Computers in Libraries conference

20Jan12

One of these days I am going to the Computers in Libraries conference. This year it is being held in Washington, D.C. in March. The programming covers mobile technology, content management, marketing, service innovations, streams for school libraries and special libraries.

Here are a few tantalizing sessions:

Getting to Yes after CIL (moving forward with negotiations between   IT department and library director);

Discovering Innovative Practices through Benchmarking (one of speakers is Kristin Vajs, Chief Librarian, Research Library, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System)

Tinkerers : Maker Culture & Libraries (how librarians can play a role in do-it-yourself community of  fabricators, coders, and educators who are dedicated to sharing information)

“Computers” is probably a misnomer.  I would add a tagline along the lines of librarians using technology in whatever form to deliver relevant and timely information to customers enhancing their knowledge base.

- Brenda

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The Pitblado Lectures

06Jan12

My latest column is up on Slaw. I wanted to bring the Pitblado Lectures to the attention of a broader audience. This series of lectures focuses on one practice area, and brings in national and local experts. Isaac Pitblado, the lawyer they were named in honour of, was a great Manitoba barrister.

~ Karen

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Tags: Professional Development, Slaw

Hiring in rural libraries

05Jan12

A topic that we don’t often think about with 32% of the Canadian population using libraries in the hinterland. Rural libraries are likely underserved but hiring librarians in a rural setting is an important issue ensuring equal access of information services to all regardless of where they live. Sarah Sutherland of McMillan (where I work) published a paper about potential strategies to hiring librarians in these communities. Some of the common sense strategies for employers include helping spouses of new hires get jobs in the community.

If you are interested in some of the challenges facing rural libraries, see the report Regional Libraries Across Canada: A Kaleidoscope of Services and Governance Structures by Ann Curry, Suzanne Green, and Jessica O’Neill (2004). I found the report Small and Rural Libraries Discussion Paper  (2007) to be a fascinating read, as it compared statistics across countries. Go Finland for the highest number of library visits per capita for region serviced!

I would love to hear firsthand from those in small, rural, county or regional libraries about the joys of their work and the challenges as well.

- Brenda

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Tags: recruiting librarians, rural libraries, Small libraries

My 2011 Clawbie Nominations

29Dec11

It’s awards time again! Hard to believe it was a year ago that Brenda and I won the 2010 Clawbie award for Best Law Librarian blog! Here are my nominations for the 2011 award:

PitbLAWg: This is the writing of a whole firm of lawyers (full disclosure: I used to work for Pitblado). After a slow start, it’s getting posted to regularly and on a whole variety of subject areas. Obviously Manitoba-centric, but for me, that’s a good thing. I especially like that the most prolific poster is Ned Brown, a senior partner.

On Firmer Ground: This is a collaboration of a number of law library associations, with a truly global authorship. Although not that many posts, the ones that are there are substantive and informative. I look forward to great work yet to come!

Employment and Human Rights Law in Canada by Lisa Stam. Lisa’s posts are thoughtful and well-researched, and help keep me informed on the changes happening in these areas of law.

And a shout out to potential “Friends of the North” 3 Geeks and a Law Blog - while they don’t write on the Canadian legal sphere very often, Greg Lambert did recently cite Tegan and Sara in a post, and you can’t get any more quintessentially Canadian than that!

This year was a hard year to come up with my picks – not because there aren’t a lot of great law blogs out there, but because I like to highlight ones that are a little off the beaten path. Blogging can be a huge time consumer, and I think it’s important to recognize those who contribute to the greater good.

And a huge thank you to Steve Mathews and crew for taking this on again. I’m sure you’ll have fun wading through the nominations looking for those shining stars!

~ Karen

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Tags: Clawbies

Google+ for Libraries

29Nov11

I noticed the new Google+ social networking launch in past few weeks. I doubt I will personally sign up, but your library might want a presence. David Lee King offers a step-by-step guide to setting up a Google+ page. I suppose that when enough people are users the multiple video chat function of Hangouts will be useful.

- Brenda Wong

Other Reading

Positive feedback on Google+

Google+ as Artificial Means to Organizing Friends

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Creating a workshop

24Nov11

One of the reasons I left my previous firm was to take on new challenges. I wanted to create and deliver workshops, do more in-depth research, and develop a more aggressive current awareness program. I’ve made headway on the latter two, and now I’m working on a legal research refresher.

Last fall I took a course on engaging adult learners from the University of Toronto’s Professional Learning Centre. I’ll be using some of those strategies to create my program. I’m dealing with a diverse audience – lawyers from both the litigation side and the corporate/commercial side at my firm, so it will be a challenge just to make the material relevant to both groups. I’m also keeping it short, over a lunch hour (Rule #1 – offer food!).

When I first decided to enrol in the library technician program, I had no idea teaching would be in my career path. And yet, a lot of all types of library work is informal instruction. We help our clients use the catalogue, teach them alternate terms to guide them through the controlled vocabulary of subject headings, and show them how to use specialized equipment and databases. This is an extension of that kind of instruction – a more formal, structured course where I determine what outcomes I want to achieve, and consider how I’m going to accomplish them.

