No More Library Workshops!

Does your library experience low attendance rate to your library workshops? As a librarian instructor, you have worked so hard to get people to attend your workshops, but still  not much improvement. Does that mean your patrons do not need the information? Does that mean library workshops have no value to your library community? Librarians all know that is not the case. Here is an innovative way to make some changes: No more workshops in the library! One-on-one and on demand instructional sessions instead.

I look at this as a patron driven change and another level of providing library instruction. I can certainly see some of the advantages of one-on-one or on demand sessions:

• Fit into the patron's schedule
• Deliver content based on individual's needs or at the point of need
• Provide a conformable environment to ask questions -- patrons
• Reduce the tense of speaking in public -- librarians

I believe it's time to make a change for better or worse depending on what you think and what content you want to deliver. It might be more effective to turn those workshops that have hands on components into one-on-one sessions. 

Want to Start an iPad Program for a Library?

Yesterday I attended the ALA Webinar, Integrating iPads and Tablets Computers into Library Services (1). I  think the presenters did a great job. I hope MLA hosts a similar webcast to show successful iPad programs in health sciences libraries. At least one thing I learned from the webinar was that librarians need to ask questions before setting up a tablet program for their library:

• What's it for? Is it for staff development, in-house use such as in class, or for circulating them to library patrons?
• What content are you going to load on the device? Content would include apps and tools related to patron needs.
• Do you have technical support for the program? 
• How are you going to train library staff to provide frontline support for the program?

If you already have a tablet program in your library, what's your thought so far? 

Make it Easy for them

There is an interesting article, Don't make it easy for them, set me thinking. Yes, students need to learn library research skills. What about faculty members? My point is make it easy for them. Yes, make it easy for them! We call it support faculty teaching, research, and clinical education.

The library outreach programs have provided lots of opportunities for librarians to connect with academic faculties. Years of liaison experience told me faculty members like helpful, personalized, and convenient library services delivered to their desktops. I found myself really enjoy working with them by providing these services. I questioned myself a while ago, "Am I spoiling them by doing so?" One of my librarian friend said, "No, this is called another level of customer service." So, here they are:

• Set up automatic email alerts for each faculty on their research topics with My NCBI. This personalized service includes knowing and understanding each faculty member's research interests or topics, constructing a good search for each topic, creating My NCBI account for each faculty, and writing up instructions on how to manage the alerts.
• Conduct literature searches for faculty members. This involves not only expert search using related databases, but delivering the search results in the format of their preferences. Sometimes it goes further than that such as organizing citations and retrieving full text articles for them.
• Scan articles from the library's print collection to PDFs and send to them via emails. The challenge is basically time especially when I have a busy schedule and when the faculty are rush to need the articles.
• Deliver one-on-one library workshop sessions to faculty's offices. This is especially in demand for hands-on workshops. What makes this service welcoming is the focus of individualization. This requires me to get very familiar with the workshop contents and alter the teaching method based on each individual faculty's characteristics and needs.
• There are some very basic things we, librarians, expect our users to do them themselves while faculty members expect librarians to do those basic things for them. My liaison philosophy is don't ask, just do it. For example, could you get the full text of this article for me (I know we have online access to the article and she can download it from her desktop.); do we have this book in the library ( I know we do. A catalog search will tell her.); I need this article via interlibrary loan, could you request for me? (I know she can do it online by logging onto her library account.); Could you pull these articles for me from the library stack? I will come and pick up after work (I know the library doesn't offer this service. She can come to the library and do it herself.)

Concern and worry was if I got lots of requests, it might be difficult to handle and it would greatly increase my workload. I took it as a challenge. Reference service hasn't change a lot, we just need to do it in different ways: make it easy for them, but might mean make it difficult for us. This brings to the core of my job -- providing excellent customer service!

Google Voice SMS -- Libraries

I've been playing with Google Voice since I received the invitation to pick my GV number.



Awesome things I like about GV:

1. Use GV SMS. When people text me back, I can receive their text messages either from my cell phone or my GV interface.
2. Forward my home phone to my GV number and choose to listen to voice messages or view them in my email right from my computer.
3. Transcribe voice messages left at my home phone to text messages and email messages and deliver them either to my cellphone or GV interface.
   

I still consider myself a beginner of using GV and there are more GV features for further exploration and experience.

While I was testing GV SMS, one thought came to my mind: can libraries use this feature to provide SMS reference service? We can call it Text a Librarian. Thinking about this I immediately sent a request to get a GV number for the library.

