An opportunity for the library to do more? October 18, 2007
Posted by Ian in libraries.add a comment
Today, our library rolled out a new twist on document delivery – we can now deliver pdfs direct to the desktops of our patrons. I was talking to one of our patrons about it and he was justifiably grateful as the old process was highly inefficient* and lead to a lot of unwanted paper and in some cases people in his department were taking the printed articles, scanning them and converting them into pdfs. What he said next got me thinking – he said that many people in his department would look for other means of getting the articles instead of using our document delivery service.
Why did this get me thinking? Well, to use document delivery is essentially 1 click entering a username and password and then 2 clicks and the request is made – easy peasy. What they were doing instead was googling the article title/author to see if it existed someplace for free online. I applaud their ingenuity but I can’t help but wonder if there is an opportunity here for libraries to provide a value added service.
What if we could do something to eliminate the need for them to search the internet themselves? What if our serials resolver could search the title/author on the internet and include that in it’s results when checking our journals? I envisage a results screen that says something to the effect of “we don’t own this journal electronically but we have found possible matches at the following websites”. Right now with our software it is not possible but down the road it should be.
*The old method of document delivery was that the article was sent to us as a pdf and then printed and sent by internal mail to patron or alternatively the patron could pick up the paper copy at the library. We had to do this because copyright law said that we weren’t allowed to email pdfs directly to our patrons. That has changed thankfully. Now patrons must click a box saying that they verify that the article being delivered is for academic purposes only.
Libraries in private hands… October 14, 2007
Posted by Ian in libraries.1 comment so far
A few days ago one of the work peeps sent this article around the office. It tells the sad(??) tale of communities letting their libraries be run by private companies who hire fewer staff and keep shorter hours.
The problem is shrinking budgets. Although you have to wonder sometimes (emphasis is mine):
Jackson County lost 36 percent of its budget in one fell swoop last year when Congress failed to renew the rich subsidies designed to help parts of the country where logging has been hurt by endangered-species regulations. Rather than cut back on, say, law enforcement, county officials closed the libraries. (Congress later approved a one-year extension of the logging subsidies.)
Book lovers complained bitterly about the closings, but two ballot measures to raise taxes and reopen the libraries fell short. Then LSSI offered to run the libraries, underbidding the public employees union.
Two things here:
1. This community was living on borrowed time – if you are counting on a federal subsidy just to offer basic services perhaps you need to reexamine how you are doing things.
2. No politician is going to fall on his/her sword raise taxes just for the public library. In the city where I used to live in one year the city told the public library that they had to open another branch and then cut their budget by a few hundred thousand to help them out.
In general, I have no problem with private companies running libraries. So long as users have reasonable access to relevant material.
This kind of thing really ticks me off! September 11, 2007
Posted by Ian in libraries.3 comments
This morning one of the library peeps, bless her soul, sent around something old from the American Library Association.
The article is titled 10 Reasons Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library and it goes through the usual rigamoroll about how the internet has no quality controls, how e-books are no substitute for “real” books etc. Now the article is several years old but some of these arguements are still being used. Here is the most insulting bit:
Quality Control Doesn’t Exist
Yes, we need the Internet, but in addition to all the scientific, medical, and historical information (when accurate), there is also a cesspool of waste. When young people aren’t getting their sex education off XXX-rated sites, they’re learning politics from the Freeman Web page, or race relations from Klan sites. There is no quality control on the Web, and there isn’t likely to be any. Unlike libraries where vanity press publications are rarely, if ever, collected, vanity is often what drives the Internet. Any fool can put up anything on the Web, and, to my accounting, all have.
What this is essentially saying is that people are not smart enough to figure out what’s best for them or in this case the “right” information – as if there is such a thing – and we the omniscient librarians have all the answers (because the printed word is somehow more reliable??) Quality is a relative thing. There are many people who would never publish anything in print but who can provide valuable insight on any number of subjects. Moreover, it is interesting to see the thoughts non-”experts” and my fellow human beings. This reminds me of a talk at library school by this guy on blogs and other participative technologies. One of the old curmudgeons asked what the appeal of the blogosphere was – why would anyone want to waste their time reading the unedited thoughts of the person on the street.. it was a truly shoulder sagging moment.
As an aside – this style of defence of the library and librarianship always bothers me. Instead of focusing on the value added services that we can provide we focus on what’s wrong with the other system. All those cries of the internet is no substitute for the library are going to be for nought. The internet is innovating, while libraries are stagnating – we need to focus on our problems and get our own house in order before we start pointing out the faults of others…
LibQUAL+ or Why it is important to understand statistical significance… August 24, 2007
Posted by Ian in academia, libraries, QEII.3 comments
Yesterday a session was held to go over the results from our most recent iteration of the LibQUAL+ library quality survey. For those of you not in the know LibQUAL+ is a massive survey put out by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The aim is to measure perceptions of the library in three broad categories: Service, Collections/Technical Services, and Library as Place (aka facilities). In the survey users are asked about a variety of functions and for each to give a number between one and ten to represent the minimum level of that service that the user would expect, then to give a number between one and ten to represent how the library is actually doing and finally, a number between one and ten to represent the users desired level for the item in question. Statistics are then gathered about the gaps between minimum and perception, as well as between perception and desired. Libraries are then supposed to go out and use these stats as indicators for what needs fixing, as well as use them to compare their situation with other similar sized universities. The survey is very broad and its usefulness is dubious at best but what really gets me is the sample size chosen when we completed our survey.
Memorial has about 17000 students add in faculty and administration and there are probably closer to 19000 users (probably even more than that). Now considering that most surveys get between 20-30% response rate one would think that you would want to send the survey to as many users as possible. But no, we sent the survey to 5500 users… that’s about 29% of our users in total. Our response rate was 18% or about 890. 890 out of 19000… That is 5% roughly of our user base and yet this is a tool that is supposed to be meaningful? You cannot base any decision on what 5% of your user base thinks.
Here’s something really depressing for the math nerds out there. For the most part the numerical data that is gathered in this survey is mostly ignored – or people will say “look our users gave us a score of 8 in [insert service thing here]” when the actual score is meaningless for comparison purposes.
Now some say that this tool is a good basis for historical comparisons. I say hogwash! For one thing you are not surveying the same people over time. The users you have now may have very different expectations from the users you have 5 years from now. Even if it were possible to survey the same cohort every year, I think you might find that the results would not be consistent as user needs evolved and changed.
If libraries and librarians want to do serious research more of us need to be more conversant in the language of statistics and we need to invest more time in thinking about experimental design.
