Inspiration for your weekend

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are well and have a lovely weekend planned. I was going to write a long, involved post about my experience at last week’s ALISE Conference and how I’ve changed my perceptions of conferences over the years, but unfortunately work tasks have caught up with me and I don’t have sufficient time nor brain space to write coherently about that topic today. I’m hoping that next week’s post will be about musing on conferences, networking, and our lovely professions. Instead, today I want to share some inspiration things I’ve seen/read on the web this last week because who doesn’t like some inspiration?

First, check out Lifehacker’s how to prioritize when everything is important so you can get control of your to-do list. Then, it will be easier for you to enjoy the weekend.

I highly suggest reading Neil Gaiman’s blog post, A speech I once gave: On Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton. It is a lovely read and will probably make you want to break out your copy of The Lord of the Rings for a read.

If you have some old books that are seriously beyond repair, you could get crafty this weekend and turn them into cute planters such as these. Usually I’m not up for cutting up books, it’s the librarian and archivist in me which objects, but these are adorable and you could always make up quasi-books (you know, if you’ve taken a book binding course or are super-crafty) if you didn’t want to cut up an actual book.

If you need some inspiration on what to make for food this weekend, check out this recipe for fresh spring rolls. Always a good choice for tasty eats.

Finally, how awesome is this escalator in the Tel Aviv Municipality Building? Super awesome!

Escalator in the Tel Aviv Municipality Building via Beautiful Portals

Have a lovely weekend, full of reading, good food, talks with friends, and some time to sit back and get inspired. I’ll be back next week with actual talks about libraries, archives, conferences, tech, and such. Allons-y!

Traveling, Technology, and Fun

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you have a lovely weekend planned and that your week went well. This week has been very busy at my campus with our external reviewer here for the review of our information literacy program and the start of classes. So let’s get ready for the weekend with some tips on traveling, technology, and some fun stuff, too.

I know a lot of librarians are getting ready for the start of conference season, what with ALISE and ALA Midwinter conferences coming up in the next two weeks. (By the way, I’ll be in Dallas next week for ALISE, so if you are there do say hi.) Since conference season is starting, I thought it only appropriate to highlight two great resources from Lifehacker: airline scorecard (check before you decide which airline to fly) and
best tech-friendly airports and airlines (see where you can get wifi, etc.).

Also, check out Lifehacker’s article on the stay on top of the fight against SOPA/PIPA tools. Great to share with your library patrons and great to use to keep yourself informed.

So, did you sign up to learn to code this year with Codecademy? If not there is still time so head on over and start your course. It’s really a fun way to learn to code and you get nifty achievement badges, too (similar to Foursquare badges).

After you’ve planned your travel, learned some JavaScript, and gotten up-to-date with SOPA, take a break to make one of these lovely origami cat bookmarks. I’m going to make one and I’m sure my cat will have fun ripping it out of one of my books this weekend.

Finally, if you haven’t treated yourself to watching this Joy of Books video, you really should. It’s just delightful.

Have a wonderful, relaxing, productive, and fun weekend, dear readers! I’ll be back next week with some thoughts from my time at ALISE and other randomness. Allons-y!

Happy 2012!

Happy 2012, dear readers! I hope you had a lovely holiday and are ready to dig into this new year. I had a nice break and can’t believe that we are already a week into 2012. Where does the time go? I thought to get us started, I’d offer up a few tips and a bit of fun as we make our way into this new year.

But first, I wanted to thank the readers of this blog for last year. The number of hits increased dramatically, which is great. I’m glad that this blog is continuing to be useful and readable for you, dear readers. It is fun to write and always great to receive feedback via comments.

Secondly not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I am excited so I wanted to share that I was selected as this week’s ACRL Member of the Week. So thanks ACRL! It’s fun to share why I enjoy academic librarianship so much.

Okay, now on to the tips and technology.

Lifehacker always does such nice end-of-the-year lists that I had to share another one: Most Popular Repurposing Tricks of 2011. To get you into Lifehacker’s lists for the new year, check out the article on the Best Time to Buy Anything in 2012. Who doesn’t like saving some money? This would be great to share with your patrons who I’m sure wouldn’t mind saving some money, too.

