Changing Nature of Reference Service

My library is located in Plymouth, a name shared by towns not only in the United States but also in other countries.  Thus, we tend to get calls and emails and instant chat messages from folks who believe they are contacting their local library, but it may be a library hundreds of miles away from us.  We usually catch on fairly quickly from the nature of the question or the library card number and good naturedly give the patron the correct phone number or URL of their local Plymouth library.  However,  with the many databases we have at our disposal, and good searching skills on the Internet, we are still able to answer questions for other Plymouth patrons no matter where they are located geographically.  A recent patron query is a wonderful example of this:  A patron called me and asked for a death date for her father so she could try to locate an obituary.  She knew he died in Plymouth, but wasn’t sure of the month or  exact year, only an approximate year.  I explained to her that our local papers were not indexed and finding this information would be very difficult to do just searching reels of microfilm.  She said it was very important for her to find this precise date since there were insurance issues outstanding.  I told her I’d do my best and got her phone number.  (The area code should have been a tip-off , but it didn’t register with me at the time.)  By this time, the reference librarian in me was looking for ways to avoid prolonged searching of 15-17 year old newspapers on film.  Thankfully, we subscribe to Ancestry Library Edition, so I tried using their version of the Social Security Death Benefits Index.  Bingo !! I hit paydirt within three minutes.  There was just one problem – the individual I was looking for didn’t reside in OUR Plymouth, but in another town called Plymouth almost 900 miles away.  The odd area code finally made some sense to me.  I called the patron and told her that I had good news and bad news.  I had found the date of her father’s death,  but that she was going to have to look through the newspapers in her own Plymouth library to find the obituary since we were several states away.  She was truly shocked that we were not in her home state and even more surprised that we managed to come up with the information she needed so quickly.  I told her that with our electronic tools, librarians are no longer limited by geographic borders, only our good resources and skills!

Ponderings about On-line Learning

In a past life, over 30 years ago, I spent a few years working for a now-defunct computer learning school.  You know the kind I mean – you see their ads on the channels that show re-runs of Bonanza and Gunsmoke.  I was in charge of filing VA forms for the veterans who were taking classes there but still had much interaction with the instructors who taught programming languages.  We had many heated discussions regarding the possibility of using the computer for teaching classes online.  While I’m now ashamed to admit it, I was the person who argued against this ever happening.  I said that a machine could never replace a live person in a classroom setting.  Those programming instructors would certainly be laughing at me now!

Last week I taught two sessions of my Intro to RSS class to a group of librarians from two different states using Centra software and VOIP technology.  My first few years of using this technology were hard since I didn’t teach frequently enough to become comfortable with its features.  I think I’m finally at ease switching between text chat and live talk while running my web presentation.  My students are unfailingly patient when a new window doesn’t show up on their own computer monitors.  I always have lots of interaction during the course of the two hours.  I’ve asked myself if this would be better done in person – and I’m not sure of the answer.  Certainly, seeing people face to face leads to a natural exchange of ideas and comments, but we had a pretty lively conversation online last week.  The over-riding feature in teaching online is that a librarian from the U.P. in Michigan and two librarians from western Indiana could join with other librarians from the metro Detroit area in discussing the advantages of using RSS without leaving their desks.  That alone makes a huge difference to me in judging the merits of on-line vs. in person classes.

With the threat of widespread H1N1 flu in the upcoming months, colleges are requesting their professors to plan ahead and put their lectures online so that students may view them from home or dorms.  I wonder how many of these teachers have the skills and/or desire to do this.  The image I’ll always carry with me from the various universities I’ve attended is that of  an older professor either pointing to something on the board, reading out of a book, or sitting on a lecture desk earnestly discussing a topic.  Other than actually watching my teachers waving their arms in the air to get across their point of view, most of these other activities will easily lend themselves to the on-line technology.  My mother and my brother were both college professors.  If they were still alive, I wonder what they would think of this shift in the method of educating their students.  Personally, I love it!!

The Joys of Shelf Reading

One of our annual events each year is the shelf reading blitz that happens after summer reading is over and before school starts.  Librarians take this task in stride and rush to claim their own subject areas to put into order prior to moving on to other collections.  Not only do we put the materials in correct Dewey order, but many of us take this opportunity to weed our area as well.  Since I purchase materials in the 004 – 006 area of computers, my books and DVDs tend to need frequent updating and discarding.  Last week I finally got rid of my Windows 95 and 98 books as well as the DOS books.  Wouldn’t you know it – - the minute I weed these items, we have requests for them!!  That DOS for Dummies book hadn’t circulated in several years.  Now I was forced to interloan it thought Michigan eLibrary.  If I had waited to shelf read just one more week, we would have had this book in stock. 

Thankfully,  another area of my collection duties is genealogy & local history.  Since many of these books deal with historic topics, they tend not to go out of date.  I’m familiar with my dedicated genealogy patrons and know better than to discard their cherished favorite books!  Other than slipping thin volumes of local cemetery records back into order, my patrons keep close watch on the order of the books they use for their research. 

It’s a joy to have such diverse collections, including my new favorite – the video games for adults.  There is no shelf reading there since 90% of them are constantly out in circulation.  My six Nintendo DS game systems have never remained on the shelf for more than an hour at a time, so this is a mute point.

Summer is ending and my shelf reading / weeding is done.  Now we anxiously await the happy pitter-patter of middle schoolers’ gym shoes and cell phone ringtones and will know that another school year has started.  This is our last week of peace and quiet for many months to come!

