Cathy | Library

Used & Indie Book Stores

books

I went to a bunch of  bookstores over spring break: The Montague Bookmill, Harvard Book Store, Raven Used Books (Northampton and Cambridge), & Porter Square Books.

The nearest bookstore to me is Barnes & Noble, and it’s fine for best-sellers, it’s crap for exploration.

Wandering through the bookstores was just what my bibliographic soul has been missing. I picked up a huge stack of books, some of which I’ve been looking for for ages (Borges) and some which were impulse buys (Smith). I wrote down authors and titles for at least 50 more that I want to read or that I want to buy for my library. Serendipity is a huge part of collection development (it’s also a huge part of humanities scholarship, but that’s another post). Browsing shelves, looking at staff recommendations and endcap displays, letting your eye stray to a brightly colored cover, finding something amusingly mis-shelved; these are the perks of shopping at used and indie bookstores. Amazon doesn’t deliver this. You don’t get the same thrill of discovery from reading Choice or New York Times book reviews.

I still miss McIntyre & Moore. They had the best selection of academic esoterica.

by  /  March 19, 2012  /  Posted in: Library
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Citation Management Rant

Citation management tools like ref works, end note, cite monkey, etc are crutches. Theyre like calculators-that can’t add.

We don’t let kids use calculators until they can add 2+2 and get 4. But somehow, some faculty think its ok to let students muck around with citation managers when they can’t tell APA from MLA.

Sure, they were supposed to learn citation in high school. They were also supposed to learn spelling, grammar and punctuation, how to do algebra, and the parts of the solar system and the periodic table. They probably didn’t. So students come to college ignorant, and have to be brought up to college level, because the profs demand college level work. And no one wants to sacrifice class time to do remedial work, I get that. I hate having to spend part of my precious 50 minutes teaching students where the address bar is , or how to navigate the library homepage. Kids should know this. But if it’s not being taught, what can you do?

You have to teach it.

And I mean teach it. Not turn to some electronic substitution. You want your students to turn in papers in MLA style, then you damn well better teach MLA style in class. Make it just as much a part of your freshman composition syllabus constructing an argument, and weigh it as heavily in your grading rubric as spelling. Don’t pawn it off on your librarian or turn to a computer program.

All the citation management software turn out something that looks like a proper citation. But they all get something subtly wrong. It could be a comma, it could be an extra space, or something could be left out. It can also be human error. If you use a tool where you have to enter your own data, or fill out forms, and you misspell something, or worse yet, you don’t know where to find something (what’s a publisher?) or enter something in the wrong field, then you’re screwed.

Using citation management software without knowing how to cite is like using a calculator without knowing how to add. You don’t know if the machine is doing it wrong. And if you have to rely on your ignorance to get a passing grade, you’re in trouble.

Teaching bibliographic citation is hard, finicky, tedious, and boring: the comma goes there. It only goes there. There’s no other place for it.
It has to be this way.
Why? Because MLA says so, that’s why.

Perhaps your best hope for a fun lesson bibliographies is to have it be a Memory type game, or a spot the differences puzzle. Fill in the blanks. Mad-Libs, only without the fun. Or the creativity.

My school subscribes to ref works. Its a fine tool, very useful for upper level students, grad students and faculty. Its overwhelming for freshmen, who only have to cite 5-10 sources per paper, as rule. Its using a cargo crane to pick up a pencil. Its a zombie apocalypse horror movie full of overkill.

And it’s not something I can include in a 50 minute “library tour” information literacy session. So please stop asking for it.

Ask me instead to explain bibliographies, or to demonstrate how to cite books, articles and websites. As me to juggle knives while riding a unicycle blindfolded. Just don’t ask me to teach citation management as a bandaid.

by  /  February 16, 2012  /  Posted in: Library, Teaching
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#libday8 wrap-up

What have I done this week? Too much.

