The Serials Guybrarian

TypePad

2005-07-13T01:00:00.000-05:00

I just opened a trial account with TypePad. I'm not a big fan of the idea of paying for a blog, but I've seen some of its features on the blogs of others, and I wanted to try them out, since there are just some things that Blogger can't do.

I have to admit, it's pretty slick. There's a calendar, the option to use and display categories, and several other features I've yet to really explore. If it's as friendly to Flickr as I hope it is, I may have to seriously consider jumping ship.

Anyway, check out the trial blog. Let me know what you think.

Interview Insights

2005-07-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

My search committee wrapped up candidate on-site interviews today, and it's been an incredibly educational experience for me. In addition to learning about how to observe, interview, and interact with candidates, I've gained an understanding of how involved and demanding serving on a search committee can be. I look forward to undertaking the process in the future, but I make no apologies for being glad that this experience is nearing its end, as I've plenty else to keep me busy right now!

It's also been somewhat humbling for me as well. I looked at some of these candidates, most of whom have a lot more years worth of librarian experience than I do, and almost felt bad that I, who have less than a year's professional experience under my belt, was in the position of deciding who among them should be my colleague here. I've also seen how these candidates are going about handling the library problems of their current positions, and felt I could learn a thing or two from them, regardless of whether or not they were hired here in Northfield.

It just goes to show, these things really can put your own experiences into perspective.

Recap: ALA

2005-07-04T18:41:00.000-05:00

The ALA Conference was interesting on many levels.

The first was in dealing with Chicago's public transportation and the shuttles for the conference. Having lived in or near Chicago for a good portion of my life, I thought I would do fine by just taking the El. This supposition was quickly shattered by several realizations:

the El doesn't go everywhere, least of all to McCormick Place;
the CTA buses change scheduless--if not every day, at least on the weekends;
the shuttles operate on some odd schedules, and you pretty much have to go back to McCormick Place and take another shuttle from there to get to the hotel--not much in the way of shuttling between hotels, which can be a bit inconvenient
taxis are expensive, but sometimes they are the fastest way from point A to point B

Due to these discoveries, I missed some of the sessions early in the conference that I wanted to attend, but had a pretty good handle on things by the second day. Needless to say, by the time I left, I knew the ins and outs of using CTA (and a couple of commercial) services pretty well. So, bring on the next ALA Chicago--though next time, I'm staying at a conference hotel!

The second was the sheer size of it. Hearing about how big ALA is does not compare to strolling through the exhibits floor and seeing the sheer number of vendors with whom libraries deal, or sitting in the ALA Opening Ceremony with what was easily 10,000 other librarians (it could have been more--I'm lousy with visual estimates like this), listening to Carol Brey-Casiano, Richard Daley and Barack Obama speak. Feeling the thunderous applause, being carried off by the voluminous cheering--it was a pretty powerful experience.

Being new to ALA (well, the conference at least), I'm not sure how to view this. The power of a convention of assembled librarians notwithstanding, I was struck by several observations that were, perhaps, less flattering:

it's easy to get lost in the shuffle of a group this large;
there was a lot of commercial and corporate flag-waving going on. How many times were ProQuest and Elsevier mentioned?
how can you possibly hope to influence the direction of so unwieldy an organization?
why did we elect Michael Gorman? I certainly didn't vote for him...

Okay, that last one was probably uncalled for, but my concerns about everything else are genuine. I'm of two minds about ALA: I love the size and scope of it, but I'm not sure how much I can influence what goes on in it like I would a smaller group (ie, NASIG). And given what I've heard from other librarians not renewing their memberships, it makes me wonder about the direction of the organization.

Oh well, if nothing else, it'll give me something to think about when I'm wiling away my scads of free time at work. Because we know nothing ever happens in serials. (sarcasm fully intended)

Finally, the sessions. They were very good, and the speakers were knowledgeable about their topic, though not always particularly engaging.

The two sessions about Google that I attended were particularly interesting, given the pervasiveness of Google throughout the information landscape. The first was basically about what Google needed to do to continue its growth, as well as how its mission coincided with and differed from that of libraries. The second was a panel Q and A session with the Google Five, the libraries partnered with Google for Google Print. Many questions were asked about libraries working with a commercial entity, preservation concerns, and issues regarding accessibility.

