I want to tell stories

As I settle down in the new job, I have a bit of time to think about the job itself and things I would like to do. I am now responsible for the library's newsletter. By the way, I have been informed that we need to be getting that publication out pretty soon, so it looks like my list of things to do got one more urgent item on it. Moving along, my director has expressed a strong interest in blogs and other online tools. I am planning a library blog for us among other things. I don't want it to be just a library news blog. I want the blog and other tools to tell a story, our story.

The idea of using stories to spread the library's good works is not new. For example, Michael Stephen's (who seems to need some help getting dressed) blog explores the theme of telling the stories of the library frequently. One example is his post on "Telling the Library's Story." Personally, I am more intrigued by the method, by the idea of finding and nurturing stories. The Anecdote blog, which deals with stories and work, had a small post by Shawm on "How to Make Your Workplace More Storyable." For the authors of the blog, stories facilitate knowledge flow. For me, it is not just the knowledge, though knowledge is important. It's the stories as well and how they can bring people together. I am the type of person who can go to social gatherings and simply let others talk. I like encouraging that when possible. This idea about stories makes sense in the library since the library is a place where people come together. Shawn gives some ideas on making the workplace more "storyable." I think I can learn a thing or two from this. As usual, the stuff not quoted is my humble thinking. Emphasis in the original.

• "Do remarkable things." From the brief time I have been in my new job, I can see we come together to do some very remarkable things. I got here on time to help out with our Banned Books Week Readout. We participated in the campus chili cook-off, one of the Homecoming events (more on that later). Events like that are remarkable, and we should be telling those stories. We should also be telling stories about the remarkable service we offer our students and academic community on a regular basis. I am hoping to be the one telling some of those stories. I also hope to encourage others to share their stories as well.
  
• "Know how to ask story eliciting questions. Don't just ask for the facts. Ask 'What happened?' 'Tell me about a time when ...' 'When was the last time ...'." In essence, get people talking. Use more open-ended questions. Shawn also offers a post on "Questions to Elicit Stories" that may provide some more food for thought in this regard.
• "Eat together." This is self-explanatory. Shawn observes that in many workplaces people don't stop for lunch. I will make a different observation: if you do stop for lunch, do talk. Watching the soaps in the breakroom does not count. Maybe bringing food now and then to a meeting, or even agreeing to having a small lunch at a near campus location. A small meal can do wonderful things for small conversations.
  
• "Tell stories. Someone has to start modelling the behaviour so why not start the trend yourself." Shawn admonishes against making a big deal. Just jump right into the recounting. I imagine that once the behavior is in place that telling stories would be second nature. You just do it.
  

I am setting out then to discover how "storyable" is my library. And then, I am going to explore ways of telling some of those stories.

Article Note: on Onsite Library Services

Citation for the article:

Wagner, A. Ben and Cynthia Tysick. "Onsite Reference and Instruction Services: Setting Up Shop Where Our Patrons Live." Reference and User Services Quarterly 46.4 (2007): 60-65.

Read it in print.

I am always interested in instructional services. I was an Instruction Librarian, and though my title has changed, I still do a good amount of instruction (once an Instruction Librarian, always an Instruction Librarian I guess). Anyhow, this article also seems relevant now because it discusses an outreach model of more personal service. My new role is outreach, so clearly this is of interest to me in that vein as well. The article discusses the model of outreach at the University of Buffalo where librarians have set up office hours in departments as part of their service. One must note that UB is a much bigger campus than we are, but some of the ideas could work here. I don't know if that would be something we could pursue here, but it is worth a look. Plus the article has some other interesting ideas. The significance is in addressing the need for more of a personal touch at a time when a lot of the services are going online.

First, a couple of basic reminders from the article. The authors looked at other outreach techniques as a review and for context:

• "Contact opportunities included serving on departmental committees, instructional support, and attendance at social functions" (61). These are examples of opportunities to meet people and network.
  
• "As a result of dedicating field librarians to specific departments, strong interpersonal ties and interactions between the departments and librarians occurred" (61). This is something I find intriguing and that I would like to try out. In my new setting, the staff is a bit on the small side, so I am not sure how a model of office hours on a different location might be taken. On the other hand, I am thinking there are some opportunities we could explore for this type of outreach. Once I talk to some people, I may have a better sense. If nothing else, I would be willing to use myself as the guinea pig for my liaison area, or some other onsite service.
  
• "Most of the successful models report the use of multiple, targeted techniques including invitations to library workshops and other events, creative orientation activities, involvement in as many departmental academic and social events as possible, visits to faculty and administrators in their offices, and participation in curriculum committees" (63).
  

