Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Librarian In Black Interview

Sarah Houghton-Jan is the Librarian In Black.  Sarah is not an academic librarian, and that is why I refer to her site so often.  Sarah presents numerous technological tips, techniques, tools, and trends in normal-speak.  LiB is a great way to see how some of the tools we use in our academic lives can be applied to the rest of the world.  On top of that, Sarah is friendly and helpful—if you go to her site, you can chat with her via Meebo! 

Librarian in Black, your blog, is full of lots of information.  You constantly refresh it and add new materials.  As a professional, how do you find the time to develop and present this kind of information in addition to all of your other work-related tasks?

How do I find the time?  I think that is my most-often asked question.  I work a full time job at a public library as a technology manager.  My commute is going from 80 minutes each way to 120 minutes each way.  I try to find time to read my 400 RSS feeds, post on my blog, write articles, and teach classes too.  Oh yes, and a personal life . . . when I have the time .  I don’t know how I find the time, but I do.  I think that people believe that all I do when I go home is read professional material and blog . . . but it’s not true.  I spend a lot of time vegging in front of the TV or computer (fun computer stuff, not icky librarian stuff), cooking, walking, and otherwise spending time with my husband and our cat.  I figure that if I can manage to find the time to do this, anyone can.  All it really takes is 20 minutes a day to keep up adequately, and if you want to push it and start writing or really reading a lot, perhaps 45 minutes a day.  If the profession is important to you, if you believe in what we do in libraries, you can find the time—believe me.  Now, whether or not that time is on “work time” or your own time is really up to your employer.  I strongly advocate for employers to give their staff 15-30 minutes a day to “keep up,” and to reduce duties or change the schedule to allow for that.  If you just say “ok, go do it” library staff won’t do it.  They have a ton of other stuff to do, and will fill those minutes with those things, not with learning.  I hate the sound of “enforced learning,” but it almost has to come to that.

In terms of web based applications, which have you found to be the most useful to your career?  towards delivering services to customers?  Please explain.

I’m going to stick to one each . . . otherwise the list would go on for pages.

Useful to me as a librarian: Bloglines because of the wonderful accessible-anywhere interface it has so I can read my RSS feeds.
Useful for customer service delivery: The free MeeboMe widget because it allows users who use IM and users on the library’s website to contact the library staff via IM.

When you work with the public, especially people who are computer savvy but new to Web 2.0 applications, what do you recommend they start with first?

I usually recommend that they read some blogs, they try starting one themselves.  Then it’s on to uploading photos to Flickr and playing with tagging.  From there, I tell people to take them where their interests lie—perhaps it’s in creating a wiki for their book club, or an IM account to talk to their children.  Following personal interests usually leads to better learning.

Working in the public libraries, what do you think is the most under-developed yet vital information handling/locating tool people need to develop (research, the ability to verify sources, getting lost in the flash, etc.)?

I think that our users, the general public, simply aren’t aware of what is on the web and also how to locate it effectively.  Many people are completely unaware of search engines or what they do.  Maybe they have AOL at home, and AOL’s built-in search makes them think that is the web, the only way to get to the web, and a complete catalog of what is out there.  Raising general awareness of the wealth of data that is available to people and the existing tools, and techniques for using those tools, should be school and public libraries’ primary mission in user education right now.

What do you see as the two or three most important changes in technology which impact libraries—not just academic libraries, but all libraries.

Digital rights management is extremely important for libraries to pay attention to because of the way it limits our users’ access to our materials and the long-term preservation and access issues it brings with it.

Net Neutrality is also a huge concern of mine—if the web is altered by commercial interests, then the deck for our users’ information seeking is already stacked.  This has the potential to add huge barriers and frustration for educational content and resources.

Have you discovered any particular sites, tools, or mashups that you believe would be useful to young academics?

Writeboard (http://www.writeboard.com/) is a great collaboration tool, rather like a wiki, where you can work alone or with others to build a document, and roll back to previous versions at any time.  It’s really easy to use and great for collaborative projects.

BibMe (http://www.bibme.org/) is also an academic-friendly tool that lets you build a works cited page in a number of styles, from websites, books, articles, you name it.  Again, this one is really easy to use, and something I wish I’d had when I was still in school!  I still use it to build resource lists for papers and courses I teach.  It works for both teachers and students.

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