"...In this third part, I will wrap up the analysis of the report and provide what I think libraries could do in relation to this report...

Advice from elected officials:

Stress the library’s return on investment (ROI) to the community

1. Build strategic partnerships
2. Be proactive
3. Engage voters in the campaign
4. Stress the broad appeal of the library

Elected officials on library funding campaigns

Elected officials cited a number of important components required of a successful
library funding campaign:

• Messaging that focuses on the broader value of the library to the community,specifically a community gathering place, access to technology and programs for teenagers and other groups
• A passionate, committed and active champion(s) who can rally support among the elected officials and community influences
• Civic engagement, including a commitment to speak with every relevant group in the community to encourage grassroots support
• A willingness to partner with other public services in a joint effort where strategically advantageous
• The ability to ask for the right support at the right time:
  • Voter turnout is greater for general elections than local elections
  • It is often easier to campaign for a new building than for operating funds...

A definite need, the "passionate librarian"

These five attributes can be combined to describe the ‘passionate librarian’:p152

True advocate for lifelong learning

• Passionate about making the library relevant again
• Knowledgeable about every aspect of the library
• Well-educated
• Knowledgeable about the community.

There seems to be a DEFINITE correlation between passionate librarians and support. Sure if your staff doesn't care about the library, why should anyone else? Furthermore, if you are a mover and shaker is it more important that you ARE one rather than what specifically you are doing?...

Library's Relevance is questioned

Information: The library is one of many sources of information. It could potentially be replaced by a combination of bookstores, schools, coffee shops and the Internet.

• Institution: The library is an institution sometimes associated with an out-of-date building, aged materials and limited accessibility. (The library has limited hours, the Internet is available 24/7.)

• Nice to have: Availability of so many other options for information and learning make the library a ‘nice to have’ service, rather than a necessity.

• Past: The library is an important part of supporters’ lives, but they question whether it is still relevant for their children and grandchildren.

• Altruism for others: The library is less important to them, but it is important for ‘other people’ in the community.

p 174

...Probable Supporters and Super Supporters felt that support for libraries
can be improved by increasing the public’s attention to four essential community benefits that the public library uniquely delivers:

• Equal access: 'No kid should have an excuse for not having a book or knowing how to do research. If you don’t have a computer at home, you can go to the public library.'

• Shared community values (or teaches values) 'It’s one of the few things that truly can provide a sense of community. It doesn’t belong to anyone but to all of us. It’s a good lesson in respect, being quiet, signing up for Internet time, returning books on time. It’s kind of a good building block in respect.'

• A sacred place 'It’s a gathering place where lots of different people can listen to someone else’s ideas, whether spoken or written.' (Super Supporter, Medford, Oregon)
• Community stature. 'It represents a commitment by the community to cultural and intellectual activities.'..."

I worked through lunch proofreading a grant proposal for more library training.  Usually, when I get something to proofread, I also pretty it up.  In this case, there were a lot of tables full of budget figures in the proposal so I added very small touches like lightly shading the header rows, giving a thicker border above the "Total" rows and things like that, making the tables a bit easier to read.

I spent the last couple hours converting more of our webpages to the content management system that the entire library is switching to.  The office I work in is just one small unit of many, many departments within the University Library, thus we get pulled into the big, overarching decisions with everyone else.

After I left the Center, I spent a couple hours working on LibGuides stuff.  I added my notes from Tuesday's training session to my outline and searched for video tutorials that I could add to our training guides.

Thursday was full of experimentation, which is something I truly love... most of the time.  I synced Thunderbird with the office Google Calendars (via Lightning and Provider) and installed a couple extensions in order to get a customized print-out of the schedules we needed for the programs in the Fall.  It was quickly apparent that tweaking this work-around would require a little more time than I could give it right then, so I moved on to other projects.

One of our international librarians has spent the past year with us and she is leaving soon to go back to Pakistan.  I have learned *so* much from her and had such a wonderful time getting to know her.  She stopped by my desk and we had a good talk about file management practices... or the lack thereof.  We both bemoaned the messy, duplicated, frustrating nature of shared network drives.  Every place I've worked at for the past 10 years has had such a feature yet not a single one of them has used them well.  People still email drafts back and forth to each other, which are then saved on desktops or in personal folders of the network drive and pretty soon there are a dozen different versions of the same document.  We talked about the search limitations and clunky interface involved in trying to find the right file in the right folder.  Mused on the potential of tagging for file systems. But even information professionals don't know what exactly to do with their information.  Alas.

In the afternoon I had a one-on-one LibGuide training session, which went really well.  We focussed on the "Books from the Catalog" box and created RSS feeds from UIUC's New Titles page as well.  I realized I need to add a blurb to the handout about the difference between "copying" a box and "linking" a box.