Monday

  • ESL6 class: intro to the library, research in English, library skills, citation
  • Prep for Tuesday’s classes.
  • Told I was “too innovative” and to go back to basics. :P
  • Coffee with a colleague

Tuesday:

  • Prep for Wednesday’s classes
  • Comp102 class: Finding book reviews, source reliability, Internet, databases, bias
  • Had huge fight with my phone
  • Emailed notice of upcoming reading circle. Lots of faculty interested in participating.
  • Prep for Friday’s class.
  • Meeting with colleagues for book editing project

Wednesday:

  • COM503:All innovation, all the time.  Capstone seminar, personal branding, eportfolios, Twitter, Pinterest, ifttt.com, leveraging social media
  • COM335: Continued innovation. Transforming print press releases into Tweets, leveraging social media. ZooBorns.
  • Continued to fight with phone. It’s difficult to demo Twitter when the phone app won’t open.
  • Prep for Thursday’s class
  • Watched Shakespeare videos on YouTube
  • Eat dinner
  • ENG725: Intro to English research for grad students.Night course.  Hamlet. Go over English research tools (print books, MLA, JSTOR, ProjectMuse, Web of Science, EEBO)
  • Photocopy for Thursday’s 8am class

Thursday:

  • Comp2: 8am classes are trough- especially after night courses. Intro to databases: Academic Search Premier, NYT, Boston Globe. They’ll be back next week for individualized workshops and research time.
  • Student conference. How to organize thoughts for a 2 minute speech.
  • Apple store appointment: MacBook not charging, replace mag board.

Friday:

  • Comp2: Co-teaching/Research Day 1. Pirates of Somalia. What is information? What is good information? How do we know info is good? Had students create “used car buying guides” to illustrate trustworthy information.
  • Conference video chat about upcoming NERCOMP event: Tweet This SIG!

 

 

by  /  February 3, 2012  /  Posted in: Library, Teaching
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Backfiring Experiements

I’m participating in Library Day in the Life round 8. It’s a bi-annual event where librarians, library staff, and students share their days. I spend most of my days teaching, and thinking about teaching.  I attend a lot of meetings, too, but mostly I teach. For every hour in the classroom, there’s about 2-3 hours of prep. Photocopying, lesson planning, and scheduling. 

Last semester I revamped all my Composition 101&102 classes (aka “Can you give my students a tour of the library? I want them to get an idea of what we have, and how to do research? And while yo’re at it, can you teach them how to use RefWorks and write a bibliography?”). I put my Immersion experiences to work, after years of experimenting, and tweaking, I got an active, group-learning concept driven lesson plan made up. It was awesome.

I hated standing there for 50 or 90 minutes and expound on how to use the catalog or how to search databases. I made up student-centered group learning exercises to place the responsiblility of learnign on the students. I shifted my focus away from mechanics and onto concepts. Since everyone can type words into Google or Wikipedia and get results, and since most of my students search databases like they search Google, I focused on understanding and analyzing results. This is just a 101/102 course, they didn’t need discipline specific knowledge or research skills. Constructing truly effective searches requires a lot of subject knowledge, and a familiarity with subject specific materials. These kids need to know what kinds of information exist in their “scholarly library databases.” They need to know the difference between a book and a newspaper, and when it’s appropriate to use each in research. I really liked my source based lesson.

It seemed to work. I had more students participating and talking about class stuff in class, fewer students playing solitare or Facebook games. I got some valuable insights (the vast majority of my students had never seen nor read a scholarly journal), and was using that data to revamp my spring semester lessons.

I have two “libary tour”/intro to research classes this week. I’ve been working with the professors for years, and we have a good relationship. So I’m going to pay attention to what they say. Both profs have asked for the traditional databases talk. Mechanics only. No concepts. They feel that I spent too much time on informational concepts and kinds of information, and not enough on “this is how you do X” last semester.

So, what to do? Do I go back to the sage on the stage, semi-robotic way of teaching? When I teach this way, I can see the students getting bored as I do this. I can see their attention wandering, I can seem them glazing over, and playing with their smartphones. I also hate it. It turns my brain to mush. I can do that lesson in my sleep. So it puts me to sleep.

I want to continue experimenting with teaching, I want to continue to challenge and engage my students. Instead of just saying “Don’t use Wikipedia or Google in your research papers” I want to show them viable alternatives.  Instead of  saying “You have to use only scholarly journals in your research” I want them to understand what a scholarly journal is.

