I tried using Cozi organizer about a year ago for the shopping list and appointment calendar features. We never got it up and running, but I like the idea that multiple users can see the family appointment calendar and add to weekly shopping list. Now Cozi also works with Microsoft Outlook so you can see appointment in Outlook on your work computer. The text message feature and family journal of digital images may be useful for some busy parents, but they were not useful in our household. Although I used Cozi on the Internet, the same information can be sent to Blackberries and other PDA’s or cell phones. An alternate organizer is Google Calendar which you can access at the office as well. Life gets busier and a tool for organizing grocery shopping and which kid is at which extra curricular event is a lifesaver.

– Brenda

At SLA2008 in Seattle, one of the big initiatives was to make the conference as green as possible. There were no piles of bottled water to grab from, instead there were water coolers where you could fill up the new reusable water bottle you could receive courtesy of the Pacific Northwest chapter. Instead of handouts, we were encouraged to check the website after the conference to download the presentations (and obviously view them electronically, rather than printing everything!). Waste was not only being recycled, there was even a compost bin to take used coffee cups and other compostable waste. Seattle itself is a conscientiously green city, with taxis running on natural gas (although since that’s a fossil fuel itself, I’m not sure how green an initiative that is). Conference organizers even had a carbon credit offset program in place, although I’m not quite sure how that was supposed to work.

With over 5,000 people in attendance, there had to have been significant reductions in waste just by the lack of handouts alone. Hopefully this effort will become the norm as we try to responsibly use the resources of our planet.

~ Karen

My reading takes me into business, politics, and other subject areas. Teachers and librarians could have great talks about how to teach information literacy. We have seen the huge social changes underway from the Internet and now Web 2.0. I personally used a travel agent for the first time in about 10 years. Is this a dying profession with buying travel online, and the cost of oil going through the roof? I don’t know the answers but I do want to spread the word about this video about education or see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Teachers and librarians are helping to teach strategies to kids to sift, analyze and evaluate information. By evaluating the information, people can come up with more intelligent answers, and even more questions perhaps. There is discussion about the background of this video too.

As library professionals, we have important roles in teaching users to evaulate, analyze and synthesize information.

– Brenda

Seth Godin published an interesting post on what every good marketer should know called “What do you know?” I particularly like the 8th bullet point: Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.

As a solo librarian I work hard to maintain networks with others like me, so we can compare and/or share resources, ideas, service we’ve received from our vendors. These are the conversations that our vendors should be ensuring are the “right sort”, that is, passing along how great we think they are, and how they’ve gone above and beyond in some way. Sometimes they’re not. We’re human; sometimes we criticize the messenger just because we don’t like them or the way they do business.

On the other hand, sometimes it’s not our fault: there are those vendors who just don’t get it. They want me to purchase something they have to sell, and the pitch becomes all about them and not about me. Make it about me, and I’ll be far more receptive to your message. Now there’s a conversation I’d enjoy having!

Brenda says that “Seth Godin’s writing challenges me about to think hard about customer service. Sometimes the dialogue is awkward. Or there is misunderstanding and that is okay. What is important is the exchange of ideas and really listening. Listening is a hard skill to acquire because our own egos are interfering. We are often not really listening and understanding the underlying message from the other person. I would love to hear Godin speak in person and see if he is a dynamic public speaker. Not everyone is.”

Well, Brenda, I can tell you that after listening to Seth as the closing keynote speaker at SLA 2008, I would have to say he’s easily as dynamic in person as he is in print. His presentation was entertaining, informative, and thought provoking. I left thinking about all the things I do right, as well as being ready to brainstorm how to improve some of my weaknesses.

Now, who should I start my next conversation with?…

~ Karen

Because Karen and I work in special libraries, we don’t focus often enough on school libraries or public libraries. But today I found an interlibrary loan (ILL) initiative that works for school or public libraries.

Chris Harris wrote about treating ILL initiative as a game with points and everything. So there is someone else out there who regards ILL as a challenge. I like to also see what the other local libraries are asking for as items to borrow on the listserv. At year end, I have generated statistics to see if any frequently requested items should be added to our collection.

The author Harris writes for School Library Journal, and I can see this adapted for a smallish public library system, too. He makes a good point of using existing collections better as more collections become digital.

– Brenda

As a member of the Special Libraries Association, I receive the monthly journal Information Outlook. I look forward to receiving each issue, as it’s always chock full of interesting and informative articles of relevance to me in my current position. This month’s issue has an article about how the Washington State Library turned itself around, from being about to close permanently, to inventing a new role: Keeping a State Library Open by Duane McCollum (must be a member to log in).

One paragraph in particular resonated with me:

…Libraries must market their services, promote their value, focus on the information needs of their constituency, and offer things unavailable anywhere else. … (p. 13)

This should be the mantra of all special libraries.

So this morning I tried something new, “focussing on the information needs of my constituency”: Once a week, I compile all the new decisions released in our province and send them to lawyers in my firm. This week, I added a brief note explaining the decision, so my users could quickly glance at the decision and decide if they even needed to open it.  It only added a few more minutes to my assignment, as I was already reviewing each decision anyway, and added a ton of value to what my users received. Something unavailable elsewhere? Not really, but no one else took it on. And if my firm thought about reducing the hours of their library, I think I’d have a whole bunch of champions saying they couldn’t do without me!

