Wednesday:
Celebrate the end of my summer contract hours by only working 2 hours on my citation video project. All work and no play, don’t you know. Too tired even to run today.
Thursday:
Work another 2 hours on citation videos – now have 2 complete. Drop son off at home after XC practice and drive into the office for a meeting on the migration of NetLibrary content to EBSCOhost. Spend the next three hours getting updates on projects from staff. Budget projections are looking pretty dire – we may need to make some unpopular decisions this fall. Added staff member to this blog in hopes that she will write about all the cool things happening in periodicals – especially highlighting some of our hidden treasures. End the day as usual at the YMCA with a 5K run.
Friday:
Another several hours on citation videos. Finally discovered an easy way to play the content in PowerPoint while recording in Jing. I quickly re-record my first 2 videos (now half the file size as the originals and much easier to view) and move on to the third.
I still need to call two vendors today about new databases; I wish there was a 24-hour rule in responding to customer requests.
July 29, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. .
6:30 a.m. Wake up, begin consuming large amounts of coffee. Catch up the latest disaster news from Washington. Trying to contain my excitement that the whole country is counting down to my birthday this year: August 2nd.
7:00 a.m. Wake son for XC practice.
7:30 a.m. Wake son again for XC practice.
8:15 a.m. Drop son at XC practice; drive into work.
9:00 a.m. Budget meeting; the upcoming year looks a little dicey in terms of actually having funding to retain all the resources that faculty and students need. I’m sure this is hugely surprising for anyone reading this!
9:05 a.m. Have officially burned through all the hours in my summer contract. For the next month, working pro bono.
10:00 a.m. Meeting over. Run over to periodicals office to alert staff member that our ERM is being worked on and that we shouldn’t be entering new data. Come up with new student project to check a bibliography to make sure all the books are still in print. Upon accessing Books in Print, realize that we no longer have access to BIP via FirstSearch. Pay one invoice. Sign, scan, and email 3 renewals, asking for invoices.
11:00 a.m. Hear back from FirstSearch that the database changes were announced over a year ago. Cool. We’ve lost access to 9 other databases besides Books in Print. Update some budget numbers.
12:00 p.m. Alert my staff member that we can actually keep adding data to our ERM, no worries.
12:10 p.m. Rush out of library for a 20-minute drive home to pick up my daughter and get her to band practice. Actual time allotted for 20-minute drive: 10 minutes.
12:33 p.m. Drop daughter off at practice (only 3 minutes late!), then over to Blue Cup for lunch. Send out email to director and collection development librarian about FirstSearch changes. Feel slight headache coming on.
1:15 p.m. Grab daughter and drive home. Write this post. Update a-z list to reflect access changes to those 10 FirstSearch databases.
2:30 p.m. Add a note to our FirstSearch databases about them being down.
3:15 p.m. Create new fund/ledger structure for our reference titles so that it will be easier for our reference librarian to track expenses. Previously, funding had been split between monographs, standing orders, and electronic resources with no coding flagging the materials as “reference.” With expenses continuing to rise, this new system is expected to help us better track expenses for this area.
4:00 p.m. Hitting the YMCA for an amazing stress-relieving run.
July 26, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. .
I can’t say that the following musings will reflect a typical week as it’s July (very few classes going on), I’m on a part-time summer contract, and I only have 6 hours left on my contract. In May my position was re-structured to include managing electronic resources. I am excited about my new responsibilities, but it has made for a much more work-intensive summer than I was anticipating.
5:50 a.m. ignore alarm, sleep until 6:30.
6:30 a.m. coffee, news, check of the interwebs.
8:15 a.m. drop son off at XC practice, hit my favorite local coffee shop (Blue Cup) to work until son shows up after practice.
8:30 a.m. Begin work on a series of quick videos about citing sources – not only how to cite (examples will be specifically geared towards actual resources used in an assignment for our CST110 classes), but why we cite. In the background, trying for the umpteenth time to download the final section of data for my CST110 assessment project. Hoping that the bandwidth at the Blue Cup is better than what I have at home.
8:45 a.m. Blue Cup internet rocks! Files downloaded. Background files for videos gathered. Reviewing goals for the videos.
