Cultural Research

Brian Mathews: Creating an Academic Library for the Whole Student

Marketing Today's Academic Library:
A Bold New Approach to Communicating with Students

Brian Mathews, author of Marketing Today's Academic Library and blogger at The Ubiquitous Librarian is featured in a Library Beat Longshots Podcast:

Longshots #222: From solitary to social:
creating an academic library for the whole student

"Sarah talks with Brian Mathews, assistant university librarian, University of California-Santa Barbara, about making academic libraries more user-sensitive. Brian's work explores the way academic libraries can adapt services to serve the whole student versus just their current projects. He discusses the seven categories that describe the spectrum of student needs: academic, social, entertainment and recreational, service, personal, travel, and rejuvenation."

Official Site: Longshots Podcast

Today's Posts Found Through American Libraries Direct

American Libraries Direct is an awesome email newsletter from American Libraries and it always leads me to resources I want to check out and, often, to blog about.

Just sayin'!

Innovation Awards: U of Michigan for Enriching Scholarship, NCSU Libraries for Course Views

Various branches of the American Library Association have recently honored university library projects for innovation.

The University of Michigan’s Enriching Scholarship program has been awarded the ALA/Information Today, Inc. Library of the Future Award:

"Enriching Scholarship is a collaborative program between the University Library, campus information technology divisions, and campus-wide academic support units that offers dozens of workshops in a week long curriculum each May. These workshops enhance the effective integration of scholarly content and technology into teaching, service, and research activities on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Mich."

Official Site: Enriching Scholarship

NCSU Libraries was one of three libraries recognized for use of cutting-edge technologies by the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy:

"Course Views [Library Tools] Project, North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, Raleigh, N.C."

"The NCSU Libraries implemented a cutting-edge service in response to the difficulty of creating and maintaining enough “course pages” – recommended resources for specific courses and assignments – to meet students’ needs. The Course Views system provides pages for all 6,000 courses offered by over 150 departments at NCSU."

Official Site: Library Course Views

Related Cultural Research Coverage:
NCSU Libraries Release WolfWalk Mobile Site

Flipping the Script on the Future of the Book

The Future of Publishing - created by DK (UK)

This interesting little video addresses publishing with a more specific reference to books and seems relevant to libraries as well. Be sure to watch past the halfway point! hint hint...

Developing a Mobile Website for your Library

Cindi Trainor reports on the "Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device: Developing a Mobile Website for Your Library" workshop at ALA Midwinter.

The workshop included "six steps to mobile development":

Needs assessment
Integrating with existing library services
Project planning
Building the site
Keeping up

Slideshow from the presenters:
Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device: Developing a Mobile Website for Your Library

EBSCOhost Mobile Interface Tutorial

EBSCOhost Mobile Tutorial

The above video demonstrating the EBSCOhost Mobile interface is a bit of a snoozer but, if you've wondered exactly how services would be mobilized, it will give you a sense of the thrilling reality!

If you're really interested in following the tutorial, I'd suggest going to the video at YouTube and enlarging the image.

ResourceShelf has more information and a brief review dating back to EBSCOhost Mobile's launch in the fall.

NCSU Libraries Release WolfWalk Mobile Site

The NCSU Libraries recently released WolfWalk:

"a mobile library project that allows you to explore North Carolina State University campus history using selected mobile devices. WolfWalk provides information on the history of approximately 60 major sites of interest on the NCSU campus, together with multiple current and/or historic images that are sourced from the NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center."

This sounds like a great tie-in between special collections and information about a local setting in mobile website form. It's also an example of how traditional library departments, such as special collections, can move from simple access to the creation of meaningful resources, i.e., to digital publishing.

There's more at NCSU Libraries News.

CCV Embeds Librarians in Blackboard Classrooms

CCV's Embedded Librarian Program

The Hartness Library of the Community College of Vermont (CCV) provides a demo video describing their "Embedded Librarian Program" in which librarians create a visible online presence within classes using Blackboard. It's a simple enough idea but having had quite a bit of experience as a student in Blackboard settings, I think it could be quite powerful.

LSSI & Riverside County Library System Announce Print On Demand Book Fulfillment Program

Library Systems & Services (LSSI), a library management company currently operating the Riverside County Library System (RCLS) in California, announced in a press release that an "innovative new on-demand book printing program begins today at the Grace Mellman Library in Temecula":

"Under a $100,000 grant from the California State Library, the RCLS is studying the usefulness of on-demand printing to enhance library collections. The July 2009 grant has been used to purchase a Book Espresso 'print-on-demand' machine which prints, covers and binds trade paperback quality books from computer files."

"Library patrons will now have the option to request titles, have the book printed for free, read it and return it to the library collection, or they may choose to keep the book and pay a printing fee. If the requesting patron is at the Book Espresso location and wants to pay for the book, it can be printed immediately while they wait..."

"Available book titles will be obtained from Lightning Source, with over 500,000 titles available, and Google Books, who has partnered with over 20,000 publishers to make their content available for on-demand printing."

This innovative approach is actually very logical and timely, given the development of on-demand publishing services, though I'd love to compare how things price out between owning an Espresso Book Machine and ordering individual Lightning Source copies via Ingram.

Nevertheless, given the high cost of interlibrary loan, this is an innovation whose time has come.

Tim Spalding on Social Cataloging, Libraries & the Open Web

What is Social Cataloging? (LIANZA09) from Tim Spalding on Vimeo.

Tim Spalding, the founder of Library Thing, discusses LibraryThing, personal and social cataloging, LibraryThing for libraries, building community and the open web. I went from perceiving him as an executive/publicist to recognizing his perspective as innovative and in touch with how libraries might better interface with the open web to serve patrons.

As Tim discussed various ways librarians could use LibraryThing, I was reminded of a visit to my local public library where a woman was told her reading wishlist had been wiped as it would be from time to time. It turned out that she'd only had it for a month or two and was supposed to expect such instability due to a warning regarding periodic data purges.

This situation, in which a libary is poorly supporting a service that could be accessed for free online via such companies as LibraryThing, is a strong example of what happens when a closed web approach encounters a problem that's readily solvable via the open web. Unfortunately, in this case, an unhappy patron who was now less inclined to use the library's own web services was the result.