10A: Reflection on Class 11-15-16

In the beginning of the class, we talked about the results of the presidential election. As a result, I think this was the most boring class meet for me. Actually, I think it was the first one; I didn’t have a lot to contribute to discussion. Plus, I’m so sick and tired of politics. I was tired of politics long before Trump and Clinton were nominated by their parties, and I thought that once the election was over, the talk on politics would die down, and then it didn’t. And then I come to class and we talk about it. Sigh. (Disclaimer: I’m somewhat apathetic when it comes to politics. I actually wanted to be a politician once to help people but I soon realized I would never be able to become one and get elected and make improvements because I am not corrupt nor dishonest).

BUT. The talk about the election was informational and enlightening. I have never before ever thought about the affect presidential elections have on libraries. But it makes total sense that they are worried because they get funding from the government, just like schools do, and it’s very important to libraries and their longevity.

We all had a jigsaw activity where 3 of us read an article, then we joined others who read a different article, and we discussed all of them. Then we got back together as a class to further the discussion. I was assigned “How to weather the Trump administration: Head to the library.” The headline seemed really interesting, but the article was boring, and didn’t seem like it had anything to do with its headline. I don’t think that it was organized very well, and pretty much what the author had to say was that Trump should be sworn into office at the Library of Congress. Because it’s not like where they get sworn in at is a tradition. I disagree with this. When mentioning this article in our discussion, the professor mentioned how Laura Bush as first lady didn’t have her husband get sworn in at the Library of Congress, and she was a librarian. I didn’t know that she was a librarian. I don’t know how I didn’t know this.

The professor also mentioned how there is this test where they ask you which leader you would elect based upon their faults and stuff, and Hitler is usually the one that gets chosen. I know exactly what she was talking about. I know that one of the other men is Winston Churchill, I don’t remember who else there is. She likened this to Trump, and I thought that was funny, but it’s true. I also know that part of the test asks if you would let this woman’s child live or abort him before he’s born since he had a whole bunch wrong with him; if you say yes to it, you just killed Beethoven.

We also talked about how libraries are political because they can control the knowledge and information going to the community. They are also activists. The professor mentioned that when the Patriot Act came out, libraries would post a sign in the window saying that the FBI hadn’t been there but if the sign came down, it means they had been there. That’s extremely funny. Librarians aren’t just activists, they’re rebels LOL.

9B: Reflection on Readings

Chapter 4 of the textbook talks about how instruction is “a core reference service function” (page 98). It is not about just giving patrons the information they are seeking, but teaching them how to look and find information for themselves. I’ve always found reference instruction in my classes to be helpful, but I know that it can be a very frustrating and sometimes unrewarding job. A lot of people don’t want to learn how to do it, they want someone to do the work for them. Come to think of it, this is actually a second reason why I don’t want to be a reference librarian. Not just because you have to act like a teacher (in reality, all librarians are teachers in some way), and have to get up in front of an audience, which I hate, but a lot of people don’t appreciate what you do, and/or don’t see the real benefit of what you are doing.

I had a chat the other day and I could not find a single thing to help them. I was very frustrated. My coworker told me not to worry because based on what the patron said, she doesn’t think that the student had even begun to look for their topic, and just wanted information immediately. This is what librarians have to be careful about; they can provide info but they also need to make sure that there was some kind of teaching lesson done at the same time. My librarian coworkers are very good at doing this. Sometimes they come out right away and teach the patron how they found the information, whereas other times they do it in an unobvious way, that sometimes makes me wonder if the student understood the librarian, because sometimes the librarian hides it in the way they say something. They’re not necessarily snarky about it, but it’s a quip, which I always find funny, because I catch them. I doubt that all patrons catch it. You also have to be very careful when talking to the librarians because they love to teach and some of them will go on and on teaching you things. It’s great because they are a fountain of information, but not when it’s taking a lot of time and either one has to be somewhere soon or there are others waiting in line to talk to the librarian.  

