Asking undergrads what they think...

As Diane and I have mentioned in previous posts, Duke University Libraries staff are committed to improving our users' experiences, and we all know that undergraduates make up a larger portion of this patron base.

This summer, Associate University Librarian for Collections and User Services Bob Byrd and I worked together to create a forum specifically intended for getting feedback about library services and resources from upper-level undergraduates (first-year students also have a newly created board for this purpose).

We put out a call for applicants and were pleasantly surprised by the number of students interested in serving on the inaugural Undergraduate Advisory Board. Bob and I worked with two of our colleagues to select ten students representing a range of disciplines (from engineering to philosophy and everything in between), both on-campus and off-campus interests and all three classes (sophomores, juniors and seniors).

The board met for the first time in late September and has continued to meet every other Wednesday this fall. Since September, members of the board have started a blog, posted signs in Perkins/Bostock asking for feedback about the Libraries, helped extend hours of operation for food service in the von der Heyden Pavilion during exams, investigated adding healthy food options to vending machines in the libraries, and explored jazzing up stairwells in Perkins/Bostock with literary and motivational quotations (look for updates this spring!).

In addition to spearheading projects, the board has provided valuable insights on library resources, services and web interfaces -- UAB member Shining Li attended a Duke University Libraries bloggers meeting in October to share her perspective on the libraries' use of Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools; and just last night, UAB members provided feedback on the recently updated Libraries homepage and suggested ways to draw more applicants for the Friends of the Libraries' Book Collectors Contest.

We'll resume our biweekly meetings in January, and members of the board welcome your input on projects that are currently under way. They're also ready and willing to provide feedback on library policies and procedures...all we have to do is ask.

Practicing Gratitude

Thanksgiving has put me in mind of the great benefits of practicing gratitude. As a recent blog post noted:

Did you know that human brains are hard-wired to scout for trouble? Back in caveman days, or even the wild wild west, continuously scanning your surroundings for trouble was a useful way for us to be hard-wired, since danger and life-threatening situations loomed around every corner.

But now that we live in the [comparatively] safer 21st century, this negativity-seeking hard-wire insures that we emphasize the troubles and worries in our life, rather than focusing on the good things. And while there are always plenty of bad things that go on in the world, there are also abundant good things.....if we remember to slow down long enough to pay attention.

So let me enumerate what I’m grateful for, library instruction wise, this year:

Duke's I&O staff:  I’ve got the best instruction staff around (no contest), and I’m grateful to Emily Daly and field experience students Alex Gallin and Jake Vaccaro for contributing to the success of the library’s instruction program.  We have had terrific field experience students and think the world of the UNC SILS program. Thanks, Stephanie Peterson and Jeff Pomerantz!

Support of library administration:  Lynne O’Brien is a wonderful boss; reporting to Lynne enables us to work closely with our Center for Instructional Technology colleagues (here's to you, CIT folks!).  That has given us a better understanding of teaching and learning at Duke.  We appreciate how the library’s Executive Group demonstrates interest and support for instruction.

Climate of innovation: Amazing and innovative things happen here at Duke, due in no small part to an organizational climate that encourages and values experimentation.  Interesting and important changes can happen quickly here, and our users benefit.

Library staff who do instruction at Duke:  My colleagues across the library value instruction,  and demonstrate a commitment to providing interesting and informative instruction to library users.  The 30+ library staff who deliver instruction here deserve a lot of praise for their efforts -- thank you!

The larger instruction community:  We’re fortunate to be located in an area where we have many talented library colleagues across the TRLN institutions and regionally.  The Duke Libraries provide encouragement and support for us to be involved nationally and internationally, so we can learn from others and share the good work that happens here.

As I look forward to celebrating two years at the Duke Libraries, I have a lot of reasons to practice gratitude.

WorldCat Collection Analysis

As part of our field experiences, Alex and I have had the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with WorldCat Collection Analysis, an online tool from OCLC which Duke subscribes to. The idea behind WCA is to use WorldCat data to provide a straightforward way to examine a library's holdings and to assess how they compare to those of other institutions.

One use of WCA is to get a sense of the makeup of a library’s collection, and how it has evolved over time. Running a “My Library” analysis produces results like these:

This analysis shows home library titles organized by subject category and publication date (so Duke Libraries hold 415 books on anthropology with a publication date of 2005). Clicking on the numbers will bring up a list of the titles themselves.

While this search only goes back to 1990, it’s possible to extend the analysis back to books published before 1500, and the arrow icons to the left of each subject category allow the search to be narrowed by subcategory:

It seems that Duke Libraries are acquiring works on aquaculture at the rate of around 50 titles a year.

In addition to analyzing the holdings of a single library, WCA can be used to compare the holdings of multiple libraries, via its “Peer Comparison” analysis:

This search is a top-level comparison of Duke’s and MIT’s holdings. “Unique” items are those held only by the specified library, while “Overlap” items are held by both libraries. This analysis can be broken down by subject category, and it’s also possible to compare the home library with multi-library groups.

Another use for WCA is to analyze interlibrary loan activity: it gives access to data both on items loaned and items requested. These searches are broken down by subject category, and can be viewed by number of requests or by request date (as far back as 2003). These are some results from an analysis by request frequency:

This shows that Duke users have requested three music-related titles more than 10 times since 2003--two are periodicals and the other is Noise: The Political Economy of Music.

Alex and I are still exploring WCA's possibilities, but it seems like a useful tool for understanding the dimensions of a library’s collection and how it stacks up to its peers. For those interested in learning more about WCA, we'll be offering an informal, hands-on workshop on Monday December 6th from 2-3 in Bostock 023.

