Participatory Culture, Participatory Libraries | Inside Higher Ed

From Barbara Fister at Library Babel Fish:

The fact is, academic libraries should be all about participatory culture. They are labs, they are workshops, they are studios for making new ideas inspired by old ones. We’ve gotten distracted by trying to look more like Google and Amazon (even though our pseudo-shopping platforms are never as slick). We’ve been paying too much attention to delivering what scholars ask for efficiently and helping busy student shop for quotes they can use in a paper. That’s not really what libraries are for.

Participatory Culture, Participatory Libraries | Inside Higher Ed

We have been trying to think of an alternative name for our developing learning commons, especially for when the working concept becomes embodied as a populated physical space within the library.  My pet idea is to use the terms 'scholar' and 'workshop' in the new name.  This starts with my view that the main use of informative sources in college is research and scholarship.  That students are here as apprentice scholars and so are here to grow in their participation in communities of scholarly and professional practice. That we are dedicated to the kind of locally regulated sharing that is key to successful commons (from since the Middle Ages).

In reading the obituary of Elinor Ostrom--the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on commons--I learned that she chose the name "Workshop" for her research center particularly because it was to be a place for students and faculty to work together and collaborate as masters and apprentices, and a place for these scholars to participate in contributing to the Knowledge Commons (see Understanding Knowledge as a Commons, edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-08357-4).

And now Fister comes along.

So how about "Scholars' Workshop" as the name for our learning commons space?

Declaration of In(ter)dependence | Inside Higher Ed

 I want to get back to some of these ideas soon.  Especially knowledge as a common good, libraries as a growing organisms, and the kind of leadership needed to sustain a commons.

Declaration of In(ter)dependence | Inside Higher Ed

"Selfless Audacity" Means Creating a Sustainable Not-a-Business Model | Peer to Peer Review

Another take on how the basics of library science and practice from Ranganathan can persist in a networked world. Barbara Fister addresses all the laws but one, "Save the time of the reader." Perhaps she takes it for granted.

"Selfless Audacity" Means Creating a Sustainable Not-a-Business Model | Peer to Peer Review

Assessment at Penfield Library

Assessment Activities in Penfield Library

Mission

Penfield Library: Where Ideas, Learning and Innovation Connect

We are active partners in the teaching and learning process, connecting members of the SUNY Oswego community with meaningful resources, user-centered services and engaging spaces.

Principles

Penfield Library is at the heart of teaching and learning at SUNY Oswego.

As College leaders in information technology and information literacy, we connect learners with

· resources that are both selected and organized to be easily discovered and meaningfully incorporated into the learning process.

· assistance, guidance and instruction in the use of information sources.

· online and physical spaces where they can pursue learning.

October 7, 2010

Indicators of patrons connecting with our resources, services and spaces

• · Website visits – resources, online spaces
• · Door counts – spaces
• · Instruction attendance – services

These measures help us to monitor and document the volume and extent of our connections with our patrons. These statistics are normalized by dividing them by FTE students, providing a profile of library use by our “average” student. These numbers can also be validated by comparing them to reported frequency of use in interviews and surveys.

By focusing on three top level measures we have a sustainable and feasible way to monitor the impact of improvements and other changes in the library.

We have several years’ worth of this data. We are exploring good ways to present this information to the campus community.

Reports of users’ experiences

• · Surveys and interviews
• · Suggestion box
• · Net Promoter Score

o "How likely is it that you would recommend Penfield Library to a friend or fellow student?"

These instruments will focus on identifying our strengths and weaknesses, and exploring how our patrons find value in their use of library and information resources. We have a mix of quantitative and qualitative data from at least four interview or survey projects. And we have access to a number of campus surveys that include some information about the library.

