Full-text availability of ERIC documents

This may be old news to some of you, but if you'd forgotten or hadn't noticed this change in the ERIC database please read on...Although I've heard and read information about changes with ERIC over the last couple of years, I have to admit I wasn't clear on how we might be effected. I realized today that over 100,000 full-text non-journal ERIC documents published from 1993-2004 are now available in the ERIC database. Until the recent past anyone who wanted to read an ERIC document would have been referred to a larger academic institution such as Georgia State to view their ERIC document collection on microfiche or referred to a fee based document delivery service. Today I was trying to track down such a document and found out that it's now available full-text in ERIC. Yippee!

Net Generation Students and Libraries

Today's Library Link of the Day is an excellent book excerpt from Educause Review by Joan K. Lippincott called "Net Generation Students and Libraries". She discusses the gulf between "millenial" students and library services and provides suggestions for bridging those gaps. Highly recommended!

Excerpt:

What are some of the major disconnects between many of today’s academic libraries and Net Gen students? The most common one is students’ dependence on Google or similar search engines for discovery of information resources rather than consultation of library Web pages, catalogs, and databases as the main source of access. Since students often find library-sponsored resources difficult to figure out on their own, and they are seldom exposed to or interested in formal instruction in information literacy, they prefer to use the simplistic but responsive Google. Another disconnect is that digital library resources often reside outside the environment that is frequently the digital home of students’ coursework, namely, the course management system, or CMS. Library services are often presented in the library organization context rather than in a user-centered mode. Libraries emphasize access to information but generally do not have facilities, software, or support for student creation of new information products. All of these disconnects can be remedied if appropriate attention is paid to the style of Net Gen students.

Cleaning The Closet

Here's a selection of random, yet interesting, items that I haven't gotten around to posting.

There's an interesting article about visualization search software in the March 1 Library Journal.

The Librarian In Black (among others) noted the recent arrival of government search tab in Clusty.

And the Digital Library of Georgia is demo-ing a cool new homepage.

So I guess they were all kinda "finding stuff on the web" related!

WebCT For The Library Training

As previously mentioned, we're working on having Tracy Adkins from OIT Training present a workshop on WebCT for Librarians. There was a good response so we're working on a time. Your Staff Development Committee rep should be asking you about it in the next day or so.

Tracy would like some ideas on what kinds of things we would like to learn about in (or take away from) the training. Post your suggestions in the comments and I'll pass them along to her. Gracias!

Update 3/24/05: I changed the title of this post to reflect that the session would be open to all library employees, not just degreed librarians. I certainly didn't mean to exclude anyone.

Librarian Incarnations

Just messing with the blog and noticed a comment Pete left under the IM post. It seeemed interesting enough to warrant it's own discussion. In relation to technology, including IM and providing remote wireless ref services he said:

I can't help but wonder sometimes how many different incarnations of ourselves do we need to offer? That is not a popular question, but it deserves some attention. This is not to suggest that we revert to the, "old days," when librarians were sequestered behind an intimidating Reference Desk and the attitude was, "if they need help they can come to me, and if they don't like that, too bad." I realize we need to keep up with technology and offer the best service possible, but are there limits to what we can or should be doing?

This is very true. Although I'm certainly guilty of doing things because I think they're cool, planning and using technology in the most beneficial ways possible for our users is very important. The reality of the situation is that many of our users are younger "millenial" students who are more used to looking up stuff online than coming to a library. So we're going to have to meet them on their turf if we want to remain relevant. That doesn't mean someone sits in the Student Center w/ a laptop 24/7 waiting for questions. But I do think that timely experimentation w/ providing services outside the traditional library setting is very important. Maybe do a test of wireless remote reference services at term paper time when more people might be likely to use it. Make sure people know about it. Keep stats. And if there isn't a demand for the service, don't do it again. Or revisit it in the future. Have library hours in the ISS lab during busy research times. Etc etc.

Michael Stephens (no, he doesn't pay me for these plugs) wrote a good article called "Technoplans vs. Technolust" for Library Journal that covers some of these planning issues in relation to technology.

I think we need to provide as many different "incarnations" or outlets as possible and practical. This can be done with a minimal investment and certainly just a few interested librarians can provide adequate services in these areas. Not doing so risks cutting off a growing portion of our user base.

Instant Messaging

Check out this interesting presentation from the recent Computers In Libraries Conference by Michael Stephens and Aaron Schmidt called "IM: Breaking Down Boundaries". They discuss instant messaging and potential applications for libraries.

The Distance Learning Committee (you know who you are) is setting up an IM reference service for possible use by DL students. Is this something we could (or should) be doing on a larger scale?

Sidenote: CIL 2005 has a presentation page with links to a lot of session materials. Looks interesting!

Google Scholar

Pete posted this over on the old Info Lit blog yesterday and said it was cool to move it over here. Should make for a good discussion!

Hey Everyone,
I've been looking at Google Scholar a bit lately, and I just wondered what others thought of it. I have found some of the results are links to articles in subscription databases which are not very helpful. What have your experiences been like? Should we be teaching ATEC students about Google Scholar? Thanks.

posted by Pete at 4:54 PM

COMO Program Proposals

The call is out for program proposals (this link is a PDF!) for COMO XVII. The deadline for submitting proposals is May 31. The conference will be held from October 12-14, 2005 in Columbus.

Is it just me or does the word "proposals" look really weird in print?

GA Conference on Info Lit Proposals

Just a reminder that the deadline to submit program proposals for the Georgia Conference on Information Literacy is April 1, 2005. The conference will be held on September 30 - October 1 at Georgia Southern.