Friday hit me with the revelation that the IFLA conference is only three weeks away!  We got the schedule for our GSLIS booth coverage at IFLA in Quebec -- I'll be one of the volunteers.  I'm also going as part of the Mortenson Center crew to present a poster there, which was one of the projects I worked on today.  The Center has a pretty clever approach to conference posters -- they create slides in PowerPoint (like a lot of people do) BUT! they make several slides instead of one big slide.  They get these slides printed out as 11 x 17 laminated mini-posters, which lay in the bottom of a carry-on very conveniently and without the need to be rolled up.  At the conference, they arrange the mini-posters however they'll fit with the poster board provided, sometimes they leave a couple slides off.  It's all very flexible, easy to pack, easy to set up and take down.  So I've been formatting the slides for this year's poster, adding images from our archive and getting it ready for our last proofing next week before it's sent to the printers.

I also worked on an excel spreadsheet for our program participants; the spreadsheet will link to several mail merge documents in Word for things like name badges, contact lists, introductions for speakers and so on.  We've never done this before with this program.  In years past, the list of participants was simply repeated from one Word document to another, with various information added and left off and reformatted and so on.  In an effort to make our documents more centralized and efficient, we're trying out the mail merge approach this year.  Hopefully it works smoothly.

The day ended with the beginning of another project - I started proofreading a publication that will be coming out this fall on international library leadership institutes, which sorta started here.  This publication is also the basis for our IFLA poster and - lucky me - it's actually a very interesting read!

And now it's Saturday.  I'm at home.  I'm going to have a couple chocolate chip cookies and work on home projects rather than work projects for a while.   :-)

For more on the the book that inspired the Flat Stanley project, click here ("Classic Picture Books Every Child Should Read") www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/. The image at left shows a chapter-book edition of Flat Stanley with pictures by Scott Nash. The June 7 review shows the cover of the original picture-book edition with art by the great Tomi Ungerer, the subject of an article in tomorrow's New York Times. There's a link to the profile in Comment #13 for the June 7 post.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

So why haven't you read "Shelf Monkey" by Corey Redekop? It's like "Fight Club," except with books instead of broken bones - um, okay, maybe just a few broken bones. It's the book that makes you realize you're not crazy for wanting to literally seize and burn crappy novels - well, again, maybe just a little crazy. This is the book that comforts you in the dead of night when you wake up with that dream about kidnapping Oprah Winfrey and force-feeding her Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and the Margarita" page by page.

In a word, it's awesome. Just buy the damn thing already.

We've explored the most beautiful libraries in the world,

[EA 03/18/08] now we invite you to see the most modern.

I punch in the barcode and find that it's from a book on fertility.  People who are going to have children should NOT be stealing books from the library.  NO ONE should be stealing from the library.  End of story, amen.

I really am thrilled that there are so many people who've been enjoying --and participating in-- my new "Friday Finds" weekly event! I really didn't expect that it would catch on, but leave it to the blog-o-sphere to constantly surprise me! :P

I was also thrilled, this morning, to read this article that an online group friend posted about libraries in Canada. Apparently there's been an increase in library patronage, and in reading! Whoohoo! The article states that more and more people are using libraries, and reading is no longer just a "highbrow literary pursuit" viewed by many as "snobbish". The article goes on to say:

That snobbery has now evaporated and people feel free to read whatever pleases them, transforming libraries into purveyors of blockbusters just like movie theatres, Mr. Kaiser says.

"People want to read what Oprah recommends. They want to read what are on bestseller lists. They want to read what TV shows and celebrities promote," he says. "I look at it as literature becoming mainstream."

This also makes me think that my Raved-About Reads challenge is a good idea... because, if people are wanting to read what's "raved about" (or "recommended"), then there will be more interest in a challenge like this one. :D

Overall, I'm just thrilled to know that books aren't going anywhere, despite the new "toys" out there that make it seem that way, and that reading is not only *still* popular, but increasing as a popular pasttime. :)

"How you know he didn't? You don't know what He thinks."
~ No Country For Old Men

God, I love Tommy Lee Jones. And have new respect for Cormac McCarthy, who I always labeled in the past as too much of a "man's man"..........

Digipalooza 7/25/08

Today was the first full day of sessions. It started promptly (as usual) with a welcome by Steve Potash, CEO of Overdrive. He announced the format of MP3, and teased us about the upcoming introduction of the Sony Reader partnership. We then saw an introductory video of the Digital Bookmobile.

SESSION 1: Overdrive Digital Formats. The speakers were:

Lisa Coreno from Overdrive:
She talked about the (now) two formats for audiobooks offered by Overdrive – WMA & MP3. By the way, audio books are the most popular media form offered. Lisa also introduced the latest version of the Overdrive Media Console (version 3.0). It includes a “burn wizard” for ease of burning cds.

Presently, Washington, D.C., Hamilton Public Library in Ontario, King County Public Library System in Washington & Boston Public Library are live with MP3 offerings. Systems with representatives at Digipalooza will get priority when it comes to bringing up the rest of the Overdrive world.

Megan Greer from Overdrive:

Megan’s presentation was about E-books. She discussed the two formats offered – Adobe Digital Editions & Mobipocket. The total Overdrive e-book circulation last year was 750,000.

