Graduating Student Appreciation

Today we wished our graduating seniors happiness and good luck as they are moving on with they lives and careers. We asked each of the twelve graduating student workers to pick out a book that meant something to thew. We then placed a bookplate in it with their name.







John H. Pollitz


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WAAL Keynote - Brian Matthews

On Wednesday morning, Brian Matthews, who is the User Experience Librarian at Georgia Tech and soon to be of UC Santa Barbara, spoke to the group about his experience on bringing innovative services to the Georgia Tech libraries. I liked the idea that their mission was to design the "premier group study area on campus". It reminded me of the Pike Fish Market deciding to be a world famous fish market and how they decided to accomplish that goal. Here were the ideas that had resonance for me.

• Furniture on wheels so students could control their space; including movable walls and whiteboards. This seems to be a current design theme that we will need to remember as we buy any new furniture.
• They designed group work tables not just study rooms. This taps into the need to see and be seen while still getting work done. Bryan Vogh is already working on how we can create these types of work areas on the first floor of McIntyre Library. I think that we can use our flip-chart and map of the first floor to let students decide where we site the group workstations.
  
• They used Wimba software to deliver social web events to students on a current topic, ideas or issues instead of holding drop-in instruction sessions. It seemed like an innovative way to deliver information literacy in a non-class based manner.
• At Georgia Tech they promote class projects that use the library as a case study much like we are currently doing with Dr. Sutton's marketing class.
• Matthews mentioned how he discovered how immersing himself in the activities of the library led to new insights. While his office was being renovated for three months he moved his workspace out into the library with the students. I'm thinking this might be a great way for me to get out onto the floors for a couple of hours per week instead of being cooped up in my office.

WAAL Ideas 1

I arrived today in time for the first session by librarians from UW Stevens Point. Here are the ideas I found interesting.

• They have used a lot of moveable furniture in their public areas.

• They have a couple of rooms for presentation practice rooms. Our students have been asking for this. We need to set this up.

• In their coffee bar they have kiosk computers around their architectural pillars. It seems like a good way to deal with our pillars and answer the student's requests for quick search and print stations.

• They also have big screens that show computer availability on all their floors. This seems like something we could use since we have computers on all of our floors.

Jp



John H. Pollitz

Director of Libraries

UW Eau Claire

Eau Claire WI

715-836-4827

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McIntyre Library, that "foxy older woman"

Yesterday the latest issue of Volume One came out with an article that mentions McIntyre Library in the most delightful way. Online editor, Mike Paulus, offers up a paean to libraries in general and local libraries in particular. He remembers the time he spent in McIntyre Library as a student at UW-Eau Claire by describing the library as a "foxy older woman". I hadn't thought of this place like that but like how he talks about "her". I particularly enjoyed his description of long nigths studying in the library that he described as, "... usually ending up far more confused than when I started. You seemed amused by this, you clever minx, you. but you always gave me the answers I needed." There's more. This was a fun read and a wonderful description of the role libraries play in people's lives.

Politics and Fair Use

I read an interesting article on fair use, YouTube, and John McCain this morning in Library Journal's Academic Newswire. It seems that the McCain campaign recognizes the strong contribution that YouTube videos make towards the political process. YouTube, as a result of their continuing legal battle with Viacom, has been very quick to comply with DMCA takedown notices. The McCain campaign has asked YouTube to investigate more closely the request that come regarding political material. So far, Google/YouTube have maintained that this would be impossible. The LJ article notes how this is just another example of how fair use faces numerous challenges in the current climate. Librarians and educators depend on a robust fair use protection of free speech. Looks like I'm on John McCain's side on this one.

Meebo on the library website

I continue to be amazed at how well Meebo works as a way to connect with our clients.

This is my second week working the reference desk from two to four on Tuesday afternoon and both days someone has contacted us (I was on desk today with Marcus, our student worker and he got the question) using the Meebo widget we have on the library homepage.Today someone wanted to know if we had a scanner in the library, which we answered that we did. Then about ten minutes later, a non-traditional student came in. I ended up helping him do the scanning. I thought it all the more impressive since it was one of our older students. This really must have appeal for a range of ages.

CUWL Conference

Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester opened up the meeting with an introduction to efforts on their campus to learn more about how students live, work and research. Working with a staff anthropologist they have used ethnographic study techniques to learn how the libraries might better serve students. Many of the things they did are replicable at McIntyre. Ideas that I heard were attracting students to focus groups using $5 and food. They didn't sit around speculating what students need, they asked them. They redesigned their website by giving students mockups of their site and having them circle what was good, writing in what was missing and X-ing out what was useless. Because of what they learned about students and their relationship with their parents, they focused on parents during orientation programs instead of overwhelmed students. They hosted a parent breakfast. Another thing that we could adapt was putting white boards in all the group study rooms and placed movable white boards around the library.

Other highlights:

• The new Library Dynamics software will allow us to compare our collection with others in the System and other libraries across the country. It looked pretty easy to do but no one really knows all the details about the software yet.
• The document delivery project has opened up more questions about how best to provide access to scholarly material for our faculty. Possibilities include ILL credit cards, everyone joining RAPID interlibrary loan (Madison and Milwaukee use it and praise it), and spreading the funds to more publisher websites.
  
• Madison will go directly to publishers rather than pay copyright costs when ordering material that would incur those charges.
• The credit cards require more fiscal management time but seem to facilitate document delivery.