 

by  /  January 31, 2012  /  Posted in: Library, Teaching
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MBTA Public Meeting

I went to last night’s  public meeting on the MBTA’s proposed fare hike at Salem City Hall Annex.

When I got there at 5:50, there were already so many people there that they had to open 2 overflow rooms. One was a small 10 person conference room, and the other, where I was, had at least 60 people. Some of us had chairs, while the rest packed in, ringing the walls and sitting on the floor.

This being the MBTA there were technical difficulties, and there was no projector or visuals for the speakers. The members of the MBTA staff that were organizing the meeting were surprised by the size of the crowd. I find that hard to believe.

Also, there was no wifi in City Hall Annex- this was a great disappointment. I live-tweeted with my Blackberry, and because the phone hates me, I had to reboot it twice due to the Twitter app and Foursquare wanting to install updates. It’s hard to follow the conversation with a Blackberry. I had really hoped for wifi and using my iPad. Oh well.

Charles Plank, Senior Director at the MBTA was the speaker- he basically read what was in this proposal.  There were a lot of other senior MBTA officials  there, including General Manager Jonathan Davis. Richard Davey of MassDot was there,and came to the overflow room at the end of the meeting.

Approximately 25 people spoke about the fare hikes/service decreases. I counted 4 speakers affiliated with Salem State University, 1 from North Shore Community College, and at least 8 non-drivers.

Then there were the community leaders. Members of the Beverly City Council, the Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce, the North Shore Alliance for Economic Development, the Rockport Planning Board, and the Marblehead Chamber of Commerce all spoke about how the economices and infrastructure of North Shore cities and towns has been restructured around public transportation and tourism. The proposed weekend and evening cuts to the commuter rail would drastically impact the economy of the North Shore.

This is only what I saw in the overflow room. I’m sure there were more in the main room.

Many, many people spoke about their dependence on the T to get them to and from work (I was one of the few there who did not rely on the T for work transportation). Many of the speakers don’t have a car, and the spoke of their fear that the fare hikes/service cuts would force them to spend more money to get to work, money that they don’t have.

When it was my turn to speak, I ad-libbed it. I wanted to mention the cheapness parking at the T, how they should look into raising parking fees more, and point out Dave Gardetta’s LA Magazine article “Between the Lines.”

The gist of my little speech:

  • The current proposals will make public transportation into  a luxury.
  • It’s still so cheap to drive into Boston and park.
  • The proposed increases to parking at MBTA lots and garages are a good start, but they don’t go far enough. $10 to park at Alewife is a steal.
  • Both Plan A and Plan B make driving into Boston more reasonable, affordable and timely than taking the T.
  • Dave Gardetta wrote in LA Mazine about the cheap cost of parking, and how new construction in LA mandates one parking spot for every guest. How cities are accommodating cars at the expense of people.
  • The T’s plan puts public transportation behind automobile transportation. If the T wants to increase revenue, it needs to make itself into an appealing, viable alternative to cars.
  • What will be the effect of eliminating commuter rail on nights and weekends on Salem? Particularly in October. Traffic is bad enough during the Halloween season. Imagine if every visitor had to drive.

———-

Now that it’s the next day, and I can reflect a bit more, and I’ve heard and digested what the other speakers had to say, I can expand my thinking. Writing it out here will help me to clarify everything before writing to the MBTA and my elected officials.

The MBTA needs to grow the service. Not cut it. Make it more appealing to riders, make it a better alternative to driving. Make the T such a shiny, wonderful, amazing experience that people clamber to get on it, rather than drive. If the T wants to increase revenue, it has to offer a product that people want.

These proposed fare cuts scare me.

These increases make riding the T into an unaffordable luxury than a daily necessity.

They are taking the “public” out of public transportation.

It’s public transport, not private transport. These pricing changes make it unaffordable to the people. How can something be called public transit if people can’t afford to ride it? Public transit is seen to be a liberal, coastal, blue state concern, so it’s not a priority in Washington.  So transportation subsidies are at the mercy of people who aren’t invested in public transportation (oil lobbyists, car lobbyists).

I believe that transportation, healthcare, education, are the purview, benefit, and responsibility of the people, not private institutions. The state should be responsible for these basic services. Those who ride the T are the ones who depend upon its public-ness and it’s service. Those who can’t afford a car or who are unable to drive. The poor, the elderly, and the disabled are the ones who need this service, and they’re the most likely to suffer when services are cut.