10:00 a.m. Leave to transport my son back home. Make homemade waffles, clean kitchen.
11:00 a.m. From several emails, determine that I need to update our EZproxy config for Web of Science. After updating the files and re-starting the server, add an alert to all our Web of Knowledge databases on the a-z list about the new interface going live. Sent an email to my staff member about updating our ERM, e-resource blog, staff, and LibGuides with this information. Contemplate just doing the updates myself, as staff member is out until Thursday, but realize that I am going to have to delegate to survive the rest of the summer.
11:30 a.m. See email about yet another library web form being broken. Realize that I need to focus on getting my videos done. Close email, close blog – focus on videos.
2:45 p.m. First draft of Why we Cite video completed! Feeling like I’m finally accomplishing some summer goals. Heading to the YMCA to run.
July 25, 2011. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. .
After over a year of silence, I am once again inspired to write about periodicals. Why the lack of inspiration? Mid-life crisis, interesting state political struggles, trusted staff retiring, more emphasis on face to face teaching – the possibilities are endless! As we still have not filled our open staff position and our lone student worker is out for three weeks enjoying a field experience, I find myself filling in as a periodicals student worker for a few weeks.
It has been a pretty amazing experience so far. Checking in new microfiche and microfilm titles has led me to the decision that we really don’t need to continue receiving two microform formats. Also, I now see clearly the need for putting our microform shelflist online.
By re-shelving our current titles and gathering use statistics, I have a better sense of how our print collection is getting used (or not!).
When uploading our print barcodes to our use statistics database, I discovered that 18 of our current titles had physical barcodes that did not match the barcode in our catalog. Meaning, of course, that these data were not being included on reports.
Small discoveries, perhaps, but ones that help me to remember that in order to have those wonderful teaching/learning moments with our users, there is still much technical work involved in libraries, and it is important.
April 27, 2011. Uncategorized. .
photo by Dwayne Webb
Over the past ten years, we have quietly and slowly undertaken a revolution in the way we access scholarly journal articles. Our periodicals department once managed 1600 print and microform subscriptions. Now we manage 63,000 access points to journal articles (print, electronic, and microform) through our GetTeXt service (SFX).
Several years ago we moved our bound journals from our first floor to the lower level. Just this past summer, we switched our subscriptions from print to electronic except for titles that are 1) leisure reading/magazines and 2) not available electronically. We currently stand at 388 print subscriptions.
As our current periodicals area was meant for a much larger collection, we are in the midst of cutting in half the amount of shelving we use, leaving more space for a comfortable lounge area, coming later this spring.
Anecdotally, we understand that some of our users still want to access their scholar journal articles in print and may be alarmed by our changes. In our community of 9,000 users, however, the data point to the majority of our users wanting instantaneous access to journal articles 24/7.
The following data illustrate the sharp decline in our print/microform titles as well as the rise in electronic use. I hope these illustrations help explain why we are making the switch to electronic:
We can break down that use by format:
Which of our print titles are getting the most use? These graphs show current periodicals used more than 50 times in a fiscal year (July 1-July 30):
As use continues to decline on the print front, we are moving our extremely limited funds to support electronic access. Here’s just one example of why moving to electronic makes sense. In the fall of 2007, we canceled 46 print titles, all published by Elsevier. These 46 titles cost us $60,000 in FY08. The costs of these subscriptions were rising approx. 10% each year. We canceled those 46 print titles in favor of Elsevier’s College Edition, a series of three packages totaling 2100 titles in the areas of physical sciences, life & health sciences, and social and behavioral sciences. The cost for College Edition? $33,000. The annual price increases? A mere 3%. We saved nearly $30,000 and added access to 2,000 more titles. And is College Edition being used? In 2009, 34,440 full text articles were downloaded.
Our students, faculty, and staff can access electronic journals whether they are studying in China, at a conference in San Francisco, or in their apartment across town. They can access the content at 3:00 in the morning or at 12 noon. They can save the articles to their desktop or print them out.
Is electronic access to journals perfect? Of course not. Is research easier, quicker and more convenient with electronic journals? Yes.
