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A librarian walked into a bar…

July 9, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

Paula Cole at the House of Blues

Do you remember Paula Cole? She is a singer songwriter known by some for her first big hit, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and by others for the Dawson’s Creek theme, “I Don’t Want to Wait.”  You are most likely not in the rarefied group, those of us who will remember her as the singer who shushed librarians in the House of Blues. Yes, it was a very special occasion for us all when she politely but firmly asked us to shut up and listen to her sing. Since becoming a librarian I have been shushed many times in the library, but never before have I been shushed in a bar. This was without a doubt one of the most memorable moments of this year’s American Library Association’s Annual Conference (ALA.)

There were few Laura Lippmancelebrity sightings at ALA this year, but there was a panel with Baltimore native Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series and winner of almost every crime award possible; the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award.

Grumpy Cat: A Grumpy Book

I did get a sneak peak at Grumpy Cat’s new book, A Grumpy Book. Unfortunately he wasn’t available to sign his book so the question remains, will he sign autographs with his left or right paw?

–Pamela

Filed Under: Musings

Reading this Summer?

June 25, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

Reading on the Beach

Reading on the Beach by Courtney McGough on Flickr

Last weekend I broke down. I bought a Kindle (a Kindle Paperwhite to be exact). Despite my ambivalence towards e-reading, it’s getting harder for me to deny the conveniences of an e-reader. I’m a reader. Although chasing a toddler around the house has but a kink in my reading style, I still try to get in as much eyeball-to-text time as I possibly can. When I go on a trip, I take as much care and effort packing my reading materials as I do packing my clothes. This little 5 x 7 inch device is making upcoming travel so much more convenient and amazingly less stressful. Instead of trying to squeeze in 3-4 different volumes I can just pop that Kindle in my purse and call it a day. It’s fantastic.

Will I stop buying and checking out print books from the library? No way. In fact, as I type, I have two books on my nightstand from the St. Mary’s County Library. The Kindle is just a new addition to my reading lifestyle and a great way to kick off the summer reading season. If you’re interested in getting your summer reading off right, the SMCM Library can help.

Kindles

We have 6 different Kindles for SMCM students, faculty, and staff to borrow loaded with all kinds of fantastic fiction. Want to find out what all the Game of Thrones fuss is about? Read it on our Kindle Fire. Curious about Gone Girl or Kate Atkinson’s latest, Life after Life? Read one on a Kindle Touch. For more about our Kindles and the books on them, check out our online Kindle Guide.

Popular Reading Collection

If you’re more of a print-on-paper kind of reader. We have you covered. Our popular reading collection has a great selection of fiction and non-fiction bestsellers to help you take a break from heavy academic reading. Take a walk up to the 2nd floor and hang a left. In the reading area you’ll find a beautiful water-front view and our awesome Popular Reading Collection.

St. Mary’s County Public Libraries

I wouldn’t be doing my due-diligence as a librarian if I didn’t do a little cross-promotion. We are fortunate to have an amazing public library system in our county. If you haven’t visited one of the branches in Lexington Park, Leonardtown, or Charlotte Hall, please do it. Their book, movie, and music selection is amazing! A few weekends ago I picked up Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers, a copy of the Alabama Shakes album, and Dinosaur vs. The Potty, a board book for my son. They have fun summer programming for kids too!

Summer Book Club

Since you’re doing all this reading anyway, you might as well win a prize or two for your efforts. The SMCM Library’s Summer Reading Program continues this year and gives all SMCM students, faculty, staff, and alumni a chance to contribute book reviews to the Summer Reading Blog and win prizes.

Happy Reading,

Ronnie

Filed Under: Library Collection, Musings, Services Tagged With: books, ebooks, fiction, kindles, popular reading, St. Mary's Public Library, summer, summer reading program

The New York Public Library

June 11, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

As a librarian, I like to visit local libraries when I travel. As a tourist, I like to take photographs. Recently, I visited the main branch of the New York Public Library, in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building on 5th Avenue at 42nd. The building stands as an example of fine architecture and a symbol of the past, present and future of information, learning, and humanity.