I attended several other sessions, but will have to write about them later. To sum the conference up succinctly: I got a lot out of ALA in terms of information, but I'm not sure I just want to be a consumer at these conferences. Dealing with the size of it all is something I'll have to think about for future assemblies.

The Unexpected Task

2005-06-22T16:44:00.000-05:00

So, it's been a day.

A good day, to be sure. I finished inputting cancellations and have got all the but the tracest of business in order for the renewal list (which doesn't go out for a couple weeks), I followed up on the cataloging I did yesterday of some old Norwegian missionary newspap-eriodicals, adding item records and barcodes to the bib record I updated. I even met with the serials associate and our circulation guru, to discuss stacks maintenance and set up a time we could talk to the circ student workers about it.

That time was at 2pm. Today.

Needless to say, I felt a bit harried as I put a quick power point presentation together, even though I knew it wasn't that big a deal. I normally don't have a problem with doing new tasks--it comes with the territory in serials--but doing new things that require me to speak in front of people with only a couple hours' notice stresses me out just the teensiest bit. Things went over well enough, however, and we gave them a quick tour of the stacks and some of the periodicals office.

This was a good shakeup to my already hectic routine. Being in the theater, I can always use a good test of resourcefulness, not to mention my improv skills. But to say the least, I needed a run by the time I was through. :)

Tales from the Spinning Head

2005-06-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a week last week!

I did nothing for my reports last week. Between my cataloging catch-up sessions, working on the renewal list, a candidate onsite interview here, and dealing with final details re: ALA (and they're still unresolved, grrr), I simply wasn't able to get around to it. Oh, and we also had the phone interviews I mentioned in the last entry.

Being on a search committee can be a taxing task indeed! I was told I should expect to "endure" the marathons of phone interviews; sitting through the interviews wasn't really the problem, though. It was scheduling on-site interviews afterward! I think logistics is probably the biggest obstacle when it comes to coordinating these things. It turned out the only days that worked for everyone would require me to re-schedule our SFX training dates, the exact days/times of which I was still unsure, to August!

Fortunately (if it can indeed be called that), it dovetailed nicely with an announcement I eventually got that SFX couldn't schedule us until August anyway. I've been hoping for a quicker training setup, but with everyone's respective availabilities on the fritz for the summer season, it becomes a question of, "Hey, what can you do?" Just in case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The serials associate and I have also managed to set up a loose schedule of management/maintenance of the journals in the stacks. We'll each be responsible for various sections, go through and look for problems, and see what needs to be fixed or could be done better. This will hopefully help when we get students in for shelf-reading in the fall. While I've been through a walkthrough of the process, I haven't gotten around to following up on it yet. Should make a worthy goal for this week.

My big task for today is to finish going over the renewal list from our vendor. I'm actually very nearly done with the process of going through it manually. I have several titles that I need to make sure are cancelled, and have been taking notes on some of the discrepancies I've found between the renewal list and last year's invoice. Hopefully I can get through it, get it mailed this week, and not have to think about it for a little while.

Then I can get back to cataloging and planning for the serials review!

Oh, and I still am not registered for ALA, though I am going. It seems they got me my login information just in time for me to miss the online registration. So now I have to register onsite. Grrr. >:-O

Whew!!!

2005-06-09T18:53:00.000-05:00

What I've to do this week:

Look into electronic holdings for my reports. I'll also hopefully be getting some simplified stats from Collection Development soon that will let me start looking into do the real reports.
Prepare for next week's phone interviews for my search committee, as well as some on-site interviews (for a committee I'm not on). We've got at least four telephone interviews, and this is my first time serving on a search committee. I'm told I'm in for an *interesting* time... :-\
Figure out what's going on with SFX training and implementation. It's been about a week since I've heard anything.
Try to get my trip to ALA finalized. See below for a short rant.

What I've done this week:

Tinkered with, consulted upon, and got loads of help (thank you Sarah!) with those circulation statistics I mentioned last week. I think I can find a way to extract enough of the not-so-unreliable (how's that for a double negative) circ information that I can include at least one such statisticin the reports. So, that's good!
My cataloging mentor returned, and we finally loaded those records into the catalog TODAY. I got a lot of praise: I had the routine for adding electronicresources down, and I'd done a lot while she was gone, in her estimation. I should be able to load on my own next time...

