Bibliocycle

It’s National Library Week. Help us celebrate by exploring one of these excellent resources from Gale. Just use the drop-down menu below to select the resource you’d like to explore, and then go!
The resources include:
Archives Unbound — a vast new resource of topically-focused, cross-searchable digital collections of historical documents
Career Transitions — a new electronic resource offering a comprehensive guide to career change
Global Issues in Context — this online resource offers global news and perspectives on issues and events of international importance
GREENR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources) — a new electronic resource offering authoritative reference content on the environment, energy, economic development and natural resources
Grzimek’s Animal Life — an interactive, media-rich online resource, with information on more than 4,000 species

This Sunday begins the annual celebration of National Library Week. Naturally, we are planning to celebrate at the OWHL all week.  There will be free books and movies to check out, and free professional assistance on research projects.  Oh wait, that is what we do every week.  All the more reason to celebrate.  Join us at the OWHL during National Library Week.  Mention that you saw this post and we’ll give you a free OWHL carabiner.

And even if you can’t stop by, be sure to check out these excellent products, on free trial this week in celebration of National Library Week.

Recently I made an inventory of my web and print publication responsibilities. I have two Blogs, this one, which is for my “professional” posts, and The Bicycle Reader, which I set up to chronicle my adventures on my sabbatical last year, particularly my cross-country bike trip.

I also have two Facebook accounts, one which is personal (although my “friends” are a mix of family, friends, and colleagues) and one which is the organization page of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library. There are 167 “fans” of that page.

In addition, I have two Twitter accounts (OWHLDirector and Bibliocyclist) professional and personal, respectively.

I also have two flickr accounts, one for the library, and one for my personal photography.

Every week I write newsletter features for our website, and a couple of times a month I change the “current content.”  That’s the section of the page that currently features “A Day in the Life of an Instructional Librarian.”  Once a week I turn in several articles for the PA Newsletter, the Gazette.

The workflow involved in keeping track of this stuff could probably provide direction to a small company.  When I went to Library School, this was not what I imagined.  Fortunately, I also got to teach two classes this week and give a presentation for the Academic Support Department staff meeting.

It is getting close to the end of the day on Friday, and I still have to clean out my email before I head home.  Is technology making our lives easier?

Last week we introduced our new collection of electronic books—ebrary. Those e-books primarily support academic work. But we are also happy to introduce another e-book program available through NOBLE that features recent recreational reading and bestsellers.

The new e-book collection can be read on Sony Readers and the nook reader from Barnes & Noble, as well as on PC and Mac computers and many smart phones. If you don’t have your own reader, we will be happy to loan you one of ours. The OWHL has purchased 5 Sony readers to support this collection.

Under this program each user can have up to four downloadable items (any combination of e-books or audiobooks) checked out at the same time. As is the case with downloadable audiobooks, there are no fines or overdues for e-books because the titles expire at the end of the loan period automatically.

To learn more or to borrow a Sony Reader, stop by the Help Desk at the OWHL. To access the e-books and audiobooks to play on your own device, go to our Overdrive site. You’ll need your PA ID as your library card.

I have to admit, sometimes I think nostalgically back to a time when libraries only loaned actual physical books.  The sands have shifted, and that time has passed.  Now everything is more complicated.  What formats do we purchase materials in?  How do we expose those options in the catalog?  What does it mean to participate in a consortium (established largely for the sharing of physical materials) when members libraries are obtaining unique content under licenses for their users only?  Yesterday I was wrestling with the dilemma of how to catalog and circulate the OWHL’s new collection of ereader devices and electronic books.  Our nook permits us to “loan” content.  We purchase titles that appear on the device, but reside in our “nook account” in the cloud.  So if a patron comes in and borrows the nook to read a particular title, neither the nook nor that title are available for other users.  But then if another patron, who owns his own nook, comes in and wants to borrow a different title in our nook library, we should be able to loan it to his nook.

That suggests that the nook titles should appear in our catalog so that they are discoverable, and should be “checked out” when they are borrowed. (Even though the titles are electronic, only one person at a time may use the title.)  But that raises a troubling privacy issue  Assuming that our physical nook has 15 titles on it, would the “check out” of a particular nook title require us to ask the patron which of the books s/he is intending to read?  The nook device checks out for 3 weeks.  If the patron reads really fast, and finishes the original book in less time, isn’t it possible that s/he will want to begin one of the other books loaded on the device, making them unavailable for checkout, even though the status in the catalog would indicate that they are available?  Is this too complicated a model for libraries?  Should we concentrate on purchasing nook content, and not circulate the actual devices?  We could then “loan” our titles to patrons for use on their ereader devices or smartphones.  But apparently not  their iPads, since Apple has decided not to play well with others.