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Unarguably, the NYPL has plenty to offer its metropolitan patrons, but it also has something to offer us. The NYPL hosts online resources and image galleries accessible to anyone, anywhere, which are packed with fun multimedia and primary source materials. Take a look.

The Online Exhibitions, which are web sites built to reflect physical exhibits displayed at the NYPL locations, offer a unique collection of images, essays, and even games.

For example:  Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library

The NYPL has digitized over 800,000 images from its collections and made them freely available online in the NYPL Digital Gallery. The images include manuscripts, maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs.

Like this one: a collection of menus!
Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, 1851-1930.

Finally, best of all, the Digital Projects, an assortment of images and multimedia, are just fun and fascinating to review.

Here’s an example:  John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive
A searchable online archive of manuscripts and video interpretations of John Cage’s work, with timeline and brief bio. (It’s a collection of primary sources!)

If you use an item from one of the online resources, don’t forget about intellectual property!

More reasons why the NYPL is so great:

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Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: exhibit, online resource, primary sources

Assessment Is Not a Four-Letter Word

April 15, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

The Terror of Assessment

Did someone say assessment?
Photo credit: Terror by pablokdc on Flickr

If there’s one word that can easily give most college and university faculty the chills, it’s assessment. It typically conjures up notions of standardized tests, bureaucrats meddling in the classroom, and legions of zombie-like students who only know how to answer multiple-choice questions. Kenneth Bernstein’s article on The Washington Post’s The Answer Sheet blog struck a cord with educators frustrated by the K-12 classroom experiences created by the No Child Left Behind Act and served as a warning for those in higher education: Watch out. The bureaucrats are coming for you too.
Indeed there are very vocal politicians riding the wave of economic uncertainty, unemployment, and increasing student loan debt who demand that institutions of higher education and those who teach in them demonstrate their impact on their students and the nation’s economy. Rick Perry’s continuing crusade in Texas is a prime example of government officials delving into the operations of their flagship universities, demanding changes, and even calculating professors worth.

Libraries are no strangers to this kind of top-down assessment. We’ve always been subject to outside scrutiny and have often been asked by library board of trustees, academic administrators, faculty, and the general public to prove our worth. Much of this pressure has resulted in rarely read statistical reports on library use and the dreaded “Return on Investment” (ROI) calculators that were all the rage in public libraries a few years ago.

Given the climate of accusation-based accountability that accompanies most assessment practices, it’s no wonder that assessment has turned into academia’s newest obscenity. Assessment is what gets forced on you and your classroom when tuition bills increase, jobs are scarce, and students can’t write a short paragraph without grammatical errors. Whenever the word is mentioned, people’s postures change, eyes narrow, and hands are ready to write a well-researched rebuttal.

Assessment has been claimed by the powerful, when really it’s a practice that should give educators the power to evaluate student learning in their classrooms and and inform their teaching. In academic library circles, Dr. Debra Gilchrist (Vice President of Learning and Student Success at Pierce College) is the assessment guru. After attending the Association of College and Research Libraries Information Literacy Immersion Program in 2008 and hearing Deb speak, my entire view of assessment changed. Here’s Deb in her own words:

…assessment is much more than gathering data. Assessment is a thoughtful and intentional process by which faculty and administrators collectively, as a community of learners, derive meaning and take action to improve…Assessment is about telling a story–the story of our students’ learning, the story of our instruction program, the story of our contributions to overall student success.
(from A Twenty Year Path: Learning about Assessment, Learning from Assessment in Communications in Information Literacy, vol. 3, no. 2, 2009)

Assessment is not research. The ultimate goal of assessing student learning is not to prove a return on investment, justify an increase in salary or defend a job. That may be where assessment has been taken in the past, but we still have the opportunity to take back assessment and make it our own.

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Value of Academic Libraries Initiative is an excellent example of higher education educators using assessment in the right way: to tell a story about student learning. As a part of this initiative, ACRL was awarded a $250,000 grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to develop the Assessment in Action (AiA) Program, which provides training and support to teams of librarians and campus collaborators (faculty, administrators, etc.) who will undertake an assessment project at their home colleges and universities. The goal of each project is to examine the relationship between the library and student learning.