The authors also list other outreach techniques. I am listing them here mostly as a reminder for myself. I am sure more experienced folks already know this:

• "attending seminars (especially given by one's own faculty) and other departmental events at least once a month;"
  
• "maintaining a list of faculty teaching and research areas;"
• "exceeding even exceptional customer service standards for the first few requests from any new patron (first impressions count);"
• "keeping e-mail communications to a minimum, making them as brief and informative as possible;"
• "targeting graduate student groups, since graduate students teach undergraduate core courses in the departments, conduct their own research, and let other graduate students know where they received good service" (63).
  

The article goes on to explain how the departments were chosen for the initial project. Librarians also identified their concerns:

"In initial planning, librarians identified visibility, time commitment, scheduling, Internet access, and marketing as key elements. Concerns included sustainability, the time away from the librarian's regular office, and the reliance solely on electronic resources" (62).

Now for me, the issue of being away from an office would not be an issue. I do outreach. I think I mentioned in my interview that if I am out of the office a lot doing the library's good work, then I am doing my job. Sustainability and time commitments could be a concern here for us. I would likely take care of the marketing. But like the authors, I think we won't know for sure until we try it.

The article also provides advice and tips on how to carry out the project. One good piece of advice is to keep the time commitment small at first. As the authors point out, it is always easier to add time later (62). While the authors admit that the project was not perfect, they did find that it was valuable and sustainable. Here is part of what they concluded:

• "Above all, the pilot program demonstrated that face-to-face encounters have significant advantages over e-mail and virtual interactions" (64).
  
• "Onsite departmental reference services are not the complete answer for patron outreach. It works best within the larger context of faculty and student outreach activities that intentionally build long-term relationships with the department, such as attendance at faculty seminars and departmental events. Nor does it replace e-mail, phone consultations, instant messaging, general exceptional customer service, and library-based reference services and appointments" (64).
  

Article Note: On Library Instruction and Student Term Papers

Citation for the article:

Hurst, Susan and Joseph Leonard. "Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Effect of Library Instruction on the Quality of Students' Term Papers." Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship 8.1 (Spring 2007).

Available online in the link above. A hat tip to the Information Literacy Land of Confusion.

While the article confirms that library instruction has a positive effect on students using more varied sources in their papers, the study does leave the question open of whether there is any effect on the actual grades the students get. The question of grades is one that may need further exploration, and according to the authors, provides an opportunity to look at actual course requirements to find more opportunities to emphasize and reward better research.

The article itself is a pretty easy read. The authors basically present their data in tables and provide brief discussion of the results. The study is a citation analysis of student bibliographies. The literature review provides a brief but good overview of previous work in this area, which lays a foundation for further work as well.

Some notes from the introduction. As usual, the stuff in quotation marks comes from the article. The rest is mine.

• "Because today's undergraduates are skilled at surfing the web, it is often assumed that they will be equally proficient in locating data needed for their papers and assignments/ Despite their web-surfing skills and technological acumen, however, students may still not know how to effectively search and locate research articles on a topic." This is pretty much the mantra of every other article on this topic that I have read. I know it from experience as an instruction librarian, and I am sure my colleagues know it as well. Conveying this to the faculty is a different matter since a few do make this assumption.
  
• "Another problem is that while it is assumed that students are taught how to use the library during an introductory English course or through a library orientation, this is frequently not the case." Again, see my remarks above. I would also add that even when the students do get such an orientation, if they lack opportunities to practice the skills they were shown in the orientation session, they will not remember them later on.
  

The hypotheses for this study were as follows:

• #1: "Students in the sections that receive library instruction will be more likely to cite a larger number of sources overall, use a greater variety of resources, and cite resources located using library tool, (e.g. the catalog or databases), than the students in the sections that did not receive instruction." This hypothesis was proven by the study. It did find students who had a library session did use a more varied set of sources and got them from places like databases.
  
• #2: "Students in the sections that received library instruction would earn higher grades on their term papers than the students not receiving the instruction." This was not proven. Though the students who got instruction scored about a point higher, that is not statistically significant.
  

The study was based on three International Business classes: two that got instruction and one that did not (the control). Note that "no specific requirements were given for the bibliographies for any of the sections. The students were encouraged to use a variety of resources, both print and electronic, but there were no required numbers or types or sources mandated." The bibliographies from the papers were collected and analyzed. You can read article for the specific methodology.