Susan Broman, Adult Services Coordinator, County of Los Angeles Public Library.

NOTE: At this point, while I was typing this online on my blog, the WiFi crashed & I lost all my notes on this presenter’s talk. Steve Potash will email her presentation to me so I can include it in a later posting. It was from this point on that I got smart & took notes in Word, later to be copied & pasted in my blog.

Danielle Phillips, Maricopa County Library District (AZ):

Danielle is the media selector for her county library system. Her presentation focused on their usageand buying habits. They make heavy use of Standing Order plans & the Holds Manager.

SESSION 2 - Collection Development. The speakers were:

Karen Potash, Overdrive:

Karen’s first suggestion is to set up a Collection Development Profile which is customized show the needs of your patrons & community. Her tips include use of the Marketplace lists; stocking up on the most popular titles. She recommends using keyword searches in the genre field to for selection, as well as using the awards field. View the traffic report to see where patrons are clicking in from to access your Overdrive site.

Cindy Orr, Collections Manager (retired), Cleveland Public Library:

Cindy’s presentation involved an overview of the Digital Selection Calendar used by the Cleveland Public Library. It’s broken down by monthly and then weekly collection development & purchasing tasks. It helps keep a large library ordering for itself on target with their budget.

Michael Santangelo, Electronic Resources Specialist,Brooklyn Public Library:

Michael uses a paradigm which includes collection development & promotion. He mentioned that for selection purposes he not only uses what is covered by traditional sources of review material, but he also checks pop culture sources, web sites, blogs & rss feeds. He suggests getting library staff involved in the selection process since they have direct user experience. You can involve them by allowing them to create lists and suggestion forms. Have them work with user surveys and make them aware of your library’s Overdrive circulation statistics. To promote this service to your patrons, use multiple access points on your web site.

Ruth Ann Copley, Davidson County Public Library System – North Carolina Digital Library, (NC)
Ruth’s consortium decided not to use Maximum Access, since the members felt it was too costly. They did have Net library, but Overdrive’s statistics were much better. They have their individual member libraries do their own purchasing. They developed a circulating “position” of “Holds Patrol” to make sure that additional titles are added in order to maintain a 7:1 holds ratio.

Sarah Redman, Capital Area District Library (MI):

There are 26 libraries in Sarah’s consortium. Two people (one of whom is Sarah herself) do the ordering from member library recommendations. The do not use a committee approach.

In between sessions 1 & 2 there were ½ hour breaks during which time I was able to visit with the exhibitors (Overdrive partners), network & eat. After the second session was over the program broke for lunch.

Since I’m writing this after having been to a ball game (our evening’s entertainment courtesy of Overdrive - & the Indians won over the Twins), the time is fast approaching midnight. Although I don’t plan to turn into a pumpkin, I am slowly losing my ability to type. I will continue with the first day’s program & upload my photos tomorrow.

I have been using the term "patrons" as does my ILS software.  I wonder if use of this term reveals my age or how long ago or where I went to library school.  I thought maybe there was a new term the "in" librarians of today might be using and I might be on the outside.  Anyway, the results were interesting although probably not of major significance. I'll have to spend further thought on the subject and its potential ramifications, if any.

It is seems a little confusing how the poll results are displayed with the percentage and bar graph on top of the terms.  It takes a few seconds to figure out the results.  This emphasizes a good point I read on a recent Seth Godin blog post [ http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/bar-graphs-vs-p.html ] of which I agree: "... In a presentation to non-scientists (or to bored scientists), the purpose of a chart or graph is to make one point, vividly. Tell a story and move on. If you can't be both vivid and truthful, it doesn't belong in your presentation. (I can think of dozens of good uses of bar graphs... they're not forbidden, they're just overused and misused)..."

Here are the results of the poll at the time I participated:

READER POLL

What do you call people who use your library?

 0.94%
Client
 11.25%
Customer
 1.12%
Member
 81.54%
Patron
 1.31%
Reader
 3.84%
User

View Previous Poll Results

Here's my list:

#1. My drink of choice is COLD Pepsi - No ice.

#2. I love children's art.

#3. I display my children's artwork on a wall in my office.

#4. I volunteer two mornings a month in the Art room at my kid's school.

#5. The Art teacher wishes I had my teaching degree because I would have been a better sub then some of the subs she had last year!

#6. The Art teacher is one of my best friends!

#7. The Art teacher's dd is the youngest person I know that is fighting Breast Cancer at the age of 22.  She was diagnosed two years ago, was in remission but the cancer came back last October.

#8. I volunteer at least 15 hours a week during the school year, between my kids' school and the community work I do.

#9. I LOVE kindergarten.  I volunteered in kindergarten at least 2 hours a week last year and will again this year and I don't even have a kindergartener anymore!

#10. My eldest is 14 years old and a freshmen this fall.

#11. He has a girlfriend named Danika.

#12. He volunteers at the zoo every summer.  He just finished a two week stint on the Z-team for a total of 40 hours.

