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Troubles for Reference Librarians: Rick Roche:

At the risk of sounding old fashioned and crotchety, let me say that this sounds like the result of having had too much easy success in the past and settling for just enough. I think we as librarians should work to make our tools as easy to use as possible, with the goal of connecting clients and information/content that they seek, but we should convey that the tools are not perfect. I think some of our marketing that says "Hey, use this , it's easy!" backfires on us. Students and other clients believe us and then assume that if the easy search does not find anything, there is nothing to be found. How we can have positive and encouraging promotions that are still realistic is tricky. We need to think about this.

Yikes! A threatening note found in Western Illinois University's Malpass Library early Wednesday morning prompted heightened security on campus, but the school did not close or alter its schedule for final examinations.

There is an interesting article in the New York Times about new software invented to help scientitsts organize their library research problems with working on the Internet. See: "Defeating Bedlam" by Olivia Judson, December 16, 2008.

The journal articles arrive with file names like 456330a.pdf or sd-article121.pdf. Keeping track of what these are, what I have, where I’ve put them, which other papers are related to them — hopeless. Attempting to replicate my old way of doing things, but on my computer — so, electronic versions of papers in electronic folders — didn’t work, I think because I couldn’t see what the papers actually were.

And so, absurdly, it became easier to re-research a subject each time I wanted to think about it, and to download the papers again. My hard drive has filled up with duplicates; my office, with stalagmites of paper. And it isn’t just that I have the organizational skills of a mosquito. Many of my colleagues have found the same thing. (Yes, we talk about it. Oh, they are lofty, the conversations in university common rooms.) In short, access to information is easier and faster than ever before (for a caveat, see the notes, below, but there’s been no obvious way to manage it once you’ve got it.

Several pieces of software are now being developed to address this problem. I want to look at two of them here. The first is called Zotero; the second, Papers. Both are in version 1 and are still a bit buggy; but each has the potential, I think, to become a valuable tool for research.

“Last semester I basically lived in the library for a week with a group of my friends,” said Jennifer Rosen, a SUNY Binghamton sophomore majoring in history and economics. “I ended up sleeping in the library on an air mattress that a bunch of people I was studying with had. We ate all our meals there and I practically didn’t go back to my room for like a week."

“In one of the corner study rooms near where I was staying, there was someone with a coffee machine, a toaster and a whole table of food; they seriously lived in the library,”

Fred R. Shapiro, a Yale Law School librarian and editor of the Yale Book of Quotations has compiled a list of memorable quotes for 2008, mostly having come from the world of politics.

To wit:

5. “The fundamentals of America’s economy are strong.” — McCain

4. “It’s not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number.” U.S. Treasury Department spokeswoman, explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout

3. “We have sort of become a nation of whiners.” Sen. Phil Gramm

2. “All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.” Gov. Sarah Palin, responding to a request by CBS anchor Katie Couric to name the newspapers or magazines she reads

You'll need a Chronicle of Higher Ed subscription to read Young Librarians, Talkin' 'Bout Their Generation, but you can listen to Susan Gibbons talk about what the library will look like in the future, the differences among the generations of librarians, and shortcomings of library science.

Penn Libraries Receive Gotham Book Mart Collection: When the Gotham Book Mart closed its doors last year, the disposition of its precious contents was in question. But thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, the Gotham Book Mart Collection has a new home at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. A landmark cultural institution in New York City, the Gotham Book Mart was the epitome of all that is engaging and inspiring about an independent bookstore. It was an oasis where poets, writers, and lovers of literature could gather for readings, discuss and discover authors and their works, and while away hours poring over the store's eclectic and often unique inventory.

In a November report, officials at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recommended closing the school’s physical LIS library, citing low usage, a shift to electronic resources, and the “high degree of interdisciplinarity” of library & information studies. That recommendation, however, is meeting some stiff resistance this week, as Caroline M. Nappo, a doctoral student and Information in Society Fellow at University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, one of the top ranked LIS schools in the nation, circulated a petition to save the space.

See: LJ for the rest of the story.

Bernie Sloan passed along on the JESSE listserv a link from the Chronicle of Higher Education. It appears that there is a library for hire. Johns Hopkins University is providing service to Excelsior College so that it can provide library services to its distant students. Johns Hopkins University is compensated by Excelsior College for the services rendered.

A timid, hair-wrapped-in-a-bun, pince-nez-wearing spinster (with a cardigan sweater). Is that the image you have of a librarian from 100 years ago? Hell no, they were gun-toting, horseback-riding, walk-2-miles-to-work-in-a-blizzard type of woman. Those were the kind of librarians who settled the West.

Fascinating bit of history via the Chicago Tribune. Around the turn of the 20th century, graduates of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (then called the Illinois Library School) headed to places like Texas, North Dakota, Idaho and Oregon.

Lisa Renee Kemplin, senior library specialist at the University of Illinois, looks through Ida Kidder's 1908 letter from Salem, Ore., at the Archives Research Center in Urbana. The letter and other documents catalog UI librarians' trips to the West 100 years ago.