Like most people, I’m not crazy about public speaking, so I’ve tried to make this as painless as possible. First, my audience is known to me – lawyers at my firm – so I already have a rapport with them. They’re juniors, so I probably still know more than them. And I’ll be well prepared – knowing what I want to get across and how I’m going to do it. The first one is always the roughest anyway, no matter how well prepared I am. In a perverse way, I’m actually looking forward to this.

Who knows – one day I may have the nerve to deliver a keynote address!

~ Karen

Filed under: Learning, Training Ideas   |  1 Comment
Tags: legal research, New Ideas, public speaking

RDA overview

08Nov11

Here is a summary of RDA’s Cataloguing Rules and the Solo Librarian presentation on October 19, 2011 by Mark Rose of the Intergovernmental Committee on Urban and Regional Research at a Special Libraries Association meeting.

First some background: AACR2 was cancelled in 2005 as major cataloguing changes were needed. RDA was designed for digital world. It is intended to combine digital media with dictionary catalogue. It is an acronym for Resource, Description and Access. There are core elements and options elements.

RDA has a database approach to the bibliographic record, so it relates to authority data as well. One needs to understand the principles of FRBR (Functional requirements for Bibliographic Records) and FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data) for using RDA. Some new concepts introduced including subjects, which AACR2 did not address.

• Group 1 entities: Works, Expressions, Manifestations and Items
• Group 2 entities (responsibilities): Person, Corporations and Families
• Group 3 entities (subjects): Concepts, Objects, Events and Places
• FRBR is based on User Tasks: Find, Identify, Select and Obtain

There will be longer records because of new concepts. Some new changes with RDA include, previously there was general material designation,  but now 3 types replace that:

• content
• media
• carrier

Some other major changes: No more rule of 3 for authors ; list all authors which is good for legal libraries. Enter information as found like 2nd edition not 2nd ed.  And don’t correct spelling with [sic] and don’t alter punctuation. Ultimately this will be easier to catalogue as not following obscure rules, but individual records will have more characters, then the file sizes for the catalogue will increase potentially having implications for slower search speeds, according to Rose.

There is an RDA toolkit as well. A workshop held regularly called RDA Essentials is free and open to everyone to support transition to RDA. RDA Toolkit Essentials debuts on November 16th returning live webinar every other month, intended as resource for those needing an introduction or a refresher on RDA Toolkit and its features. Thanks to Amra Porobic of Insurance Bureau of Canada for pointing it out.

ILS vendors: Sirsi is working on RDA enhancement. But Inmagic currently has no RDA plans and a library would need to commission as a project, and for some 3rd party resellers, Andornot out of British Columbia, RDA is not on their radar. World Cat has some test RDA records and potentially Library of Congress does too. Amicus at National Library of Canada is also studying RDA.

Breaking news:  Library of Congress concluded its investigation and saw potential incompatible issues with MARC. And they go one step further by not supporting at this time and call for re-imagining MARC too.

RDA is official as of now, but not implemented and embraced by library community as a whole. University libraries appear to support it. For example Daniel Paradis at Concordia University has training materials showing RDA and AACR2 side by side. This will help put RDA into context. It is an excellent resource.

The future for cataloguing is as murky as reading tea leaves as RDA potentially means less standardization across catalogues,  more potential for errors with more information, and ultimately are the users needs served by more information?  I leave the last word to Mark Rose who asks: “RDA works in theory but does it work in practise?”

- Brenda Wong

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Why Failure is Important

09Oct11

Success is celebrated in our culture but with every success comes from setbacks and failures. Understanding then recovering from failure is an important life and business strategy. I am surprised at many functioning adults, who can’t deal with setbacks.

Harvard Business Review devoted a whole issue to understanding and recovering from failure. It grabbed my attention as a leading management journal thought it was important enough to discuss in-depth.One of my take-aways is that some of the population falls into “woe is me” reaction to failure as they are mired in helplessness, frustration and anger when faced with setback. Other responses is to try different strategies or keep persisting. See Seligman and Hiroto’s experiments described in “Building resilience” by Martin E.P. Seligman, Harvard Business Review, April 2011, p.100-106.

Stepping back let’s take a look at a child learning to ride a bicycle, and the process of learning. When I  was learned to riding a bike, I had the motivation to succeed but I also had tools. I needed faith that I would be riding on my two wheels like the other kids, so I would try again after falling. I also had support from my dad who ran along side me to hold the bike. Persistence, desire to succeed, support, encouragement are all tools in the path to achieving goals holding failure at bay, as temporary, local setbacks. Some adults will not view failure as temporary, local or changeable but fall into negative thinking possibly anger and frustration sabotaging themselves. Too often, as adults, we amplify our negative experience and don’t see it as a temporary state.