Here's the one caveat: the constant data I used for my records was mis-typed somewhere, so the location codes came up wrong for ALL of them. I'll have to correct them tomorrow. It's like with coding: it was one wrong letter! The punishment doesn't fit the crime...! :)

I also got some print items taken care of, which she looked over and then helped me with the remainders.
I also created the report I mentioned last week for a small academic department, then got down and dirty this week and did another report for a much larger one. I didn't get around to including electronic holdings in this report like I wanted to, but maybe I can whip up some magic and do it tomorrow before I present it.
Got SOME details finalized about ALA, though I still can't log on to register for the conference itself. ALA is being VERY slow about getting me my login info. >:-O

Well, in addition to all that, I've also helped someone find out how to use Live Bookmarks on Mozilla Firefox, introduced another person to Flickr, have been researching RSS and blogs and aggregators (oh my!), and just got done adding an extra two laps to my daily run. I think I deserve my pint and karaoke tonight! :)

Reports, MS Access, and Lists

2005-06-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

This is the first big task for which I've really had to use Microsoft Access, which is certainly a big factor when considering the time and effort I've had to put into creating a good report template for the serials review. In order to get the information to Access, I have to pull it from our ILS into Microsoft Excel, format it the way I want it to appear, then load it into Acess. It's an involved process, to be certain! :)

I know this will get easier for future tasks, but in the mean time it's amazing the amount of time, energy, labor, and frustration involved in getting something like this done. Detail work can really drive you crazy sometimes! You have to take into account the overall layout, the text size and structure, what fields go where, in what order, and so on. Then there are the screwy little properties of many of the objects you use in the report; making those "work right" can add a whole new degree of challenge to things. All this is done with the purpose of keeping things readable for the faculty, for whom we're putting these together.

On the bright side: I'm not supposed to make this decision until the end of next week. So, at least I'm ahead of things! :)

Circulation/Usage Statistics

2005-06-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

Usage statistics don't like me. Well, Bridge usage statistics don't like me.

I spoke to someone in ILL about the circulation statistics in our item records, and was immediately informed that usage statistics for periodicals were highly unlikely to be reliable for the review. A number of factors seemed to be involved, including the mess that resulted when the Bridge catalogs were merged a year ago, timing issues involved with re-setting yearly records, and likely a host of other problems that were over my head. I then found out that some of the statistics might be valid, and that if I picked through certain fields and tags that I might be able to ascertain a fairly reliable count for them. By the time I left, my head was spinning. I think I'm still dizzy.

At this point, I'm not sure we'll be using circ stats for the serials review. More information about the reliability of those fields is needed.

Where Does the Time Go...?

2005-06-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

A week without a blog entry, who'da thunk it? :)

Things done lately:

Finished installing the last of the flat-shelving in Current Periodicals!
Went over some old materials from previous cataloging sessions and worked on a couple of them.
Preparations for the serials review, including a review of fields for the department reports, creating lists in our ILS, pulling that data from into MS Excel and Access.
Phone calls and emails with various colleagues regarding the setup of training dates for our Open-URL product.
Oh, I also typed up and submitted those minutes for last week's meeting. Apparently our annual report is going to be written from my notes. How's that for pressure? :)

Things to do soonly:

Finish off cataloging my current batch of JSTOR and Muse titles. I'll be loading them and several print records into the ILS tomorrow.
Recommend which data fields and which Office applications to use for the serials review. Prepare a feasibly close facsimile of the lists and reports we'll be working with in the review.
Get our yearly invoice checked and paid.
Find out more about statistics fields in our ILS for the serials review.

By the time all is said and done, I will be a list-making expert. Or at least, I'll have committed enough time and frustration to it that I'd better be an expert. I spent all day yesterday parsing, tweaking, grumbling, and consulting with a more tech-savvy colleague about how to get the information I need into my list. Believe it or not, I spent most of today cataloging as a form of relative escape and relaxation!

Two interesting points of humor for me today: I got an invoice from our vendor, for an item that cost nothing (do we have to pay these?).

Then, our vendor wows me again: our yearly invoice was addressed to our acquisitions person! This shouldn't be a big deal, but considering that I'd called them last week and asked that my name supplant hers on all their mailings and they told me she didn't exist to them at all, this was rather amusing.

You've gotta love serials... ;-)

JSTOR and Muse Alone Are Enough...

