the Anthropologist in the Stacks

Science Friday, Digital Scholarship, and the End of the (Academic) World as we Know It (with apologies to REM)

2012-01-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

If I didn't listen to NPR, I think I'd never come up with blogpost ideas. This time, it was listening to Science Friday that did it. Ira Flatow was interviewing Michael Nielsen, whose book, Reinventing Discovery: the New Era of Networked Science appears to be something I should get my hands on. During the interview, Nielsen discussed the Galaxy Zoo, a project that allows non-scientists to get into NASA's Hubble Space Telescope archive, and help classify galaxies by shape. So far, more than a quarter of a million people have participated in the project. That's scaling up something fierce, and something that would not have been possible without the kinds of digital tools we now have at our disposal. It's also a kind of crowdsourcing. a kind of knowledge production made particularly possible and accessible by tools like wikis, blogs, etc.

Crowdsourced knowledge is trusted by Digital Residents (so far as we can tell) far more than by Digital Visitors, who still seem to insist on institutionally produced knowledge as the authoritative standard. Some fields, such as Bioinformatics, have scholars working with projects so novel that the peer-reviewed literature just has not been produced in enough quantity to be helpful to researchers when they are actively engaged in their research--they turn to blogs, tweets, emails, phone calls, and face to face conversations to keep up with the field--the latter two happening, I suspect, only after quite a bit of the first three take place.

My own library has launched a Digital Scholarship Lab, and while we expect that at first, there will be a large Digital Humanities component, I think it's no accident that we are naming it Digital Scholarship, and Nielsen's book makes me think my hunch is a solid one--these digital tools are, as he said in the interview I heard, fundamentally transforming the ways we construct knowledge, broadly defined. This transformation is not limited to a particular field or discipline, it is global, and it is utter.

It is also frightening and destabilizing to many traditional academics, who see in digital tools as a way to trivialize, ignore, or fail to achieve the insights gained through traditional scholarship with old fashioned tools like books, paper, images, and manuscripts. Peer-reviewed journals are increasingly threatened by Open Access, blogging, and twitter, as primary ways to share and discuss scholarship. Twitter and blogs make it possible to have a "conference" at any time, no matter where you are in the world--we do not have to wait for a national disciplinary conference to engage in scholarly exchange, nor do we want to wait anymore.

Nielsen pointed out that junior scholars and senior scholars tend to be happy to get on board with radical changes, and I can see why: junior scholars are a part of the changes, they are fish in the water already; senior scholars are in a position to actually make change happen, and they are senior scholars, so less is at stake for them. Scholars in the middle of their career, either trying to get tenure, or just post-tenure and now with even more work to do, may well feel that they're being told to change doing everything that, up to this point, had been working out just fine for them. It might be like coming up to someone halfway through their dissertation and insisting that they try this new reference management system. Or making someone who is writing a book switch word processing software just as they are writing their conclusion.

I don't have a conclusion here, just a string of thoughts that have come to an end (for now).

SOPA Protest Outcomes, Activism vs. Everyday Life

2012-01-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

Several high-traffic sites were down yesterday, on a kind of a strike in protest of the so-called anti-piracy legislation that was working its way through congress (SOPA in the House, PIPA in the Senate). The momentum of the legislation has significantly slowed, thanks to the counter-lobbying carried on yesterday by users of the internet, and people who produce some of the content that ends up on the web. Up until yesterday, apparently, the voices being heard by Congress were primarily those of publishers and other people who profit from the content of the internet.

At any rate, it was something I was curious about--to what extent would the website strikes actually affect the everyday lives of people who use the internet? So I sent out an email, I blogged, and tweeted. I got the most responses via email, from people I know face to face (my collaborators in the V&R project would have something to say about that, I'll bet). For the most part, there was very little impact--I heard back primarily from faculty, who said that they could, for the most part, do the things they'd intended to do online yesterday. Those things included using their university email, Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books, Twitter, and university library websites and databases. A couple of professors occasionally use Wikipedia to help clarify terms for their lecture prep, and they had to google for alternate sources. A couple of colleagues were stymied in non-academic activities by the lack of Craigslist and Wikipedia, but for the most part, the academic work of the experts in their respective fields was relatively uninterrupted.

One faculty member reported that her graduate students who rely on Wikipedia for clarification of technical terms were suffering a bit yesterday. The most suffering probably was experienced by undergraduates and high school students, if this twitter stream is any indication.

But many people took time out of their day yesterday to call their legislators in protest against SOPA/PIPA. Even though sites like Google were up, they included links to information and petition sites. I initially wondered what the impact of the strike might have been if Google had shut down, or Twitter, or (*gasp*) Facebook. Why not really take things down, scare the hell out of people, make them feel what they'd be missing where it would be really obvious (in a way that copyright concerns seldom are in everyday life)?

Here's what I think: the content that flooded Twitter, Google, and FB yesterday was largely about SOPA, PIPA, what was at stake, and how to fight it. If those sites had also been down, a powerful platform for activism would also have been unavailable. I don't know if this was by design, but leaving the big SMS and Google up was a really effective way to both show a little bit of what the internet would be like under the proposed legislation, and to really flex the internet's ability to facilitate activism on a grand scale.

