Wednesday, May 23, 2007

WHERE IS THE LINE?

Here is an interesting article on legal reference and not giving legal advice:

Where is the Line? Legal Reference Service and the Unauthorized Practice
of Law (UPL)



--Andrea

Thursday, May 17, 2007

School for Scanning

The A-Z of Creating Digital Collections

From May 1-3 Greg and I had the privilege of attending the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s School for Scanning in Minneapolis. This training was co-sponsored by the Midwest Art Conservation Center and had participants and presenters from libraries and cultural and corporate institutions throughout the U.S. including the Anchorage Municipal Libraries, Harvard University, the Atomic Testing Museum, U of M, and more. Over the three day period we attended many interesting sessions including The Future of Digitization, Digitizing Text, Digitizing Photos, Planning Digital Projects, Funding Digital Projects, Copyright Issues, and Digital Preservation.

One session Greg and I felt that was especially useful was Outsourcing and Vendor Relations . In this class we learned about the distinct advantages and disadvantages of doing scanning in-house and outsourcing scanning projects. An interesting point was that all scanning projects have in-house components as staff always needs to be part of the process in order to set standards and make decisions. Outsourcing part or even most of a scanning project isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it lets you more effectively manage your time and resources by letting others help. You need to know what you’re getting into before your run out to buy a scanner. We also learned about how to work around the challenges of outsourcing, how to work with vendors, and how to evaluate your scanning project.

Here are some additional interesting and important points from other sessions we attended:

1) Everything starts with the audience, both current and future. Get to know your users. What do they want to see? What do we want users to be able to do with our digital content? How do we accomplish this? What sort of context, interpretation, and services will we provide with this digital content? How will we measure success?

2) The best digitization projects start with the conviction that they will be worthwhile. Know your institutional capabilities. Have a plan for sustaining the project after the grant is completed. Grants don’t sustain projects.

3) Planning is essential. Plan before you budget. Be detailed and clear. Review your plan, you may need to revise. Keep checking it throughout the project.

4) Scanning advice: Do it once, do it right. Scan materials at the highest resolution you can, depending on the items’ priority, funding available, etc. Capture as much metadata (descriptive material) as you can. Save unedited masters in several places and ways. Avoid making decisions based on current technology, think of the future and try to have materials which can be refigured for future/new audiences.

5) Be aware of long term trends affecting the users of archival materials and monitor the health of suppliers. Sometimes we have no control over the technology we use and institutions may have to change for economic, environmental, or financial reasons (the company is not making enough money to sustain the production of film or video tapes, etc.). The conservation community is not large enough to sustain producing certain materials.

6) Selection criteria for materials for digitization: Should materials be digitized (is there sufficient content value and viewer demand, how do they relate to the collection policy and other digital resources), may they be digitized (who owns the legal rights), can they be digitized (is there the necessary infrastructure, what is the physical nature of the materials, is there the technical expertise, do the items have enough organization, description, and arrangement)


--Erin

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

We Get By With a Little Help from our Friends

How Participation and Contribution from Patrons and Staff Enhances One Public Library’s Website and Builds Community

Presented by Marilyn Turner from the Hennepin Public Library System at the Enhancing Quality Staff Symposium May 2007

I found this to be the most exciting workshop that I attended that day. Hennepin County Public Libraries really focus on providing quality reader’s advisory services. They took this value and added it to their website. First in 2001, the staff began adding the booklists that they create to the website. Currently there are about 100 staff members who create and maintain about 250 booklists as part of their job responsibilities. Also in 2001, kids were able to submit online book reviews from the HCPL website. Online reviews for adult materials began in 2002.

Staff found that the booklists were helpful for themselves and also started creating subject guides with links to the catalog, events, websites, etc. The subject guides allow staff to really focus in one area while allowing other staff members to keep up on the subject easily. A couple of factors that add to the success of the website is that the staff rely on each other for the information and to give feedback, the subject guides and booklists are high priority for the library system, staff have time to work on them, and staff have tools on the intranet for submitting the information.

In 2007 the HCPL embraced Web 2.0 on its website and began allowing comments on any title in the catalog. The public now enriches the site by adding comments and participating in the discussions about items in the catalog. So far there have been over 5700 comments added to the catalog. These go up immediately and are viewed by staff as they come in. An email is sent automatically to a select few who check the content of the review. Users are also able to create their own booklists to share with others. Over 200 costumer booklists have been contributed so far.

The HCPL website also has RSS feeds for upcoming releases by certain authors or for individual searches so that patrons can be notified of new items of interest in the catalog or on the website.