#13. He is happy to be home after spending two weeks at a friend's house that was closer to the zoo and was a great help as I didn't have to drive him there and pick him up every day.

#14. My eldest daughter is a photography diva and a jr, girl scout.

#15. She is also an amazing baker! You have got to try her peanut butter chocolate chip cookies!

#16. She also reads incessentaly.

#17. She is 10 and a half (that half is IMPORTANT) and entering the 5th grade.

#18. My third child, my 9 year old son, is my favorite 9 year old in the world!

#19. He is my athlete.  He plays soccer, golf, and basketball.

#20. He is also a Cub Scout.

#21. He will be entering 4th grade in 3 1/2 weeks.

#22. He plays a MEAN guitar on Guitar Hero!

#23. He has beautiful blue eyes and gorgeous blond hair!

#24. My baby is 7 1/2 years old and in 2nd grade.

#25. She is a bundle of uncontrollable energy and sometimes can be VERY bossy.

#26. and that bossiness does not endear her to her siblings some days!

#27. But she is a little cutie and a brownie girl scout.

#28. We are all avid readers!

#29. We have have so many books in this house that we've been accused of owning a small library!

#30. My library card is the most used card in my wallet.

#31. I've had a library card since I was 6 years old.

#32. My children get their first library cards on their 5th birthdays.

#34. I hate folding laundry.

#35. I love to try new recipes!

#36. unfortunately my children are not all that keen on trying new foods and meals.

#37. I LOVE cheesecake - any kind.  My favorite tho is Carmel Apple Cheescake.

#38. I fell in love with the property we built our home on because of the mature trees, lilac bushes and apple trees.  It helped a lot that it was a real steal financially too!

#39. I love dogs - we have a pug named Shadow who is approaching her 10th birthday.

#40. Shadow is my hero and my youngest daughter's best friend.

#41. Ask me someday about WHY Shadow is my hero.

#42. I don't like cats - we have an American short hair named Meepo who is roughly 3 years old.

#43. He is my husband's cat.

#44. But WHO cleans the litter box when it's needed?

#45. My favorite flowers are lilies of any sort.  Thus the header on this blog.  Those are my tiger lilies.

#46. I love the theatre and acting.  I don't do much of it anymore but I do love helping out with the productions at my kids' schools.

#47. I LOVE Grey's Anatomy.

#48. I watch religiously even in the off season!

#49. I'm the eldest of 6 children.

#50. I have 2 sisters

#51. and 3 brothers.

#52. I also have 5 foster siblings.  2 boys and 3 girls.  All of these foster siblings are also my cousins.

#53. I haven't worked outside my home in 13+ years.

#54. I'm applying for jobs at the elementary school my children attend.

#55. I've been scrapbooking for over 15 years.

#56. I talk to my eldest sister almost everyday.

#57. She is a "gypsy" so to speak.  She works for a company that travels around the country fixing storm damage to cars, vans, trucks and such.

#58. I talk to my baby brother at least once a week.

#59. He is 13 years younger then me.

#60.  I talk to my mom and dad almost everyday.

#61. I LOVE chocolate.

#62. Especially DeBrand's Chocolate.

#63. I graduated college 17 years ago with a degree in Communications and a minor in English.

#64.  I SHOULD have gotten my teaching degree.

#65.  I know quite a bit of Sign language. I taught myself.

#66.  I don't know ANY other foreign language.  It wasn't required when I was in highschool.

#67. However, from growing up in the midst of a big Finnish community I can cuss in Finn if I wanted too.

#68. I homeschooled my eldest child from preschool through 2nd grade.

#69. None of my children had any preschool before kindergarten, beyond what I did at home with them.

#70. I'm extremely thrifty.  Okay I'm cheap.  I revel in the challenge to find the best deals!

#71. Oh more pets - We also have two gerbils named Judy and Annie after two of my eldest daughters favorite book characters, Judy Moody and Annie in the Magic Treehouse Series.

#72. I've picked 15 zucchini of my 6 plants so far this summer!

#73. My tomatoes have not produced anything ripe yet.

#74. My husband brought me home roses last night.  For no reason whatsoever.

#75. My hubby won't believe this but he truly is the best thing that's ever happened to me.

#76. I have trouble sleeping alone.

#77. On those nights I tend to sit up either on the computer or scrapbooking.

#78. I think my dog has fleas.  ---YUCK!!!

#79. I've only been consistently blogging for about a week.

#80. I LOVE making the gifts we give.  I feel it's so much more personal.

#81. My grandmother, rest her soul, picked out my wedding dress.

#82. I was devastated when she died, knowing that my children would not get to meet their great grandmother.

#83. I don't like cleaning.  I do it but I don't like it.  Ah to hire a housekeeper!

#84. I love working outside tho.  I love mowing the lawn and taking care of the gardens and trees.

#85. I love birds - especially birds of prey like hawks, eagles, and owls.

#86. I would rather wear mittens then gloves.

