Thing 10: Future trends

 My very last "thing" to blog about and then I am done! It's been a great learning experience...

If I could predict the future and know exactly what libraries will be like in 2020, I'd be a very rich person. Since I don't have special powers to look into the future, I can only offer my best guess. I have to disagree with the idea of libraries going by the wayside. My thoughts and observations are based on an academic library. I am sure public libraries and high school (K-12) libraries have their own unique set of challenges. I think one thing all libraries have in common is that every library user expects Internet connection whether it be to read e-mail, do research, do homework, and connect with online social communities (facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.).

As a library worker, I have the perfect opportunity to observe our library patrons and what their needs are. Each spring, our library conducts an online survey. One of the questions is how do you use the library. The results are split betweeen in person and remotely. I have seen students come in to the library very early in the morning to finish up their papers and use the printing services. I have seen them come in groups to use the group study rooms. I have seen them come in to read the articles that their professors have put on reserve. Our statistics show that the number of people going in and out of the library has increased over the years. I think in the future, there will still be a need for study space, and computers. For those students using the library remotely, there will be a greater need for them to be able to connect to our databases and online resources. With technology changing rapidly, there will also be a greater need for library workers to be able to adapt to changing technologies. Librarians and library staff will have to be constantly updating and improving their skills and knowledge base in order to assist patrons with the new technologies.

One example of a new technology that I think will take off is e-books, and streaming videos. As a cataloger, I prefer having a book in my hand, and matching the title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication date, number of pages, etc. I have also cataloged e-books and I can say that they are more complicated. We purchase them from the vendor in batches. We have also purchased a collection streaming videos and I am told we may be getting more. I think the number of available e-books and streaming videos will be endless. To complicate things, our e-books can only be downloaded onto certain devices. By the year 2020, I hope all the details will be straightened out. We have to start now to plan for the future. I recently bought an e-reader not because I want to read e-books, but because I want to be able to see for myself how to search for an e-book in our collection, how to download it onto the e-reader, and how to read it. Who knows, maybe someday in the near future, this will come in handy.

I am constantly amazed at the new technologies that are available. I am not sure if our library patrons will expect us to provide all those extra services. If so, the way libraries are on very tight budgets, I don't think we will be able to deliver all those services. I am hoping that the basic services will still be important: circulation, reference, academic reserves, information literacy, and printing. For me personally, I hope and pray that books will still be available. What would a library be without books?

Thing 9: e-books

Just trying to catch up and I’m so glad I’ve made it this far...

I feel really deprived because I don’t own an iPhone, iPod, iPad, Smart phone, Kindle, Nook or any kind of “cool device” where I can read a book on a screen. If I won an iPad, I would be in heaven! But since I never win anything, the eReader that I would like to get if I ever decided to get one would be a Nook. I don’t know why I would go for that instead of a Kindle because I haven’t even held a Nook in my hands. My brother-in-law and his wife recently came to visit and he was showing off his Kindle. He let me press the button to turn the page, showed me how to download a book, put a book in archive (basically putting a book on the shelf for later reading), and read the bestseller reviews. I can’t say I was terribly impressed. Sure, when you’re going on vacation, it’s much more convenient to pack a Kindle than packing a suitcase full of books. My husband likes to read a lot and he has his own room in the house that he calls the library. We have had many discussions on the subject and I don’t think he will ever switch to e-books. I also don’t think he will be heartbroken if he doesn’t get a Kindle for Father’s Day, haha.  Personally, I like the feel of books in my hand; I like flipping through the pages; I like looking at the photographs in art books; I even like the smell of books (weird, I know!). Having said that, I do feel like I need to try to adapt to the changing technology, both personally and professionally.