Some of the things the study found:

• It found that students "can only use resources that they know about. While the library website is as user-friendly and accessible as possible, it still increases usability to have a demonstration, particularly one tailored to the specific resources that are more likely to be useful for a particular assignment." On the one hand, this may not be great news for those librarians who are all about 2.0 and putting everything online. Guess what? If the students don't know it is there, they won't use it. On the other hand, this is where good marketing comes in. Instruction is one way to do it. However, other ways of publicity on campus to promote a library's website and its resources would be useful as well. Maybe it is time to focus a bit more on raising awareness of the resources that are already available and little less on adding yet another bell or a whistle to a website.
  
• "Those that had received library instruction utilized proportionally more journal articles and databases, and fewer Internet sites, with the differences being statistically significant."
  
• "By demonstrating these resources to the students through library instruction, they became aware of them and subsequently used them to locate information for their research papers."
  
• However, here is the not so good news: "Thus, although those in the group that received library instruction did indeed cite more scholarly sources and more types of sources, this did not result in an improved grade for either the paper itself or for the course overall." It is not good news because often we tell students that they may get a better grade if they use better sources. It turns out, at least from this study, that those who mostly used the Internet pretty much did as well as those who used library resources. Thus, the the cynical student would be able to say, "why do I need the library?" Given this study, it would not be easy to give a clear answer.
  

Yet I think the answer lies elsewhere. The authors hint at it when they suggest designing better assignments and emphasizing more research of higher quality in classes. The "out," so to speak, is that the class used in the study was a business class that did not require extensive use of scholarly sources. A lot of what was needed was material like company information, some of it easily available on the web. So, I wonder if this result would have been different for a different subject area where more scholarly research would actually be necessary (social and hard sciences, for example).

Do note also that the papers used in the study were not graded "explicitly according to the number or types of resources cited." So, there was no real reward for the student who used better sources. This brings me to question how much critical thinking skills were involved in the assignment. One would think, and the authors agree, that better sources would lead to a better analysis, and a better analysis, to a better grade. But the study does not bear that out. Therefore, as an educator, I wonder if the answer may not be someplace else. Maybe higher expectations from the professor and from the course? Maybe looking at a more critical pedagogy? But it is not just critical thinking. It is knowing what to do with what you learn. Here and here are some previous readings I have done that may shed some further light. The grade issue may be something to explore further. Then again, if we say that grades are not the most important thing, but the learning, then we still need to be asking these questions. Did the students really learn what they were supposed to learn, or did they just regurgitate whatever they were given in a class? Overall, a good study, but it still leaves open questions.

Banned Books Readout at UT-Tyler 2007

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"

-- Kurt Vonnegut, author

We had our Banned Books Readout here on campus. The event, sponsored by the library, is held annually as part of the events for Banned Books Week. For me, this was my first activity on campus as the new Outreach Librarian. Fortunately, I had the able assistance of our webmaster who has also been serving as Outreach Coordinator (I am gradually taking over the outreach role from her. However, it is more like we'll be working together, and that is a good thing).

The event went from 10:30a to 2:30p, and it took place in the nice open terrace we have facing the lake. We had readers representing various departments on campus. Readers chose their own selections for reading in 15 minute segments. The concept was for the reader to introduce the work and then read their selection.

Our equipment for the event included:

• Letter sign on sidewalk to advertise the event for people as they walked by.
  
• A nice sign on an easel next to the podium. The graphics were drawn by one of our circulation periodicals assistants (I am still learning who does what here).
  
• Most of the books that people chose were items checked out from the library. This is definitely something to encourage in the future if possible. However, any book is welcome.
  
• We had buttons to hand out that said "I read Banned Books." I think we should continue making them and providing them.
  
• We had flyers with the list of readers.
  

The selection of books read this time around:

• Amy Timberlake and Adam Rex, The Dirty Cowboy.
• Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War.
• The Bible (selections from the Book of Genesis. I did not provide a link given there are so many editions.)
• Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird.
  
• Inga Muscio, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence.
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
• Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic.
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• Michael Willhoite, Daddy's Roommate.
• Dee Alexander Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
• Dr. Seuss, The Butter Battle Book.
• Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen.
• Confucius, The Analects.
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.
• Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men.

Our readers all brought in their style and skill to the texts. The books listed include books we commonly associate with challenges, such as Daddy's Roommate, to works that we don't usually think of as being challenged, such as The Analects. The history professor who chose Confucius gave us a small lesson on the history of the book, explaining how the work was banned in its own country by a more legalistic regime. We were moved at times; we laughed at other times. The audience came and went as the morning gave way to the afternoon. Overall, the audience was small, but we had a good showing overall.

