Connecting Librarian

What is the catalogue – Helen Livingston – University of South Australia

Catalogue is a register of all items found in the library. (showed Wikipedia definition – long). Told us Charles Cutter”s definition – incorporates what there is and where can I find it.

Who is the catalogue for? Our users, but not sure if it was always that way. Have lots of content to assist users to find what they want. Its also for inventory control – tells us loans, physical location and helps with acquisitions.

What do we catalogue? Physical items, databases, aggregations, web sites and items owned but held elsewhere? And it has changed over time. Since 2004, the ANZ expenditure on e-resources has climbed from 15 to 30% of budgets.

Special collections, serial collections are all digital and are being catalogued.

User behaviour – what is the easiest place to start research according to students? – Google.

So what is the catalogue becoming? Is it to provide access to library materials or just a place to collect metadata. Most catalogue data now comes from national agencies, libraries, publishers and commercial entities.

The standards of cataloguing are changing. RDA, based on FRBR principles, to replace AACR. It will bring different format of same title together. eg. dvd, books, notes etc. Recently announced that ALA will begin the massive transition away from MARC.

Catalogues inventory control purpose isloans – between 2004 and 2010, loans ffell from 24.5 million to 15 million.

What might we do? Keep the catalogue, continue to buy records, layer the catalogue with discovery layers, maintain loan systems, work with library vendors to improve systems. In other words, we can keep up with the times, moving along gently.

OR

We could stop copy cataloguing, stop focusing on details, point to records rather than buying or storing them, embrace new standards (and be cheerful about it), incorporate virtual and physical shelves in the virtual and physical worlds. Become super efficient and flexible.

We don’t do so well at getting knowledge of our virtual resources to our physical shelves.

OR

Ditch the catalogue as a tool for users, ditch it as an inventory control system, incorporate records for in-house physical material into discovery systems, get a simple inventory control systems for the decreasing physical purchases, make loans REALLY simple (or don’t lend the physical out of the building!)

The Internet of everything: linking the print and online collections – David Feighan and Sue Healey

Showed the “Internet of things” on YouTube. (IBM Social Media)

The internet of things is going to be big, to the point where there will be many more things on the internet than actual people on the internet. NIC sees it as a major disruptive trend by 2025. Raises a lot of privacy concerns etc. China has also identified it as a key strategic emerging industries for them.

First two areas that physical collections and spaces have gone virtual, have been via RFID and QR codes on their rooms. But will students use them? Surveyed them and found that at Year 7, 45% had smart phones, but Year 10 it was 83% and ubiquitous in Years 11 and 12. They showed a QR code and as long as they could say how they were used, they were defined as knowing what they were. It was over 70%.

The library space is being used so they are using QR codes to connect them to the online resources. On shelves, they have A4 size shelf talkers, which are themed and have a QR code which links to their online resources.

www.qrstuff.com Allows you to link to websites, Facebook, YouTube video, Google Maps location and many, many more. There are other sites for QR code generation and doing a site on YouTube will give you many videos of how QR codes are being used.

Near future? Using RFID and geospatial tagging will your phone show you where the items is?

And then let you touch on to check it out? Its not happening because we want them, but is actually being driven by the retail and entertainment sectors. But these developments can also lend themselves to libraries.

As we re-purpose our space as learning commons, how do we get those space on the internet?

Linking objects and people within spaces and games (Parallel Kingdom).

Change or fade away: school libraries need to change – Bronwyn Foxall – Abbotsleigh

School libraries are not immune to the challenges facing all libraries. The only way forward is to discover what your own community wants.

Why are librarians important in schools? What do you do that is so important that the school would suffer if you weren’t there.

Library functions are changing – AV is going digital, reducing number of books, empty spaces due to PC removal and more.

Surveyed students and stakeholders to find out what they could do to revision what they are doing. Main reason why students came to the library, to study alone, to research, to find a book, to attend a class and then to study in a group. Use of computers will die due to laptops for every student.

Asked them what spaces they needed? Quiet study was the biggest demand, and then individual spaces. Open ended questions biggest response was a request for a cafe. More demand for specific spaces – quiet study rooms, group study rooms, individual study space. They were also asking for more books, even more than requests for e-books and magazines etc.