Also in the technology realm, I thought I’d share some information from Lifehacker on how you can Learn to Code with Free Weekly Lessons from Codeacademy this year. Go ahead and sign up, lessons start next week. I signed up and am excited about learning from Codeacademy. It never hurts to expand your tech skills (and help out your library and archives in the process).

Now let’s have a bit of fun before getting back to work!

If the post-holiday, back-to-work grind has gotten you stressed out, check out Lifehacker’s great article on Giving Better Massages. Messages are great for relieving stress and tension, plus the article gives tips at the end on self-massage which is great for when you can’t get someone to give you a massage.

Also, I’m happy to share that two of my very awesome friends (Hanna and Anna) have started a joint blog, the corner of your eye. Go on over, subscribe, and get your twice weekly dose of arts and culture reviews.

Anyone else extremely excited about The Hobbit coming out in December? I might be just a tiny bit excited (understatement of the year, thus far). So for my fellow fans, check out this lovely image from Beautiful Portals Tumblr:

I hope 2012 is going well for you and that you have a fantastic weekend planned. Read a good book, relax with a cup of tea, get a massage, and then get ready to take on this new year. See you next week with more good stuff. Allons-y!

Thoughts at the end of the term

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you are having a lovely day. It is the end of the term here and that always puts me into a reflective mood. So today, I want to share a few reflections with you about this term as well as some end-of-the-year lists before wishing you a very happy holiday, so let’s get on with it.

This has been an incredibly busy fall term. It has been busier than any of my past terms. I made two trips to Southern California for grant-required workshops (although luckily Collin ended up driving, so I only had to navigate-thanks, Collin!), a trip to Monterey for Internet Librarian (fantastic, techie conference which I highly recommend), and a trip to Laguna Niguel for the Women’s Leadership Institute (also a fabulous conference). Oh, and my sister got married. So it was a little busy and I’m looking forward to the holiday break.

On top of the traveling, I was teaching two classes on information literacy for freshmen along with the other usual assortment of librarian duties. To say that I was a bit overwhelmed at times is an understatement. To say that if I didn’t have a couple of synced Google Calenders to my phone I would have been lost on any given day is not an understatement. But, overall, I’d have to say it was a very good term.

I learned from my students, which is always as it should be, and hopefully my evaluations will reflect that my students learned from me. They created amazing online tutorials showcasing their many talents and expertise in everything from playing the guitar to creating origami hearts. It was a great opportunity to combine what they were learning about information literacy in the classroom to further their knowledge and skills on something they already love. This quarter again underscored for me the importance of making everything relevant to my students’ lives outside of the classroom.

This quarter also re-emphasized for me the importance of building in time for reflection in the learning process. This is the second year that I’ve required my students to write weekly reflections about their learning and how they can apply what they’ve learned to their other classes and to their lives. It has been a great success and I feel that the students are engaging with the materials more fully because of this reflection space.

Finally, this quarter has again reinforced that teaching is about being genuinely interested in one’s students and honestly wanting to help them learn. It is exhausting, fun, time-consuming, interesting, and life-changing work and I can’t imagine not teaching. And, if I do a really good job, my students catch some of this excitement for learning too and use it in their coming terms and throughout their lives.

So now, on to the lists. Lifehacker has been posting numerous “best of” lists in the past few days. I highly suggest you check them out and get to some fun over the holidays. I suggest the following to get you started: Most popular top 10s of 2011, Most popular photograph tips, tricks, and hacks of 2011, and Top 10 ways to create a more focused and productive work environment.

Finally, I leave you with one of my favorite short, holiday videos ever featuring the Doctor, naturally:

I wish you a very happy holiday and wonderful new year, dear readers! I will be taking a rest from blogging until the new year. Until then, relax, read some good books, send friends and family members a handwritten note, and bake something lovely to share with someone you love. I’ll be back in 2012 with more library, archives, and tech news and notes. Allons-y!

