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Since Walt Crawford just commented (in the Library Society of the World chat room) that he has not yet been tagged for the Passion Quilt meme, I am tagging him by making this post.

Whether he actually participates is another matter entirely!

For the last two weeks or so, I’ve been collaborating on a presentation proposal on the topic of subject guides. They’ve been on my mind a lot recently, and thus, I was delighted to see Sarah Houghton-Jan’s recent call for subject guide collaboration.

Sarah asks:

…why can’t we have a similar site for subject guides, for subject-specific pathfinders? The recommended websites (with the exception of local websites), catalog searches, articles, blogs, RSS feeds, video and audio content, and books will be the same for most libraries by type (admittedly, academic & public libraries will have different audiences, and different items selected as a result). The only real things that would be different would be our databases and any local-specific materials (like a special collection, rare books, etc.). Does anyone else see value in trying to combine our efforts to create subject guides, or are all of our users really that different from each other that we need to create these individually? We are all a lot more alike than different, and in times of tough budgets I’d like to think we could help each other here…or perhaps even have a grant-funded project to tackle this issue.

I do wonder at the disparity between subject guides on a particular topic. Jackson and Pellack¹ did a study in 2004, examining the subject guides of ARL libraries in four different subject areas, and they found that they mostly had unique resources. Jackson and Pellack wondered at this phenomenon - if a resource is key to that discipline, shouldn’t it be on all subject guides?

I would say “yes,” but even so, I am not sure I see much value in trying to combine efforts to create collaborative subject guides - if these guides are aimed at library patrons. It seems to me that such an effort would be duplicating the efforts of subject directories in general, and in particular, directories like BUBL (although BUBL does not, to my knowledge, include subscription databases). I have seen no data on use of subject directories, but I bet you a nickel that 9/10 college students have never heard of DMOZ. (Even Yahoo’s directory structure has moved from subject-oriented to function-oriented.)

Such a project might be valuable to librarians, however, as sources they might turn to for their own guides. However, I’m not sure it would really solve the problem - you can’t make librarians use a collaborative list of resources.

Another reason I’m not sure this is an area where we should be pushing for collaboration is because I think there’s going to be a move away from subject guides. While we’re planning to do some usability studies in the fall, I have no data now to back this up - it’s purely conjecture. Still, my own experience doing reference and instruction has led me to believe that there will be a bigger need for course- and assignment-specific guides. Our users’ needs are unique when it comes to the courses they take and the assignments they do research for.

Despite my nay-saying, I am not against such an initiative - I think I would contribute to and benefit from a collaborative effort to create subject guides.

¹ Jackson, R. & Pellack, L.J. (2004). Internet Subject Guides in Academic Libraries: An Analysis of Contents, Practices, and Opinions. Reference and User Services Quarterly, 43(4), 319-327.

These are my shared links for May 2nd:

• Why YA
  A really great post about how young adult SF/F outsells adult SF/F by an excruciatingly large margin. Worth checking out if you have any interest in the publishing industry.

These are my shared links for April 28th:

• DrugMonkey : You are not "just a tech", you are a scientist!!
  This post really struck me, because it reminded me so much of the "librarian" and "para-professional" discussion recently. I was especially interested to note that apparently, lab technicians are disproportionately female.

Because library folk tend to take themselves too darn seriously.

Original photos, and mosaic (with caption) by Michael Porter.

These are my shared links for April 27th:

• Gapers Block: Detour - Chicago Then & Now
  This is a pretty cool pictorial of what Chicago looked like in the 40s and 50s, and what it looks like in this decade.

These are my shared links for April 25th:

• Geek Logik Answers All Your Relationship Questions
  If you like XKCD, you'll probably be amused by this blog entry.

This afternoon, I attended a meeting of my fellow research and instruction librarians (and staff) here at work. We have these meetings about once a month, and as such, they are not particularly worth blogging about. Today, however, we had an interesting discussion.

A colleague had come across a recent blog post about my presentation at this year’s Computers in Libraries, and wanted to discuss whether this kind of feedback is something we should include when considering contract renewal and promotions. (Currently, at my place of work, all tenure-track faculty within the library have a vote on the renewal and promotion of all other tenure-track faculty.) The discussion also encompassed whether or not to include blogging in general.

My conclusion, and I think (hope) the conclusion of the larger group, was that blogging as authorship should not be evaluated unless the person being evaluated asks it to be considered, and that comments made by other bloggers (or even respondents to a particular entry) not be considered in general.

I think it’s important that the author of a blog bring it forward, because he or she can place it in context. The discussion of whether to include blogs in contract and promotion reviews has been discussed repeatedly in academia - but to my knowledge, they all frame it in the same way: blogging, they say, is not of the same caliber as peer-reviewed publications.

However, I don’t think this means blogging is entirely irrelevant to workload. At my place of work, we have three general areas in which we are assessed: professional effectiveness (in doing my recent activity report, I broke my professional effectiveness down into several sub-categories: reference, instruction, collection development/management, liaison work, government documents, technology, and other), professional achievement (i.e. presentations and publications), and service (which includes library and university committees, tasks force, and so on).

I liaise with the statistics department at my place of work, and I have a blog to let them know the titles of statistics titles I’ve purchased, and about other relevant resources I come across. Honestly, it doesn’t seem that successful as a blog - it has had one page view in the last 30 days - but a few faculty members in the department have expressed pleasure at its existence, including the chair of the department. This is something I feel I’d like to share at my own review - not to say, “Look, this is comparable to publication!” but to say, “Hey, look at this way that I reached out to my faculty members.”

I also think blogging could be construed as service, like participation on a committee. For example, the Free Government Information blog occasionally asks for guest bloggers. I read this blog to keep up to date on information relevant to (one of) my subfields, and thus, I would say that the people blog there provide me, and other members of the government documents community, with a service.

I have also been thinking about reading blogs. I started reading blogs written by people who were studying or working in librarianship, as a means to keep abreast of trends in libraries. But I find that nowadays, continuing to read those blogs has been a move toward the personal - I tend to read the blogs of the people I like. I still keep abreast of innovations in libraries, but I don’t seek them out; I expect that, because of my professional/social circle, I will hear about these innovations whether I wish to or not.

Nowadays, I probably have more science and government documents blogs than librarian blogs in my feed reader, because I’m using blogs as one tool to familiarize myself with my subject areas. In looking at my workload, I’m more likely to think about blog-reading as “liaison work” than I am to think about it as “technology” (keeping up with, that is).

I also read a blog to assist me with my reference work - our electronic resources management team blogs whenever we’re having a problem with one of our resources. They tell us the nature of the problem, and what they’re doing or did to fix it.

Blogging is still a novel means of communication for some people, but I think we need to stop thinking about whether or not it’s an effective means of scholarly communication and focus on the fact that it is an effective way of communicating several kinds of information that remain relevant to our workload as academics (or at least as librarians).

These are my shared links for April 24th:

• Hundreds of EPA Scientists Report Political Interference Over Last Five Years
  The summary points out that several scientists in other federal agencies have also experienced political interference. This is deeply depressing.
• Amtrak’s Future Outlook and Budgetary Needs
  I’m always a bit irritated with Amtrak (because it’s so often late), and wonder why it’s not as efficient as European rail. While this document can’t answer that question, it does offer a peek inside Amtrak’s operations, so it’s worth a read.
• Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life
  An interesting study put out by Pew; fewer people believe they’re living well. Not surprising…