We buy books on spec. Admittedly, it is well-considered and informed speculation, but it is speculation nonetheless. After six months, books are no longer considered “new” and are sent into the stacks. It upsets me when books enter the stacks without ever having circulated, because the odds of them being discovered when they are out of sight are much diminished. Thus, a dilemma for libraries is how to display new materials so that they are irresistible.

Lacking the appropriate furniture for physical displays, we have tried virtual solutions to this problem. For years we have produced monthly web pages featuring new fiction and new non-fiction materials. But it is a big leap from discovering a new book on the library web site to making the trip over to obtain the book. Most people want instant gratification, and for that, nothing can out perform a good physical display.

At the end of the fall term, we did some brainstorming around the question: Given that we can’t afford new furniture, what do we already have that can be used to promote our new materials? After much discussion, we decided to recycle our old index tables, which were in storage in the attic. They are not perfect. They are quite unattractive, actually. But we felt that in this case function trumped aesthetics. What they do have going for them is that they have a slanted top, at a convenient height for noticing books.

We loaded one of them up with new non-fiction materials, with topics ranging across the disciplines. Each of us chose a few titles from our assigned “liaison” areas for the display. The second display shelf is being used for thematic displays. The current display is targeted to students enrolled in History 310, who are presently coming up with topics for their research papers. The featured books are intended to spur topic ideas, across a wide range of interests.

Scanning the display and replenishing the titles has become part of our opening routine each morning. The books are flying off of the display shelves. Sometimes students look at the books in the library, sometimes they are checked out. Either way is OK with us. Our new materials are finding an audience. And now we are back to brainstorming how to achieve the same result with better-looking display shelving at an affordable cost.

The OWHL is pleased to announce that we have just added 47,000 full-text electronic books to our collection. These academic titles are provided by ebrary, and are well aligned with our curriculum. Here are some reasons why we are so excited.

1. You can find these books in the OWHL catalog, or you can search the collection directly through ebrary on the A to Z list.
2. You can refine your topic by selecting any “facet” suggested for your search. You can get to these books from anywhere, at any time, even when the OWHL isn’t open.
3. The collection offers unlimited simultaneous user access—so if a whole class is interested in the same topic, the students don’t have to fight over the books.
4. You can search within each book, getting immediately to the “best parts.”
5. You can highlight text on the screen, add notes, and save all of your annotations with one click.
6. You can get help with citations for the sources you use.
7. You can use “text to speech” and have the text read to you.
8. You can find out more or take a “test drive” by stopping by the Help Desk at the OWHL.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at a meeting of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium considering the implications for libraries of e-readers and downloadable electronic books. I was pleased to be invited, because it gave me the chance to clarify my thinking about this complicated topic. I spoke about the OWHL’s experience with our two Kindles and new nook,  and our plans for a set of 5 Sony PRS-300′s that we have just ordered. I talked about the diverse electronic collections that we currently have, and our plans for future collection development. And then I confessed that I had far more questions than answers, and what I really wanted to do was to share the questions with the group, to see what my colleagues are thinking about these topics that keep me up at night.  Despite an excellent discussion, the questions mostly remain unanswered.
So I have decided to pose them to you.

1. Can we foresee a point in time when we (libraries) no longer collect physical books? What is the time line? What do we do with the print collections that we currently have?

2. With the pressures on our budgets, how long can we afford to collect the same book in redundant formats? (Print, Large print, CD audiobook, Downloadable audiobook, eBook?) If we have to give some formats up, which ones will go? How do we decide which formats to collect for any given title?

3. We belong to a library consortium. Our delivery systems were set up to facilitate the sharing of physical items. What are the implications for Inter-network Transfers of the explosion of electronic content?  Freed of geographic limitations associated with physical transfer, could we share materials with a much larger group of libraries?

4. The FCC has indicated that it views broadband access as a right, and has published a 10-year plan to get us to ubiquitous, very high speed connectivity. Consequently, we should anticipate that residents of poorer communities who are currently electronically disenfranchised will  have the ability to download books (and movies, and audio.) In this case,  how long should we continue to collect CDs and DVDs?

5. What are the implications for shared collections (such as our in NOBLE) when individual libraries decide to purchase (or lease) electronic materials under contracts that limit the materials to that library’s patrons?    How should the records for these materials appear our shared catalog?