#87. The only jewelry I wear all the time are my wedding and engagement rings.

#88.  I have a 3 ring zippered binder that my kids call "Mom's Brain."

#89. It has a calendar, and a separate section for each of my children as well as sections for the kindergarten literacy program that I'm in charge of at school.  If it doesn't get put on the calendar in my "brain" it doesn't happen.

#90. I love playing games with my family.

#91.  I hate visiting the doctor.

#92. I hate going to the dentist

#93. I love genealogy and that's what excited me about scrapbooking to begin with.

#94. My aunt has traced my mom's side of the family back to President Nixon, and back to Europe.

#95. I love listening to church congregations sing from hymnals - especially the old hymns.

#96. My computer desk top is a disaster zone.

#97. My scrapping corner however is quite neat and tidy.

#98. I love fresh veggies right out of the garden - especially sweet corn and zucchini.

#99. I love strawberries and apples picked fresh.

#100. I believe the true hero of The Lord of the Rings is Sam - Not Frodo.

#101. Right now I have 112 items checked out from the public library!

Okay I should stop now - I could go on, but I did say just 101 random things, not 201.

Blessings,

Garsy

So the study in question basically looked at NCLB data from a lot of states, looking at how students performed on the math sections by gender. The differences they found were statistically insignificant at every level, from primary to secondary grades. They concluded that,

for grades 2 to 11, the general population no longer shows a gender difference in math skills....There is evidence of slightly greater male variability in scores, although the causes remain unexplained. Gender differences in math performance, even among high scorers, are insufficient to explain lopsided gender patterns in participation in some STEM fields.

So what does this have to do with critical thinking? The study itself isn't really what I'm interested in here so much as the reaction to it. Because one of the things critical thinking is about is how we react when we come across information that challenges what we thought to be true. And for every math teacher that reacted to this study with a "duh" there are a lot of people around there who have some ingrained assumptions about how boys are better at math and girls are better at reading.

One of the most common narratives about boys and girls and math goes like this - boys and girls show similar aptitude so long as the math is easy. But when it gets complex, boys are better. That's the line that used to explain why girls stopped taking math in high school, and now it's used to explain why they don't do math as much in college. So it's not like I was surprised to see that that a whole bunch of commenters go Right There.

But the thing is - the study's authors deal with this. They talk about the complexity question (they used a different data set to get at that) and they talk about the SAT scores thing. It's not buried - it's a whole section with a heading and everything.

And we can't blame bad science reporting or Science's paywall on this - the posts or linked stories mention the complexity question because the authors didn't just mention it in the study - they emphasized it. This is a super-short article, and they spend some of their very limited time to say that our NCLB tests kind of suck - they don't test for much, at least not for what they should be testing for. I mean really - that topic is their big finish, the last line -

An unexpected finding was that state assessments designed to meet NCLB requirements fail to test complex problem-solving of the kind needed for success in STEM careers, a lacuna that should be fixed.

Now I'm not saying that these commenters should automatically buy the analysis presented, but they should notice it. They should engage with it. Not to do so suggests, well, a lack of a disposition to think critically.

In the very late 80's the APA engaged in a Delphi project to define critical thinking in a way that would be useful for higher education and for educational assessment. A panel of experts on critical thinking instruction, assessment and theory was convened and together they developed an influential consensus* of an ideal critical thinker as -

1. Someone who can think critically, has a set of skills, including : interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-evaluation. This skill dimension is an essential part of critical thinking.

2. Someone with the disposition to use those skills, to learn. Critical thinkers are sensitive about their own biases. They are open-minded. They are inquisitive, questioning people. They have an eagerness for knowledge and learning.

(An aside - the Delphi Method of research that grounded this project is pretty cool itself if you're geeky like me)

Some definitive examples of lacking the disposition to think critically can be found at ABC News' coverage of the gender/math study (ETA - in the comments, not ABC's report) -- there's this:

The fact remains, boys tend to do better in math than girls. And there's no shame in that. Just like girls tend to do better in languages.I wonder who skewed these figures?

And there's this:

That doesn't make any sense. There is no rational reason for this gap to disappear. It is a fact that men are better then women at certain tasks and worse then them at others. I think that the disappearance of this gap speaks more to our educators doing a better job of "teaching the tests" then to students actually understanding the material better.

In other words, "I read this thing. It contradicts what I believe. So I will simply restate my previously held beliefs and perhaps suggest a conspiracy."

Now, these people obviously aren't worth engaging with - I mean, they're commenting on a story at ABC News dot com, and they're not doing so especially well. But the thing is - I've read things just like this from my students before.
We have them write a bunch of stuff about the things they encounter in their early exploratory research stages and so we get a lot of information about how they're reacting to the ideas they encounter. Sometimes their reaction is exactly this - "this article says X which is wrong because I believe Y."

And that's not a slam on my students - learning how to think critically, and developing the disposition to think critically is something that we should expect people to do in the college years. But that aspect of it - that willingness to examine your own biases and to accept new information that challenges your absolute world view as potentially valid - that's the critical thinking big leagues. It's not easy stuff. Not for anyone.