My director asked me to ponder what things we could improve for future readouts. Here are a some things I am pondering:

• The location. This is an object of debate already, and I am not sure I have the answer. I was told that when it was done in the library, that some students felt like they may be called upon to read, or they did not want to approach in fear they were interrupting something. I think with a little gentle encouragement and welcoming, that could be overcome. The outside location we used this time is nice. It is an open space; it is outdoors, and there is good traffic. However, there are restrictions on using a microphone there during certain hours. So, I have mixed feelings. At the moment, I would say for us to continue holding the event outside, weather permitting.
  
• We need to have some extra books handy. That way, if someone approaches wanting to read on the spot, we can hand him or her something. Since we did have a couple of breaks in the reading, allowing for such breaks to be open mike moments would be a good idea.
  
• We probably need additional publicity and promotion for the event. Getting more students to read would be nice. That is one of the things I will be working on throughout this year and in my time here: publicity for the library. There is a campus electronic bulletin board. We can use that. We have a list of people who participate, so calling on them is good, but getting others in addition would be great as well.
  

By the way, we took pictures as well. I have placed a good number of them on my Flickr account. Here is the link to the set. I will probably be using a few of them for an article in our library newsletter later in the term. And certainly using photos is a possibility for when we implement a blog for the library, which is another thing I am considering.


"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

-- John F. Kennedy. Remarks made on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America at H.E.W. Auditorium, February 26, 1962

It's Banned Books Week 2007

We have made it another year, and ALA, along with other organizations, is once again sponsoring Banned Books Week. There are already some cracks about how the abbreviation BBW means anything but Banned Books Week (go ahead, run the Google search and see what you find. I did.). There are also the usual detractors who say "no one bans books in the United States." True, overall, the United States government has not made a major move to ban books. However, the fact remains that a lot of people do challenge books, and that some books are removed from libraries (they may get put back on the shelves, but removal, or restricted access, does happen). These challenges usually take the form of some parent or "concerned citizen" who wants a book removed. Detractors usually fall back on parental rights, and when pushed, will argue back that "well, librarians censor all the time when they don't purchase everything." Actually, we call that Collection Development, and it is one of the things we are paid as professionals to do.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I have no problem with a parent deciding what their child should or should not read. That is their right and their duty. I am a parent. I make sure I know what my daughter is reading and checking out of the library. She does not go online without supervision. In other words, her mother and I put in the work that all parents should be putting in when it comes to parenting, which more often than not is not done by a lot of other parents. What I do have a problem with is other parents trying to decide what I read or not. Sure, detractors may argue, "but look, you can get the book on Amazon or other store." I sure can, but why should I be deprived of access to a book in my library, where I pay taxes as well, because one parent decides to challenge, and the library folds? Don't like the book? I have a simple solution for you: don't read it. Don't want your child to get a book? Don't let them have it. Do your duty as a parent and act accordingly. Don't come around trying to deprive others of access because you have a personal problem with a particular book. You have your right to make a choice. I have a right to make my choices as well. Your rights end where mine begin. It's as simple as that. I may not like Harry Potter (to pick an example of a commonly challenged book), but if that is your cup of tea, then go right ahead. And by the way, if you decide to challenge a book (or other material), at least have the decency to actually read it yourself before making your decision. Nothing will make me lose respect for you faster than you wanting to ban some book on hearsay and admitting you never read it. You read the book, and the book is not to your tastes or runs counter to your values? Cool with me. I understand not every book is for every reader. But at least make the attempt to be informed before you condemn a book.

And no, no one is making any claims here that things like porn should be accessible in libraries. Please use some common sense. This goes to those who say librarians are happy to let porn into their libraries. If porn is your thing, please do it somewhere private. Again, common sense.


Well, that is my two cents about Banned Books Week this year. My library will be hosting a read-out tomorrow. I am in the middle of deciding what to read for the event. I am looking forward to it.

In the meantime, don't take just my word for it on the issue. Here are some other people who are saying a thing or two about Banned Books Week:

• I can always count on the Annoyed Librarian. Sure enough, she takes on ALA's celebration here.
  
• From The Onion, get a bit of an amusing take on the issue. What's the big deal?, teens say.
• The Heretical Librarian is doing a series for Banned Books Week on authors that have actually been banned, threatened, etc. due to their writings. Here is his post on Faraq Foda. Feel free to go visit the blog so you can read the other items in the series as they come out.
  
• Amnesty International also has a page on Banned Books. From the site, "during Banned Books Week, Amnesty International directs attention to the plight of individuals who are persecuted because of the writings that they produce, circulate or read."
  
• Jessamyn West, of Librarian.net, has a post on Banned Books Week and union issues.