Data Visualization is Pretty

Even before library school, as a paraprofessional working in a library, I felt like I’d been hearing about “data visualization” and libraries for years. When I hear about it, sometimes it’s in that irksome, next-to-meaningless way (“Data visualization is something that is increasingly important to the librarian’s toolkit”); sometimes it’s in a provocative way (“Visualization is the only way to show the true beauty of statistics”); sometimes it’s in an offhand/amusing way (“Data visualization tools make things pretty”); and, yes, sometimes it’s in a guilty way (“Oh, yeah, um, data visualization. I really gotta learn about that... sometime”). Because I’ve been hearing and reading about it for so long, I feel like I’m way behind my colleagues in exploring the wide world of data visualization, even if that still means being ever-so-slightly ahead of some university library users. Recently, I decided to just jump in and see what I could handle. And it turns out, there are actually a handful of fun, potentially useful things that don’t require much specialized technical knowledge (basically, I don’t know Ajax, or Flash, or Silverlight, and so if I can figure this stuff out, so can you!).

Over the past two years, at the suggestion of a wise teacher, I’ve peeked at several Edward Tufte books (Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, and, Beautiful Evidence), which provide nice frameworks and principles for how we can look at, analyze, and use data. While working at NYU’s Bobst Library, I started to explore Hans Gosling’s Gapminder (which has been featured numerous times on TED Talks, and is based on Trendalyzer software that Google acquired in from the Gapminder Foundation in early 2007). Gapminder allows you to visualize primarily global health and demographic data in bubble graphs over time and by country. Easy-to-use and positively addictive, I think this is a great “entry-level” tool because it makes clear why you would even want to use visual display. It is also a great way to present global health information. Very cool since now I’m assisting Diane Harvey, who is the Librarian for Global Health!

After spending long stretches of time manipulating graphs on Gapminder and making sure that everyone I knew had heard of it, I was primed to see the attraction of data visualization; I started seeing examples all over the place. From Twitter apps to OKCupid’s Trends blog to the Visual Complexity project, data visualization seems to be everywhere these days! Last week, I Googled “data visualization for librarians” and got some really insightful hits to make sense of it all, including lots of work done by Triangle-area librarian, Hilary Davis, Associate Head of Collection Management for Engineering and E-Science Collection Management at NCSU Libraries.

In our last department meeting, Diane Harvey shared her initial experiences and experiments with a data visualization tool called Many Eyes. Many Eyes is an IBM Research project that offers a lot of options for displaying your data. The catch is that you have to agree to have your data public and freely available for anyone else to use (several BYOD -- Bring Your Own Data -- tools seem to have this prerequisite). The visualization options were impressive in scope: Phrase Net, Word Tree, Tag Cloud, Word Cloud, Bar Chart, Histogram, Bubble Chart, Network Diagram, Scatterplot, Pie Chart, Treemap, Line Graph, Stack Graph, Country Maps, US County Map, and some State Maps. So really, lots and lots of choices. Diane was playing around with it just to see what it could do for us given the fact that the libraries collects so much data. Diane’s explorations piqued my interest and inspired me to try, and I’ve been monkeying around, seeing how easy it is to use. Without registering, you can still view other people’s data sets and visualizations. According to the website, you can also create your own visualizations using existing data sets without registering, but each time I tried to do that, my computer froze (a total of five times, and I tried on a PC and a Mac). Registering is easy, though, and things seemed to go a lot more smoothly after I shared my email address. Some exporting is still trickier than I think it should be, but I’ve only just begun experimenting. I’d love your comments or suggestions if you’ve used Many Eyes to present your library data!

These and other examples of visual data presentations (e.g., the Flowing Data blog, Visual Thesaurus, Wordle, graphical tools in Digg) have convinced me that data visualization isn’t just a passing fad; these are tools that I’m going to need to get comfortable and conversant with as I enter the profession. Here’s to a strong start while I’m at Duke! Please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Assessing the assessment conference, part two

As Diane mentioned last week, several of us from Duke Libraries participated in ARL's Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment conference.  I enjoyed being in Baltimore and spending time with colleagues and friends and found day two of the three-day conference to be particularly beneficial.

Day two was chock-full of presentations and sessions:  A keynote in the morning, followed by three concurrent sessions (comprising three 30-minute presentations each) and another plenary.  We rounded out the day at an impressive reception at the exquisite Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University.

I focused my attention on the sessions involving usability and qualitative research methods, given the nature of my current work at Duke.  The highlights?  Diane mentioned the impressive usability project University of Washington librarians conducted of their LibGuides.  Not only was their usability extremely thorough, but the librarians conducting the tests followed through on what they discovered, making on-the-fly changes as needed and then mandating that librarians edit their guides to reflect what they learned from their users.

Head of Web Services Jennifer Ward, also from University of Washington Libraries, reported on her department's relatively recent creation of personas to inform their website design.  We've considered the advantages and challenges (the time required, above all) of creating personas at Duke, so I appreciated hearing their step-by-step process for developing Brooke the Beginner, Paul the Professional and Sharon the Scholar, among others.  Duke's Web Interfaces Group plans to adapt UW's process for researching and creating personas of our own -- stay tuned for more.      

Of course, no assessment conference would be complete without a session or two on assessing students' learning in library instruction.  I enjoyed hearing from Catherine Pellegrino, who has clearly been thinking a lot about student learning since we attended ACRL Immersion together in 2009.  She reminded us to move beyond simply evaluating ourselves and our teaching to assessing what students are actually learning, breathing new life into those good ole' minute papers.  Rather than simply sticking those scraps of paper in a file folder, Catherine encouraged us to transcribe them verbatim and look for patterns in students' responses over the course of a semester, allowing patterns to inform our future teaching, both individually and programmatically.

Oh, and that impressive reporting form that Diane covets?  We've been in touch with our colleagues at Cornell to get more information about the technical aspects of the system.  We'll keep you posted...  