What are your questions? Please share in the comments.
February 23, 2010. Uncategorized. .
I had an anonymous chat with a user over the summer. S/he was asking about what “fun” magazines we had in the library. I was quickly scrambling to think about “leisure” magazines that we have (we categorize them only as “general”). I rattled off Guitar Player, Glamour, Elle, Rolling Stone and then it hit me – what makes these titles fun or even popular?
For the past ten years I’ve been so busy managing access to scholarly journals that I haven’t given our “fun” titles a second glance. When the person chatting with me asked about what alternative press titles we had I knew I was in trouble. We have some titles – like Ms. and Viet Tide, but there are many areas, such as GLBT, in which we are greatly lacking. I also realized that we don’t have an easy way to display our popular titles.
And there it was: a new project!
So, I’m reviewing our “general” titles (many of which are indeed general, but don’t seem either popular or fun) and adding in some core titles in a number of areas. I’ll also be working on a way to display these titles electronically via our library web site.
If you have suggestions for magazine titles to add (or cancel!), please let me know.
October 22, 2009. News, Subscriptions, Uncategorized. .
Before you get too excited about how short my work days are this week, you need to know that here at UW-La Crosse, librarians are faculty and on 9-month contracts. We receive a part-time contract in the summer, which usually gives us just enough time to keep our departments above water. Today I completed my contract hours, so from here on out, I’m working because 1) I love being a librarian 2) I supervise a department with 2 FTE and 3) I still have a lot of projects that I need to complete before the hurricane that is September hits.
6:00: alarm goes off – slap the snooze button until 6:30. Wonder why I don’t just change the alarm to 6:30.
6:30: wake up daughter for summer school as she needs to be at the bus stop at 7:15. Drink several cups of coffee, check online networks, home and work email, and listen to the headlines on CNN.
7:15: say goodbye to daughter, shower, dress, read more of The Given Day, make phone calls to schedule appointments, etc. I realize that there is a lot of time wasted between now and leaving home, but in truth I am just not a morning person.
9:00: leave home
9:30: arrive at the office, get some hot tea, check for snail mail, check email.
9:45: I am extremely lucky to have scored a new notebook computer for work and I’m slowly configuring it and moving over files from my old notebook. I move over some more files and begin to gather data to update our acquisitions formula. This year, I’m trying out a new procedure that will hopefully save time in the future, but at the present time it’s just a painfully slow process.
10:30: All-staff meeting to make decisions on some budget stuff. A good meeting. I whittled my inbox down to 1000 messages and thought we had a good discussion about the budget.
12:0o: The meeting is over and my stomach is rumbling loudly. Sit down briefly and catch up with a colleague. My phone starts ringing and after talking to my husband, son, and daughter (who has just gotten off the bus) I realize it’s time to head home.
Once home, I still check my email a few times, but most of my day is spend supervising play dates, folding laundry, and making brownies. And the brownies: the best I’ve ever made.
July 28, 2009. Tags: librarydayinthelife. Uncategorized. .
Pre-work: Same morning routine as all the other days this week. Twist for this morning: took 2 full cups of coffee before my brain function kicked in.
8:00: Arrive in my office. Computer refuses to let me in to our shared file space because I was forced kicking and screaming to change my campus password yesterday. Reboot computer, wait full 5 minutes for it to reboot, re-set links to mapped drive. Access email folders, send password for journal-which-shall-not -be -named to colleague.
8:30: Catch up on blogs, email, check calendar. No meetings!
9:00: Run down to staff lounge for tea, stop procrastinating working on Course Page for Choosing a Topic. It’s fun learning how to create a new page in LibData and checking out how other libraries approach this on their web sites. Wow! Styles are crazy for my course page. Check to see if other librarians are editing the style sheet; they are not. Will ask e-resources librarian for help later.
10:00: Note that I included my old office hours in my little video showing how to find my office (It’s a little difficult to find, but the view is worth the aggravation). When I go to edit it, discover that I didn’t save all the original files. Re-create parts of the movie and think it is even better than before. After I’m finished, find all the original files.
11:30: “Mouse” hand is starting to ache. Might be time for a break. Walking over to the mail room. Stretching.