A very interesting thing the chapter talks about is the types of instructional models in libraries, which are library orientation, library instruction, bibliographic instruction, and information literacy instruction (pages 100-107). I never really thought about there being different types of instruction, but now reading about these types, I know exactly what the book is talking about. What is really interesting is that not just the librarians do the library orientation model. Our admissions department does this. They always give a tour of the library to people who are interested in coming to the university for school, and/or they do it during orientation. Unfortunately, I always hear the student volunteers say incorrect information and I have to stop myself from correcting them and embarrassing them in front of the tour group. I’ve had the other types of instruction models in my history classes: library, bibliographic, and information literacy. I can see how the last three are different from each other, but to me it seems like they are easily wrapped up together. To be able to teach people about bibliographic and information literacy, they first need to know how to use the library’s tools and resources (which is library instruction) to find the bibliographic information (which is “more conceptual approaches to teaching information seeking and use” page 101). Bibliographic info is about teaching the skills necessary in order to be able to find sources and use online searching. Information literacy instruction goes one step further in that it “emphasizes a wider range of information sources than traditional library resources” (page 102). It is not just about finding and using the info that you found, but also being able to evaluate it. Evaluation is very important when one can’t find information in credible sources, but instead has to move to the internet and do a general search. One needs to know which website results are credible and which ones are not.

Chapter 8 of the textbook is about evaluation and assessment of reference services. Librarians love evaluation and assessments. There is not a day that goes by that librarians aren’t doing some kind of evaluation and/or assessment. This is because libraries are always very self-aware of their services and therefore are constantly trying to improve them and provide the patrons with what they want if it is in their power to do so (and if the requests are reasonable, since some people expect and demand what they want to be handed to them on a silver platter). The textbook says that “evaluation and assessment are both linked to accountability, or the process of providing stakeholders with evidence of quality, improvement, and progress toward mission and goals” (page 212). I going to deviate slightly from reference services because evaluation and assessment isn’t just in the world of reference services, but is also important to circulation services and to the library as a whole. A great example for the library as a whole in regards to providing stakeholders with evidence is something that my library did a couple of years ago. We not only stayed open till 2am Mondays-Thursdays by request of the university’s student government, but we also took constant stats AND did surveys to prove to student government that staying open till 2am was not viable. Hourly patron counts showed the number of users in the library, and if the user count was not nonexistent, there still wasn’t enough people in the library to be worthy of having the lights on (I think it costs $150 an hour to have the lights on in the library; this was a couple of years ago so I’m sure the cost has gone up since then). Furthermore, the majority of the surveys showed that students did not want to be at the library past a certain hour because of the library’s location (which was the second most dangerous city in the country for years, it’s now gone up the list a little bit, YAY!). With the surveys and the hourly patron counts, we aptly demonstrated to student government that 2am was not going to work out. Of course, I think all of this could have easily been avoided by telling student government “no” in the first place without all of this proof. This is because student government for some odd reason (people not checking their facts most like) thought that the library closed at 10pm every night, which in reality we had been closing at midnight for years, and thought that we should be open until 2am (why they jumped past midnight, I’ll never know. Maybe that was the library’s decision). But anyways, we nipped that in the butt with evaluations and assessments. We do stay open till 2am during finals, and that has been very helpful to students and we do a 24/7 week too (which the numbers have been dropping since then; probably due to lack of advertisement on student government’s part). The best thing about the 2am surveys and stats is that it shows those who think we should be open 24/7 that that’s not viable either (the 24/7 people usually are talkers not doers; they only want us to be open 24/7 when they need it, which is like almost never).

One way in which reference librarians evaluate and assess their services is through the use of tracking stats that “can evaluate the effectiveness and quality of their services and resources as well as the satisfaction level of users” (page 212). The reference librarians at my work record every single transaction that they have, whether it was a reference question, or one for the circulation desk, or ITS, or about directions, hours, anything. They don’t just record what the reference transaction was about, but also record where it took place (reference desk, in their office, out and about, etc.), how (in person, phone, chat), and how long it took, and whether they had to refer the question to another librarian. This semester, we just started doing the exact same thing for circulation (which people keep forgetting to record). For chats, not only do the patrons rate the reference transaction, but so do the librarians. This analytics system is great for retrospection. By looking at the data, the librarians are then able to see themes and patterns that keep arising and can then change the way they do things or the way something is presented on the website or something. For example, if some issue keeps showing up, then the librarians will create a frequently asked question that goes on the website to address the problem. Then that way they won’t keep getting people asking them about the issue, whether it is in person or through email or chat.