Assessing the assessment conference

We’re back from three days in Baltimore, participating in the Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment conference.  This is the third conference that ARL has sponsored, and this time around Duke staff made two contributions.  Yvonne presented a poster relating our assessment efforts to the new library strategic plan, and Linda, Emily, Yvonne and I gave a lightning-fast presentation about the User Studies Initiative.   The large room was full, and we got some good questions, so I consider our presentation a success.  Folks sought out Linda and Emily at other points in the conference to talk more about their user studies.  Linda worked with CIT’s Shawn Miller on a study of the Cultural Anthropology faculty; and Emily interviewed undergraduate students writing honors theses.  The take-away message from our presentation was:  you can build staff competence and confidence in doing user studies by creating an in-house staff development program. 

Other presentations that impressed me at the conference?  Cornell, which has one of the best library assessment shops in the country, rolled out a conceptually elegant, easy to use, web-based form to report reference transactions, research consultations, and instruction sessions.  I covet that form.  The University of Washington also has a great assessment operation, and they reported on an extensive evaluation and revamp of their LibGuides template, and guide to best practices. 

I know that Emily will have more to say about the presentations that she found useful.  Meanwhile, you can look at the conference program and poster abstracts.  Conference proceedings will be available, but I don’t know when.

It wouldn’t be a library conference without a cranky blog post.  Check out Steve Bell’s rant about seat-saving.

Online language learning tools: try them out!

As part of their efforts to provide resources to learners of foreign languages, the Duke Libraries are currently evaluating several online language learning software packages for potential purchase. Four tools are being considered: of those, Byki, Mango and TellMeMore are currently available on a trial basis to users with a Duke NetID, while the trial of the fourth (Rosetta Stone) will be available soon. The libraries are looking for feedback from the Duke community on these programs, so if you are interested in language learning, you may want to check them out.

So far I've had the chance to explore Byki and Mango, and these are some of my impressions:

Byki offers an impressive array of languages, including many less commonly taught languages (a few of which I had never heard of: Bashkir, Mirandese and Buriat). Although Byki provides grammatical information and a few exercises for some of the languages, its principal offering is an extensive set of audio flashcards for each language: students can use these to translate into or out of the foreign language, or to practice pronunciation and listening comprehension.

While Byki doesn't provide much in the way of grammatical instruction or cultural context, it could be a very helpful resource for pronunciation and vocabulary building, particularly in the case of languages for which instructional material is hard to come by. The trial of Byki runs only until October 31st, so if you're looking to acquire a bit of conversational Buriat, act quickly!

Mango also covers a large number of languages (though not quite as many as Byki). In comparison to Byki, it offers a much more structured and guided language learning experience, presenting and reviewing simple forms and phrases, and then asking the student to combine these to form more complex sentences. If you want an online version of the experience of an introductory language class, Mango might be worth a try.

Some may question Mango's frequent use of English (in instructions, translations, grammatical explanations, and cultural notes). But while full immersion has its merits, as a language teacher and student I've found that a few words of explanation can go a long way, especially when dealing with idiomatic language or grammatical features that diverge sharply from the student's native tongue. So I welcomed the information and clarification that Mango offered.

Mango's lessons don't get into particularly advanced grammar or vocabulary, so it may be more of a starting point than a complete course. But it's definitely worth a look for those who want a smooth and engaging introduction to a new language. It's available to try until November 5th.

Both of these tools, along with TellMeMore, can be found at the libraries' Database Trials page-- and Rosetta Stone will be there soon. Give them a look, and let us know what you think!

Lessons learned from honors researchers user study

As you may recall from previous blog posts, I led a user study of nine undergraduates who spent the 2009-2010 academic year researching and writing honors theses in order to graduate with distinction in May.  I am pleased to report that all nine students did indeed complete their theses and earn distinction and that these nine students helped Duke University meet its goal of doubling the number of students earning this honor (an impressive 25% of May 2010 graduates earned distinction, up from 12% in 2004).

I really enjoyed interviewing and getting to know the nine subjects of this study -- students in biology, history, public policy and program II -- and I spent the late summer analyzing my findings and producing some recommendations for serving honors researchers for the university and the library.  I've shared my detailed report to university administration, directors of undergraduate studies in the participating programs and the library community, but I wanted to share a few highlights here, as well: 

•  Nine of the 19 human and physical resources honors researchers deemed "critical" to the success of their research were related to the Libraries -- students mentioned subject librarians, data services staff, ILL, Search TRLN and the Ask a Librarian chat service, among others 
• Three students used citation management software to format their citations (two used EndNote, one began using RefWorks and then switched to Zotero) -- other students either started to use a tool and then abandoned it due to its complexity or decided from the start to format citations manually 
• Six students said that the library was most critical to their work as they located print and e-resources locally and through ILL
• Four students relied heavily on the libraries' physical spaces; others tended to work in their dorm rooms or apartments
• Four students explicitly stated that the Libraries could stand to do a better job of marketing their services and clarifying the role of the subject librarian in supporting honors researchers    

Bottom line:  Researchers' habits are as individualized and unique as the questions that drive their theses -- while we can draw some conclusions about best practices for supporting these undergraduates, we can't draw clear lines based only on their disciplines, genders or ages (i.e. "Science students don't go to the library to work -- they do all of their work in the lab" or "This generation of students doesn't use notecards or paper/pen for taking notes or drafting their papers -- they do everything online.").

And that's precisely what made this user study so interesting -- it also happens to make our jobs as librarians particularly challenging.  We offer a suite of services in hopes of reaching as many students -- and their particular learning styles and study habits -- as possible, but when it comes down to it, we must continue to get to know our users and their unique perspectives.

Want to know more about this study?  Feel free to get in touch.  Interested in meeting the students who intend to graduate with distinction in May 2011?  Attend a reception for honors researchers, librarians and faculty scheduled from 3:30-4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov 2 in the Rare Book Room.

The wonderful world of Internet language learning resources

During the four weeks that Alex and I have been volunteering with Instruction and Outreach, one my projects has been helping with the creation of a LibGuide to assist students of foreign languages, and in particular those learning languages outside the context of a university class.