For now, it looks like it worked.

SOPA Protests and the Impact on your Everyday Life

2012-01-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

I've circulated an email to some of my key contacts in my particular corner of the academic world, and thought I'd see if I could get a response via blogpost, just for kicks. So, here's what I'm asking:

So, with the SOPA protests online, I’m curious the extent towhich you think it’s affecting your ability to do the things you want and/orneed to do today, for academic or non-academic purposes.

If you’ve got the time and inclination, would you pleasetell me:

1) what were you planning to do today that involved being online?

2) were you successful?

3) if not, why not?

4) if so, could you do it as you originally intended, or did you have to come up with a work-around?

Would you like to answer the questions? Please do so in the comments.

More on Visitors and Residents

2012-01-18T06:53:00.000-08:00

This video (it's about 20 minutes long) gives some more of the history and rationale behind the V&R project I'm working on, in collaboration with these two scholars, Dave White (Oxford), and Lynn Connaway (OCLC).

Nice still shot of Dave there--if you're interested, it's worth watching. This project is trying to break down assumptions about how, when, and why people of all ages look for, acquire, and evaluate information.

Beautiful University Libraries and Thinking about Space

2011-12-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

So, this lovely series of photos from stumbleupon shows a lot of university library reading rooms, primarily from old, historic libraries such as reading rooms at Oxford, UK, or in historic American universities such as Harvard, or UC Berkeley.

I'm struck by how few people there are in these photographs. I understand that the photographer was probably more focused on the beauty of the spaces, but it seems to me that the true beauty of a library is in what the space provides in terms of the potential for people to think and work. So, yes, some of these lovely spaces do that. But we can't see that in action in these spaces.

We are getting new spaces in Atkins, and I'm curious to see how they facilitate student work on campus, and what kind of work ends up being done. The new north entrance to Atkins will be more than just a new doorway, there will be a large group study/conference room, and open spaces designed for collaborative work as well.

We've got spaces on the ground floor that have experimental furniture in them, and it's still unclear if students are using the furniture (like this mediascape table) in the way it's intended.

There are also spaces on the 1st and 2nd floors in particular that are still relatively unconfigured--we haven't really decided what we want to put in there long-term, so students are arranging those spaces themselves. I am going to be starting the New Year trying to investigate what students want out of these open spaces--what kinds of things are they trying to do, what kinds of things are they successful in doing, and what informs that success?

Finals are nearly over--where are you doing your best work in the Library? What do you wish these new spaces to do for you?

Information Literacy and deciding what is "good"

2011-08-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is the latest discussion of the woeful information literacy skills of contemporary undergraduates (a topic about which I have blogged already). No fewer than six of my friends and colleagues sent me the link to this article, because it's also an excellent presentation of the ERIAL library ethnography project. My colleague Andrew Asher was one of the anthropologists participating in this large-scale study, which aimed to ground what we know about students and their interactions with libraries and library resources in their actual behavior, through open-ended interviews, participant observation, and other research instruments like photo diaries (all methods I engage in as a part of the Atkins Ethnography Project here at UNC Charlotte).

Particularly highlighted in the Chronicle's coverage of the ERIAL project (and its upcoming publications via ALA) is the surprise that so-called "digital natives" could be so terribly unskilled at evaluating information. I don't think we need to be surprised by students capable of googling not being aware of how to pick which source to use, any more than we would be surprised by children kept away from books all of their lives being unable to figure out what to do with all of those large blocks-full-of-paper things in the library. Digital literacy has never been the same as information literacy, and all of the digital toys in the world will not render our students (or anyone else's students, for that matter) capable of distinguishing a reliable source from an unreliable source.

Persistent, consistent instruction in information literacy is what will give our students that skill set. And it cannot begin at university--this skill should be taught and exercised throughout K-12 education (and beyond). The testing culture of our current educational system makes critical thinking far less valued than retention and regurgitation of facts, and we are paying for that emphasis with the lack of preparation we see in our undergraduates. The idea that an undergraduate degree is "to get a job," rather than a basis for becoming a thinking and contributing (not just in economic terms) member of society, also gets in the way of educators advocating for critical thinking in the classrooms. Some students get frustrated by it (being asked to think critically about class content, society, life in general) because they are not necessarily used to being asked to do it, and professors are frustrated by students' frustration--why did they come to college if not to think?

I am collaborating on a project now that involves interviewing and observing high school seniors and college freshman as they look for information, academic and otherwise. My research partners and I are beginning to analyze the interview data now, and among the many striking things is the standard by which students judge information to be "reliable:" repetition. Several students say things like, "if I find it more than once on the web, I know that it's reliable information." Why do they think this? Where are they getting this standard of reliability? Is it possible that they're not being told any other standards? Or are they simply assuming that the most popular Google link is popular for a fact-based reason?