Thoughts on the Women’s Leadership Institute

Hello, dear readers! I hope you are well and getting into the holiday spirit. Here on campus it is finals week which is always such an interesting week on campus. The term is coming to a close and yet before the campus goes completely silent, there is a mad rush of energy and activity. Anyway, today I just want to share some thoughts I had as I’ve been meditating on what I heard, learned, and experienced at the Women’s Leadership Institute I attended last week in Laguna Niguel.

First of all, it was my first time at the Women’s Leadership Institute and my first time in Laguna Niguel. Both were wonderful experiences and the first takeaway from the experience was how supportive a lot of supervisors are to fund the travel to the institute for their employees. There were about 150 women who attended the conference and the California State University system was well-represented at the institute. It was nice to see that many supervisors hold professional development of their staff to be important. (I’m very lucky that our University Librarian told me about the conference and supported my attendance.)

Overall, it was one of the best experiences I have ever had at a conference. All of the speakers, from the panelists to the keynote speakers, were amazing. I’ve never been to a conference that had speakers who were so good across the board.

One of the best sessions was the opening keynote by Sara Laschever who, along with Linda Babcock, wrote the book: Ask for it: How women can use the power of negotiation to get what they really want. She was a fantastic speaker and her book is great (I bought it while at the institute and devoured it on the flight home). Her research shows that women are fantastic negotiators when negotiating on behalf of someone else but not good at all when negotiating for themselves. Because of this, women don’t get promoted or get the perks and benefits that men get simply because they don’t ask. Now there are a lot of other gender biases that women have to overcome that men don’t, but actually asking for what they want is a huge first step.

After Laschever’s talk, lots of the women were sharing stories of when they should have asked or negotiated for something and what they had asked for that they never thought they would get. It was great because many then started asking for things, that may seem small but that they would not have thought of before the talk. For example, on the last night of my stay I noticed that I hadn’t been left one of those tiny bottles of lotion in my room. I really wanted one because I hadn’t packed any, but was going to just forego it because I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone. Then I stopped and thought that was silly, picked up the phone and requested a bottle of lotion. Three minutes later, housekeeping was there with two bottles of lotion and I was happy (and proud of myself for actually asking. This may seem like a small thing to you, but to me it was a huge victory to actually ask for something, even if it was just lotion). I highly recommend the book to everyone and suggest you share it with the women in your life.

One of the major themes that ran throughout multiple talks was the large issue of work/life balance. I know I continually struggle with balance in my life (even on the yoga mat) and I was excited to hear about what the very powerful and influential women leaders had to say about work/life balance. Basically, no one has a grasp on work/life balance and the take away message was that you can’t have it all, something always has to give.

I was talking with a library director while I was there and she said that the best thing one can do is extend grace to one’s self because not everything will go perfectly and that’s okay. I think this was one of the most important pieces of wisdom I heard while at the conference because it helps me remember that I don’t need to be perfect when I would never expect anyone else to be. The other very important idea, which we all know but it is a good reminder, is that you have to decide what is most important in your life. To do this, you have to determine what you define as success for yourself and not what others think should define success in your life.

There were also some amazing talks on different styles of leadership, developing your career and your brand, and successfully having difficult conversations. It was an inspiring three days surrounded by many current and future leaders in higher education and now my reading list for the holiday break has grown about three-fold.

Throughout the institute, one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts was the structured wellness time each afternoon. During wellness time, there were different activities you could choose to join or you could choose to go off on your own for a walk on the beach or time just thinking. It was a great mix of activities and a reminder to take time to slow down and actually be present instead of trying to multi-task for the entire day. It was also a great time to reflect on what we were learning and it made the institute feel less like a blur than other conferences I’ve been to in the past.

In the coming weeks, I hope to share more with you, dear readers, about what I learned and how I think it will impact my career path and journey in the coming years. I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments about leadership and any of the conferences you recommend.

Have a wonderful rest of your day, read a good book, talk with a friend, and remember to enjoy the journey. I’ll be back with more libraries, archives, and tech news soon. Allons-y!

Enjoy your Thanksgiving break!

Hello, dear readers! I hope you are doing well and are easing into the Thanksgiving break if you are in the United States without too much stress. I just have a few things to share with you that you may like to take a look at while you are digesting your large meal tomorrow and don’t feel like moving too much.