People who can afford to drive, will drive. It doesn’t matter if they regard cars as a privilege or a luxury or a toy. Those who can’t drive due to cost or disability need someway to get around. How are they being served by raising the price of the RIDE or by eliminating routes and raising fares across the board?

And those of us who choose to use public transportation should be able to make those choices.  I want to be able to take the T into Boston, or up to Rockport. I want to be able to take the bus.

Public transport is vital. As a kid in Malden it was my ticket to the greater world. It introduced me to Harvard Square and the wonderful, crazy liberalism of the People’s Republic of Cambridge. I didn’t need a car, I could go anywhere on the T, or busses or commuter rail. The T was freedom.

Living in Rochester, NY with a crappy bus service meant bumming lots of rides. dependent on others. it took about 3 hours to get cross-town. Totally impossible to be carless in Rochester. After 4 years there, I was determined to never again live without public transportation.

Montreal was awesome- express busses, subway, regular busses, all of which made it easy and affordable to get around. I loved taking the metro, even when it was -40, and the bus was delayed by 2 hours, or the Metro drivers threatened to strike. And, the bus passes were reasonably prices. A reliable, affordable, comprehensive public transit system made Montreal wonderful.

One of the other speakers mentioned  the T’s social responsibility,and how that relates to its financial responsibility. The social responsibility, the social contract, is implied in the very name/concept of “public transportation.” Right now the T is looking at it’s financial responsibility at the expense of it’s social contract with the people of Massachusetts.

This implied social contract also extends to the small businesses who depend upon the T to bring tourists up to Salem, Beverly, Rockport, Newburyport, and all the other towns. The social contract extends to the cities and towns that have invested in infrastructure to support the T. What right does the T have to turn its back on all of this?

As someone who works in Salem, I’m terrified of the traffic in Salem this October if there is no commuter rail service on the weekends. I don’t think the city can cope with the cars or the traffic.

These fare cuts will hurt everyone.

Please, MBTA, find some other way.

by  /  January 26, 2012  /  Posted in: Not Library
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Understanding Literary Research

Last semester I revamped my literature library sessions. Overall, they were successful, with the students having a better understanding of the material and the research process-at least that was the feedback from faculty. I still haven’t figured out a way to do follow-through assessment of library sessions.

A lot of our literature courses are sequential, with one being taught in the spring and the other in the fall, and Shakespeare is no exception.  Last semester it was Histories & Comedies, this term it’s Tragedies and Romances. Enough students take them in sequence, so I wasn’t comfortable with just rehashing the same lesson on parsing the sexy title that I used for the fall classes.

I wanted the students to understand the vocabulary of English research, and it’s underlying organizational structure.  I wanted them to know that because of the way English books are organized (and, the follow up, how articles are indexed) that there’s no way in the English or Literature taxonomy to have “psychology of Hamlet.”

I started them out with  brainstorming exercise:  ”How do you organize literature?”

Answers: Author, genre (poetry, play, essay), date, language

Then I showed them how Library of Congress arranges literature.

Language-Date-Author-Genre-Work

Then we talked about literary scholarship, and literary theory. Since theory became popular in the 1960s, it’s changed how literary scholarship is done. Before theory, literary scholarship was more literary criticism: evaluation and interpretation. Now, with theory, there is still evaluation and interpretation, but it’s done through a particular lens, like post-colonialism, structuralism, Marxism, or feminism.

When you search MLA International Bibliography or JSTOR, you’re searching literary theory, but it’s organized according to the language-date-author-genre-work taxonomy. Occasionally, you’ll find database-added subject terms, but they’re a new adaptation in response to the changing nature of literary scholarship, and they’re not always present. The theory isn’t always identified, and the topic of the article isn’t always obvious.

Example

This article has the traditional taxonomy as well as some contemporary subject terms

This article has a very ambiguous subject

 

Another problem we run into when searching for literary criticism is the commonness of English words. Searching for “‘Romeo and Juliet’ AND Love” is bad- you get too many hits. Almost every book or article on R&J mentions the word “love” somewhere. It’s better to be specific and use the language of the play: romance, marriage; or to search for the characters who are in love (but then a search for “‘Romeo and Juliet’ AND (Romeo OR Juliet)” is a little foolish. A better example is my old standby of “Magic in The Tempest.”