And what the many, many online discussions of this study have got me thinking about is how many different ways that one can resist thinking critically - the discussions on Slashdot and at the Chronicle, for example, are at an obviously higher level than the one at ABC News - they're discussions, for one. And the arguments raised are more complex, and mostly subtler than "nuh uh." But I think there's still a lot of knee-jerk refusals to consider information that challenges worldviews, mental models, belief structures or whatever you want to call all of that cognitive and affective and mental baggage we bring along with us when we encounter new information going on in those comment threads.

With some others, Paul Facione (the guy who wrote the executive summary for the Delphi project) talks more thoroughly about the disposition to think critically** and in particular this article talks about what we might expect from new college students. There's a lot of good stuff here but I'm going to engage in some super-simplistic summary and say that the authors show that college students are positively disposed to think critically in many ways - but the one that hangs them up some is this "truth-seeking" aspect.

I'm not in love with the phrase "truth-seeking" here but I'm fine with what they mean by that phrase - someone with a positive disposition towards truth seeking is "eager to seek the best knowledge in a given context, courageous about asking questions and honest and objective about pursuing inquiry if the findings do not support one's self-interests or one's preconceived opinions."

Just as interesting is the related finding - that, for the most part, these students were rewarded more in their first year of college for showing positive dispositions along other scales (most notably "analyticity" or the ability to evaluate and create reasoned arguments) than for truth-seeking. That piece feels true to me, at least so far as my experiences with argument papers and comm 111 speeches extends.

While we encourage students to choose a topic they want to learn about, not just one they feel strongly about (and in this our composition faculty are taking a different tack than the one in most of the books I've seen)m many students still choose to write on topics they "already know." Sometimes it is clear from the start that they feel so strongly about their chosen topic that they will not be able to learn from their research process. And, of course, some of them can craft beautifully-reasoned arguments without ever really engaging with sources in a way that leaves them open to changing their minds on a topic. I know I've done it.

We do focus on their argument-building ability more than their truth-seeking, and perhaps that isn't where they need the most help to become critical thinkers. Over the years, we have added some dimensions of the latter into their work, asking them to reflect on their own biases and preconceptions, for example, but I suspect we could do more. Something to think about - hopefully critically and open-mindedly.

___________

*Facione, Peter A. (1990). Executive Summary, "The Delphi Report" (opens in PDF

**Facione, P.A., Sanchez (Giancarlo), C.A., Facione, N.C. & Gainen, J. (1995) The disposition toward critical thinking. Journal of General Education, 44:1, 1-25.

Summary from the Publisher's Website:

This is one of the very few books that systematically explores the characteristics of scholarly communication outside the West. Over the last decade the advances in information technology have remodelled the foundation of scholarly communication. This book examines how countries/regions in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan) have reacted to the innovations in the conduct of research and in the exchange of ideas. It outlines the traditional systems of scholarly exchange in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and then concentrates on the efforts of these countries/regions to provide revolutionary ways of writing, publishing, and reading of information produced by members of the academic community. It also discusses the achievements as well as challenges in the process of technology innovations, highlighting the uniqueness of practices in scholarly communication in this part of the world.

http://www.chandospublishing.com/chandos_publishing_record_detail.php?ID=163 

This is the final post from the Rocky Mountain branch of Legal Research Plus. Many thanks to our friends at the University of Denver Westminster Law Library for their help these past weeks. I look forward to joining my colleagues in Palo Alto for future postings.

Now today a colleague discovered that I had been working on this collection and she passed a few my way.  First up was the magic ISBN  (155902983) from Aerie books that is apparently used on every item they have ever published.  Type it into ALibris and you'll max out the search.  It's great in our catalog where we have Librarything for libraries, which of course pulls in information via ISBN.  According to our system the Secret Garden, Treasure Island, and and Little Prince are all different editions of the same book.

The second item was an oclc record (that has since been justifiably deleted from the system)  for an audiobook with 12 or 14 or 16 tapes that is apparently read by 1 of 3 possible readers.  The note that accompanied this refered to the record as being overFRBRed.

All in all a bad day for cataloging but a fun day for me.

I'm sure most librarians out there could benefit from some of the innovations implemented in some of these places.

My favorites:

• Deflt Public Library in the Netherlands, which greets you with a text message as you enter, provides LCD screens throughout with information, and a planned "genius bar" to give tech advice to patrons.
• Turku City Library in Finland, which integrates all media (Books, DVDs, audio recordings) into a single collection, organized by subject, rather than shelving media in one area and books in another.
• Pace University Library, which uses a media streaming service to deliver content across multiple campuses while avoiding copyright infringement by keeping the date behind the library's secure server.

As a history guy, I still love my books printed on paper. But it's great to see libraries around the world developing such innovative methods for delivery, access, and service.