Our plan is to establish a more regular administration of surveys

Program Review and Self Study Initiative

• · Analysis of collection and library instruction activity for each department to be delivered at beginning of self study process

First inspired by a report of best practices for Program Reviews, this idea has also surfaced in work on Oswego’s Self Study for Middle States. This approach could generate more engagement by faculty in library-teaching collaboration, highlight the Library’s success (or not) in participating in the teaching and learning process, and place the focus for library assessment at a more granular level than we have done before. This program-by-program analysis can also help identify areas for improvement at a level that matters the most—students’ success in their respective programs.

Learning outcomes: Information literacy

• · Lake Effect Research Challenge Worksheet for basic level
• · Assessments in Program Review Self Studies
• · Sense-making (critical incident) interviews with seniors
• · Information Literacy Test to validate other measures
• · NSSE data on research assignments and activities

Triangulation is the rule here. The Research Challenge Worksheet provides an assessment of information literacy at the basic level—focusing on first year students’ preparation for their next four years of academic research. This has been done in three full cycles over seven years and has identified areas for improvement and has documented progress.

Assessments incorporated into Program Review Self Studies have the potential for doing the same at the capstone level but focusing on student accomplishment at the end of four years work in their disciplines. We have had only a handful of departments directly include information literacy learning outcomes in their assessments, and reports of their findings have not been shared with the librarians.

The senior interviews and the Information Literacy Test are both planned to validate and expand on what we find in the Worksheets and the Self Studies. The senior interviews are meant to be a continuing project and will both document student abilities and help us uncover areas for improvement in teaching and library programs.

The Information Literacy Test, a standardized multiple-choice instrument, is planned for this Spring. It will focus on sophomore students to give us a benchmark in regard to how well our students accomplish and retain information literacy abilities from their First Year experiences.

NSSE surveys are self reports from students of their activities and engagement in their education. This cannot tell us whether students meet our expectations, but does tell us to what extent students engage in information literacy activities.

--Jim Nichols, Nov. 2, 2010

Why Isn't There Just One Citation Style?

Okay, so that's a rhetorical question. Here's the rhetorical answer, or at least one based on a rhetorical look at citation practice in different disciplines. By the way, the short answer is because there is not just one discipline.

I started my graduate school career in English, using endnotes in the MLA style complete with a handful of Latin abbreviations. Then I worked in Mass Communications using parenthetical references in the APA style. When I finally landed in Library Science and started to try to track down sources from incorrect or partial citations I learned to appreciate redundancy, reversing everything I had learned about good writing.

And then I found myself back in the English Comp. classroom and tried to deconstruct for myself what the meaning and use of a citation style might be.

First, any citation style is a heavily coded system for communicating the most important information about a source in the least amount of space. The order of elements and the punctuation are a code that removes the need for labels for author, title, date et cetera (I remember my Latin). This level of coding is amenable to standardization and that is why we almost always see a colon before page numbers or parentheses around a date.

Two notable differences between MLA and APA include the content of the parenthetical references and the placement of publication dates in the "Works Cited" or "References" lists. These differences are impossible to standardize because they are rooted in the rhetorical needs of humanities scholars on the one hand, and social sciences researchers on the other.

Humanities research revolves around presenting a close reading of a specific text. Dates are important reference points for context and establishing the primacy of a specific version of a text, but in the midst of reading and interpretation the words on the page, the specific page, are the center of attention.

Social scientists center on the gathering and analysis of data and the building of theory rooted in data. The words on a specific page of a published article are not nearly as important as the report of results and conclusions represented by the whole of the article. So specific page numbers are only incidental. The year of publication, though, becomes important because it places the one report into the context of all the reports in the particular line of research.

So we will always see page numbers in MLA and years in APA, and that is the way it should be. And students should have to learn the style for the discipline they are working in, so they can better learn how to work, that is use books and other sources, in that discipline.

What SUNY Needs to Know About OhioLINK

I left Ohio libraries in 1991, just as OhioLINK was getting off the ground, but was privy to the earliest steps to developing Ohio's powerhouse of library services. Among New Yorkers, I have found it difficult at times to explain what a great value OhioLINK has turned out to be. At a time when the SUNY Chancellor comes to us with fresh and positive impressions of her experiences with OhioLINK, it has become urgent for us to understand the full range of what OhioLINK does, the value it provides to the public and private colleges and universities in Ohio, and how we can make something like it happen in New York.