  • How does the play describe magic: enchantments, charms, spells, workings
  • Who uses magic: Prospero
  • Which characters are magical: Ariel, cast of the masque
  • Which events in the play are magical: storm

And then use these terms to build searches. By using the plays own language in searches, you’ve identified your controlled vocabulary, and your searches will be more productive.

There is also the problem of the play as production and the play as film. Both of these qualities get in the way of doing literary scholarship on the play as text. But that’s another post.

1 Comment by  /  January 25, 2012  /  Posted in: Teaching
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Adventures in InfoLit Group Work

I included group work in three of my classes last week.  Go me!

The English grad students got the same inscrutable title exercise as the Shakespeare undergrads. They seemed to like it. Actually, they liked what we did in class so much they –the students– asked if they could come back this week for more.  I have to plan something new and different for them tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll work on search mapping. It’s a good collaborative exercise.

The freshmen comp students compared source types and since there were more groups than source types, they were able to validate each other’s work.  Having their peers reinforce their definitions seemed to work well, I only had to add a few things. This class has a return visit on Friday, where we’ll be going over databases.  This is the first library class I had that we didn’t do primarily with computers. We used them for a few minutes but mostly we examined physical sources. I’ll find out on Friday how much they remember when I ask them to tell the difference between popular magazines and scholarly journals as displayed in a database.

by  /  September 26, 2011  /  Posted in: Library, Teaching
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Speak Geek

Two posts in a week? *gasp*

I found this fabulous campaign via Letters to a Young Librarian and I think it’s a wonderful idea.

I am geeky in many different ways. I’m a book geek, a dance geek, a music geek, a theatre geek, a sf/f geek, a tech geek….There’s no way to limit myself to one “genre” of geekiness.  Almost all of these different interests help me in my job.

So, here are my  10 reasons why I love being a geeky librarian.

  1. I can build up  a collection of horror, sf, and fantasy novels. We have some faculty who research zombie movies and others who prefer 19th century Gothic.  Last year I had a student write a term paper comparing Twilight to Romeo & Juliet. I can connect to my international students by talking about Harry Potter à l’école des Sorciers & Harry Potter et la Chambre des Secrets.
  2. I bring my knitting to work. Many of my co-workers are knitters, and we pass around pattern books, and show off our finished projects.
  3. When I go to professional conferences or workshops, I bring my knitting. I end up meeting all the other knitters, and we bond over our socks, hats, sweaters, mittens, and book cozies.
  4. Angry Birds makes me a better librarian.  Becoming an Angry Birds fan has made me so comfortable with the iPad that I can teach my coworkers and patrons how to use it.
  5. I turned my interest in the web into part of my job. I manage my library’s social media connections, and connect to our patrons across various platforms. I never thought hanging out in AOL chat rooms in the mid 90s would be so useful.
  6. In fact, being a Communications subject specialist practically means I have to stay on the cutting edge on the web. How am I going to teach students how to handle corporate social media if I don’t use Twitter? Or how location based marketing works if I don’t have a smartphone?
  7. I can use my theatre training to be a better teacher.  I’ve demonstrated fencing in front of a class. I will put on fake accents. I’ll stand up and act out scenes from Shakespeare.  Every time I do something outside of the expected, I manage to connect to one student.
  8. A patron came to the Info Desk with a question, and I noticed her ukulele, and that lead to me sharing a story about the ukulele and saxophone ensemble I heard over the summer, which lead to more musical conversations. (Disclaimer: I play fiddle, not ukulele or saxophone).
  9.  People come to expect silly things in my office. I have a wall full of magnetic poetry, and a Nun-zilla action figure on my bookshelf. She’s right next to Nancy Pearl and William Shakespeare.
  10. By being a little strange, I have the freedom to do wacky, off-the-wall things in work and in teaching, and it’s fun.