"We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

How do we find all those pages? We start at a set of well-connected initial pages and follow each of their links to new pages. Then we follow the links on those new pages to even more pages and so on, until we have a huge list of links. In fact, we found even more than 1 trillion individual links, but not all of them lead to unique web pages. Many pages have multiple URLs with exactly the same content or URLs that are auto-generated copies of each other. Even after removing those exact duplicates, we saw a trillion unique URLs, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day.

So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don't know; we don't have time to look at them all! :-) Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite -- for example, web calendars may have a "next day" link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a "new" page. We're not doing that, obviously, since there would be little benefit to you. But this example shows that the size of the web really depends on your definition of what's a useful page, and there is no exact answer.

We don't index every one of those trillion pages -- many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content similar to the calendar example that isn't very useful to searchers. But we're proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine, and our goal always has been to index all the world's data.

To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day. This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it'd be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

As you can see, our distributed infrastructure allows applications to efficiently traverse a link graph with many trillions of connections, or quickly sort petabytes of data, just to prepare to answer the most important question: your next Google search."

I would like to add an excerpt from a blog post from the Australian blog "Libraries Interact" http://librariesinteract.info/ entitled "Size of the Internet":

"Asking how big the internet is, is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string. The answer is we really don’t know because it is unorganised, uncatalogued and continues to grow at a phenomenal rate.

However, two recent sources are having a guestimate on where the internet is in terms of a global resource.

The first came from Internet World Stats which is “an International website featuring up to date world Internet Usage, Population Statistics and Internet Market Research Data, for over 233 individual countries and world regions.”

Their statistics put the number of worldwide internet users at 1.407 billion, up from 16 million in 1995.  How things have changed.  This is now 21.1% or more than 1 in every 5 people in the world who use the internet. They have an interesting table and graph, showing the growth over the last 13 years, which are well worth checking out.

These statistitcs are of course skewed by western nations’ use.  Australia/Oceania, for example has only 0.5% of the world’s population, but 1.4% of the world’s internet users.  Of the total population in this corner of the world, 57% are internet users.  If we broke that further down to Australia alone, that would be higher.

The other stat come from the Google blog (thanks to Phil Bradley for the link).  According to the Google post - We knew the web was big…., their “systems that process new links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion .. unique URLs on the web at once!”  Wow, that’s 1,000,000,000,000 URLs.   This does not include duplicated cotent or auto-generated copies, so its not as inflated as it may seem.

Very interesting too is that the first Google index in 1998 (yes, they are 10 years old this year), only had 26 million unique URLS. The post won’t guess at how many unique pages are on the web, although they suggest it could be infinite.

Big numbers, big things happening, just all the more reason for libraries to be there too."

The photos shown so far have all been courtesy of the Kingsway Branch's Senior Clerk, Kitty Younker, who faithfully takes photos once a week from which I select just one.

We are currently working on the furnishings for the new building and I am very excited by the fresh colours and modern designs of the samples we have seen so far.  The colours and design will be reflected in the millwork and overall space design as well.

Our intent is that this new branch reflect both the considerable history of the Edmonds area and its current cultural diversity. We want it to be a beautiful and functional part of the Edmonds area and a hub of community activity in a neighbourhood in the process of renewing itself.

Deb

I've been in a dry spell so to speak. Due to many circumstances often beyond my control, including housefulls of children, overindulgence in chardonnay, general malaise, head trips and self defeating thought patterns, I have been - shall we say - unable to fully enjoy the sexual experience to the maximum heights for a while.

This morning, mid coitus, I got that Obama slogan in my head and it wouldn't stop repeating itself "Yes We Can!!" .... "Yes We Can!!"  and...... voila! Magic. The man is magic.  If he can fix my "problem" then he can do anything.  And then there's you know who, who was in the coital throes with me - he's kinda magic too.

Then, clearing my desktop bookshelf of items I rarely read so I could put these books there, I came across an American Library Association journal whose cover read "Shaping the Future with Student Interns." I'd been grabbing the stack of ALA mags to put them in a closed overhead bin, and ironically, my morning paradigm shift had come from this six-word headline I was about to archive. Student interns. Read: No-cost, temporary employees burning to prove their mettle. We've got 'em in a university nearby that acts like a feeder school to our corporation. I've used them before. They were great, and their effectiveness, semester by semester, has grown as the needs of our customers became clearer and our Website matured. And for some silly reason, as I struggled recently to determine ways to get more volunteers writing on our site, I completely overlooked them.

But interns -- especially those from our feeder school -- really know our content. They use it all the time. They understand how our library's materials are organized and accessed. They're young college students, so they understand Web 2.0. Most have a Facebook account; shop on Amazon, Ebay, and Craigslist; and participate in online forums. Many can write well. Each wants an internship whose assignments are measurable so that calculating success, or a grade, will be easy. Many would like to work for our department because they have declared a major (family history) which corresponds with what our department does.