First, go check out Lifehacker’s article on the top 10 gadgets for your go bag. There’s some great stuff there and some would make great holiday presents, just saying…

If you just want to stare at beautiful things while digesting your Thanksgiving feast, check out the latest post on I Love Typography. It is beautiful as usual. I really do love typography.

If you are are able to focus on something more serious for a moment over the long weekend, I highly suggest reading all about the SOPA bill that’s going to cripple your internet on Lifehacker. Then, go and actually make your voice heard so the SOPA bill gets stopped.

If you want more information about copyright, Protect IP, and SOPA, check out Hank’s video (he’s one half of the Vlogbrothers):

Also, if you have some energy and feel like being techie, check out Lifehacker’s top 10 ways to customize your technology. Customization is always fun. I actually need to re-customize some stuff that got stripped out a few weeks ago with the latest Chrome updates.

Oh, and because it is the holiday time of year, which to me means baking, I have to share that the Joy the Baker Cookbook is available for pre-order! I’m so excited, although we have to wait until February for the book, because I love her recipes!

Luckily, in time for even Thanksgiving, if you need a quick, not-too-sweet dessert or a nice breakfast bread, check out vegan pumpkin walnut bread from the aforementioned Joy the Baker. It is so good and makes two loaves! Even your non-vegan friends and family members will love it.

Take care, dear readers. Have a lovely Thanksgiving, for those of you in the states, and a lovely weekend for everyone else everywhere. Allons-y!

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday and Happy Veterans Day, dear readers! I know I’ve been away for a while after the crazy busyness of Internet Librarian, but now I’m back. And, I have a good excuse for being away for a bit: my sister got married last weekend! It was a lot of fun and if you want to see a beautiful photo of my sister and her husband by Ryan Greenleaf, check it out here. So now that I’m back in archives and library-land, it’s time to get back into the swing of things. So let’s get on to the good stuff!

When I saw this article from Lifehacker, how to make and sustain a good first impression every time, I had to post the link to it. It is a fantastic article and great to share with your students, friends, and family. Making a first impression is utterly important, so check out some tips that will help you make a better one.

For those of you doing usability testing, check out Smashing Magazine’s Comprehensive Review of Usability and User Experience Testing Tools. Super-helpful reviews. And, as Internet Librarian has taught us, usability testing is key for success.

And, because it makes me happy to see an article about an university’s archives and special collections (especially one that is so heavily used), I had to include this article on Iowa State University’s Parks Library. Archives and special collections (and libraries) are super-important and still relevant to researchers today.

Now to just for fun stuff. This photograph makes me smile (and makes me want to take a vacation to Ireland asap!), from Beautiful Portals Tumblr:

National Library of Ireland by faceted nerd

Have a lovely, fun-filled weekend! If you need some inspiration for weekend baking, check out Joy the Baker’s Pumpkin Millet Chocolate Muffins I’ll be back next week with more tips and tools. Allons-y!

Data Management, Preservation, Curation, & Repositories: IL 2011 Session Summary

First session after lunch! Very excited for this session. It is by Christie Peters and Anita R. Dryden from University of Houston; Susan Chesley Perry from University of California, Santa Cruz; and William Gunn from Mendeley. This session was about data curation and management (and finally we finally heard the term archivist!). Allons-y!

Assessing Data Management Needs at the University of Houston
by Christie Peters and Anita R. Dryden

For more information, they have a forthcoming article in Science & Technology Libraries.

Started needs assessment of data management needs in summer 2010 at University of Houston. Lots of librarians feel that Data is a four-letter word. Many librarians feel that there is a lack of support, qualified personnel, infrastructure and lack of trust from faculty. You need good relationships in order to get buy-in from people.

They got buy in due to NSF (National Science Foundation) Data Management Plan requirements for data storage that was implemented in 2011. Also, the University of Houston wants to attain Tier One status. Therefore, these two initiatives/requirements helped get buy-in to the data management needs assessment project.

