Links of interest 11/8/10 - open access, accessibility, statistics and more

Open Access

• the Creative Commons NZ mailing list.
• The State Services Commission has released the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework.
• In a brown-bag lunch conversation about open access yesterday a bunch of us also talked about the digitisation of the AJHRs, the Directory of Open Access Journals, ways/issues with getting more open access content in our catalogue and/or Summon, and a bunch of other things.

Accessibility

• Char Booth writes about e-texts and library accessibility including a great quote that "ebooks were created by the blind, then made inaccessible by the sighted."
• NZETC has just posted about the 1064 works in DAISY format available in their collection for people with print-related disabilities. (DAISY = "Digital Accessible Information SYstem")

Library statistics

• Dave Pattern at U of Huddersfield blogs about how "non- and low-usage of library services/resources [...] relates to final grades"
• Some results from extending the Angers university library's opening hours - in French and in Google Translate's English
• Stats from the Toulouse library's standard OPAC vs its mobile OPAC - in French and Google Translate's English.
• And Meredith Farkas writes about "the unsupported interpretations" librarians often make based on our statistics

Miscellaneous

• The first year of research on the Researchers of Tomorrow (pdf) study finds that "in broad approaches to information‐seeking and use of research resources, there are no marked differences between Generation Y doctoral students and those in older age groups. Nor are there marked differences in these behaviours between doctoral students of any age in different years of their study. The most significant differences revealed in the data are between subject disciplines of study irrespective of age or year of study."
• Assessments of Information Literacy collects links to infolit tests, assessments, rubrics and tutorials available online.
• Christina Pikas lists a Rundown of the new [database etc] interfaces this summer. There were some surprises, including a ScienceDirect/Scopus merger apparently due August 28...

[Edited 12/8 to fix broken links]

And I thought we did a literature review

When we were preparing the case for our "Library on Location" trial, and again when we were writing up our results for the conference paper, we did a literature review - both journals and blogs. I thought we'd been pretty much as thorough as the variable terminology people assign to the concept allowed.

But I just saw a tweet linking to Theoretical Job Description for the Librarian with a Laptop, which links back to where the blogger first had the idea, which in turn links to someone else with the same idea.

(This last one is a really really great idea for implementing it at an academic library with maximum success.)

It's not uncommon for me to see the occasional new one, but for some reason this hit me with a "Argh, we librarians really like reinventing the wheel, don't we?" At one point I was vaguely thinking of doing a survey of libraries who'd done this kind of thing in order to write up a journal article about success factors, but stuff happened. Suddenly I'm all fired up again and just have to work out how to pull myself back from impending overcommitment...

In the meantime, my collection of links about libraries that have done outreach by taking books and/or laptops outside the library to meet users in popular locations is at my "onlocation" tag on Diigo.

Library Day in the Life

On Wednesdays I work the afternoon/evening shift, so I spent the morning sleeping in, doing the laundry, and watching my sister ice a cake she volunteered for the "Chocolate Day" my colleagues and I had planned for today. My bus brought me to work at 12:45 and I sat and watched Top Gear with two colleagues on their lunch break while everyone else drifted in and "OMG"d at my sister's truly awesome cake.

At 1pm I was on the desk shift as the normal person rostered for that hour was on sick leave. (A propos of which, today's A Softer World strip provides a brilliant rebuttal to a certain proposed employment law change in New Zealand. I like sick leave, it means that my colleagues are less likely to come and infect me.) It was semi-steady circulation and basic enquiries, and a query about finding sources for a small literature review on pneumatic conveyers, but I also had time to do some background searches on the PhD topic of a new student in my subject area, and to quickly check my email.

Said student came at 2pm - I spent the next 50 minutes talking with her about where she's at so far (I didn't spend as much time on this part as I'd like - I'm still learning how to have this sort of conversation without sounding like the Spanish Inquisition) and what resources we have available (interlibrary loans are always high on the interest list but of course we also talked databases etc) and then I gave her a tour of the building. Before we parted I had the wit to ask if I can check in with her in a month or two - so now I can do so without feeling like I'm nagging.

Though what feels like nagging is frequently good - among my emails was one from a lecturer about setting up a time for a session with one of his classes that I'd been asking him about. I scheduled that in.

At 3:30 (we have scheduled breaks and lunch hours; I'm always a bit shocked to see overseas folk talking about not finding time for lunch) I went to enjoy a slice of my sister's awesome cake.

Back at my desk I scanned Twitter and Friendfeed and Google Reader for awesome news stuff. I compiled a bunch of that for the draft of the library section of a department's weekly newsletter; a bunch more will go in my next "Links of interest" post on the internal library blog. My colleague in the same office talked about an article she'd just been reading about the emotional dissonance between how information literacy instructors have to act in the classroom and the reactions we get from students. I'm describing it badly, I need to read it myself.

From colleagues I answered a phone query re opinions on our multisearch, and an email query about duplicate copies of something in storage. There were two wrong numbers at some point, and two misdirected emails. I tidied some stuff up, and also replied to another lecturer about some other classes in a couple of weeks (there'll 6-8 sessions) and about the associated library assignment.

From 5-9 it was just two of us staffing the branch. So at 6pm I had another desk shift and it wasn't much quieter than 1pm - lots of people borrowing 3-hour loans, someone wanting instruction on using the mopier's scan-to-email function, someone asking about an ebook that's mysteriously disappeared from the content provider's database (I sent an email to our e-resources expert).