I can almost see how Text a Librarian comes live:

Patrons send text messages to the library's GV number from their cellphone, desktop, and laptops. Librarians login libraries' Google Voice account and answer questions using GV interface like the way they were using Instant Message.

Note that pick a GV number carefully. If you want to change your GV number later, you will be charged $10 for the change fee.

Communications: Campus vs Library

My library just joined Twitter, a step forward to get into the loop of social media. This is not one person’s initiative or one person's passion at the library, it is a decision from the library's Reference and Outreach Service Department. The first idea was to publicize library's resources and services and the second idea was to explore possible channel to deliver library services. To make this communication channel effective and helpful, it would be interested to know and look around how UTHSC campus communicates with faculty and students. Thanks for Brian Mattews' post that sparked my idea to look around. I especially like this and would like to share with my blog readers:

"Stop thinking about just the library for a moment and consider how others on campus communicate with students as well. How can you work together with them?"

Let's compare:

http://www.twitter.com/uthsc --- Yes. The library just opened a Twitter account.
http://www.youtube.com/uthsc --- No.
http://www.utmem.edu/facebook --- No.
http://www.delicious.com/uthsc --- Yes. The library has a delicious a account.
http://www.utmem.edu/wikipedia --- No.

How can/should the library communicate with campus?

What Faculty Members Need of a Librarian?

As a library faculty and library liaison to the College of Nursing (CON) and the College of Pharmacy (COP), I've been looking for ways to bring library services and resources to support the educational and research needs of the colleges served. Recently I conducted a two-minute survey with the intend to get to know what faculty members need of a librarian and to bring library liaison services to another level. Only in three days since the survey was distributed, 29 CON and COP faculty members answered the questions. I'm hoping to get more in the next few days. Here is a brief overview of the survey results, which already provided some food for thought.

When asked whether they wanted to receive information or tips about library resources and services, 66% says yes and 86% prefers using email. I'm not surprised only 34% of the faculty are interested in bringing a librarian into their courses to deliver a 20-minute session about using library resources effectively for their students. I think partly because they don't really know what a librarian can do for them. I'm delighted to know 48% of the faculty expressed interests in attending the library workshop, Staying Current for which I'm the instructor. 31% of them already have their own way of keeping up to date. Four (14%) faculty members would like to have one-on-one sessions to learn about tools and resources for staying current on their research topics.

The survey asks "What would you like your librarian to do for you?" and it yielded some interesting responses:

"Assist with complex literature searches. (Which I already get and am very grateful for)."
"Help with student literature searches (when I refer a student to the librarian)."
"An one-on-one session for new tools and methods."
"Reference Manager or Endnote instruction."
"It would be nice to have the librarian present an update on material at one of our Department faculty meetings."
"Searches. Obtain difficult to find articles."
"Assist with a literature search in preparation for NIH grant."
"Come into classes (DNP and PhD) as part of a workshop at the start of the term to help students learn how to conduct literature searches."
"I am wondering if a presentation to our professional staff regarding clinical resources available through the Library? I don't think staff are completely aware of what is available."
"Our graduate students take courses online and many do not live in or near Memphis, so they are limited to online library access. With that in mind, could you set up a repository of on-demand online tutorials and tools designated specifically for students so that they do not have to wade through the scheduled, on-campus, and/or faculty resources in order to find what they need quickly and efficiently? Could you make the workshops available for on-demand online viewing?"

Sounds familiar? For librarians who have liaison responsibilities to CON or COP, the mini survey results might offer some helpful insight and thoughts on what faculty members need of a librarian. Based on the 29 responses, faculty members expect librarians:

• To provide expert literature searches to support research and educational programs
  
• To offer instructional sessions or workshops to their students on literature searching
• To be the information messenger between the college and the library
• To be flexible in offering library workshops considering the needs of distance learning community
  

The faculty members' responses implied that they are aware of librarians' expertise in information retrieval and information management. Their responses also presented a lot of opportunities for librarians to take. I would further summarize the survey results and plan my liaison services in another post. Suggestions and comments are welcome!

Cool Tools for Physicians and More

There is a saying managing your credit, managing your life. My saying is managing information, managing your career. In today's information explosion era the ability to manage information effectively and efficiently is critical. I believe anyone who wants to be professional in their field needs to stay current and keep themselves up to date. To do so, a bag of cool tools is essential. I'm trilled after reading the Internet Cool Tools for Physicians by Melissa Rethlefsen, David Rothman, and Daniel Mojon. I would say those cool tools are not only put together for physicians, but for anyone who wants to be professional in their field. I found them useful, relevant, and interesting for my career as a medical librarian.