I have a special fondness for books because I get to catalog them and I’m paid to do something that is fun. We recently purchased 10,000 NetLibrary e-books, and cataloging them wasn’t at all fun. There was something wrong with the first batch that we received. First I had to move the old records to discard, then remove them from the catalog before I could load the new set of MARC records. These e-books are different from the kind that you purchase from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Apparently there are many different formats of e-books. I recently found out through research on my own that these can only be downloaded onto specific devices, and Kindle is not one of them. Our library has purchased 2 Sony Readers and we’re still in the testing phase. I am really looking forward to the June 9^th workshop on e-books sponsored by CDLC because I hope to gain a better understanding on how e-books will change what we deliver to our students.

Thing 8: Video

Here's a video I created and posted on YouTube about a year ago. Each year during Poetry Blitz Week, the library sponsors a poetry reading. Faculty and students come to the library to read a favorite poem, or a poem that they've written themselves. As you can see, they sometimes bring props (see the hedgehog).

Another video is of Kingsley Greene, our library director, and Susan Scrimshaw, president of The Sage Colleges. The video was taken during the dedication of the library café, known as Hazel's Café, which was named after an alumna, Hazel Bode, who bequeathed money to the college for library renovations. I used iMovie to create the video, complete with music, slide transitions, and special effects. I had fun creating this even though it's just an amateur video. I am sure there are lots of events in the library that I could record and post on YouTube.

Thing #7

Productivity and Collaboration Tools

The two productivity tools I ended up exploring were Google Calendar and Google Docs.

First, Google Calendar because I think it would be great to have calendars for both of our library campuses in one location. We have a library staff calendar for vacations, meetings, etc. on CampusCruiser, our college e-mail system, but I don’t think it has all the features that Google Calendar offers. I am thinking we could create calendars for the reference desk schedule, and student circulation assistants’ schedule. For the media room reservations, we have a binder that we keep at the circulation desk to jot down the reservations. Faculty or students call in or walk up to the desk if they wish to reserve a room. Sharing the calendars would be easy because anyone with the link could view the calendar online to see if there’s an available time slot even before making the phone call. An easier option is if you want to make all of your calendar information (including event details) available to the world, all you would do so click the “Make this calendar public” button. For sharing with specific people, you would just add each person’s e-mail address and choose their permissions settings—whether or not you want them to edit the calendar or just be able to view it.  The calendar help menu is a good place to start in getting started on how to create, customize, organize, and share calendars.

Google Docs: I have been playing with the idea of creating an online form for librarians to submit their book orders. This is a really good tool that I could use in acquisitions because each librarian has his or her own way of submitting book orders. I created a form a couple of years ago, but it never really took off. The idea was for librarians to use the online form to submit their book orders (title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication date, edition, campus, shelving location, fund ID, price, and any special notes). Using the responses that would be saved in a spreadsheet, I could then go ahead and create the order information in our catalog. Google provides lots of templates to choose from, so reinventing the wheel is not necessary. For security, I can specify that the form be available only to anyone with the link. This is still a work in progress, but it’s a lot of fun customizing the form, and doing test runs. Documentation on Google Docs can be found here: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/search/label/forms/

Thing 6 : Online Meetings

Diving into Digital Books: Adding eReaders to Your Library, May 2^nd, 2011.

I attended this archived webinar and found it to be as convenient as attending a live webinar.  Many thanks to Polly who sent me the archived link; I was able to download and install the Elluminate Live! Software on my

MacBook Pro while lying in bed and my laptop on my lap—where else? The process was very easy and seamless. The audio was good, and there were no sound issues. At one point, I was able to pause the program for a short break and continue where I left off. It was and hour-long webinar with a brief answer and question session at the end.  There were 135 participants and a little pop-up window kept appearing every time a participant joined the webinar. On the left panel of the screen, there was a little window where you could view chat sessions and comments from the participants. In the middle of the screen were slides that corresponded to the presenter’s topic. They were very engaging and kept my attention throughout the program. Even though this was an archived webinar, it's as if I was attending it live. The only disadvantage was that if I had any questions, I wasn't able to ask them.

Compared to attending an in-person meeting, I think this is very good. If you don’t have the funds for travel, or cannot attend due to scheduling problems, an archived webinar is the next best alternative. I have attended webinars before, and I think I will continue to attend as many free ones as time allows in order to keep up with my library skills.