12:30: Still working on Course page. I think It’s taking shape.
12:45: quick lunch in break room.
1:00: Get news from US News & World Report might be ceasing their print edition. Turns out they are just switching to a monthly edition, but the emails are really flying. I would not be surprised if more of our weekly news titles publish fewer issues.
2:00: Still working on Choosing Topics page. Adding Librarian’s Internet Index. Notice that our description of this resource is still listing the old title, go into LibData and update it. LibData makes it very easy to update database information.
3:20: Leave a little late; run to car to drive to daughter’s school and then take her to her tap class.
4:00-5:00: Enjoying the YMCA’s wireless. Notice that the styles on many of our web pages are not displaying well in IE. Work until keyboard stops working (no enter key!) and decide that’s enough for the day.
January 30, 2009. Tags: librarydayinthelife. News, Uncategorized. .
I received a question about our access to OVID yesterday via MEEBO when I wasn’t logged in. I can see the question in the chat window, I just can’t respond so that the person asking this excellent question can see my response. So, I’m responding here because it was a really great question:
how do I search the OVID data base directly? I know that we have some journals in that, but it doesn’t show up on the database title list.?
Murphy Library subscribes to 10 journals through OVID. OVID offers thousands of other titles, but UW-La Crosse users have access to just the 10. I never realized that users would think to search OVID rather than OTJR or another of the 10 journals directly. Each of the 10 journals is cataloged in the library catalog and linked within our link resolver (GetTeXt), but I never added a link to the OVID database itself. Until today.
Journals@OVID (OVID)
Journals@Ovid is a single database that contains the Ovid Full Text and graphics of every full text journal offered by Ovid. Use the “External Resolver” link to request articles from journals to which we do not subscribe. Or, limit your search to Your Journals@Ovid, a subset of the full database that contains only Murphy Library’s current OVID subscriptions (American Journal of Occupational Therapy, American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Journal of Cardiopulmonary Research and Prevention, Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise, OTJR, Pediatric Physical Therapy, and Strength and Conditioning Journal).
Enjoy!
September 16, 2008. Uncategorized. .
I haven’t updated this blog in a long, long time. I’ve been busy, of course. Busy is good. Lately I’ve been in that head-spinning busy where schedules and goals and emergencies are swirling around and it’s difficult to prioritize. In the midst of this major head-swirling, exciting things are happening at Murphy Library.
1. Over 700 newspapers from 76 countries in 38 languages in full-color and full-page format are now available for your reading pleasure from PressDisplay. Although two of my favorite newspapers weren’t available when we signed the license agreement, both the Star-Tribune (Minneapolis) and the Chicago Tribune are now included. While most PressDisplay newspapers have a 60 days rolling backfile, access to the Chicago Tribune is only for 4 days, rolling. Still, this is progress! Speaking of progress, it was through browsing through the Tribune via PressDisplay that I discovered that construction is underway on this monstrosity stunning new Chicago landmark, the Chicago Spire. Holy cow.
2. Blackwell is dead, long live Wiley-Blackwell. Yes, the merger between Blackwell and Wiley is complete. All of our Blackwell journals that were available through Blackwell’s Synergy platform are now available through Wiley interScience. At least, they should be. Links from our periodicals locator (the interface formerly known as periodicals holdings list) should be redirecting users to Wiley, but please let me know if things don’t go as planned (use the Questions? Ask a Librarian link from the GetTeXt menu).
3. The web site redesign is now live! The Murphy Library web team has been working with the UW-L web template for a year now and after a long summer of coding, the new web site is finally available. Now that we have lots of good people using this new web, I’m learning more about what new aspects of the design are working and which aren’t. We’ll be making lots of little changes in the coming weeks, all designed to further improve the library research experience.
4. I’m enjoying my first semester of being an embedded librarian. I’m “borrowing” this gig from a colleague on leave, but I already realize I will miss this added interaction with students. I’ve always loved the research process – it’s a game for me – and it’s great to be asked to come along on someone’s research adventure.
5. I’m really hungry. bye.
*Talking Heads, Slippery People
September 11, 2008. Uncategorized. .
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