Reference librarians also use the data to see if they need improvement in some area and then they will have a meeting among the librarians to have someone teach the others about something in the field in which they are responsible for. I, along with the students who have recently been thrown onto the reference desk, were just invited to attend a meeting on Friday. It is about nursing resources. And now the librarians think they will do this every Friday, which will immensely help me since I’m not aware of a lot of the resources that the library has (which is always a problem during the weekend when there is no veteran reference librarian).

Evaluation and assessment of reference (or any type of library) services is a lot of work, but can also be fun. It is very crucial to the field of library science, so future librarians are going to have to learn to love and live with it.

9A: Reflection on Class 11-1-16

In class, we had a warmup where one person chatted online with another posing as a reference librarian asking for other books like their favorite children’s book. A third person was a researcher helping out the reference person. This was a pretty difficult warmup, but I think a big part of it was because the person asking us the questions was being difficult (which means he did a great job at stumping us!). He told us that he liked this one book because it had his name in it. So at first we started looking for titles with his name on it but then he said he liked that it was an adventure. So then I started looking for that and as soon as I started coming up with something, he said he liked that it was about different cultures, then he later said Eskimos. I was having a heck of a time keeping up. We found a whole bunch of Eskimo books and then he said he wanted something that was about a blow dart because an Eskimo took the balloon down with a blow dart. At this time, our time was almost up and I couldn’t find anything about a blow dart. It was very frustrating. But this scenario could have easily happened when dealing with a child (which he was doing a great job channeling and snickering the whole time about it too :-P ).  Later the professor said that Google Books is really good for helping to narrow down search terms. Sure enough, I put blow dart into the search box, and lo and behold, a whole bunch of children’s books about blow darts showed up. I will never forget to use Google Books to help with search terms after this.

We then talked about galleys, which are advanced reader copies. You create a profile on a company’s website, and if they like your profile, they will send you an online version of their book to read and then write a review. I have always wanted to do this, but alas I don’t have the time. Plus, there are way too many books on my list to read that I want to read first.

We then moved on to reader’s advisory in regards to gender. We talked a little bit about how female authors will publish under initials or pseudonyms because otherwise they are looked down upon. The professor mentioned the author Eloisa James who in reality is Mary Bly, an Elizabethan scholar, and the daughter of a famous poet, Robert Bly. I was shocked to learn this. I own and have read some books by Eloisa James. I wasn’t aware it was a pseudonym. For all the negative criticisms against romance books, some of them are actually written by those who have valid credentials. It’s no wonder I like some of them, because they are written by historians. One author I like publishes books under two different names: Shannon Drake and Heather Graham (her maiden name). I don’t know why she publishes under both. I used to think it was based on the type of romance books (area, century, etc.), but that’s not the case.

We then discussed why intellects love literary greats, but at the same time we like “junk”. The professor said it’s because it’s a comfort thing; books are formulaic and consistent (especially in a series, which she mentioned Nancy Drew). This brought to mind Archie comics. Archie comics have been around for a long time. My mom read them when she was young. Archie comics have been very consistent. For decades, Archie has dated both Veronica and Betty, never truly picking one over the other. In recent years, they have actually mixed this up and created a series where Archie gets married to one of them. But here’s the catch: there are two parallel stories, what happens if he married Betty and what happens if he married Veronica. Today, they are still creating both parallel stories. I wonder what made them do this; maybe readers got really tired of the same old same old (decades worth) so they changed the story a little bit. But it’s still pretty much the same though.

Talking about junk vs. literary greats made me think of why adults love to read books from the young adult genre. I love reading YA. I have coworkers who are in their 60s and they love to read YA as well. I’m talking about books that are a series such as Harry Potter, The Maze Runner, Twilight, Percy Jackson, Divergent, The Hunger Games. What is it about these that all ages love to read them? They’re supposed to be kid books. Is it because they are an easy read, or something else?