Consequently I've been spending some time exploring the world of free online language resources, and while I've run across a number of antiquated, sketchy or poorly-designed sites, the more I look around, the luckier I feel to be a language learner in the Internet age, with instant access to so many useful tools and detailed reference works--and perhaps best of all, with endless opportunities to encounter authentic foreign language material, both written and spoken.

I won't try to list all the helpful resources I've found, but here are a few that stand out:

RadioTime is a directory of online radio broadcasters with an on-board interface. Listening to foreign radio stations is a tremendous way to develop language skills, and RadioTime's regional directory offers easy and reliable access to stations all over the world.

Tex's French Grammar is a clever, comprehensive and entertaining introduction to French. It's been around for a long time (I dimly remember using it during my initial forays into French many years ago) but it's showing no signs of age. Tex's home is the Texas Language Technology Center at UTexas, which also offers online language resources for Arabic, Spanish, Persian, German, Portuguese and Italian. Definitely worth a visit.

Rikaichan is a Firefox extension which brings up an instant popup translation when you move your mouse over Japanese text. It's a beautifully quick and click-free way to look up unfamiliar words.

Typeit.org is one solution to the problem of getting accents, umlauts and their ilk into your text. It provides an online text box with buttons used to enter the special characters of 19 different languages. You can enter text and special characters into the box, then copy-paste it wherever you need it. Easy! Or, as they apparently say in Icelandic, "auðveldur!" ("ð" provided courtesy of typeit.org.)

This is a tiny sampling of the helpful tools language learners can find on the Internet. If you have favorite online language resources, we'd love to hear about them!

Going Global.... (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I wrote about some of the projects that I’ve started to work on as part of the I & O Department. Here is the (brief) continuation of my discussion of “Going Global” at Duke Libraries:

On Monday (I know, that seems like ages ago), Aisha Harvey, the Head of Collection Development at Perkins Library, introduced Jake, Diane, Emily, and me to the WorldCat Collection Analysis tool. First of all, it was cool to meet Aisha! We also got a good overview of the tool’s rich functionalities and discussed a few of the bumps that we might experience along the way. Diane and I will be working on analyzing Duke’s global health collection by creating subject profiles, comparing our collections to our peers’, and developing some sort of collection development plan from there. Since global health is necessarily interdisciplinary, it might be a little tricky to formulate our subject profiles (we’ll probably have to piece together call number ranges... and maybe some other stuff... I’m going to check out what’s posted here, but if any of you readers have had experience with this, please let us know!). I’m sure we’ll be able to work out the kinks, and I’m looking forward to getting into the WCA system and seeing what it can do for us. Part of the reason I applied for this field experience was to gain some collection development experience; I think this project looks promising! It’s also pretty rad to be learning alongside Diane and Emily, who are uniquely gifted mentors. Again, stayed tuned for updates.

One final thought on my Going Global rant:
Another aspect of Going Global is inviting international students into the Duke community. Working with international students and growing increasingly sensitive to their needs in an academic library setting is something that I’ve been interested in for several years. Emily Daly is working with colleagues on making sure that international students are getting the attention they deserve at Perkins. As a burgeoning librarian, it is inspiring to see the Going Global theme not only pushing out toward the rest of the world, but also working within our lives here in the United States. I know I’ve just started at Perkins, and only part-time, but I’m totally looking forward to going global right here in Instruction and Outreach. Wish me luck!

Going Global... right here in North Carolina

This week marks the three-week anniversary of my field experience in the Instruction & Outreach Department at Duke’s Perkins Library. Besides all the usual getting-started stuff, both the exciting and the mundane (being warmly welcomed by Emily and Diane, taking a brief tour of the library, gawking amazedly at The Link, setting up Outlook, getting an ID, forgetting said ID and waiting outside the staff door for some kind soul to let me in), I’ve also had a chance to begin working on several projects that all roughly fall into the category of “Going Global.” Yes, “going global” is a hackneyed slogan, no doubt, but it’s actually a surprisingly accurate theme to describe the disparate projects I’ve begun as a part-time member of the I & O team.

Back in March, when I saw Diane’s posted request for a student to assist with the Library’s Global Health duties, I’ll admit that although I wasn’t absolutely sure about what that meant, I did know I was interested. In just three shorts weeks it’s become clear just how expansive Diane’s role as both Head of Instruction & Outreach as well as the Librarian for Global Health is. For me, as a second-year library-school student, it is invaluable to be able to see, experience, and understand not only her overarching roles but also the department’s day-to-day responsibilities. I mean, it’s only been three weeks and I’m already getting into the thick of it!

Having a snappy concept to encapsulate my main projects keeps me focused on why I’m here at Perkins. (The bus ride over from UNC is a welcome respite from the busy week, but I’m here for more than that!) “Going Global” is a way for me to think about how Duke Libraries fits into the University’s mission (in general) and into the global health and global education at Duke (in particular). Going Global also reminds me that it’s not only Duke students, faculty, and scholars going abroad through study abroad, Duke Engage, or fieldwork at Duke Global Health Institute -- students, faculty, and scholars are coming to the Triangle Area in droves every year, the issues and challenges abroad are felt right here in North Carolina, and information is being transmitted internationally every minute of every day.

.... Interesting to think about, sure, but what have I actually been doing here?

My first week here I started working on revamping the Global Health LibGuide, an entryway for users to find resources to do research, read current news, find relevant data and stats, and get assistance in the area of global health. It’s still a work in progress, but definitely worth checking out. Compiling resources for that LibGuide gave me a chance to practice using the Springshare software (with which I was already familiar), and, more significantly, get familiar with the global health resources and tools that are essential to the field. I visited several other research libraries’ websites to get a sense of what other librarians find important. Feeling connected to what other global health practitioners and researchers are using is something I hope to learn over the course of the semester. For me, actually going through the databases and webpages and actually making a usable subject guide is a more effective (and more fun!) way to learn than to sit in a library school class and try to memorize lists of resources. Thank god for field experiences!