In response they removed shelves to create discussion spaces, created quiet study rooms and a multimedia space – all of which have delighted students.

Need to keep rethinking the library facilities, but also the services. Used a fun film and library vouchers to reach Year 12s, added a discovery layer and federated search to their catalogue, library blogs, run competitions around the library using QR codes and the students have responded well.

Some of the things they want to be able to do:

• new furniture styles for collaborative learning

• add a bit of whimsy

• put some bookcases on the balcony with tables and chairs (WD books)

• funky shelving spaces

• different lighting styles

In order to survive, school libraries must be engaged in a continual process of assessment and evaulation.

Hi, Day 2, hope you have survived Day 1 of Blog Every Day of June. If you’re interested, you’ll be able to check out a daily summary of what’s been talked about on various participants blogs at Libraries Interact.

I was inspired for this post by a video compiled by Kathryn Greenhill of Librarians Matter. She interviewed librarians attending the ALIA Online conference in Sydney this past January, asking them What is a library and what does a librarian do.  Check it out….

It was as I was watching that a couple of the interviewees mentioned connections.  And that thought linked in to a lot that I have been considering. I have been reading everywhere about the future of libraries, with books about to disappear (lol) and everything being on the internet (lol and yawn – heard it before).

The future of public libraries has been of interest to my workplace too, as we work with our Councils to plan and build some more new libraries in the next few years. If libraries are going to be obsolete, then why do we need the buildings?

I think that our librarian interviewees have got it very right. Libraries and librarians have always been about connections. Libraries until recently at least, have mostly been about connecting the library user to the right book or the right information. (not ignoring the DVDs, CD’s, magazines, digital resources or many other things that libraries do). But if and when the book finally becomes less of a feature of libraries – due to online availability and wider accessibility, what will libraries and librarians be about then. We will still be about connections.

Whether its connecting users to facilities – whether its study space, online connections, equipment, meeting facilities, or connecting users to resources – whether its online or physical, in whatever form it may take, or even connecting users to other users – for learning, for sharing common interests, for a common goal or more. Librarians are connected to their libraries, to their users and to their communities, so are ideally placed to help others make whatever connections they need or want.

I don’t know what the library of the future is going to be like, but I do know that it will be about the connections that our communities need and want and that librarians will still be needed to make them happen.

As promised, here is the update.  Its quick.  Check out the previous blog post for the details of what happened, and for Monique (Branch Managers) update in the comments.

The cleaners did a great job and the carpet was dry and library staff were able to put all the shelving back to its normal places by late Friday afternoon.

Children's area as it was and is again

Although there was close on 100 items affected by water, only about 12 had to be withdrawn, mostly magazines and humour which were on fixed shelving.  The rest of the affected books were dried out, the minor damage noted and returned to circulation.

Eighteen interior roofing tiles will be replaced, due to the water damage.  The cause was the amount of rain – it was too much, too quickly and the gutters and drainage just couldn’t cope.  Barring another such storm, it is not expected to happen again.

As of yesterday, the Council Offices were still drying out sections of their carpet affected by the flood.  The shopping centre mostly returned to normal operations by Monday just gone, although the cinema complex, where 9 out of the 10 cinemas were flooded, only reopened yesterday.  ( the noise of many wails heard from teenage girls not able to see New Moon locally, finally abated).

We were very fortunate in terms of where the flood hit us – it was not near electronic equipment and in the only part of the library where 90% of the collection was on wheels.  So between placement and fast acting staff, we got off very lightly.  Now its as if it never happened.

Business as usual.

It could have been a lot worse, but with so many people expressing their empathy, I thought I would take the time to blog the story of my library being flooded.  I will blog later about the implications further down the track.

Yesterday in Melbourne (Thursday 26th November), a severe thunderstorm came through, causing widespread damage across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.  I had seen the warnings via Twitter and had warned library staff, but we didn’t expect the impact that we got.

At about 3pm, the sky went so dark that our carpark lights came on automatically.  The area also went very still – trees stopped moving, as did many birds. At 3.05pm the wind started really moving and a few minutes later the rain came down. The best way I can describe it was cyclonic. I was watching from the staff room and it reminded a little of those TV reports you see live from cyclone affected areas.