Earlier in March 2008, MLA host an eight-week online CE course Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools to MLA members. Currently MLA Social Networking Software Task Force is offering CE opportunities entitled Dig Deeper with Social Media: short courses on emerging online tools for MLA members. The Southeastern Atlantic and Greater Midwest regions of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine also offered an online CE course, Geeks Bearing Gifts in both regions. What does all this for? It's a call for medical librarians to explore, experience, test, and discuss Web 2.0 technologies and Internet tools and its potential uses in medical libraries. Internet Cool Tools for Physicians takes a deep look at these cool and neat tools that are useful not just for physicians. I would suggest reading and even owing this book if you have these questions or if you are asked these questions:

1. Where to find comprehensive tips in searching Google from basics to Scholar?
2. How to use RSS feeds to keep current?
3. How to create a RSS feed for the information that doesn't offer it?
4. How to export Google Reader subscriptions to another aggregator?
5. How to combine multiple feeds into one single feed?
   
6. What if I still want RSS items delivered to me via email?
   
7. How to use iGoogle as a personalized start page?
8. What can a wiki do to meet a professional need?
9. How to create a live survey using Google Docs?
10. How to take notes on the Web pages I like and share with others?

Internet Cool Tools for Physicians provides answers to all these questions and those tools can make your life a lot more easy in the Internet world. I'm guessing the 2nd edition of the book will have have a section on micro-blogging in health care. While physicians, let's expand this group to health care professionals and health care educators, are using those cool tools, what medical librarians should do and can do in terms of providing library services? Medical librarians are challenged. This is not in the future, it is happening now whether you like it or not.

I love trying new stuff and believe good information should be shared. Since my library is undergoing financial difficulty, adding a book to the collection is hardly possible. I'm thinking of donating the book to the library and let more people benefit from those cool and neat tools.

Dear Med Student

Waiting, in vain, for a month hoping to get a reply from a 4th year med student who complained about our library catalog, I think I need to say something. Here is the email we received about a month ago:

"I am a 4th year med student and think the new library catalog format is garbage. I cannot get on pubmed or uptodate like I used to and when I search the catalog even simple basic medical concepts return little to no results. This is severely affecting my ability to gather information and is very discouraging when compared to other institutions access to appropriate research/educational material."

This kind of message would make every medical librarian restless and want to offer the best help they can. The student's complaint about the library catalog didn't worry me much because the new search interface is really simple and easy to use. I tried searching PubMed and UpToDate, both showed up in seconds at the very top of the search results with links to the databases. What struck me the most was something underneath the complaint--the student's information literacy skills and knowledge of researching the library. Obviously, the student had a hard time finding information he needed to complete his course assignments. Let me guess. He didn't know the difference between an online database and the library's catalog. It happened quite often when students with a list of readings from their professors came to the library to retrieve the full text articles, they started searching the catalog by entering the article titles to conduct the search. Of course, nothing came out. Another possible diagnosis. The student had a research topic for a course project. He wanted to know what literatures are available out there. He started searching the catalog. Of course, it would retrieve a list of books and journals, which made him frustrated because he couldn't go into each item to view the content.

Dear med student, if you could spare some time with a medical librarian either by phone, by email, by Live Chat, or drop by the library, your life would be much easier. The librarian would orientate you navigating the library and its resources and point you to the right direction where to look for what you need. Dear med student, don't let this happen again, contact your librarian.

Echo: Feeling Responsible for Everything

Have you ever had this nagging feeling as onellums expressed in ACRLog while working at the reference desk? We are lucky to have our Web team and Circulation to cove many of the requests and problems related to computers, printing system, and copy machines. Whenever we received those questions or requests, we would just do referral. However, I do receive other requests at the reference desk and probably I shouldn't fill:

• Blank CDs and CD markers
  
• Spoons and forks
  
• Advil® ( I always keep a bottle in my office)
  
• Tissues
  
• Printing online articles
  
• Retrieving a book from the shelf and put it at Circulation for them to pick up
  
• Photocopying articles
• PDFing articles from print collection

I, too, find myself easily get lost in the ephemera of students’ and faculty's needs! I was told we didn't provide these services, part of the reason was we were lack of people. My reason to take them up was pretty simple: It's hard for me to tolerate patrons leaving the library without getting what they need. I believe library is a great place and promoting the library starts with minor things we might not even consider important. However, little things mean something for each individual patron.

I always enjoy helping others and by doing so I get help, too. Does that make me a bad librarian? Does offering extra help go beyond my responsibilities?