Thing #5: Reflection & Catch Up Week

So far, so good. I don't think there's been an assignment that was too difficult to complete. I am now totally addicted to Google Reader and I would never have known about it until the assignment on RSS feeds. I am going to make an effort to visit and comment on other participants' blogs. I think if we all do this, we can learn a lot from each other.

Thing 4 : Online Communities

Well, I finally have a moment to complete this assignment. Our library is pretty much connected to the whole social networking scene. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and we have a Flickr pro account. Unfortunately, our web librarian recently rearranged our library homepage and removed the icons for Facebook and Twitter. Our Facebook page is pretty static, and there's not much content. However, our Twitter account is active with over 200 followers. With all the changes lately, I think it will be a lot easier to update all the social networking sites in one fell swoop. You could possibly load pictures of events in Flickr, blog about it, and then send the link to Facebook! If patrons are interested in our library services, they can always go to our website, or call the reference desk.

On a personal level, I am on Facebook and Goodreads. I also have a LinkedIn account and recently joined Twitter. I know, I said I had no interest in joining Twitter, but I gave in and joined. I'm currently following 15 tweeters. I don't see how it would be useful to me. It seems like information overload. I can see how valuable it would be to follow the news or the latest Amazon deals. I also resisted joining Facebook for a long time. I used to post updates, but lately have fallen off the grid. I have friends who are on there constantly. I only use it to see what my kids are up to and to keep in touch with family and friends who are out of state and out of the country.

Thing 3: Photo Sharing

Here's a quick video and pictures from Olana, historic home of artist and painter, Frederic Church. My husband and I visited this site last spring. I can't wait for next month when we plan to take a tour of The Mount, Edith Wharton's estate in Lenox, MA. Anyone ever been there?

I created a slide show, and hope it works. I've had a personal flickr account for quite some time, but never posted much because I am too cheap to get a pro account. We have a pro account for the library which I maintain. We use it mainly for displaying book covers of new acquisitions. Our web librarian created a badge for the library website, and the new books display is prominently visible along the bottom of the screen. The content changes every month when I clean out the images and replace them with newer titles.

I have seen other Learn with CDLC participants create a slide show of their sets. I have to say it took me quite a while to figure it out, but hopefully it will work. Sometimes these things are intuitive, other times you have to keep digging until you find the answer. We will see if it works, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

This exercise was a lot of fun. I have played around with picnik, which you can get to through flickr. I like how you can edit a picture and then save it back in flickr; it is a very seamless process. Some of the features are very handy for photo editing such as cropping, resizing, adding borders and text. Which reminds me, adding text to the image would come in very handy when you want to create a watermark. I plan on experimenting on adding Sage Archives to some of the images that we are digitizing for the CDLC Digital Collections program using CONTENTdm.

Edited to add: For some reason, the slide show did not appear when I used Internet Explorer, but it did open up for me when I used Firefox. I read somewhere that it might have something to do with flash. Anyone know what's going on?

Top 10 books Kathleen Graber would recommend

Top 10 books Kathleen Graber would recommend, a photo by The Sage Libraries on Flickr.

What are your top 10 poetry books?

I know, there are only 4 pictured here. There was a whole room full of poetry books for her to choose from, so she couldn't decide. Actually, this should be titled "Top 10 books Kathleen Graber would steal from the library" (only kidding, of course!). Included are rare, signed, and first editions.

Okay, this is Option B, #5, on this week's Thing 3: Photo Sharing assignment. Added this image from our library's flickr account by clicking on the Share this on Blogger icon. Also, I'm having fun playing around with picnik. The daisy border is new since I last used it.

Spring has sprung

Every year during National Poetry Month the college sponsors a poet to come to do a reading and book signing. This year the special guest poet is Kathleen Graber. She will be reading poems from her books, Correspondence, and The Eternal city tonight at Bush Memorial. The event is free and open to the public.