So it's no big revelation that an intern adds value to our project. The big question is why we don't have them all the time, why we're not always trying to get more, and why I didn't immediately think of them when trying to figure out how to engage more contributors on our Website. And I suppose the reason for all these failures stems from two issues: First, the tour of duty for an unpaid intern is a bit shorter than the duration of a semester. We have them for only about three months, really. And the ones we get are required to work --- hours. That's a lot of turnover, and it takes effort to show an intern the ropes, train them how to use the system, provide follow-up coaching, design a project that's big enough to keep them busy, and oversee their progress in that project. But judging from the content we've gotten from some of our interns, it's all well worth it if you get the right interns and don't just accept anybody who applies.

If interns are well worth the time they take to manage, then what's holding us back from using several interns continually? Organization, really. We have nobody assigned to recruit, train, and direct interns each semester. It feels like a worthwhile assignment to make. Inasmuch as most of this workgroup's employees are centered around developing a community of contributors around a knowledge domain, it feels like maybe each of them should be in charge of an intern each quarter. Having one person assigned to recruit interns for the whole team feels wrong, somehow -- it feels smarter to have each community coordinator select and recruit their own intern so they can get the right person for the job.

The ALA journal's article about interns yields something important to remember: That interns are there to learn. "The student who only does clerical tasks or low-priority activities during fieldwork may come away with a distorted view of the librarian's role and reduced interest in remaining in the profession." In other words, we probably shouldn't employ interns only to write content. They should become involved with our product development scrums, design portal pages for a knowledge domain, get other sites to link to the content they create, monitor Web analytics for their domain, and survey users on what parts of their designs do and do not work. They could even design and create within their domain the reference-interview system I described in yesterday's blog entry which helps beginners get the help they need without having to know genealogical lingo or research methodology.

The takeaway from this six-word journal headline that happily took over my morning: My team will have a meeting Monday. We'll discuss the things each employee is doing that could benefit from an extra set of (intern) hands. If the list is sufficient to keep some interns busy with mind-growing assignments, employees will be assigned to recruit and engage some interns. If it works -- if the ROI is indeed worthwhile, recruiting and managing interns will become a regular assignment for employees each quarter.

It's last formal report was in 2004.  It's last official statement The 2006 Hague Blue Shield Accord was released September 26, 2006.

What happened to this organization?

I have visions of myself entering war torn countries in military fatigues with archival materials strapped to my back and entering national museums/libraries yelling "PUT DOWN THE CULTURAL ARTIFACTS AND NO ONE GETS HURT!"  Oh, and I would look like Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider.  That too. 

Read more at the WebJunction Blog.

Managing and Motivating Your Board (Rural Webinar)
When: Thursday July 31st, 2008 - 01:00 PM

Cultivating a Culture of Learning in the Library (Learning Webinar)
When: Tuesday August 5th, 2008 - 01:00 PM

Engaging with our New Community of Practice (SLO Webinar)
When: Tuesday August 12th, 2008 - 12:00 PM

Communication Between Techies and Non-Techies (MaintainIT Cookbook Webinar)
When: Wednesday August 13th, 2008 - 01:00 PM

Creating a Technology Petting Zoo (Learning Webinar)
When: Thursday August 14th, 2008 - 01:00 PM

Conflict in a Peaceful Library (Learning Webinar)
When: Tuesday September 16th, 2008 - 01:00 PM

Latinos Perceptions of Public Libraries (SLO Webinar)
When: Tuesday October 14th, 2008 - 12:00 PM

Refugees 101 (Community Webinar)
When: Thursday October 23rd, 2008 - 01:00 PM

"It is good to live and learn."--Miguel de Cervantes

You never know, however, what a day will bring forth. 

Lifehacker referred to an article in today's New York Times entitled "If Your Being Laid Off or Expecting to Be" by Marci Alboher [http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/if-youre-laid-off-or-expecting-to-be/].  Here are highlights I though were worth noting:

"...We began by talking about the things you shouldn’t do after being laid off, like saying disparaging things about your former employer to anyone other than close friends and family.

We then moved on to some of the more practical elements — making sure that your résumé is in order, that you have something presentable to wear to interviews and professional meetings and that you have spiffed up your online presence, if that is appropriate in your field.

We spent a good bit of time talking about touching base with all the crucial people in your network. And in times like this, when so many layoffs are driven by the slowing economy, there really is no need to feel any shame when picking up the phone to share the news with someone and ask for support, job leads or introductions. Often it’s the weak ties — the friends of your closest friends, for example — not the strong ties, that lead to opportunities. So make sure that you are systematically trying to reach those people. Linkedin [http://www.linkedin.com/] is a very good tool for locating people who are one or two degrees away from your immediate circle. Another way is to start putting out the word to everyone you come into contact with that you are open to introductions.

Finally, I suggested that people do some writing. While it may feel like an odd time for gratitude, you may make some good impressions by composing a few handwritten thank you notes to those who have helped you in your career. Similarly, if you can craft a graceful departure e-mail thanking colleagues for their support, providing your personal contact information and saying you are open to any leads or introductions, again you may be pleased with the results..."