Whither Reference? At ACRL, Skepticism Persists
The future of reference service in academic libraries has been a hot topic at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) national conferences for some time now, and this year's conference was no different, with librarian panelists at one session expressing skepticism over its future. "We've tried chat, roaming, deskless, and walkie-talkie reference, all with modest success," said Bill Miller, director of libraries at Florida Atlantic University. "Now we're IM, MySpace, Friendster, Second Life," all "laudable efforts." but reference service still faces an inevitable decline. If there is reference service in a decade, Miller warned, "it's going to look like the Avis desk at 3 a.m." in an airport.
"It's easy to get so close to something we can't see its dimensions," suggested Jerry Campbell, president, Claremont School of Theology, author of the influential 1992 article "Shaking the Foundations of Reference." "The kind of revolution we're in is not over," he said, urging attendees to get outside their comfort zones and follow the rapidly-changing web. "We could've created a Google… if we had the will and the foresight," he said, but librarians as a group are mostly change averse. "Some people would have you believe Second Life is the future of reference," observed Brian Mathews of Georgia Tech, aka The Ubiquitous Librarian. "All I've seen is other librarians." He was more positive about MySpace, "which allows us to repackage our content into a framework people can understand," and Facebook, which allows him to target reference help to people in specific courses.
One health sciences librarian in the audience talked about the appreciation students express for reference help, and said there will be reference librarians in a decade. Several in the audience clapped. "That's passionate, but wrong," Campbell countered. Another member of the audience criticized the term "reference." "I'm not sure my users want 'reference'; they want 'help' or 'assistance.'" Panel chair Jim Rettig, University Librarian of the University of Richmond, agreed, "It's our term, not our users' term." Mathews followed up: "I think 'Help Desk' is fine."
With CyberZedShed, ACRL Captures (and Shows off) Accelerating Technology
Academic librarians are doing some great things with technology, and at the recent Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) National Conference, presenters showed off their tech-savvy at the CyberZedShed, where 20-minute presentations focused on the innovative use of new technologies and got rave reviews from attendees. (Podcasts are here.)
What kinds of innovations were presented? Library staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), for example, detailed their I-Go Library Toolbar, a companion to the Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browsers, which goes beyond typical library toolbars that only target the OPAC. The UIUC library toolbar offers quick access to departmental library websites, the Ask a Librarian web page, the library catalog, online research resources, the campus phonebook, and, of course, Google. "They're not smart enough to include us," joked the library's Lisa Hinchliffe. "We're smart enough to include them." The toolbar was installed on all terminals at the library, she notes, because students don't necessarily go to the homepage; similarly, students tend not to bookmark the library homepage on their personal computers, so the toolbar is helpful.
The toolbar has become popular; besides marketing it in library instruction classes and links on the library web site, a Facebook ad costing just $50 generated more than 600 downloads, as happy students forwarded the idea to their friends. Other libraries wishing to incorporate a similar toolbar can customize UIUC's Firefox version; the Internet Explorer toolbar, however, requires a small investment of money ($75 for Toolbar Studio, in UIUC's case) and some staff time.
Reference may be lagging, or is it? Michelle Jacobs of the University of California, Merced, was in Baltimore, but she was using her Cingular smartphone to remain in contact with students back in California. On her campus, all librarians use mobile phones; they have no stationary phones. Jacobs said she walks the stacks to be able to help students; when she needs to search on the Internet, she unfolds a Bluetooth wireless keyboard and she's in business: "I'm a walking reference desk." Students, she said, "love seeing that you're not bringing them back to the desks." While Jacobs is the first librarian at her library using a smartphone specifically for reference, the library has ordered two more for student assistants.
Would you believe video IM reference via webcams in the library and at a remote kiosk? Yes, Char Booth of Ohio University suggested it has much promise, and some pitfalls. "It offers a means of more personal interaction: putting a face to a service," she said. "Then again, "you need to know where the mute button is." She said that such a service has to be marketed as "talk to a librarian" rather than let it appear that the librarians are monitoring students at the library's remote reference kiosk. She also noted that actual eye contact is impossible while using a webcam and typing, so librarians should ditch any hope for a traditional reference interview. Student reaction, she said, has been "mixed but positive." Steven Bell of Temple University, hosting the CyberZedShed predicted, "In two years, every library will be doing video reference."