2005-05-25T16:03:00.000-05:00

Just finished working on those downloaded JSTOR bibs. What's really bad is that they're about a month and a half old, so I've got plenty more JSTOR and Project Muse records to work on. I haven't loaded them into the catalog yet, since I'm uncertain about how I did (this was the first time I did the records myself without my mentor present) and don't want to risk messing up the catalog somehow.

Still... she won't be back for another week and a half. I may end up putting them in just to do *something*.

Anyway, it occurs to me that for a cataloger of my (in)experience, these JSTOR and Muse titles alone can take up a good chunk of time. I imagine it's because I always seem to be doing a million things, but I feel so far behind on those.

To say nothing of the print items that need my attention...

Never a Lack of Things to Do

2005-05-25T12:58:00.000-05:00

Things Done Today Thus Far:

Called our vendor regarding a new order record number for one of our titles, and asked about the lateness of Journal of Counseling and Development, for which we recently also got an expiration letter.
Attended a Consortium Coordinating Group meeting. We discussed membership of Bridge committees for next year, and decided to meet sparsely if at all over the summer. Committees also gave reports.
We also had an all-library meeting this morning, where we gave the yearly departmental progress reports (for which I had to take minutes)! I noticed that my hiring in late November played a pretty significant role for several departments, as I've taken a lot of the work they were doing for serials upon myself.

Things To Do Today (Thus Far):

Cataloging:

Look over a small mountain of print journals and determine what needs to be done with them. Do whatever work I can on them, then consult with Susanne on the rest when she gets back from vacation.
Work on downloaded bibs for JSTOR titles. Add local holdings and other statements, do subject/authority work, and get the modified records loaded into the catalog.

Susanne has left a pile of readings for me to do while she's gone. The top two are an article on FRBR (I'm ready for it now!) and an article on RLG (which I've heard of but, not much else).
See about getting my name put on our vendor mailing list, so that the annual invoices (among other things) for serials come to me instead of Acquisitions.
Clean my desk (will this ever get done?)

This afternoon will be my "catch-up" time, as much as I can catch up, at any rate. I really need to do some cataloging...

Any catalogers with general advice, reference websites, etc., feel free to send them my way, I'd love some more guidance while my mentor is on vacation!

Oh, and look: lunch hour is up. Off I go...!

Laters!

Welcome, Serialists

2005-05-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

Since I just attended a presentation on the benefits of blogging and RSS technology, I figured I'd give this phenomenon a try in my professional capacity (such as it is). I'm a new serials librarian, having only started my career about 6 months ago, and while I have plenty to learn, I feel there's no better resource than my colleagues in the serials world. This blog is my attempt to reach out to you, to keep you informed of what I'm doing, and to solicit (consciously and otherwise) your advice as I become a little more accustomed to the insanity of the serials world.

I am the Serials/Electronic Access Librarian at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Carleton College is also located in Northfield, which has led to both libraries forming the Bridge Consortium, so I'm fortunate to have quite a few colleagues nearby and on-hand. I am becoming familiar with the acquisitions and cataloging duties involved in working with serials, as well as the management, troubleshooting, and "everyday workflow" aspects of my job. I am currently heading up a Bridge task force that will be in charge of implementing SFX over the summer, and also have a serials review in the works for the fall season.

I just attended my first professional conference this weekend, NASIG in Minneapolis. It was a wonderful experience, from the things I learned in the sessions to the new friends I made among my colleagues. I also got to re-connect with other serialists I'd known before and put faces with the names of a few more! I am glad I went, though I do confess to feeling a bit drained from it. I'll elaborate on what I learned in a forthcoming entry.

I would like to take this first post to ask my fellow serialists for a list of web resources they might use often when dealing with serials. What sites, pages, etc. do you use to keep updated in the serials world, or as a reference for cataloging procedures? Anymore organizations I should know about/find useful? Feel free to post them here, I could use any insights!

Here is a (very small) list of some sources I've used recently:
ODLIS--I really like this source, as it allows me to look up a word one of my colleagues might feel comfortable with but that I don't yet know/use. It is, to my knowledge, free.
Open Directory of LIS Blogs--I've browsed a few of these blogs, but haven't found time to really see which ones are worth following. Suggestions...?
NASIG--Because I really enjoyed my experience there this weekend. NASIG also has a growing list of resources on its website for members.

Anyway, it's been a long day of working on flat shelves for our current periodicals section. I need to go run. I look forward to hearing from and working with you!

Best,