St. Mary’s was selected as one of the 75 institutional teams to take part in the first cohort of the AiA Program. Our focus will be on librarians’ involvement in the First Year Seminar (FYS) and whether or not it makes an impact on students’ information literacy skill development. We have excellent survey information from the Office of the Core Curriculum on students’ self-reported skill development and faculty’s opinions on students’ skill development which we hope to incorporate into our own assessment plan. One of the recommendations from the AiA Program facilitators was that our assessment project be folded into our everyday workflow so that assessment would be authentic and not burdensome on those involved. We work with FYS faculty every year and hope that some will take an interest in our assessment project this year.

As a member of this first AiA Program cohort, our team will benefit from the assessment knowledge of several ACRL l facilitators, including Dr. Gilchrist. We’re excited to begin this project, and hope that by the end of it we can at least convince a few people in higher education that assessment can be done at a micro-level, rather than be mandated from the top. Our assessment project is ultimately for the greater good. We want to find out if the way we teach information literacy is working and how we can improve our efforts to help our students, which is all assessment should ever really be about: Helping students learn.

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: acrl, AiA, assessment, assessment in action project, first year seminar, value of academic libraries

That’s my book . . . or is it?

April 8, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

Copyrightsymbol

Kirtsaeng v. John Wily & Sons, Inc.
Capitol Records v. Redigi, Inc.

If you are a court watcher, a librarian, or someone who thinks you own a book, DVD, or a digital file after you buy it, then the recent rulings in these two court cases had you sitting on the edge of your seat.

Never heard of them? How about the First Sale Doctrine? Have you ever sold, regifted, or donated a book, DVD, or music CD? Assuming you acquired the copy you own legally, the First Sale Doctrine allows you to do any of those things. It does not allow you to make 100 copies of the work and then sell or donate them. The copyright owner (e.g., publishing or record company) only controls the first sale of the item.

What happened? Supap Kirtsaeng, a student from Thailand, asked friends and family to send him 600 (!) copies of a textbook produced in Asia at a lower cost than the same one published in the US. After they arrived he sold them on eBay for a tidy profit. So the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, sued him claiming that the first sale doctrine does not apply to goods produced outside the U.S.

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The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Mr. Kirtsaeng and that is a good thing. It means that your friendly neighborhood library can loan you a book published in Europe or Asia, that you can buy a car made outside the U.S. and resell it, that a museum really can put a painting on display by Picasso, and that you can resell or give away books or other copyrighted items that you buy while studying abroad.
Now. . . how about if you own a digital music file, an mp3 or file purchased on iTunes? Can you resell it? Redigi thinks you can. Capitol Records sued Redigi, a company that manages selling digital music. Redigi actually has a seller install software that pulls files from a customer’s hard drive so they can’t even access the music they are selling once Redigi extracts it. So what’s the problem? The files aren’t really transferred. They’re copied. And a federal court ruled that the first sale doctrine doesn’t apply to copies.

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Confused yet? Copyright, intellectual property, fair use, first sale doctrine, file sharing. It can get complicated. It’s your right to know and your right (and responsibility) to use your information and images ethically and legally. Know your rights! Check these sources for more information:

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Copyright Basics (U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress)
Columbia University Libraries Copyright Advisory Office

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: copyright, first sale doctrine, intellectual property

You’ve Been Served

February 11, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

Nope, not that world-renowned SMCM Library service.  I mean the legal kind.

What would happen if didn’t think that our service, or anything about us, was that great?  And what if you posted in your blog that you thought the SMCM Library sucked because we had hardly any books, or you didn’t like the candy choices. I’m not sure there would be much we could do about it.  We might not like it, but you have a right to your opinion.