Worked with other units on campus. Worried about infringing on other units’ territories. Contacted Division of Research and found out they were overworked and understaffed and eager to work with the library on the assessment pilot study. Got a list of NSF and NIH (National Institute of Health) grant-funded projects for the pilot study. Criteria for inclusion in pilot study: large grant, individual or group projects, and cross-section of disciplines. Targeted 9 NSF and 5 NIH grants and interviewed 7 NSF PIs (Principal Investigator) and 3 NIH PIs. Fairly good response. Interviewed others because often the PI does not manage the data.

Many toolkits for assessing your digital curation needs, including: DCC/JISC Data Asset Framework and Purdue Data Curation Profile .

For University of Houston’s pilot study, did face-to-face interviews. Met with subjects, provided paper copy of the interview instrument, did not record interviews, and compiled responses for analysis. Asked questions about: project information, data lifecycle/workflows, data characteristics, data management, data organization, and data use. Graduate students were most often responsible for the data management.

Results: researchers were not looking for server space or data storage. They did need: assistance with funding agency DMP requirements, grant proposal process, finding data-related services on campus, publication support, and targeted research assistance in the area of data management.

Next steps: Plan to expand the project via establish a data working group and expand assessment. Also, try to get everyone together to see who is providing what support services.

The Great Wave: Extending Current Curation Practices to Data
by Susan Chesley Perry from UCSC

Susan Chesley Perry also works with the University Archives. [Yay! Finally someone is talking with the archivists]

Developing strategies to preserve data sets–both small and large datasets. Digital humanities lack the funding than the sciences. Many faculty are just worried about their grant projects and not about the future preservation and use of their data sets.

It would be great to hire a data librarian, but not possible with the current budget. So, UCSC must leverage existing staff and services. Luckily UC campuses have the California Digital Library (CDL) and Online Archive of California (OAC). Have DMP Tool to help PIs curate their data. One of CDL’s services is Merritt and helps with ingesting data and digital objects for archiving.

Looking to adapt online archiving policies for faculty to use. Need to get faculty to use standards for metadata and file formats, or at least use naming conventions for their filenames.

Looking at crowdsourcing the cataloging and transcription for the collections. UCSC will be doing this for the Grateful Dead Archives.

Embedding Institutional Deposit into the Scholarly Workflow
by William Gunn of Mendeley

Gunn gave an overview of Mendeley. Mendeley has around 120 million documents deposited in less than three years. Interface design is important to success of depositing materials. Mendeley has a freeium model. Currenlty working on a pilot project.

Takeaway
Make it easy for faculty to curate and archive their data sets. Don’t forget to include archivists in this conversation–they are doing a lot of data curation and preservation work, too.

IL 2011 Day 3 Keynote

Happy Wednesday! Last day of Internet Librarian 2011. This morning’s keynote is by Roy Tennant, Stephen Abram, Elizabeth Lane Lawley, and James Werle. Their talk is Internet 2020: Trendwatch Smackdown. Let the discussion begin!

Roy Tennant is the MC for this keynote discussion. James is going to update us with the Internet2 project and then the smackdown will begin.

James Werle on Internet2 and changes in technology: How we consume and use information is quite different now than in the past and the changes have happened very, very quickly. In 1996, 20 million Americans were connected to the Internet and 28% of public libraries offered Internet access. People were online 30 minutes per month. [Crazy to think about, no?]

Future prediction by Cisco, that global internet traffic is expected to quadruple by the year 2015 because more devices connected, more people connected (40% of the world’s population), better connectivity at a lower price, and traffic will be dominated by video. This will be driven, ultimately, by bandwidth.

“Advanced applications require advanced connectivity.” The more interactive and advanced applications require more bandwidth with increase in media richness. Patrons will expect to use these applications at the library in the future. We need bandwidth.

Public libraries and the internet survey from 2011: majority of libraries said that bandwidth was inadequate and they couldn’t increase their bandwidth. This is a dangerous trend: libraries falling behind bandwidth curve. Therefore

Access is essential and it is dependent on bandwidth levels. We need the connectivity in order to help our patrons.

National fabric of NGO research and education networks that are connected via Internet2. Internet2 created in 1996. These networks were created to meet the bandwidth needs. Expand to connect to K12 schools and community colleges in addition to the original universities and research centers. For more information, check out Connections, Capacity, Community: Exploring the potential benefits of research and education networks for public libraries.