Cost/Benefit: Quality Counts with Academic Administrators, Research Finds
What does your administration's financial officer want to see from your library? Data that shows good return on their considerable investment, according to Leigh Estabrook, dean of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) program and director of the Library Research Center. Estabrook interviewed over 20 Chief Academic Officers about their library perceptions and presented her findings at the ACRL National Conference in Baltimore, noting that administrators are less concerned with cost than the quality of the campus library, how central it is to faculty and students, and how much demand it gets. That's not to say that money doesn't matter. Administrators are aware of rising costs and the need to respond to them, Estabrook reported, provided that librarians have the right answers to their questions.
So what will help you help your administration show you the money? Among things administrators want from their librarians: "collaboration with departments" (especially IT), not complaints; benchmarking of library quality and use; demonstrated interest in cost savings via collaboration and creative ideas; and a proactive, problem-solving attitude. Of course, librarians should have a good answer to the question "Why do we need a library when we have Google?" Above all, Estabrook stressed, librarians should able to provide data that illustrates the library's value, such as studies of students, and any independent research that points to the library's importance.
Full "Swing": Ohio State Libraries Adjust to Life Without Thompson Library
With Ohio State University's (OSU) main Thompson Library, the centerpiece of a massive $106 million renovation and construction plan, now closed until 2009, LJ recently got an up-close and personal tour of OSU's interim plan. It's a remarkable effort involving a massive move, a complex reorganization, and a host of new services, as well as new roles for librarians and a network of interim "swing" spaces. In all, 1,076,500 volumes, as well as most of the microforms and map collections, have been moved and are now available at a warehouse facility (Ackerman Road) about two miles from campus that serves as the main library. Another roughly 61,400 volumes of reference and periodicals, microforms, as well as the DVD and VHS collections, went to a newly renovated Sullivant Hall, on the edge of campus, which also houses a new learning commons. As for staff, 171 librarians moved out of Thompson, 136 of them to the Ackerman facility.
How's it all working out? For students, it's taking a little time to get into the swing of the swing spaces. Few students take the free bus trip out to the Ackerman facility, while greater numbers are flooding the OSU Science and Technology library, the library closest to Thompson and to student classes. It has seen a 30 percent jump in gate count. "We'd obviously like to have students in the Ackerman library and have it be a bustling, vibrant place," says OSU collections librarian Dona Straley about the lack of students in the main swing space. "But we knew going into this that the physical location meant that students would have to plan a trip out rather than just dropping in between classes."
However, the student use pattern can't be blamed on the distance. OSU librarians now deliver circulating materials from Ackerman to campus locations three times a day for patron pickup, and Sullivant's new learning commons is bustling. For a detailed glimpse at library life at Ohio State, and how OSU librarians and students coping during the transition, check out Pride of the Buckeyes in the April 1 issue.
NYPL Names 14 Fellows to Center for Scholars & Writers
New York Public Library's (NYPL) Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, has announced its ninth annual group of fellows, a rich class that included two Pulitzer Prize winners; four MacArthur Foundation fellows; writers from Chile, England, the Philippines, and Wales; a photographer; and five young novelists. This year the program had 237 applicants from 14 countries to choose from, winnowed down by a selection committee drawn from a range of academic and creative fields. Fellows will enjoy a nine-month experience that includes a stipend, office space on the second floor of NYPL's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and full use of all the library's physical and electronic resources.
The incoming class includes Louis Menand, the Anne and Robert Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard, who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Metaphysical Club, and will be working on an intellectual history of the Cold War. Art critic Mark Stevens, who won a Pulitzer for de Kooning, An American Master (with Annalyn Swan), will begin research for a biography of Francis Bacon at the library. The five young novelists are Colson Whitehead, Nell Freudenberger, Owen Sheers, Jennifer Vanderbes, and Han Ong. The photographer Camilo Vergara will create a Visual Encyclopedia of the American Ghetto as both a web site and a book based on his years of documenting America's inner cities. Prize-winning journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family, will address the world of stand-up comedy. Gaby Wood, the New York correspondent for the London Observer, will write on science, superstition, and the work of a photographer-detective in 19th-century Paris. Joanne Freeman, a professor of American History at Yale, will write about violence in Congress before the Civil War.
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