But take the situation of Dale Askey, Associate University Librarian at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.  In 2010, when he was a librarian at Kansas State University, Askey wrote a blog post that criticized Edwin Mellen Press, a publisher of scholarly books which it sells to libraries.  He did not say they sucked.  But he did write some things about their prices and the types of books they publish, and he offered his professional opinion about the value of books from this publisher compared with others.

You can’t find the blog post very easily any more.  Can you guess why?  Because Edwin Mellen Press is suing Askey for more than $1 million in damages, and suing Askey and his current university for $3.5 million for libel and damages.

Exactly what is libel?  Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession.

So – if you buy a product or services from a company and you aren’t happy with them, AND your write a blog post telling people why you think that company’s products are substandard (and you use some data, not just a rant), can you get sued?  Maybe.  Is that fair?  What about your right to free speech?

What is likely to happen in this case?  Mellen lost a similar case in 1993.  This one will be argued in a Canadian court.  Librarians, publishers, and universities will be watching carefully.  And even if Mellen loses librarians and authors may be more reluctant in the future to express their views (lawsuits are really expensive even if you win).

Do you express your views and ideas on a blog?  Could your words drive someone to sue you?  Would that stop you?  Think about it.  And if you’d like to read Dale Askey’s original blog post, here it is (and if you don’t know about the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine, check it out).

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: blogging, freedom of expression, libel, publishers

Author, Author!

February 6, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

Have you ever had the chance to meet your favorite author? Been fascinated by an author you’ve never heard of based on a book talk? This year while attending the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting I attended a number of author panels. To kick off  the conference I saw Ruth Ozeki (My Year of Meats and A Tale for the Time Being – March 2013), Terry Brooks (The Shannara Trilogy) and the hilarious Gregg Olsen, (true crime and Young Adult fiction). I’d never heard of Olsen before and am not planning to read his books, but he’s a great speaker.

Ruth Ozeki and Terry Brooks

Ruth Ozeki and Terry Brooks

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There was a panel for new authors and their books (sorry, no pics) including, Tara Conklin, with The House Girl, Dina Nayeri with  A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea and Margaret Wrinkle author of Wash.

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Amity

Amity

I finished the conference with a book talk. Jacqueline Winspear is on the far left with her book, Leaving Everything Most Loved and the panel is watching Amity Gaige, as she introduces her latest book, Schroder.

Of course not all author sightings occur in formal settings. Here is a sample of author sightings from previous conferences. Can you match the author to their book?

1) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part–Time Indian
2) The Shining
3) When It Happens to You
4) A Game of Thrones
5) It’s a Big World, Little Pig!
6) The Joy Luck Club

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— Pamela Mann

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: ALAMidwinter13, authors

Reading is . . .

January 14, 2013 by Melissa Rushing

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project asked questions about people’s reading habits and about where they live.  Any guesses about what they found out?  Do city mice read more than country mice?  Do lots of people have library cards and still think libraries are important?  Why do people say they read?

Well, 78% of Americans over the age of 16 say they read a book in the last year, and 79% of those asked said they read for pleasure.   That’s 80% of the urbanites who responded and 71% of the rural residents.  Americans read, on average, 17 books last year.  That’s more than one a month.  Pretty good numbers.    About 58% of everyone surveyed has a library card and 69% say the library is important to them.

At SMCM 100% of the community has a library card (!).  How many of you would say the library is important to you?  How many of you read a book last year not for class or research, but for fun, to learn something, or to keep up with the news?  Do you read a newspaper?  Do you read?

Here a few more of those interesting numbers.  19% of those asked own an e-reader, and 93% of those asked read a print book in the past year (22% read an ebook and 14% read in both formats).   And the study showed that age, education, and household income may determine your reading habits, not where you live.

So – what does it all mean?  Maybe it means that formats matter, that libraries need to be sure we can offer opportunities to read in print, online, and using e-readers (and audio devices).  Maybe it also means that we should be thrilled that people are reading, and they get why public libraries are so important.  You may not know this but many librarians are feeling pretty insecure these days.  Warnings of our impending obsolescence are everywhere and have been around for a long time [“The Obsolete Man,” Twilight Zone,  June 2, 1961].