Another (mini-) project I’m starting this week is updating the library page for students studying abroad through the Office of Global Education or Duke Engage. This page will offer students studying or researching abroad links to local libraries and information resources in their area. “Find a library near you!” helps students understand that when they are overseas, they not only have access to Duke Libraries remotely, but they may also be able to use on-the-ground resources available in the country where they are staying. Connecting Duke students to local libraries may seem like small potatoes, but it is critical to the Going Global theme: Duke students are still Duke students when they’re abroad, but they’re also global actors, international visitors, local participants. Stay tuned for updates to the “Find a library near you!” page....


C'mon back on Friday, when I'll be writing a bit about some other Going Global projects we're working on in Instruction & Outreach!

Welcome, Alex and Jake!

The start of the fall semester brings two additions to the Duke Libraries Instruction and Outreach department and blog:  Alexandra "Alex" Gallin and Jake Vaccaro.  Alex and Jake are second-year students at UNC's School of Information and Library Science (SILS) and, lucky for us, have chosen to complete semester-long field experiences here in Perkins.

Alex has an undergraduate degree in anthropology and sociology from Carleton College, where she worked as a library assistant (and perhaps got bitten by the librarianship bug!).  She then spent nearly two years working in the reference department at NYU's Bobst library before pursuing her MLS.  She currently works at UNC's House Undergraduate Library and Davis Library and is active in the Community Workshop Series.  While at Perkins, she will help Diane support DukeEngage and Duke's Global Health Institute through collection development and instruction, as well as participate in the general activities of the Instruction and Outreach Department.

Jake completed his undergraduate degree in English and classics at Haverford College and then earned his MA in comparative literature and a graduate certificate in Medieval studies from UNC-Chapel Hill.  He completed all coursework and exams toward a PhD in Italian before beginning work on his MLS.  He taught Italian at UNC and Durham Technical Community College for several years and currently works at UNC's Davis Library.  Jake will be working on resources to support the Language Learning Options Group and helping to provide collection development for and outreach to Duke's Program in Education. 

Both Jake and Alex will regularly contribute to this blog, and they may ask to observe shifts at the reference desk or instruction sessions in Bostock or Lilly, so keep an eye out for our newest members of the team!

Emerging technologies and library instruction

Public services librarians here at Duke just received a pool of iPads to experiment with (thank you, Library Executive Group!).  Our colleagues in the Center for Instructional Technology have been keeping us posted about faculty interest in using iPads for instruction, and there are at least two projects up and running.  One, giving new masters students in Global Health  iPads to use in their research methods course, has been getting some press.  We knew that we had to get up to speed on the capabilities of the iPad so that we could help faculty and students use library-centric resources on them.  And if you’ve used an iPad, you know that searching a database and getting the full text of materials onto it is not always a straightforward process.  So we’re sharing iPads, and sharing what we learn about them through brown bag lunch meetings and Google Docs. 

Using new technologies for library instruction, or teaching about new technologies, is on my mind these days.  For example, how do you teach with a web-scale discovery interface like Summon?  Does it change the way you explain searching and retrieving?  Should we be presenting mobile interfaces in our instruction sessions?  Last night I met with first year students in one of our FOCUS living-learning programs.  I asked how many students had an iPad (one) or iPhone (many); then I talked about some apps that might be particularly useful for the courses these students are taking.  I’ve never done that before, but there seemed to be a lot of interest in relevant apps.

Photo: Robert Cox (Flickr Creative Commons license)

There seem to be several issues here:  finding out about emerging technologies, identifying the ones that seem promising for teaching and learning, getting our hands on them, and understanding how to use them (or at least talk about them) in library instruction. Many questions, few answers from where I sit.

Working with faculty who teach with media

We are so fortunate to have Kevin Smith as our colleague here at Duke.  Kevin is the Scholarly Communications Officer in the Libraries, and as a librarian and lawyer he is well placed to help librarians, faculty and students navigate the tricky intellectual property terrain.  His blog is a must-read for those in academia who produce and use scholarly information.

At our jam-packed library instruction retreat in May, Kevin was only able to give a short overview of using media for teaching and student assignments.  Last week he gave us a more in depth look at using media, and was able to tell us about how the landscape has changed between May and August with the new DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) exemption.

Kevin helped us understand the difference between “consumptive use” which is essentially making a copy; and “transformative use” that creates something new.  The heart of his message is these tips about using media for student presentations:

• Copyrighted music/film should be incorporated into a new work   
• Use no more than is necessary to make the point.   
• Have a point – the film or music should support the theme of the new work

When looking for music to serve only as a background, and not to make a particular point, Kevin suggested using the "Find" function within the Creative Commons database for CC licensed music.

The DMCA exemption that has caused some excitement allows circumvention, which is decryption of movie DVDs that use CSS encryption.  Decryption by faculty, and by extension students in those courses, is allowed in order to support what Kevin feels are the kinds of activities likely to be considered transformative fair use by the courts. 

At the beginning of his presentation, Kevin noted that while he was listening to our faculty panel at the instruction retreat, he was surprised at how confused faculty seemed to be about giving students new media assignments, because they didn’t feel confident about fair use rights.  After hearing his talk last week, we librarians now have better information to share with faculty and students as they explore digital literacies.

Drum roll, please...

One of the most rewarding aspects of my work in Instruction and Outreach is managing the Robert F. Durden Prize, which recognizes undergraduates’ excellence in research, including their analysis, evaluation and synthesis of sources, and encourages students to make use of the general library collections and services at Duke University.  The award was established three years ago and is funded by alumni who chose to name the prize in honor of Professor Emeritus of history, Bob Durden.

In May of every year, we ask students to submit papers and projects completed for course credit during the previous year, along with faculty statements of support and 500-750 word essays describing their research process and strategies and, of course, the ways that they used the Libraries to complete their work.  These essays are extremely interesting and enlightening -- we learn a great deal about how students make sense of the Libraries' tremendous (and, at times, overwhelming) resources and services, and we are let in on the "aha!" moments that lead to students' impressive discoveries and analyses.