Part of understanding failures in the workplace is recognizing sadness, anger and frustration as a legitimate first response, then moving to recognize that to amplify those emotions is to a response is that is out of proportion to the threat faced. For example, I get a negative performance evaluation from my supervisor. There are a whole spectrum of potential responses including “I am never going to get a promotion” to “I made a mistake but I will get an action plan from the supervisor to change. I am disappointed but there is next year, and there is time to get back on track.”

I also thought Peter Gruber of Mandalay Entertainment’s story about Muhammed Ali getting knocked down on the mat and asking himself “what next?” was a great narrative about how to bounce back. Ali did just that and went on to win his boxing match. For us, in life and business, we learn to be an active player in your own rescue not being afraid to fail. Also the power of self-talk has the intent to motivate one that the worst has happened so let’s move up and onwards.

I am not saying that I am perfect as I feel the sting of failure like others, but I dust myself off and tell myself that I can do better.

- Brenda Wong

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Annual loose-leaf purchases: solution or crutch?

04Oct11

Last week I wrote about the potential game-changer ebooks could become in law library collections. Part of my motivation to write about that was another development that I knew was in the works.

Librarians have become very adept at finding ways to get what their patrons need. A huge part of a law library’s collection is the loose-leaf subscription, a text which is supplemented by inserts. Depending on the frequency, the publisher will send out updates which keep the content of the original tome current. Currency is vital for lawyers – they do not want to appear in court using a particular case as authority, only to find out it was overturned on appeal but they weren’t aware. However, loose-leafs can be very expensive; some annual costs are thousands of dollars, plus you must add in the cost of the filing service. Many years ago, the publishers allowed libraries to purchase contents once a year, thus keeping their collections reasonably current, while not breaking the bank. It seemed to be a win-win: the publishers got sales, albeit not quite in keeping with their output costs (author royalties, development, materials) and libraries stayed within their budgets.

Then last week I got wind of a change. My first clue was a tweet from a colleague in B.C.:

Want to ask if a certain legal publisher is on crack, with their new pricing. Can’t buy looseleaf contents every other year.

That’s typical Twitter hyperbole, so I investigated further, and checked with the publisher. Upon confirmation, I began to ponder this new reality, and how it would affect my library. I also wondered how other libraries with broader mandates would be affected.

First of all, I’d like to make it clear that the publisher has the right to determine the rules. They are in the job of making money, and if they say you have to purchase a full subscription in order to get the contents, then that’s what you have to do. On the other hand, library budgets are static. There is not going to suddenly be a whole pile of money to purchase additional subscriptions, or to pay for the staff to file those additional updates. The pie will just be divvied up a little differently. Instead of libraries having a broad collection of reasonably current material, there will be pockets where the content is fully accessible, and lots of areas where coverage is nonexistent. If you’re a courthouse library whose mandate is to provide resources for a wide range of practice groups, I think you’re SOL. But then, you were bleeding before, when you made the decision to stretch your budget as best you could. 

Honestly? I think the problem is that libraries have done too good a job of rolling over. Our budgets get cut, and we say, “Okay, we can do this instead”, and our bosses are happy. Maybe if they lost a few significant decisions because their resources weren’t up to date they’d think about it differently. Now we have to make some really hard decisions: which practice groups are we going to support? For my own library, I’m going to be going over our collection with a fine tooth comb, and resubscribing to all titles that are relevant, and cancelling anything that was remotely a vanity purchase. That includes loose-leafs with one annual update, which I usually ignore because they were so inexpensive to keep. 

And those annual subscriptions with 12 updates? I don’t care if it’s Houlden & Morawetz, I can’t justify $3,000+ for one book. PER YEAR! (Perhaps that’s why we subscribe to InsolvencySource.) So a word of warning to the legal publishers: law librarians are on the warpath. You will probably win this battle, but the war is hardly over.

~ Karen

 

 

Filed under: Advocacy, Publishing, New books, Legal research   |  1 Comment
Tags: Advocacy, Best practices, creativity, Publishing

New developments in law library collections

30Sep11

I’ve written in the past about how important I think it is to belong to a professional association. I have two favourites, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL-ACBD), and SLA. One of the benefits of belonging to an association is the opportunity to serve, by getting involved in committees. I’m on the Vendor Liaison Committee with CALL, which forces me to pay attention to various initiatives that publishers may be undertaking. One of the areas I’m paying close attention to is ebooks.

I’m not a huge fan of ebooks, yet, although Brenda is. I just got an iPad2 (insert “happy dance” here), and while it’s definitely great for reading, I haven’t got around to downloading any books yet (I’m too busy using it to watch my favourite tv shows!). But in my law library, the publishers have been offering ebooks for some time, with some formats more successful than others. I hope legal publishers will pay attention to  Jean O’Grady‘s recent post on ebooks. I especially love her closing line:

 I fear that — at least in the law firm environment,– eBooks  may be destined to become the “8-track tape” of the 21st century.

~ Karen

Filed under: eBooks   |  1 Comment
Tags: eBooks