I think books, libraries, and librarians probably don’t have to worry too much about being unloved or obsolete any time soon.  We want people to read, not because it keeps us employed.  Because reading can help you find out how something works, or why we do the things we do, where we came from, where we might be going, or just let you escape from it all for a while.

How do you read?  What do you read?  Why do you read?

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: libraries, PewInternet, reading

What Do You Want to Know?

November 26, 2012 by Melissa Rushing

Hmmm . . . a blog post for the end of the semester.  What shall it be?  Librarian’s words of wisdom? “Don’t start your paper the night before it’s due.” [see under:  Colbert] “We probably can’t get that article for you by tomorrow.” “SAVE your work!”

Other advice to get you through the next few weeks? “Be sure to get enough sleep.”
“Don’t take NoDoz.” [yes – they still make that]

I think I will pass along a question that one of my library school professors asked at the end of each final exam in his classes . “What do you want to learn next?” David Carr would ask.  Not “show me how much you learned in the past 15 weeks.”  Not “what classes do you need to complete your requirements”.  He asked, “What do you want to know?”

So while you are gearing up for those final papers and exams, take some time to think not just about where you have been but where you are going. How has what you have learned in a class this semester changed you? How have the people you have met, or the lectures, concerts or athletic events you have attended changed you? What new questions do you have? What do you want to know?
And where will you look for answers? Maybe in a classroom, perhaps in the library, or could be sitting outside watching a sunset with friends.
Just remember that the real reason to review, reread, and rewrite is not just to focus on the last 15 weeks, but also to think about the next 15 and the 15 after that.

What do you want to know?

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: finals week, knowledge, learning

Beyond Googling on the Job

November 5, 2012 by Melissa Rushing

Information Seeking Behavior image

Information Seeking Behavior from overlobe on Flickr

We’re big fans of Project Information Literacy here at the SMCM Library. For those of you not familiar with PIL, it’s a nonprofit research organization led by Dr. Alison Head that seeks to understand the research habits of college students and recent college graduates. From the PIL website:

Our goal is to understand how early adults conceptualize and operationalize research activities for course work and “everyday life” use and especially how they resolve issues of credibility, authority, relevance, and currency in the digital age.

A few weeks ago PIL released a new report: How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the Workplace. It’s a part of a series they’re calling The Passage Studies, which examines the research behaviors of young adults at major transitional moments in their lives. In this new study, PIL researchers investigated employers’ expectations for new hires’ abilities to solve information problems and new hires’ information seeking practices and accompanying challenges on the job.

The big take-aways from this report:

  • We aren’t doing our students any favors by giving them highly structured research assignments.
    Although I think we’d all agree that students in lower level courses need the kind of practice that structured research-based assignments provide, at the upper-level students do need to practice some higher-order thinking skills. Telling senior students to include a set number of certain kinds of sources in a specific length of a research paper doesn’t prepare them for the the kind of open-ended, problem-based research they will be doing in their future jobs. Recent grads routinely mentioned that on the job, research tasks were assigned with little structure or direction but with a much tighter deadline.
  • Recent college grads experienced difficulty synthesizing information.
    One interesting finding from this report was that new hires with master’s degrees were, in the eyes of their employers, better able to solve work-related information problems because they took a “deep learning approach” which included “researching and understanding patterns, relationships, and implications of a particular issue or topic.” Employers did discuss that often new hires wanted to find an answer as quickly as possible, instead of taking the time to explore different research avenues and make connections between the information they found.
  • Research is social, but recent grads are often used to forging ahead alone.
    Employers were surprised at new hires’ attitude of “computer as workspace,” their reluctance to engage in team-based research, and their inability to do simple “old-fashioned” research tasks like picking up the phone to call someone for information. Recent grads also discussed having to learn to rely on coworkers or supervisors as research resources when they were so used to starting at a computer to fill an information need.

This report is a fascinating read. It’s definitely worth taking a few minutes go over it on your lunch hour.

Happy reading!

 

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With: college grads, information literacy, PIL

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