Using Google Books in Reference

It seems like there are fewer and fewer real reference questions these days.  You know, those that challenge us to use every single tool of librarianship that we know- the ones we really love.  Well, lucky me, I’ve had several of them lately and I have used Google Books to aid in my quest for an answer each time.  I must confess, while I use most Google apps in either my classes or personal life, their Books app was one I tended to overlook.  Never again – I’m a confirmed user of Google Books  when I need to find an obscure citation, especially if it’s over twenty years old. 

Using this tool yesterday, I was able to locate the exact date and page numbers for an article a patron needed for an upcoming lecture.  She had an old photocopy of the article, minus everything but the name of the journal.  It turned out that the journal had changed names, but I was still able to use the author’s name in Google Books to track down the bibliographic information needed to get a copy of this 40 year old article through interloan.   This same article had been cited in a book that appeared on Google Books – and this is the third time recently I’ve been able to track down older article citations using this tool.  I am certainly adding it to my favorite tools list when I am faced with a challenging reference query.

Muddling through Medicare

I spent two hours this morning with a dozen local seniors helping them decide which Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Plan was right for them.  Along the way, I also assisted two GM salaried retirees by providing them with information to help them make an informed choice in selecting their health insurance for the coming year.  As the daughter of a GM retiree, I’ve experienced the frustration and utter confusion that besets our older relatives when forced to wade through the mounds of paperwork and choices they must deal with before the end of the year.  This morning I helped a recent widower feel better about the decision he made regarding Medigap insurance.  I hugged him as he thanked me profusely and he started to weep.  I know this was partly because he mourned his wife, but also because he felt very much alone in having to make these choices at this stage in his life.  Neither General Motors or the U.S. Government take these personal reactions into account when designing their “programs.”  It makes me furious to hear to anxiety in the voices of our patrons when they tell us how lost they are and that we are their only resource.  Why must medical help be so complicated?  While I am opposed to socialized medicine, I am also aware that our current system needs fixing.  What scares me is if the government takes over managing all health care in this country, the layers of paperwork and hoops we’ll be forced to jump through will increase ten-fold.  God help us all then!

Getting Ready for my two classes

I’m teaching two classes this month for Michigan Library Consortium.  One is on Blogs for Libraries and the other in an Introduction to RSS.  Although I teach them on a regular basis, I’ve been doing it online through Centra Software recently and using two web pages as presentations.  Now I’m back to training in person and I find I need to revise both PowerPoint Presentations as well as both training manuals.  Technology is changing so rapidly that both required quite a bit of work.  About one quarter of the web links either died or had changed.  Software programs have stopped being produced.  After incorporating new info I picked up at Internet Librarian 2008, I’m hoping both classes will be refreshed and interesting.  Wish me luck!

Yet another new project – will it fly?

Every so often I feel compelled to come up with new ideas on using technology in a library environment.  I don’t know if this compulsion is related to the fact I’m an “over 60″ librarian and want to prove I can still be relevant or if I just get bored with the status quo and need to shake things up a bit.  My latest brainstorm has to do with keeping mentally fit.  My beloved husband spends hours doing Sudoku puzzles and playing Simon, an older electronic game.  He claims these activities improve his memory.  He may be on to something.  So I did some research and, lo and behold, studies have shown that seniors who did crosswords and other mind puzzles stave off dementia and remain mentally alert longer than those who don’t.

Thus, the inspiration for our Brain Age Collection.  We’ve purchased three Nintendo DS consoles and three Brain Age type games to go along with them.  I have padded cases and extra cords.  We will be circulating these DS packages for a week at a time, free of charge.  I’m hoping Baby Boomers will take them home and see if they like them.  If so, they can then purchase them for personal use.  Many of our staff members are eager to try them, so I think it might prove to be popular among the general adult population.  Who knows….. I’ll keep you updated on my success or failure.

Great Day for Reference !

I’m about to leave work for the day and I am feeling a great sense of satisfaction having answered THREE real reference questions during my hours on the desk.  The most exciting aspect of the day is that they were all so different from each other.  I was able to help an African American gentleman trace back an additional three generations in his family history in Alabama.  He said his mother would be thrilled to death with the information I helped him get.  The second question was dealing with Overdrive e-videos and a continuing problem one patron had for several weeks.  Within an hour, support at Overdrive headquarters had provided me with the knowledge I needed to fix the problem.  Finally, the mother of a bride-to-be needed to identify the title of a children’s book that she wanted to give her daughter as a wedding gift.  It was a childhood favorite, but now out of print.  Unsure about the title of the book we thought it might be, I located the phone number of the author.  I just got a call from the patron who had been treated to a delightful phone visit with the author and got a positive identification of the book in question.  Now she doesn’t feel badly about buying a copy sight unseen online.  This is what being a librarian really means to me – having a day like this.  I just wish there were more of them!

Facebook Frenzy

All I really planned to do was create an account for me so I could put up an entry on Facebook for the Library.  Little did I realize that I’d get sucked into the world of receiving virtual green plants as gifts and getting superbopped several times a day.  One could spend hours and hours just returning plants and bopping their friends!  Amazingly, I have lots of people who asked me to be their friends.  Most are young enough to be my children.  Our student pages were shocked that I was creating a page, but soon sent me invitations.  Perhaps an “over 60″ librarian can have common meeting ground with those who lurk on Facebook.  It has been an interesting experience so far — all I need is a lot more time to send more superbops!

Playing with FaceBook

Several days ago, I received permission from our director to put our Library on FaceBook.  Before doing a Library page, I decided to create a personal page for myself.  I suddenly have “found” lots of friends who spend much time on this site.  I am putting pins in virtual maps, sending Karma to friends, growing virtual gardens, and spending WAY too much time fiddling around with my profile.  Despite this, I have also managed to mount a Plymouth District Library page that already has more fans than I have friends.  I’m just a bit jealous, I’ll admit!  Check out our latest venture into Web 2.0 technology.  It can only get better from here.