I stayed on a bit longer while my colleague shelved books and collected the books requested by users in our branch and others. 7:20 I had my dinner break; 8pm my final shift and still no quieter though I caught a bit of time to update our electronic noticeboard (tomorrow's weather forecast, partly in Māori in honour of Te Wiki o Te Reo) and to start writing this post.

8:45 we dinged the bell to warn students it's nearly time to leave, and I walked around closing windows and picking up discarded student magazines and soft drink cans as subtle reinforcement that the day's over. There was only one group I had to tell verbally that we were about to close. Doors locked at 9pm; but I hung around inside for about 15 minutes waiting for the interwebs to inform me that my bus was about to arrive; finished this post on the bus and hit 'publish' from home.

Crowdsourcing library research

Reading Snapshots of Laptop Use in an Academic Library crystallised some thinky thoughts I've vaguely had for a while about the possibility of libraries working together on library research.

The very short version of the article is that in their library "28% of students used laptops in existing spaces in 2005, while 62% of students used laptops in the same spaces in 2008". But of course they're not sure exactly what's causing the change. Is it just the changing times? Changing university policy? Changing library spaces? Something in the water? When you've only got one datapoint - your own library - it's hard to see what the real trend is.

But if you had the same data from a whole bunch of libraries then you'd be able to get a better idea of the nationwide/global trends. And if your data was different from that trend, you'd be able to get a better idea of how your local circumstances are affecting what's going on.

I've had thinky thoughts in the past about libraries sharing their statistics and research and stuff and part of the problem I recognised then was that everyone counts different statistics, so results aren't always comparable.

But. What if, when we want to do this kind of research, instead of doing it in-house, we open it up:

1. stick up a wiki where we can collaborate with a pile of other libraries on deciding the methodology,
2. stick up a Google spreadsheet where participating libraries can enter their stats,
3. ???
4. profit Publish!

Potential for awesomesauce, yes/yes? Does anyone have any burning research questions they'd like to try this with? Because my burning research question is currently "Let's do it!" which, um, technically isn't a question. <looks around hopefully>

Thoughts towards universally applicable usability guidelines

Inspired by spending a few minutes trying to work out how to open a ringbinder:

Write out and/or diagram simple instructions for your product.

1. If the instructions take more than three steps, your product isn't usable; redesign it.
2. If the instructions don't actually match your product, quit smoking the good stuff on company time and write/diagram them again.
3. If users need both the written instructions AND the diagrams, then the product is more-or-less usable, but not user-friendly.
4. If users need the written instructions OR the diagrams but not both, then the product is somewhat user-friendly, but not sufficiently so as to justify entitling the instructions with "For easy operation".
5. If users don't need any instructions, THEN the product is user-friendly.

Other thoughts?

What lies clearly at hand

Quote-of-the-day from yesterday's calendar:

Our grand business in life is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. --Thomas Carlyle.

Which strikes a chord with me, albeit in a fuzzy late-Friday-afternoon kind of way.

And it's not to say that we should never look into the distance. It's important to think about it a little. But unless you're the Hubble Telescope, simply looking probably isn't your main purpose in life.

Prognosticating can be fun, but it can be hollow too. Sometimes it just leaves me with a "But now what?" feeling. What's really satisfying - always and without fail - is when I can see something that needs doing, and do it, and it's done, and the world is a bit of a better place.

30 posts in 30 days

The first round of submissions on a change proposal at MPOW closed today, so I've just emerged back onto the interwebs to catch up with everything that's happened since the end of May. Notably among them, the Australian biblioblogosphere's "30 posts in 30 days" blog challenge.

I'm a bit late to be a full participant, and not sure if my brain's up to even jumping in now, but I did spot a meme I can manage:

Do you snack while reading?
Not invariably, but frequently. I do keep an eye out for crumbs.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Um, n/a I think - what I want to drink depends a lot more on weather and whim than on activity.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I love marginalia, in fiction or non-fiction, as long as the writer isn't obnoxious about it. Bonus points if they're actually insightful. I'm not very insightful, and don't feel called to do it often; when I am I do it lightly in pencil. Except for one YA book with a character who advocated keeping a cat on a vegetarian diet: for that one I printed out a page from the RSPCA and stapled it in before bookcrossing the book.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog ear? Laying the book open flat?
I love the idea of bookmarks, but most of my bookmarks are currently in books that I got halfway into 5-10 years ago. Instead I use receipts, remote controls, cushions, a slipper, other books - whatever's handy.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
Both, but mostly fiction.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
Depends on how compelling the book is. And time of day: if I've got an appointment, I'll read up to the last minute and stop mid-sentence; if it's bed-time then I need to read to the end of the chapter. Or the end of the book.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
No, but there was one book that was so appallingly bad in every possible way that I burned it.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
No, most of the time I can work it out from context and most of the rest of the time it doesn't matter anyway.

What are you currently reading?
Dirt, greed, and sex: sexual ethics in the New Testament and their implications for today (brief summary up to where I've reached so far: homosexual acts were never a sin, they were just 'unclean' like pork and shrimp, and yes this goes for the New Testament too)

What is the last book you bought?
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemison

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
In/on bed. Though I move around a lot to avoid stiffness - couch, beanbag, etc.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Stand-alones, or series where each book can stand alone.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief et seq.

How do you organise your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)?
Fiction: by language, then author's surname.
Non-fiction: by pseudo-Library of Congress classification (pseudo because I'm not quite obsessive enough to look them up, I just go my memory/guesstimation).