 

2 Comments by  /  September 15, 2011  /  Posted in: Library
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The Inscrutable Title & Group Work

I started off the new school year in the best way possible: with Shakespeare.  I love teaching this class, not just because I get to wear my awesome Shakespeare Woot!Shirt, but because it’s taught by a wonderful professor and it’s an upper-level class, so I get to go beyond the surface.  I teach this class 4 times a year (twice in the fall, twice in the spring) and I’ve been using basically the same outline for years.  I know what to expect, I know what I can cover in the 50 minutes I have, I know what questions the students usually have. It’s time to change it.

I looked at what kinds of questions the students have after the class, what they need later.  Every semester, I have 2-3 students who come to me because they can’t find anything on their play.  I have them in for a consultation, and even when I show them the hundreds of hits on Richard III, they still can’t find anything because there’s nothing called “A Scholarly Article Examining the Roles of Women in Shakespeare’s Richard III.” I’d explained the inscrutable title concept in class, but it wasn’t making sense, apparently, so this year, rather than focus on tools, I chose to focus on concepts.

English scholars love to write inscrutable, sexy titles. I had a professor in undergrad that gave out bonus points for a sexy title to a paper.  There’s the PoMo English Title Generator, which came up with these gems:

  1. William Shakespeare Etching Frustration: Henry V and the Corporeality of Womanhood
  2. Monologic Monotheism and the Production of Homosocial Homosociality in William Shakespeare’s Henry V

Which are just as sexy, inscrutable, obtuse and frightening to an undergrad as anything in MLA International Bibliography.

The whole class worked together on one article: “‘Fellows of Infinite Tongue’: Henry V and the King’s English.”  Only looking at the title, what could we find out about this article. Could it be useful to me in writing my paper.

Henry V Article

from MLA International Bibliography

 

It was obvious this article was about the play Henry V, but was it about the character Henry? Here’s how we broke it down:

  • If there are quotation marks in the title, chances are good it’s a quote from the play. Google it, and find out who said it. In this case, it’s Henry, in Act V, Scene II.
  • Look for other nouns in the title (people, places, things). Identify them. If you don’t know who they are, look them up.
  • Look for examples of wordplay (puns, allusions, neologisms, hyphens, dashes, punctuation, etc). and  look them up.
I had to put on a bad, fake Southern accent and then switch to a BBC News accent to get across the point of the “king’s speech.” That was fun, and I was able to connect with the many theatre majors in the room.

I broke the students into groups, and gave each group an article that had to parse out using these skills.  They had 5 minutes to find out

  • Which character the article focuses on
  • 2-3 everyday words to describe the article

Then we regrouped and shared our findings. I had 8 groups, and 4 sample articles, so the groups were able to confirm each other’s research.

I ended the class with a subversive handout (a la Pegasus Librarian) and a shout-out to my Shakespeare LibGuide, to show them the what other resources are available.

I think the students got something. I know the professor was happy. I was pleased because it was the first time I’d successfully implemented group work into an infolit class.  I’ll judge it’s success if the number of  ”I can’t find anything on Twelfth Night!” questions drop. This is something I can adapt to any other literature class. I’ll try it with my graduate students next week.

 

by  /  September 14, 2011  /  Posted in: Library, Teaching
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Google wins

Q:”Who wrote ‘Home on the Range’ and what are the official lyrics”?

A: Brewster Higley wrote the poem “My Western Home” in 1872. It went through a folk music adaptation process and became “Home on the Range” which was adopted as Kansas’ state song.

To get this answer, I Googled, searched wikipedia, and came up with a few sites. The wiki page is interesting, but lacks citation, so I did some more searching and came up with this NPR article. Which lead me to searching the Kansas State Legislature page for the song, and I got the state’s official lyrics.

Just to see what happened, I searched our three virtual reference collections for the name “Brewster Higely” and got one hit for it, just a passing mention in an article about westward expansion.

I found lots of picture books called “Home on the Range” but they don’t have bibliographic information.

My traditional library sources weren’t helpful here, I had to do some real digging on the Internet to find anything useful.

Is it any wonder that my students get so frustrated with the seemingly restrictive and “useless” library tools?

What would it be like to have a single search box for all of our library databases? It would have to do natural language searching, and also have plenty of advanced options, of course.

One can only dream.

by  /  August 10, 2011  /  Posted in: Library
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