Smackdown Time!

Questions go to panelists and then answers/discussions, moderated by Tennant.

What keeps you awake at night? Most transformative trends?

Abram: Polarization of discussion. Seeing shallow polarizations of opinions in librarianship. Example: Apple fanboys defending censoring of books in the Apple Store. Can ban political apps. Why aren’t we saying this is wrong? WTF? Advertising is coming to reading and books. We need to be more aware and deeper thinkers. “It scares me that we aren’t saying this is dead wrong.” Our voices aren’t there. [Amen, brother.]

Lawley: Bandwidth is still an issue, but it is coming. Need to talk more about network neutrality. Will you have a piece of that network? Deep fears of cloud-based content because of Google Docs going down. More interested in what we layer on top of bandwidth. Doesn’t want us focused on intensive technology because it doesn’t have to be resource intensive to be an emotional connection experience.

Werle: Bandwidth is coming, but will it come to a library near you and can you afford it? These are real issues.

Abram: Net neutrality debate is not over yet.

Lawley: We need to be paying close attention to Web 2.0 discussions about what people are willing to pay for and why. Expectations that some things should be there and be there for free. what will people pay for? Cloud part isn’t the important part. The transparency of where you can get to your information is important. A good experience= what people are willing to pay for. Context often trumps content. Presentation matters. What is really valuable is the experience and how people feel. Does your service make people say that your service is really great or that they are really great? You want people to feel success and happy. Think of the users’ interactions at an in-depth level.

Abram: You need to understand that you are a product not a user. Freemium= you have a different value if you pay than if you use the free account. Google+ is using real identities to drive advertising and tie and identity to a card holder. We need to question these services and pay attention to privacy policies. If we are a product, what are we doing? What are the excesses in the information marketplace? What are we going to say to inform the discussion?

Werle: Speaking with a uniform voice: is that best found through ALA through our state libraries? What is the best mechanism? Can we even agree what should be collectively done as librarians?

Abrams: Not suggested a unified voice. We just need to make our voices known. We shouldn’t be drown out by advertising and corporate voices.

Single most disruptive technology trend?

Lawley: Doesn’t want to talk about what she wants to talk about this afternoon. Watching gamification (even though she dislikes the word) because the concepts are interesting and disruptive. [Watch for more on this on the summary of the closing keynote] Return to a love of tangible things. People are starting to care about the quality of paper and physical things. Looking at 3D printers. Seeing 3D printers in the dorm rooms. Students more excited about artifacts than viewing them on the screen.

Abram: App purchasing and subscription-based models for content at the individual level. Looking at frictionless adoption versus seamlessness. Frictionless technologies will change how users behave and get information.

Lawley: Interested in RFID more than QR Codes. Likes RFID because it feels “magical” and “invisible.” [I personally worry about RFID and privacy.] Interested in embedding RFID chips in things.

Abram: Need to look at behavioral consequences of technology. We are shifting the choice to be something that users don’t consciously make. Changing dynamics of the choice. Need to have transparency of how and who is making the choices of what information you get.

Is Internet2 all about public libraries in response to broadband?
Internet2 is owned by educational institutions. Not a commercial space. Some corporate sponsors, but it is for the research and education communities.

Lawley: Inserting virtual objects into still photographs. Researchers used Lawley’s creative commons licensed photograph of her dining room. Inserted dragon into photograph and made lighting on dragon believable. Disruptive for photographic evidence. [Just an updating of the discussions that have been going on since photography began]

Werle: Video conferencing. Price point still high. But the ability to bring people together even if they are not co-located.

Lawley: Likes Google Hangouts because it is cheap and it works. Fascinating. Things need to work in a way that is frictionless for the user. Need to worry about the interface for the user. You come to conferences for the experience. There is real value in being in the same room with other people. Technology doesn’t even come close to this physical experience. Doesn’t teach online because there is no substitute for being in the same room. We are a long way from duplicating or bettering the physical environment and experience.

Abram: Be more radical and spend more time understanding other points of view. Remember our values and figure out how to progress forward. Understand, but we don’t have to agree.

Lawley: Remember to be playful. Think about how to make technology blend into the background.