The thumbnail sketch of the value of OhioLINK is available from their 2008 Annual Report:

While many academic libraries have struggled to keep up with the rapidly increasing cost and volume of information, OhioLINK has:

More than quadrupled Ohio higher education’s journal buying power. The $26.7 million invested in OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center statewide licenses for scholarly research articles would cost at least $120 million if purchased individually just by our universities and a much larger amount if applied across all smaller colleges.

Delivered an average of $3 worth of information for every $1 spent on research databases. Purchasing information centrally, for statewide use, continues to be the most cost-effective means of providing expanded access to scholarly information.

Greatly increased access to scientific research on Ohio’s campuses. Students and faculty at OhioLINK universities now use more than three times more journals than were originally available in print on their campuses, while patrons of private colleges use five times more and community college patrons use more than 20 times the amount of journals that were traditionally available.

Greatly reduced the rate of increases in information costs to three percent or less, on average, compared to the inflation rate of eight percent for a typical academic research library.

Reduced the average rate of information cost increases to be in line with average library budget increases.

So how did they do it, and what can we learn from them? The key principles of their vision are stated in the report that spawned the project, "Academic Libraries in Ohio. Progress through Collaboration, Storage, and Technology. Report of the Library Study Committee." ED305079.
Although dated (1987 was so last century) it laid the groundwork for institutional cooperation. What impressed me most at the time, and still holds:

• Put materials where they will be used and store the materials that have to be kept. Little used materials can be de-duplicated and stored in centralized repositories, but heavily used materials must be held in duplicate and in easy reach of students.
  
• Leverage with technology to deliver materials and services. The first steps were to create a statewide PAC, retroconvert records, and maintain comprehensive item records. It was pointless to move something to remote storage if nobody would know it was there. With the PAC, everybody could see where everything was, and then request it or retrieve it.
  
• Cooperate actively across boundaries. Maybe sharing is easier in the home state of OCLC, but SUNY/OCLC, now Nylink, was one of the first OCLC ventures outside of Ohio. Anyway, cooperation in Ohio meant giving up local fiefdoms, reaching across sectors, and placing the library user as the most important player. Although 1987 was pre-WWW, it was a natural course of development to provide statewide subscriptions to databases by the early '90s. Incorporating private as well as public colleges was also done early and expanded as soon as payment schemes could be instituted.
  

For further resources see OhioLINK and the Value of Cooperation.

Signs for the Use of Books

We are just completing an inventory of the signs in our building with an eye to improving customer service. In our discussions I came up with a short list of rules or guidelines that I think help make the connection between our signage and our posture toward our users. And presumably save the time of the reader.

• Signs should be designed to help our patrons, not to attempt to do our work for us. A sign marking the location of the reference desk, for instance, is a help to those looking for reference assistance. A sign directing patrons to place used materials on a book cart, rather than on a table, is intended to do our work for us.

• It follows that most signs should do no more than mark locations or give directions to locations in the building.

• We should also remember that all the physical design elements should work to invite if not to inspire reflection, engagement and learning. The overall impression might be one of serenity and harmony, but with some elements of stimulation where it matters. Random clutter should be avoided. Overall attractiveness must be maintained.

• Need and effectiveness should always be in the picture. Most signs just don't work. Many others outlive their usefulness. We found several dozen "No Smoking" signs in the building. None of us could remember ever seeing anyone smoke in the building. This appearance of effectiveness is actually the outcome of the no-indoor-smoking culture on campus. The signs have no use anymore.

• Eliminate negativity. Nothing says "you're not really welcome here" like multiple signs beginning with the word "No". We have decided to replace "No Smoking", "No Cellphone use", and "No Groups" on our door to the main stacks area with "Welcome to the Quiet Study Area. Please respect others."