This year, Diane Harvey, Jean Ferguson and I read through every application packet, focusing on research process essays and faculty statements of support in particular.  We then named ten finalists in three categories: first and second-year students, third and fourth year students and students writing honors theses. 

Faculty members Kristen Neuschel and miriam cooke then joined the selection committee, and each of us carefully read the full packets of all ten finalists.  We met yesterday to determine this year's Durden Prize winners:  

• First/Second Year: Xinglai (Lai Lai) Sun for "The Myth of the Addict: Opium Suppression in Late Imperial China"
• Third/Fourth Year: Ryan Brown for “The Native of Nowhere: Nat Nakasa” and Eugenia (Jinny) Cho for "Architectural Acoustics of Symphony Hall” (Ryan and Jinny will split the prize)
• Honors Thesis: Andrew Simon for “Intertwining Narratives: The Copts and their Muslim Relations”

Other finalists are Lindsay Emery, Rose Filler, Caroline Griswold, Brad Lightcap, Brianna Nofil and Eugene Wang.  The work of these ten students represents a range of disciplines, including history, English, dance, physics, economics, Asian and Middle Eastern studies and linguistics.  

We will celebrate the successes of our finalists and winners at the Annual Middlesworth Award and Durden Prize Reception on Friday, October 22 from 3:30-4:30 in the Rare Book Room.  Faculty members and librarians who supported the research of Lai Lai, Ryan, Jinny and Andrew will be commenting on these students' fine work.

This event is part of the Parents' and Family Weekend schedule of events – mark your calendars, and spread the word!

The tale of a high school librarian

A little over a month ago I came to the head of Instruction and Outreach, Diane Harvey, and said as a high school librarian, I would like to learn about what is going on in academic libraries. She said that would be great and as a matter of fact, I could help her by talking about what is going on in high school libraries. So last week I gave an informal presentation to about a dozen librarians with a vested interest in the subject. I tried to be positive about it, but in the end, the news is not good.

I am a new librarian, only two years removed from library school at the University of Pittsburgh, and my head is full of idealistic visions of teaching information literacy, actively collaborating with teachers, and preparing my students to be life-long learners in the 21st century. That has not been my experience to date unfortunately. When I sat down and thought about of all the various roles I fill in my school (i.e. teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, media center program manager, technical support, and webmaster), which ones take up most of my time? Program manager, where I make sure everything in the library is running smoothly on a day-to-day basis, and technical support combine to take up about 70 percent of my time. Where is teacher and instructional partner? At the bottom, taking up about 10% of my time...

Why? The biggest reason is that budget cuts resulted in the elimination of my full-time assistant and I am simply stretched too thin. There are over 1100 students in my school. I am the only librarian. I have student assistants, but they often require as much of my attention as they free up. As technology becomes more prevalent, my responsibilities as tech support grow. In the end, I rarely teach information literacy skills and almost never get the chance to plan lessons together with teachers. I have a plan to change this, however. Like the saying "pick your battles," I've identified the best area for me to focus on to make a difference. So I am positive about this coming school year and finally being able to do what I signed up to do.

Finally, to demonstrate how my experience with budget cuts reflects a national trend, please check out "A Nation Without School Librarians." This Google map is only a few months old, but already has hundreds of locations where school librarian positions have been reduced or eliminated. I fear there are many, many other librarians out there who are also stretched very thin and do not teach information literacy skills as often as we should be.

What are all those high schoolers doing in the library?

In preparation for Western Alamance media coordinator and Duke Libraries volunteer Tim Johnson's talk next week, What's happening in high school libraries?, I find my thoughts shifting to the work that we've done with pre-college students this summer.

The Duke Libraries have a long history of collaborating with the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP), housed close to East Campus and responsible for administering a number of Summer Studies Programs and Summer Institutes.  This year has been no different -- with over a week to go in TIP Summer Studies Term II, Duke librarians have lead a whopping 32 instruction sessions for eager and motivated TIP students.  Research sessions have been lead by science, social science and humanities librarians alike and have included topics ranging from vampires in contemporary culture to the energy of physics.  

And our work with TIP students doesn't end with research instruction sessions -- Duke Libraries staff make it their mission to welcome these hard-working students and their equally hard-working instructors.  They enjoy many of the same privileges that all Duke students and faculty benefit from, including the ability to check out books and DVDs, access to all of our online resources and access to group study rooms, computer clusters and reading rooms.  If you've been in the library at all this summer, there's a good chance you've run into boisterous (but always gracious and respectful) groups of young scholars with their neon yellow and orange lanyards on their way to research the cancer of biology or draft their social psychology research proposals.

We realize that the time that these students and instructors spend at Duke is short (just two weeks in some cases), but we hope that they leave campus with a favorable impression of the Perkins Library System and a better sense of the role that the research library can play in their high school work and in their future scholarship.

There is, after all, a good chance that we'll see some of these students back at Duke in a few short years...

Standard(s) Operating Procedure

Perhaps it is only in the small, rarefied world of library instruction that an appointment to the ACRL Information Literacy Standards Committee is something to get excited about (okay, maybe ‘excited’ is too strong).  I am happy to be part of this group for several reasons.  One is that I get to work with some smart and energetic librarians like Ellysa Cahoy from Penn State and Bob Schroeder from Portland State.  Another reason is that I have an ambivalent relationship with the ACRL Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education (okay, people who know me well can snort now…) and as part of the committee I get to be up close and personal with them.

So, how do I really feel about the standards?  First, I’m glad that there are standards, because accrediting bodies and other such groups love the fact that standards exist.  When I was doing learning outcomes assessment work at the University of Maryland, those of us whose discipline had standards (like engineering and education) were in much better shape when it came to writing student learning outcomes assessment, because we had national guidelines to draw on.  But, on the other hand, how useful are the ACRL standards when it comes to planning the library instruction that we do every day?