WebCT

At Clarkston we occasionally get requests from students to help them with WebCT. If it’s a real troubleshooting question like, “I have Sun JRE 1.4.2_07, but WebCT still won’t work,” I have them contact the Help Desk. But I’ll help them with something like, “I’m supposed to look at the Calendar in my course. Where is it?”

Is anyone interested in getting a WebCT orientation/basic instruction from Tracy Adkins? This week when David and I gave our blog lunch ‘n’ learns, she mentioned that she’s more than willing to give us librarian-specific WebCT training. Is anyone interested? Or, should anything WebCT-related be referred to the Help Desk?

Blogger Weirdness

Hey y'all! Blogger has been acting kind of strange for the past few days so bear with it if you're having trouble posting or commenting. I've heard that they're working on upgrading/ expanding their servers so that might account for the troubles. I'll try to catch stuff like multiples of the same comment and remove them.

Blogging really isn't hard, I promise!

Metro-Atlanta Library Assn (MALA) April Meeting

I haven't received anything directly from MALA about this meeting, but this information was forwarded to me.

WHAT: Meeting on Distance Learning for Library staff
WHEN: Thursday April 14; 7-8 (6:30 for sign in, refreshments)

WHERE: at DeVry University
DIRECTIONS to DeVry University, 250 North Arcadia Avenue - Decatur Campus Take I285 to exit 39A, Hwy. 78, Decatur (inside perimeter). Travel in the left lane approximately 2½ miles. At the second traffic light (DeKalb Industrial Way) turn left. Travel 1½ miles, just past 2nd traffic light, DeVry is on the right. We are in one large building. Visitor parking is to the left of the building. Go through front entrance (behind flag poles). A sign in the front Lobby will direct you to the meeting room.
WHY: to learn about Distance Education for continuing education for Librarians and to learn about getting an ALA accredited degree on-line! Speakers from Valdosta State, students who have or are taking distance ed classes, handouts from University of South Carolina and FSU, trial of Blackboard (one on-line learning class tool).

What would you do?

Earlier today Sherry and I were discussing library instruction back-up plans, because the Internet connection for the instructor's workstation in the library instruction classroom was down.

Do any of you have saved demos (like a series of screen captures in a PowerPoint presentation) of GIL and various GALILEO databases to use when you don't have Internet access? If not, what's your back-up plan? Lots of talking? Drawing pictures? Visualization exercises?

Facts.com database (Consideration?)

Hi all:

I know you guys have selected the databases for this year and won't be considering anymore until Fall; I thought I would send a consideration for next year. Some of you may be familiar with facts.com. Two databases that look interesting for GPC were the Issues and Controversies Database http://www.facts.com/online-icof.htm and Today's Science http://www.facts.com/online-tsof.htm. The two can be purchased as part of a suite under the Reference Suite http://www.facts.com/online-fdc.htm . Not sure of costs or trial constraints but it might be of interest to others. --Alicia

P.s. Is there an official to submit database purchase ideas?

iPods In The Library

I was just talking to Jennifer after a meeting about iPods in libraries and said I would post some recent blog etc traffic about it. So here goes:

Michael Stephens posted this nice overview of library iPod use on Tame The Web. He also mentioned this Wired News article and story from NPR about the South Huntington (NY) Public Library using iPod Shuffles as audio book readers. There's lots more out there on this topic, but these give a basic intro. Pretty interesting stuff!

Also, if you're in the market for a USC Basketball Player Nutcracker, they're current half price! Get yours today!

Reference Committee Minutes

A draft of minutes of the March 3, 2005 Reference Committee meeting is now available on the Reference Committee web page.

GPC Information Literacy Blog

Since there has been such a good response to this blog, and the issues are so closely related, we have decided to stop maintaining the GPC Information Literacy Blog. Having the Info Lit related content here will provide one stop blogging for Reference/ Info Lit issues.

The old Info Lit blog will still be online as an archive. I also added links to the Info Lit blogs we had in the side menu in the old blog in the blogroll here.

Virtual Reference Desk 2004: Proceedings

The proceedings from the 2004 Virtual Reference Desk Conference are available online. I don't think it is all of the sessions but there is a lot of good stuff available. Lots of chat reference sessions. They do misspell Cincinnati at least once though on the site!

Portals Article/ ESBCO Permalinks

The portals article Eva mentioned is available here though Academic Search Premier.

To find the URL for a specific article in ASP, click on the title of the article from the results list. After the abstract and all that fun stuff you'll see a field called Persistent Link To This Record. That'll be the URL. Just copy and paste it to the blog or whatnot. Mmmm, permalink.

Good blogging y'all! I did break the no editing "rule" and linked the 2nd "cry" in the welcome post to something funny.

Committee Meeting

Hey, we're in the Reference Committee meeting talking about blogs. I work at the Decatur Campus Library. Thanks for listening to our blog talk.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Georgia Perimeter College Libraries Reference Committee weblog. The purpose of the blog is to disseminate committee information and to promote conversation and sharing among Reference Librarians at all GPC libraries. Topics for discussion could include articles of interest dealing with reference issues, interesting assignments you've run across on your campuses, database issues, innovative ways you are working with your campus community and many, many more.

While we're not going to promote the blog to the universe outside GPC, it isn't password protected. That means that anyone on the web could potentially read anything you post. Not likely, but certainly possible. So don't post prohibited info (like the GALILEO password) or anything that you wouldn't say out loud in a crowded room. For example, if you post something like "David Free is a real jerk and a terrible librarian too!" I might read it and get my feelings hurt and cry. You don't want me to cry do you? I didn't think so.

You will need to be a blog "team member" to post or comment on posts. Membership is limited to GPC affiliated library folks. Contact David Free for more information on becoming a team member. For information on posting, commenting, site feeds or blogs in general contact either David Free or Jennifer Link.

Happy blogging!