The children's area at the time of recarpeting

Moments later, we heard the fuss out in the library and raced out to discover a waterfall running down from the roof, near the windows  in our children’s area – along a length of about 20 metres.  You can see the windows in the background of the picture here, this one taken at the time of recarpeting.

Fortunately, most of our children’s shelving is on wheels, so staff had quickly moved it out of harms way in just moments.  However, rain was still pouring outside and still waterfalling inside.  Every bucket and bin we could find was placed under the downpour, but it didn’t make much difference, the amount of water coming in was too great.

Fortunately, 10 minutes after the storm had begun – it stopped.  The storm front moved on and we began the process of assessing the damage and clearing up as best we could.  We dug around for equipment to help, finding a couple of mops, a stiff brush and a long armed window washer (which is great not only for windows, but only for squeezing water out of carpet tiles).

Calls were made to the Council and to our HQ for assistance and direction.  Unfortunately, due to the state of other Council buildings in the area, there was not much assistance available from Council, so we got to work ourselves.

We were concerned about the state of our roof tiles, especially after hearing the news of roof collapses in the nearby shopping centre, Council offices and swimming pool.  Ours held.

Flooding at Narre Warren Library

The clean up involved sopping up the extra water, which had spread close to our front desk, with the mops and using the brush and squeegee to push as much of it out the emergency exit as possible.  Once there was no longer a flood on top of the carpet tiles, the next job was to try and squeeze the excess water out of the sopping ones.  Fortunately, as we had only been recarpeted a year ago, the tiles were still relatively clean.  Still it meant, shoes off and pants rolled up – not the usual library staff look.

In the meantime, other staff were checking for other leaks (none fortunately) and removing stock which had been affected by the downfall.  Much of it just needed a quick wipe down, but even with the speedy response by staff, there was some stock damaged (I’d estimate up to 100 titles), so they took them out the staff area to remove the excess water and set them up to dry, in the hope of saving at least some of them.

Drying out water affected stock

The library did not close at any time during this whole affair and we were able to provide access to at least part of the childrens collections during that time.

After all that, a reassessment of the flooded area and some more judicious shelf rearranging, staff were able to reopen access to all of the children’s collections, whilst leaving the flooded areas and a good safety margin, roped off to all access.

When I left work at 6pm, the cleaners had arrived, with equipment to sop up even more water, before putting the blowers to work on drying out the tiles.

We were very lucky.  Even though it was a short storm, because of the leak’s  location and the quick action of staff, major damage was averted.

Will report more on the aftermath next week, when I know more about what we’ve lost in terms of collections and the condition of the roof.

Today was the first day of NLS4, which I have blogged about already, but only the last afternoon session and plenary. I missed a lot because I ended up spending most of the day with other public librarians and Erik and Jaap the Shanachietour guys.

I began the day at the State Library of Victoria with friends and colleagues from other public libraries, to talk to the Shanachie boys about what we are doing in Victorian public libraries. I had to leave early to go and present at NLS4 – my presentation is linked from the presentation page. After I had done that, I headed back to SLV for the Shanachie guys and ended up joining them for a tour of the State LIbrary of Victoria and lunch. Check out the photos on Flickr.

Then back to the conference for the days end and then for the Cocktail Party which was held at Experimedia at the State Library. Drinks, finger foods and fun games got us all talking with friends we hadnt met yet. Presentations were made – Kate Davis from Gold Coast Libraries received the Metcalfe Award and Rachel Crowe the ALIA Aurora Scholarship. More photos of this too on Flickr.

Another day of NLS4 tomorrow, which will include a presentation from Erik and Jaap. If you havent checked out the Shanachie tour, I highly recommend you do. And if you have never done a tour of the State Library of Victoria, I suggest you add it to your list of must dos- its an amazing building.

Last week, our biggest library was recarpeted and repainted and I was part of the moving team.  Narre Warren Library is a 1300 sq mt building, comprising the library, a meeting room, family history space, local history archive, workroom, staffroom, foyer and amenities – the majority of which had to be emptied to allow the makeover to happen.  Apart from some recarpeting around the circulation desk a few years ago, this was the first makeover in the building’s 16 year history.