And in the long run, that’s how you keep a special library open.

~ Karen

This article reminds me of my time with a now defunct health library called Prevention Source BC. It was heady times as we got a web site which was a pioneering move. Previously the library lent out videos to health care professionals province wide, then it became the hub for Drug Awareness Week (DAW). DAW is an opportunity for schools, workplaces, media, and other community members to talk about preventing drug abuse. As a result of the huge splash of attention and activity, our library was inundated with phone calls for supporting resources (posters, stickers, etc.)

Then the next year the library began to actively support DAW by mailing out resource kits. Basically orders were taken by fax, not by web site. The web site had extras, which complemented the order fulfillment. But, as a library’s mandate shifts, the use of the technology had to change with it. Eventually more sophisticated use of the web site evolved and less phone calls and in-person visits resulted.

Some of the similarities between Prevention Source BC (PSBC) and the Royal Society of Chemistry is that the user groups served are so diverse: PSBC served social workers and health care professionals primarily but it also served kids, parents, and general researchers because of a lack of educational materials. The Royal Society supports people in both large and small companies. Designing a virtual library for many user groups and different search abilities must be a great challenge. My hat is off to the Royal Society of Chemistry for making it work!

– Brenda

I feel like a detective at work as I carry out my interlibrary loan responsibilities. If a user requests a journal or book that is not in our library, I request it from another library. That is the definition of interlibrary loans. I have local library contacts, who work in the same office building and then our company saves on courier costs and delivery of materials is very timely. I also have a wider circle of contacts in the downtown core. That involves phone calls or broadcast e-mails and more patience. Sometimes I am looking for an old government report and it is readily available. I also have a union list for journals for the local library association. Then I can narrow down who has the item and what their holdings are.

But then sometimes you just need friends, who are in the profession. I knew that an obscure journal was only held at the university, and we rarely get same day service from them. At professional firms a journal or book request is fulfilled in hours if not instantly. Academic libraries work on a different schedule.

But my friend “Edna” at Big City Firm on the 54th floor has access to Hein Online. I think of Hein as largely US based but strong legal content.

I asked Edna, if she had time to download one article for me. Normally our library would have to pay about $25 for university interlibrary loan transaction. But I was able to get it for free. Now I usually would not ask Edna, but she is my friend and the user is a nice guy. My user walked away happy, and hopefully my resourcefulness means I have earned a repeat customer.

– Brenda

Karen and I were discussing the different approaches to vendor relationships. Sometimes you need to fix a problem and there are different negotiating strategies. Are you aggressively pursuing your point? Or do you prefer a different style?

Karen thought that yelling and demanding concessions does not advance your case very far. She prefers a collegial relationship with publisher’s represenatives, who may then go that extra mile for you, solving your problems.

I am a pretty laid back individual. Not much gets me up in arms, so that I must muster up my anger at incompetence, then I feel falsely indignant at times. Recently I purchased a new subscription from a publisher I’d never dealt with before. They asked for prepayment, so I sent in a cheque requisition to our accounting department, and diarized the transaction.

When I hadn’t received anything after about a month, I called the publisher and asked what the status was. This is routine in our firm to ensure we get what we’ve paid for. Apparently there was an error in the cheque, and it didn’t cover the GST, so they weren’t going to send us anything until they had received full payment. It seems to me the publisher could have contacted us to clear up the problem, rather than waiting for us to call them for being unresponsive.

At this point, the problem escalated up to my supervisor, who requested that I “demand satisfaction” since we’d paid the bulk of the charge, on the understanding that we’d expedite the full payment. The first clerk I spoke with had no authority, so I had to request to speak to her boss. This was really hard for me, as I don’t like to “rant and rave”. I pleaded our case as best I could, but they wore me down and wouldn’t budge. The firm wasn’t happy, but c’est la vie.

- Brenda

I attended the Manitoba Library Technicians Association conference on Friday, May 23rd. The theme of the conference was “Information Superheroes”, and we had presentations from three super people.

Mark Rabnett, head librarian at St. Boniface Hospital’s medical library (part of the University of Manitoba library system), gave an informative and entertaining presentation on Google tips and tricks. After a brief history of the company, he showed examples of ways to more effectively search through the billions of pages indexed on Google. My own searching is fairly specialized, and I turn to Google as a last resort, so the tips he gave will be very helpful in digging deep into the grey literature that hovers on the web.

Heidi Rees, Cataloguer / Electronic Resource Librarian at the Manitoba Legislative Library, talked about the development of the virtual collection that her library is working on. Heidi’s humourous take on all aspects of the digital library made for a highly enjoyable presentation.

The final talk of the afternoon was on teen services at the Winnipeg Public Library, by Sophie Walker, but since I don’t deal with teens (at least not at work), I didn’t stay.

I thought this was a well organized event, with a group of topics that were suitable for all types of libraries. I learned something, caught up with some colleagues, and even had a great light lunch! What more could you ask for?

~ Karen