Sometimes the ACRL standards seem a bit abstract or lofty for the average 50 minute instruction session. Granted, the standards encourage a degree of collaboration with classroom faculty that recognizes that some of the standards and outcomes simply don’t belong in a library instruction session.  A more pressing question is, how have the standards held up since they were developed ten years ago?  Do they deal adequately with changes in technologies and the recognition of new literacies? 

The good news is that ACRL has authorized a revision of the standards.  The Information Literacy Standards committee will be designing a process by which that revision will get done.  It promises to be a long, complex, but ultimately rewarding process.  I hope that we can learn from the recent revision of the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner, as well as the discipline specific standards developed through ACRL.
I hope that the revised standards are relevant, clear and above all useful.

Summer Reading Advice

Relatively speaking, the summer is when most people have the most time to read for fun and since I am a visiting school librarian from a local high school, I've decided to share my thoughts on something I'm very familiar with, young adult literature. There are some absolutely wonderful stories out there that you may have never considered reading because they are sold in the "young adult" sections of bookstores. Well, I'm here to enlighten you.

My personal favorite is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It is the story of a sixteen year-old girl who volunteers to take her little sister's place in a televised fight to death with 23 other teenagers called the Hunger Games (hence the title). Explaining the plot in one sentence cannot, however, indicate how great this story is. I absolutely did not want to stop reading it. Every chapter ends with a sentence that will make you gasp and frantically start the next chapter even though it is 2a.m. and you wanted to go to bed. The book is an amazing mix of adventure, suspense, romance, philosophy, and social commentary that will change the way you think about young adult literature.

Another excellent choice is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It was originally published in Australia as an adult novel, but has been marketed as a young adult book here in the United States. The story follows a young German girl named Liesel Meminger and her foster parents living near Munich during World War II. One of the best parts of the book is the identity of the narrator... Death himself. Can you think of a more significant time in human history than the Holocaust to be the backdrop for a story told by Death? The pace of the book is quite slow, but the time it takes to read it allows you to become all the more connected emotionally to the characters. An absolutely worthwhile, powerful read.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick is a story like you have never read (or seen) before. At 530+ pages it looks intimidating, but mixed in with the text are actually 300 pages of original charcoal drawings by the author that are reminiscent of watching a black and white silent film. Hugo Cabret is an orphan living secretly in Paris' main train station during the early 1900s. There, he meets a girl who might be able to help him unlock the secret of his last memory of his father. This spellbinding mystery can be read over a single weekend and I highly recommend it.

All of these books can be found in the Duke library system. If they are checked out already, get your name on the hold list immediately. Take a break from your academic journals, theses, and dissertations. Pick up one these stories, relax, and enjoy! You won't regret it.

Librarians descend upon our nation's capital

I was among the over 19,000 librarians who made themselves at home in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the American Library Association this past weekend.

My experience at ALA was a bit of a whirlwind -- I arrived in D.C. at Sunday afternoon in time for a current issue discussion on the role that academic libraries -- and instruction librarians in particular -- play in supporting undergraduate researchers.  The discussion, organized by ACRL's Instruction Section, featured interesting conversation among instruction librarians from institutions ranging from Reed College to Michigan State University.

My key take-away from the discussion:  Undergraduate research and the academic programs that support them look different at each institution represented on Sunday afternoon, and it is our job as librarians to get to know our particular institution's culture and work to communicate to our students that we are here to support their efforts, whether it be through research consultations, special library services developed with their needs in mind, opportunities for them to present or store the products of their labor, or library prizes that reward truly outstanding use of library collections.

Monday brought a series of programs in the morning -- the highlight was "Assessment for the Rest of Us: Informal Techniques You Can Use," where we heard about 10 relatively simple assessment projects going on at libraries around the country.  Lunch with friends from UNC-SILS was followed by the a heated debate (and I'm not kidding here!) about both the virtues and challenges of Open Source Software -- the Kuali OLE project that Duke Libraries is a part of got quite a bit of attention as a cutting-edge ILS concept.

Next up was a walk through the exhibits, where I got to talk with folks from Serials Solutions, RefWorks, ERIC, EBSCO and meet Duke's new LibGuides representative.  The day ended with a presentation on ways that academic librarians are making use of the technologies that their patrons are already using -- new to me were using WordPress to create subject guides and Shelfari for feeds of book cover images.

This was my second experience at ALA Annual (the first was in 2007, also in D.C., after my first year as a Master's student at UNC-SILS), and I must say that I still don't feel that I have the conference experience down pat.  I came away, once again, feeling as though I had missed out on a number of key programs, receptions, meetings and presentations -- and my hunch was confirmed as I skimmed the Twitter backchannel and then read others' experiences, like Jennifer Howard's, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, or those captured on the American Libraries blog. 

My interest has certainly been piqued, so I'll be showing my face at ALA Annual again -- and next time, I vow to leave only once I've been treated to lunch or cocktail hour by at least one vendor, heard a couple of fabulous authors wax poetic on the importance of libraries and developed a better understanding of ALA sections and committees -- and all of the meetings and programs that accompany them.

I think that most seasoned academic librarians would assure me that it takes a time or two at ALA Annual to figure it all out -- or maybe I'm just a bit slow on this front.

Making the K-16 Connection

There comes a point in the career of every instruction librarian who teaches first year students when you throw up your hands in frustration and kvetch, “What do they teach these kids in high school?  What are those high school librarians doing?”   First year college students aren’t hatched out of a science fiction pod when they arrive on our campuses – they’re the product of twelve years of schooling and (we hope) many visits to their school libraries.  Connecting with our school library media center colleagues is a real eye-opener.  We can look fondly on the terrific standards developed by AASL (21st Century Learner) and ISTE (NETS) for K-12 information literacy, but we need to understand the reality of school libraries in this era of budget cuts, staffing shortages, and standardized testing that takes away from research and library time.

