when I started thinking, that's when the curmudgeony-ness kicked in.

Why is it wrong to ask people to restrict their cell phone usage to certain parts of the library. I understand that allowing people to text message or call the reference desk from the stacks makes us more accessible to users. And I get the if you have an iPhone that you want to be able to play games or read blogs or find the catalog. But what's wrong with asking people, for example, not to talk on the phone in certain areas of the library? Or with asking people to turn off the sound on their phones or, alternately, to use earbuds/earphones.

I feel like Andy Rooney when I start talking about what bothers me. I need you to know that I'm not some techno-phobic luddite who doesn't own a cell phone. I own a cell phone and an iPod and I use them both in public places. But I do my best to put my phone on vibrate if I'm in a place where I know it would bother people if my phone went off--the theater, restaurants, church and, yes, the library.

I understand that signage should be appropriate when dealing with these concerns. Libraries look user-unfriendly if they post signs that are mean-spirited or condescending to users. Libraries should be respectful when making requests of their users and offer them the opportunity to prove their trustworthiness. As a library, I should believe that you can play with your iPod or PSP without being a distraction to others and should encourage you to do so. But what's so wrong with asking that you do those things without bothering the person sitting next to you by "cranking it 11" when you play?

So...tell me, because I'm genuinely curious. What's so wrong with putting up appropriate signage about moving your telephone conversations to a designated place in the library? And what's wrong with asking people to be courteous when using their portable devices in public?

Erin, curmudgeon

Controlling controlled vocabulary

2007-12-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

I have to give a big "thank you" to Nicole at What I learned today for pointing me to the LCSH browser.

Created by Universitätsbibliothek Braunschweig in Germany, this tool allows users to browse LC subject headings. A user can browse through a list of headings or create a "browse" by searching in one of a few indexes. Once a user has found the term he or she desires, the user can take that term into a search in Worldcat.org, Google, LibraryThing, or Open Library.

One thing that has consistently slipped out of my grasp is the understanding of how well (or how poorly) our users understand and use controlled vocabulary. I don't work directly with our users, but I would guess that a novice searcher would have trouble constructing a search that is complex as LCSH strings can get. It's why tagging has always made sense to me, not as a replacement for controlled vocabulary but in addition to it. Given users to the tools to "discover" complex search strings seems like a neat way to give them a way into our library catalog.

I like, also, how a user can connect directly from a search term into a catalog. Theoretically, if your user was signed into his or her WorldCat.org account, clicking through to WorldCat.org would give users a list of items in your library that had that heading.

It's a neat idea, I think.

Why make something more complicated than it has to be?

2007-11-30T07:48:00.000-08:00

Adrienne, from What Adrienne Thinks About That has a fabulous post about how she simplified her library's Summer Reading Program.

You should read it, because it's pure genius.

The key to the changes was based on this logic:
"the more children visit the library, the more likely that they’re reading. Well, DUH, in most cases, that’s going to be because their parents value the library enough to bring them there frequently, and I’m going to wager those parents are also reading to their kids and even reading themselves in their spare time."

So instead of tying the prizes to how many books a kid read, the prizes were given out in the form of weekly drawings. The more times a kidlet came to the library each week, the more times that kidlet could enter the drawings.

Adrienne's library backed this newer, simpler program up with a good collection, strong programming, and free "make-and-take" activities.

This version of the SRP resonated well with me. When I was a college student, I worked for a public library during the summer. I saw kids come into the library, pull a stack of books of the shelf, flip through them, and bring them to me for credit. It always seemed to me like a slap in the face to kids who actually read the books they were trying to get credit for. But, since it wasn't against the rules, I had to give these kidlets the credit for "reading" the books.

Bravo to Adrienne and to her library for helping to change the thinking about what a Summer Reading Program should be.

Bitter is a four (wait...six) letter word

2007-11-29T08:53:00.000-08:00

I started to read this article about Timothy Ferriss, author of The four hour work week, with a hope that it would teach me about unplugging from technology to make me a more productive person, both personally and professionally.

What I ended up with was a bitter taste in my mouth.

Ferriss doesn't unplug from technology. He pays someone else to plug in for him.

Maybe he doesn't use MySpace or Ning or Twitter, but he still receives correspondence electronically. Only he has personal assistants who sift through his messages and only send him the important ones.

I don't know why this article bugs me so much, but it does. I think it's because it makes technology out to be the enemy.

Technology is not, in my opinion, the enemy. We allow ourselves (myself included) to get overloaded by the presentation of too much information. And maybe this is the point that the article was trying to make: be selective with what information you allow into your world. But I thought it missed the mark.

Teaching the masses to fish

2007-11-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

Kate at Loose Cannon Librarian has has a great post about how Library 2.0 is more about people than about technology.

What I love about this post is this:
"stamping our feet and scolding patrons about the quality of their Googling is not going to endear us to them. The 2.0 push has made a huge effort to harness technology to meet people where they are and reshape the library as a facilitator, not an intermediary."

Do you ever have a moment where you jump up and down and high-five the computer screen while shrieking "Yes!" at the top of you lungs like a crazed maniac?

No? It's just me?

Well, okay then...it's just me.

I often feel like it's Librarians vs. Google in a competition for who owns information. Not just who owns information, though, but who owns the right to pass that information on to users. And, it sometimes seems to me that in an attempt to keep all of the information inside our physical and virtual walls that we forget that our users don't care about federated searching or controlled vocabulary as much as they care about getting access to the information they need in a timely manner and without too much headache.

It's a good reminder, then, that libraries should be less about standing between users and the information they need in a specific instance and more about helping users develop the skills to find the information they need in every instance.

Libraries that "get it" often get associated with the label "Library 2.0." But, as Kate points out in her post, it isn't about technology or widgets. It's about connecting people with the information they need to be successful.