Takeaway
We need to have deep discussions about important issues such as privacy, advertising and net neutrality. Being in the room with a person is a valuable and technology doesn’t replicate the richness of this experience yet. Technology is wonderful, but needs to be seamless and frictionless.

Partnerships & Relationships for Impact: IL2011 Session Summaries

I’m excited about this session on partnerships and technology! We have speakers from University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (Anne Price and Kathy Harden) and The ResCarta Foundation (John Sarnowski).

Internships for Impact
by Anne Price and Kathy Harden from Townsend Memorial Library, small private Christian university with about 3,000 students. Therefore the library has departments of one staff member.

Talking about turning work/study positions into “internships” (mainly internships focusing on design) that meet the library’s and users’ needs. Students are one of the greatest assets. Students and librarians benefit from having an internship program.

Suggestions for creating beneficial partnerships and relationships: create internal and external relationships. Partner with your Art or Graphic Design departments in order to get students with design skills into the library.

Having support from the Library Director is extremely important to building successful programs. [As with so much, having support from upper administration is such a vital element in successful partnerships.]

Benefits to students: develop their portfolios, develop people skills, and get more experience.

Need to give students room to experiment and grow in internships in order to have successful project outcomes.

Student interns help re-design the library’s website and graphics. [Actually, it looks like the interns create almost the entire library website including page templates and stylesheets.] Students also work on READ posters. The students decided to create their own mini-READ posters to see who could be the most creative. Super-popular project and have a waiting list for people who want to be on the posters! [So cool!]

The student interns have also created bookmarks, business cards, and brochures. The library no longer has to outsource the work for business cards, etc. Students also create all the signage and the maps for the library.

The library partners with Career Services as well. Students work on graphics for Career Services, too. They create posters, website graphics.

Some pitfalls: students graduate, students lose eligibility for work-study, sometimes students don’t work out, and the internships are just work-study (they don’t make a lot of money and will go with a better offer).

But, overall, internships are fabulous and worth the time and energy to set up and run.

Builidng a Community Memory by Hosting a “ScanDay”
by John Sarnowski

Non-profit, has open source software using METS and MODS to create digital objects. Software available via the website: ResCarta.org.

Worked with small libraries on a grant for ScanDay. Trying to get smaller institutions to use the software. If library would host ScanDay, ResCarta would bring hardware and software (10 laptops and used ethernet rather than wifi; 5 flatbed scanners), train volunteers, and create a website in one day. The patrons brought in locally important materials, digitize items, metadata created, patrons received CD of their materials, and a website was created that they could share with friends and family.

ScanDay got patrons connected with the library. Patrons really enjoyed the ScanDay. Lots of great items that were unknown before. Worked with the local historical societies. It was a great way for families to connect and share.

How to do a ScanDay: marketing and publicity to drum up support and interest; round up staff and volunteers to work the scan stations and greeting stations, plus photograhy stations; training on scanners and computers; technology needed: scanners, cameras, computers; paper intake forms (like accession forms and deed of gift for archives).

Flatbed scanning (used Canon Lide scanners): scan worksheet and save to directory, scan items, capture as JPEG, crop/rotate if needed and checked off the items. Software does have the ability to do TIFF images, too.

Document scanning (Fujitsu scanner): used rotary scanner for documents and also more modern photographs that could withstand the scanning

Slide scanning (Nikon CoolScan 5000): had a lot of 35mm slides and VueMaster slides.

Photography: very simple photography set-up.

Gave patrons CD with the images at the end of scanning.

Post-production: OCR text documents, add metadata from intake forms, created a collection per patron using ResCarta software, and created website using ResCarta software.

Training Day: 4 hours of training session for all.

On ScanDay: Setup began at 8am and metadata was complete by 8pm. Scanning from 9am to 2pm.

Results: In Westby, 700 images scanned. 185 images on website. In Galesville, 1400 images scanned. 1200 on website. You can see these slides (with URLs to city’s websites) through the ResCarta site.

Takeaway
Give your students responsibilities and the space to experiment, they will create amazing projects for your library. I’m blown away by the creativity and beauty of the designs created by the students shown by Price and Harden in their presentations.