It was really exciting to hear about the website and to see the results. I think that libraries can do so much more in terms of supporting the online expectations of library users and this website is an example of good web 2.0 uses for libraries. It takes commitment from the library as a system, the staff contributors, and public participation. And a lot of trust is required from everyone.


--Katrina

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Minnesota Reflections: the Digitization Project of the Minnesota Digital Library


Presented by Keith Ewing from Saint Cloud State University at the Enhancing Quality Staff Symposium May 2007

Minnesota Digital Library Project
is a collaboration of the University of Minnesota libraries, Minitex, and the Minnesota Historical Society which brings together historic images from museums, libraries, and historical societies from around the state to create the image database, Minnesota Reflections. Minitex oversees the management of the project, while the U of M provides the scanner and server space. The local organization keeps the image and provides the metadata for indexing. This database of images includes 32 historical societies, 12 academic libraries, 10 special libraries, and 3 public libraries so far. SPPL has just begun collaborating on this project and materials from the St. Paul collection are being considered for the digital collection.


--Katrina

Go Local to Reliable Health Information and Health Services in Minnesota

Presented by Karla Block from the U of M Health Sciences Library at the Enhancing Quality Staff Symposium May 2007

My Health Minnesota – Go Local is a collaborative project of the U of M Health Sciences Library and the National Library of Medicine. The project utilizes the health information in MedlinePlus and links to local health care services. For instance, someone looking for information on Parkinson’s disease on Medline Plus will also see an option to find local services relating to that health issue. Some of the services represented in Go Local include hospitals, clinics, physicians, nursing homes, support groups, health departments, health screening, pharmacies, alternative therapies, and more. It will also link back to Medline Plus for more information. The database will be launched in July 2007.


--Katrina

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Best from the Web

Over the last month, the Dupage College has had a webcast available from their website of a webinar that was offered in April. While I was unable to watch the entire webinar - "Best from the Web", one thing struck me that should be passed along to all of our reference staff. The Dupage staff has started a wiki of recommended websites, some of which were new to me, and I hope they will be helpful to others. Please take a look...I promise it will be well worth your time!
The URL is:
http://soaring.pbwiki.com
Happy hunting!
Doris

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Customer Service on the Spot: Techniques for Tough Situations

Stevie Ray is a consultant, actor, writer, and more who uses his experiences and study of humor to advise others on how to be more effective communicators. At Tuesday’s session (5/8) he recommended “whole brain” activities as way to keep all areas of one’s mind working, not just those that perform the functions we’re used to performing. This can help people be alert and ready to deal with new and unpredictable situations. We exercised our whole brains by doing a variety of activities including “throwing” words to each other and having the other person respond with the first word they thought of. We practiced trying to explain things to someone who has a different point of reference by pretending that one person was from Colonial times and the other was from modern times and trying to explain what a “car” or “airplane” was for.

Some important and interesting points from the presentation are:

1) Communication is visual as well as verbal. Try to look confident when you speak. Try to believe that you can help so that this belief is reflected in your body language and tone of voice and expressiveness when you talk. Ask someone to watch you when you talk to others and give you feedback on how you look and sound.

2) Trying to keep things light can be helpful. Laughter improves comprehension.

3) People respond to emotion more than facts. Anger comes out of fear and frustration. Sometimes an angry person coming into the library just wants to be heard and agreed with. Recognizing and acknowledging their feelings and telling them, if appropriate, you’re sorry they have to deal with this frustrating situation and you want to help them through it can be a way to defuse their tension.

4) Many times we talk to people and say “Yes..but (or however, etc.)”. This negates anything positive we’ve said or anything they are trying to contribute. People who say “no” to everything are perceived negatively. Mr. Ray suggested saying “Yes, and..(or if, so)” and then explaining the conditions which must exist to make this happen. He also said that saying “We tried that once already and it didn’t work” wasn’t a very helpful thing to say. Mr. Ray suggests saying “We tried this and it didn’t work. Tell us about your idea and we’ll see how it might work”.

5) If people don’t understand, try to explain it another way. Follow the follower-that is find out what the other person wants to know, make sure you’re answering the question. “Not to understand another man’s thinking, doesn’t make him confused.”

6) Try to think metaphorically (blending ideas, building off what someone already knows in order to connect them to the thing you’re trying to explain) not definitively (“yes” vs. “no”). Building off what someone knows helps build understanding and prevents alienating the customer by making him/her feel he/she doesn’t know anything.


Erin