6. Should we provide subscription access to e-book collections for use on the user’s own device? (We currently do this for downloadable audio)  If our patrons can select and download titles from these collections without coming to the library, how can we add value to the transaction?

7. Given that many of the books that we select never circulate, should we dedicate a portion of our book budget for the purchase of ebooks to be installed (and loaned) on library e-readers “on demand?”  If we do this, what counts as a circulation, the loan of the device, or the use of the title?

8. It’s not an ereader, but will the iPad change everything? Can we afford to acquire ereaders before we see what happens with the iPad?

Feel free to share your ideas.

Sometimes the goal of providing our users with access to materials conflicts with our responsibility for preserving those rare and delicate materials.  Many of the valuable materials in our Special Collections are old and fragile, and could be damaged by even the most careful use.  We would like to make these materials available digitally, but have neither the equipment nor the resources to undertake a major scanning project.  Fortunately, the Internet Archive,   a non-profit digital library containing almost two million books, already includes full-text electronic versions of many of our titles.

Consequently, we can provide access to the materials by linking from our catalog record for the print volume to the Internet Archive record for the electronic version. For example, go to the OWHL catalogue and look for Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Gates Ajar (1869.) Notice that the record contains an Internet Archive icon.  This means that with one click you can go directly to the full text of the book.  You can read the book online, send it to your smart phone, or download it in a number of formats—including those for the Kindle and other ebook reading devices. All illustrations, marginalia, or other markings in the original book are reproduced exactly.

Unlike Google’s Book Search project, the Internet Archive is non-profit.  Internet Archive records never contain ads, and the materials are very stable.  Tim Sprattler, our Special Collections librarian, is systematically working his way through our collection to add these Internet Archive links to all of our Special Collection books that have already been scanned as a part of the project.

But what about our Special Collections materials that are not part of the Internet Archive?  That is where non sibi comes in! The project continues to grow as libraries send their unique, public domain materials to be scanned.  Fortunately for us, one of the scanning venues is at the Boston Public Library.  Tim will be headed there over the spring break, with a set of about 20 titles to add to the project.  To offset expenses, donating libraries pay 10 cents per page for the scanning services.  The first collection to be scanned will include  the novel My Three Years at Andover by James Lee Perrin, PA 1902, writing under the pseudonym Ewer Struly. In addition, we will contribute several small books that were part of a series of lectures written by Samuel Read Hall, the first Principal of the Teachers [English] Seminary at Andover. The first edition of Lectures on School-Keeping, published in 1829, has already been scanned.  We will be contributing the 3rd edition, published in 1831, which includes a chapter on how to locate a school and lay out a classroom.

Remember how they said that technology was going to make our lives easier?  I am at a loss as to how to manage my work-related email.  And I am not on any of those list where people circulate jokes.  I have moved all of my “current awareness” to RSS.  I have a separate personal email account, so friendly correspondance and advertisements from places where I have shopped online go there.  I even have a system for managing email.  I log in before work in the morning and quickly go through all of my new mail, flagging things for follow-up, and deleting everything I can.  I repeat the process around lunch time and again before I go home.  Sometime during the day I try to deal with flagged items.

But the sheer volume is overwhelming.  Last week I was out of town at a professional meeting and received an email message with my budget information included.  I can’t “flag” messages when I am using the web client.  I was online every day during my absence from the library, and did my best to keep my mailbox organized and up to date.  But by the time I returned to the library on Monday, the Andover “pace of life” took over and my budget information got buried.  I found it on Wednesday afternoon.  Unfortunately, I also found out that it was due on Wednesday.  This morning, I “emptied” my deleted mail.  I do this weekly.  There were 897 items.

I am a librarian, and so one of my skill sets is organization,  but I am ready to concede defeat.  Email has taken over my reading life, and it is not my favorite genre of reading.  Because I never finish it before I leave work at the end of the day, I have gradually increased the time that I spend at home reading it.  Given the time that it takes,  I barely keep up with a daily newspaper and I feel guilty whenever I pick up a book.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that spring break is coming soon.  The library is open, and I will work during spring break, but the volume of email slows to a manageable level when other people are on vacation.  One of my fantasies is to take an entire day over spring break just to read.  I’d begin the day with an unhurried reading of the New York Times (via TimesReader) followed by a leisurely reading of the current New Yorker.  Then I’d move along to a non-fiction book (in print) followed by a few hours of absorption in a fiction selection (on an ereader.)  I’d follow that all up by listening to a downloadable audiobook while riding a stationary bicycle and dreaming of spring and a utopian future without email.