                      Professor David Salomon, Chair of the English and Mondern Languages Department and Kathleen Graber
                                   in the Hare Room which houses the Carol Ann Donahue poetry collection, Russell Sage College

For the second year in a row my boss, Terry Wasielewski, and I have been commissioned to create floral arrangements for the event. I have to say it's a lot of fun creating these huge bouquets. It always makes me ready for spring and the nice weather.

Thing 2: RSS pt.2

Ok, I think I'm going to stick with Google Reader for organizing my RSS feeds. It's so easy! I can't believe I never knew about this until now. I find that Google has so many features that it's hard to keep up with every single gadget or application. So far I have 12 subscriptions and follow 2 blogs. I think that will be enough to keep me busy.

Thing 2: RSS

Ahhhh... light bulb moment! I have known about RSS for awhile now, just never concentrated on learning the new applications that have come about in recent times.

I was able to create Personal Start Pages on iGoogle and Netvibes. I have four different E-mail addresses that I use;  1 for work, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail, so setting up the accounts was pretty easy. I like how Netvibes allows you to log in using your Facebook login. It's so much easier than having to remember yet another password. I also like how you are able to check your different E-mail accounts on Netvibes. Now I don't have to have multiple tabs open on my browser. I like how Polly created a list of all the Learn with CDLC participants, now all I have to do is remember how to get there! I must admit I am a CNN news junkie, so I'm glad I can get to it through iGoogle. I have also changed my homepage to iGoogle at home (point of no return, yikes!), but will probably keep my current homepage at work. I only have two subscriptions so far  on my Google reader, but suspect I will add more as I continue to explore RSS feeds.

CDLC Bloggers

List of Learn with CDLC participants

I just thought I would post this on my blog in case anyone wants to see who else is participating in the program. I could bookmark it in my favorites, but my list is a mile long.

I have a blog

Just one more "thing" about blogs, and then I will move on to the next assignment.
Yesterday my family and I went to dinner at our favorite restaurant to celebrate my son's birthday, and my daughter getting into a one year Japanese language graduate program. Anyway, during the conversation, the subject of blogs came up. I told them that I had a blog. Their eyes lit up as if to say, wow, Mom has a blog? What's the name of your blog?, my daughter asked. At this point, I am glad I remembered what Polly said about remembering our blog name, and password, etc. My blog is rosetheblogger.blogspot.com. There's also Sister Rose's of Maria College at rosethelibrarian.blogspot.com. The two should not be confused. I am not a librarian, but for convenience sake, my son often refers to me as a librarian to his friends when they ask what I do (see the first post below). My daughter typed it in on her iPhone, and sure enough, it came up. Did she doubt me? I don't know...Kids, they think they know everything! End of story. On to the next assignment.

Pushing buttons

I just have to share my experience about our new phone system that will be put in place sometime in the next couple of weeks. Yesterday we went to a training session to learn how to operate our VoIP phones. I am usually not afraid to try new things. Well, it turns out that you have to push a lot of buttons in order to learn how to make calls, review your list of missed calls, delete your list of missed calls, do call transfers, and conference calls. What ever happened to good old fashioned phones where all you have to do is pick up the receiver? It's a good thing we have a user's manual.

Thing 1: Blogging

Hello! My name is Rose Redwood and I work at The Sage Colleges. I'm really excited to participate in CDLC's learning program. I've been working at the library at our Albany and Troy campuses for the last 10 years. I started out in circulation, then moved to interlibrary loan for a number of years, and then finally to technical services. I am currently the Bibliographic Records Manager. It's quite a mouthful to say. What exactly does my job title mean? I get that question a lot. I do a little of everything technical-related from copy cataloging, to maintaining our book order records, to dabbling in archives. Last year I learned how to digitize images on CONTENTdm, with a little help from my friends Ilka and Susan at CDLC. I do contribute to our library's blog occasionally, so I am glad that blogging on Blogger won't be too difficult to learn. What is difficult is trying to decide how to design the blog. Sometimes I feel we have too many choices which prevent us from making a decision. I am going to keep it simple!