That’s why we’re so pleased that Tim Johnson is volunteering with Instruction & Outreach this summer.  Tim is the library media specialist, information technology support, and webmaster (whew!) at Western Alamance High School in Elon, North Carolina.  Tim wanted to learn more about what goes on in an academic library, and he also wants to understand what skills his students need when they arrive on a college campus.

We’re taking advantage of Tim’s presence to pick his brain about what happens in high school.  What kind of research assignments are students doing?  What skills do they need, and how do they acquire those skills?  What typically happens in a high school media center?

While he’s part of Instruction & Outreach, Tim will be working on a number of projects (for example, looking at how academic libraries provide language learning materials) and meeting with folks throughout the Libraries.  He’ll also give a presentation for library staff on what’s happening in high school libraries. 

Making the K-16 connection is an important outreach effort for instruction librarians.  And maybe K-16 isn’t enough – when I was working on statewide academic integrity efforts in Maryland, we used the term “P-20” (preschool through grad school).  The more we know about our students the more successful our instruction efforts will be.

An embarrassment of riches or two essential tools?

Duke is fortunate enough to have had site licenses for two citation management software tools -- EndNote and RefWorks -- for the last two years. Duke spends a decent amount to provide access to both tools for all faculty, students and staff.  What exactly are we paying for?  What kind of traffic are EndNote and RefWorks seeing?

EndNote traffic is difficult to track, as users download it to their personal machines and work with their libraries offline (unless they happen to open EndNote Web accounts). We do know, however, that EndNote has been downloaded 6,977 times this fiscal year (July 1, 2009 to present).  It is worth noting that a single user my download the software to as many computers as he or she likes, so estimated number of users is actually over 11,700.  And the number of questions we get about it both at the Libraries and through the Office of Information Technology underscores the fact that Duke users are certainly doing more than simply downloading the piece of software.

Because RefWorks is web-based, we can get a slightly better picture of both who is opening RefWorks accounts and how they are using the application.

Since Duke initiated its RefWorks license in July 2008, 3,125 users have opened RefWorks accounts and downloaded 117,238 references to their personal accounts.  Undergraduates make up the majority of RefWorks users with 2,140 accounts.  Graduate students follow with 538 accounts, and faculty have opened a total of 140 accounts.  Other users include librarians, alumni, staff and researchers.  RefWorks averages about 119 new users per month, and we've seen a 23% increase in our user pool since the end of the Fall 2009 semester. 

As you might imagine, traffic to RefWorks is highest during the core months of the fall and spring semesters (September through November and February through April, respectively), with the highest number of total monthly users in October 2009 (with 492 users) and March 2010 (456 users). Average number of sessions per user per month topped out in October 2009 with an impressive 12.4 RefWorks sessions per user, on average.  Over the course of the year, the average number of sessions per user per month was 4.6.

We've compared these numbers to usage stats at some of our peer institutions who also subscribe to RefWorks, including UNC, UVA, Yale, Johns Hopkins and Cornell.  We fall right in line with our peers in terms of average sessions per month per user and average number of new users per month (adjusting for differences in full-time enrollment).   

Librarians continue to market RefWorks each fall and offer training sessions as part of the course-integrated research instruction they do for undergraduates and graduate students.  They also maintain a support page; field questions at the reference desk and through instant message; and help students, faculty and staff through one-on-one consultation.  

RefWorks is wrapping up its second year of a three-year trial period at Duke. The members of the university's site license committee are beginning to think critically about whether or not it is fiscally responsible to continue to fund both EndNote and RefWorks on a site-wide basis.  What are your thoughts?   Should Duke continue to make both options available at no cost to users?

And I can't mention RefWorks and EndNote without also giving a nod to Zotero, which Diane blogged about in April. Want to know more about how the three tools compare?  Check out the Libraries' Citation Tool Comparison chart.

LibGuides by the numbers

It's that time of year -- and, no, I'm not talking about summer vacations or the heat index.  Instead, it's the end of the fiscal year that's on my mind -- and all of the stats, facts and figures that accompany it.

As I've mentioned before, Duke Libraries are among the many that subscribe to LibGuides -- in fact, we just renewed our annual license.  And one reason that no one here at Duke gave a second thought to renewing the service (aside from the fact that librarians, students and faculty alike find value in the application), is that we regularly track usage to ensure that students and researchers continue to make use of the courseguides and subject guides librarians create each semester.

Let's take a look at traffic to Duke's LibGuides between January and the end of May (roughly the spring semester)...

There were over 83,000 hits to all 426 of our published guides.  To help give this raw number some context, we saw nearly 150,000 hits to all guides in 2009, so we're well on our way to topping that number during this calendar year.

Librarians created 99 courseguides (the most guides created in one semester to date!), and these 99 guides received 25,388 total hits, an average of 256 hits per guide.  The department to receive the highest number of guides?  You guessed it -- Writing 20, with an impressive 32 LibGuides.

While every guide created has received traffic (in a previous semester, if not this one), there are a handful that are particularly popular.  We'll call them our LibGuides Top Five:

• History 190B.01: Chubby History with 1,800 views (this guide also earns the distinction of "Most clever name," awarded by yours truly) 
• Duke Libraries Kindles with 2,398 views
• PUBPOL 114 with 2,676 views (and that's just one section of PUBPOL 114 -- the other section also received over a thousand views)
• Images Collections at Duke with 4,977 views (fun fact:  The creator was asked by LibGuides staff to contribute his guide to "Best of LibGuides" -- kudos to you, Lee!)

And, a drumroll for our most popular guide of the semester...

• Middle East Studies with a whopping 5,198 views

Thanks to you, loyal LibGuiders, for your incredible efforts this past spring -- I have no doubt that you'll continue to deliver outstanding content to your students and departments, not to mention those outside of Duke who stumble upon these gems online.

Other questions about usage of LibGuides at Duke?  I'd love to hear from you.