The moving team comprised 6 core staff, including myself, who worked full-time (or close to it) from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, in varying shifts, ranging from 7am to 3pm, to 1pm to 9pm.  A further 4-6 staff were involved in big moving times and on the last 2 days when we were getting everything back on shelves and into place.  A contract company was hired to assist with heavy moving of shelving and boxes, but the majority of the work was done by the library team.

Over the course of 5 1/2 days, we moved 60,000 items, much of that in boxes and their shelving, twice.  The first move was half of the library’s collection, packed into the other half. Sunday night we began after closing by moving the children’s and young adult areas, whose shelving was on castors.  We then also boxed up and moved the AV collections, magazines, genre fiction, adult fiction and large print collections, as well as the shelving they used and all the furniture that comprised those areas.  Took a few hours, but was fairly straightforward, especially as we were able to just roll some of the shelving, still fully stocked, out of the way. This was the easy part.

Monday was an early start, for all involved.  The painters and carpeters started their work, whilst the moving team started packing up the reference and non-fiction collections we could reach between boxes and shelving.  It took all of Monday for the old carpet to be ripped up on that side of the library, so laying the new carpet didn’t happen until Tuesday.  We were concerned that this would put a big dint in our plans for reopening to the public on Saturday, but were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at 1pm on Tuesday to find that they carpeters had nearly finished and that we were able to start moving things back across to that side of the library.  Which we did.  We finished boxing up non-fiction and moved all 60,000 items, boxes and shelving across to the newly carpeted side of the library.

Wednesday was another early start, with the library team starting to reshelve large print and fiction, whilst the other half of the library was recarpeted and painted.  This left the last 2 days to do the final moving of everything back into place and onto shelves, in preparation for Saturday reopening.

Thursday morning was another early start, but within a couple of hours we had all the non-fiction and reference shelving back in place and it was the start of a major haul, with all hands on deck, to get everything back on shelf and in place throughout the library by Friday evening.

Add to this the fact that we were accepting returns and phone calls from patrons who weren’t aware of the closure and that our daily courier run from other libraries was still happening, there was a lot to still manage in terms of circulation.  So apart from the moving team, we had 2 staff on desk and were open to the public (at least to the edge of the desk), from 10am to 5pm each day.  Amazing how many people, even on seeing the chaos that was the library during this time, asked if they could come in and use the internet, or find a book etc.

Only adding to the interesting times we were experiencing was the opportunity we were taking to tweak some of the collection arrangements.  Although most of the shelving was going back to its original location, some wasn’t and would need to be recreated and reorganised as we started reshelving.  We were also changing some shelving arrangements, including totally redoing adult fiction and large print and changing the sequence of non-fiction.  All to give a better flow for the collections and all for the benefit of our users. Nothing like a bit of spice to keep us on our toes!

So Thursday had the shelving back in place, reference and the adult collections in place and the beginnings of non-fiction reshelved.  New shelving had been creating from the skeletons of old and new homes had been found for our Italian and Basic English collections.

Which left Friday to bring it all together.  Which we did. The last book was reshelved in non-fiction at 2.35pm (not bad as most of the staff were working 7am to 3pm that day).  The last 1/2 hour was spent moving the last of the shelving into place – AV and childrens etc, getting the furniture back in place and then leaving the remaining staff to clear the desk area of its boxes, trolleys and more, ready to reopen on Saturday.

So that was the process.  You can check out the photos on Flickr for a fuller account of proceedings and for a better idea of the size of the job. However, I wanted this blog post to be more than a reflection on the work that was done.  So here goes.

I would highly recommend that any library who wants to do some team building, do a recarpeting project like this. The 6 of us on the main carpeting team, had a wonderful time working together all week.  We all worked very hard, doing exhausting work (the last minor aches disappeared by Monday), working unusual shifts and had an absolute ball doing so.  We had a great team of people, both the core team and the extended team, who were determined to make it happen.  We bonded in a way we couldn’t doing normal library work for several reasons I believe, including – spending so much dedicated time together, being away from the public and the demands they make, being able to be more relaxed and more ourselves as a result of that and also because we genuinely liked and respected our team mates before we started the project.

We were able to share the achievements (applause and much congratulations once the last book was in place), the amusements and the mishaps.  Amusements included finding a 1945 penny in a building only 16 years old and under one bay of shelving finding a fruit tingle, a tic tac, a mint and a nail file (someone’s secret stash!!!).  The mishaps included various cuts from various tools and accessories, including scissors, utlity knives, table legs, tape dispensers and the ultimate of an attack by a drawing pin, which jumped out from a display board and got entrapped in the wild hair of one of our team.

Extra weekend staff helped clear the boxed up backlog from the courier, as well as dealing with the enthusiastic library users who poured through the doors, although it will take several weeks to get the stock reorganised on shelves properly, as we were in such a hurry to get reshelved that we ended up with very full shelves in most cases, but with room to expand into unused bays.

However, it has been all worthwhile as the library is looking great and the feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive.

From my point of view, the week was a roaring success.  We achieved our goal of getting it all done in 5 days (I’m so task oriented) and was able to do so in good company.  I learned a bit about myself and a lot about my workmates, which has given me greater respect for them personally and professionally.  I am really happy that our users are taking to the new look and shelving changes well, as it adds that nice bit of icing to the cake.

It was a physically taxing week, but I am more than happy to be involved in such a project again if it ever arises, because it was fun.  They say a change is as good as a holiday and I couldn’t have done much different work that usual in this week, but would be happy to do it again, as long as its only periodic – I couldn’t do it everyday!

Great to hear the formal presentation of what I saw and learnt about the new Darien Library when I spent the day there last week.

Louise Berry – 3 principles guiding their building project, which is ultimately based on their library creed of extreme customer service

• Covenant with our patrons
• Stay ahead of expectations
• First of the new libraries, not the last of the old

Two goals: – Design and build an absolutely fantastic new library – as the most important institution in their town, where everyone wants to come
- Use technology, whatever it will make us more efficient and effective and however it will meet our patrons’ demands. Its supply and demand, not supply and need.

One rule is to tolerate uncertainty. Hard mindset for some staff to handle.

Continuing vision – eternal values of extreme customer service, friendly and helpful surroundings
- new technology

Architect Peter Gisolfi :
Creating an interior streetscape on the ground floor, aiming to be the centre of activity in the library. First floor is traditional library. Building is green with heating and cooling fed by groundwater, using recycled rainwater and many more green features, which will give the building certification and mean that’s it energy rating will be half of that of similar buildings.

Building is 3 levels – basement which holds the power (tech) library, technical services etc. First floor is popular materials, childrens area etc. Second floor is traditional library with non-fiction, reference and more. They also have a mezzanine level with lots of study space. Exterior has a New England feel, as required by law.

Three levels are popular (ground floor), traditional (first floor) and power (basement).
Lots of spaces for collaborative work on all levels. Dilemma is the issue of permanence and change – a civic building of importance which responds to the galloping rate of technological change. Response: Permanence is the town itself, the building itself and its timeless interiors.
Flexibility with open warehouse/functions change, changing technology, changing patterns of service. Connections are the building to the town setting, to regional traditions, to the environment/sustainability, interior streetscape, horizontal connections/open floors, vertical connections/open shaft, institution to community.

Alan Gray:
Not just putting a layer of technology over a new building. Its the patrons library, taking real risks, failure IS an option, get it right and then keep changing to stay ahead. Need a library failure wiki to learn from all our mistakes.

Technology layers: infrastructure, administrative, staff, patrons indirect, patron direct and patron to patron. Most important tech implementation – a materials handling system that happens to have an RFID front end. Self check works for the benefit of the patron, materials handling can have a major benefit for the library. No Tech services, no Circ back office and no cataloguing. Workflow managers not clerks, with only a small workspace to deal with exceptions. Majority of materials come to Darien shelf ready. Outsource everything related to Technical Services – outsource shelvers? What would a library be if it needed no trolleys? Would it be full of knowledge workers instead? Active items back on shelf in 20 minutes, inventory turns per item doubled, cost per circ halved, time for order to first circ – 18 hours, annual circulation per FTE: 40,000.

Have a fast second order, direct order and ship direct to patron (overnight), delivery from distributor same day. Everyone out in front of their desks, circ staff become readers advisors, information staff are at remote reference points, technology staff work in partnership with patrons, a virtual library too.