I think about how students evaluate information when I see their interest in the library website providing reviews of books, articles, and other materials that they can access in our collections. They want an Amazon.com-style service whereby they can see what previous users of the materials have said about the materials, so that the students can make an informed decision about the utility of the materials for their purposes. If you think about the Amazon-style reviews, (see, for instance, the reviews of this Economics textbook), you see that the reviewers writing the "most useful" reviews are explicit about what they wanted out of the book, how the book met their needs (or didn't), and allow the reader of the reviews to evaluate the extent to which the reviewer's standards are the reader's own. Something is given stars based on whether or not it met a particular user's needs, therefore context is necessary in a review, for other users to be able to effectively evaluate the potential of an item.

What is "good," therefore, is a subjective, shifting thing. Students who are writing five-page essays might review books as "too long" for what they need to do, and articles as "just the thing." Graduate students working on dissertations might review books according to their theoretical perspectives. Reviews on a library web site might give students the ability to get in virtual form the kind of feedback that they already ask their peers for in person (or on facebook, via text, or via emails) about the materials they need for papers, exams, and other coursework.

Students already evaluate information in non-academic settings. They read (and act on) reviews of movies, cars, live music shows, and restaurants. They take into account who is doing the reviewing, and whether that reviewer's perspective is relevant and informed (or not). It is not that they are utterly incapable of critical thinking. It is that they are not doing it in academic settings. They have not been trained to do it. Neither have they been told by our educational institutions (writ large) that critical thinking is terribly important.

Beefing up information literacy programs at the university level, and at K-12, would be an important first step towards remedying the problem. But the problem has other deep structural reasons for its existence, and those problems require fixes that come from outside of the educational system.

History's Detectives and the Way the World Searches

2011-08-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't watched History's Detectives (on PBS), in a while, so when I caught up on an episode the other night, I was struck by something I hadn't really noticed before. For those of you who've not watched it (because you are not a history/anthropology geek like myself), History's Detectives is a sort of spin-off of Antiques Roadshow. But instead of people bringing their stuff to the Roadshow for experts to tell them about it, the experts come to people's houses to inspect the item, and take it away with them for a thorough investigation as to its history and meaning.

It's fun, if you like that sort of thing (which clearly, I do). This time around, I particularly noticed how the beginning of the process of investigation was represented. After taking the object away with them to their study/office, the expert sits down with their laptop, and immediately fires up Google. When Wes Cowan was beginning his investigation of a WWII propaganda leaflet, he typed almost those precise words into the Google search box, and worked his way through the links that came up. He actually said for the benefit of the camera, "I don't know anything about this," before he started Googling.

It looked just like what any student does when they are asked to write a paper about a given topic. Or what a faculty member does when they want to have a general sense of what's being written about a topic before they teach a class on it, or write an article about it.

Here's what marked Mr. Cowan as an expert: he didn't stop with the Google search. He's not on this show to do televised Google searches. He moved away from the general overview that Google searching could give him, and started reaching out to professional contacts, snowballing his sources until he'd found the answers his client was looking for. He moved from secondary sources to primary source documents in the process, spoke to people who knew the artist who produced that particular pamphlet, and was capable at the end of all of that work of crafting a finely detailed story of the artifact in question.

Students writing papers have different goals, and how far they go beyond the Google search (or, a browse-type search on an academic library web page) is very much up to the kind of assignment. If they are writing a five page essay, the post-Google process will look different from that which goes into a 10 or 20 page paper. There is no one perfect search, because all searches happen in a given context. What may be sufficient for one assignment is woefully inadequate for another (and will be reflected in one's grade for that assignment!).

What does that mean for academic libraries, and those who work with students on their assignments? It's more important than ever to get a grounded sense of why students are looking for information, not just the fact that they need information on "X." The reference interview for a 5-page paper has compelling reasons to look different from one for the 10 page paper.

Demonstrating that we know the difference, and translating it into practice in the form of a reference interview gives us more credibility, and makes it more likely that students will come to us for help in the future.

Instruction at Point of Need

2011-07-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

I get the impression that, within academia, there is a constant, low-level (and sometimes not-so-low-level) anxiety about whether or not students are learning what they need to about information, information literacy, and how to effectively use the information that they do find. This essay is an example of some of the strategies academic libraries and librarians engage in to attempt to inform students in effective ways about their information possibilities.

Instruction at the point of need is not a concept that is unique to academic libraries. Faculty struggle with when is the best time to give students information about coursework, paper assignments, and exams. Many go over their syllabi at the beginning of the semester, but then encounter students throughout the semester who were not in class that day, who got the syllabus but didn't read it, or who have the syllabus but forgot what it said after they read it. Having syllabi on course management systems such as Moodle or Blackboard Vista can help with this some, because you are not relying on student access to a paper copy, but can expect that students who need the information can go find it online.

Design specialists think about instruction at the point of need in all sorts of contexts. The website of Edward Tufte contains an entire message board discussing examples of instruction, and whether or not those examples are effective (and why they might or might not be). Signs that assist with urban wayfinding, package instructions, safety cautions are all examples of things that need clear and obvious design elements to catch attention as well as convey information.

People who need to find their way around a city, who need to open a newly purchased item, or who need to know how to be safe when their airplane is crashing are also highly motivated to receive the information contained in those instructions. And that is where it can all get hung up in the academic context: faculty and other instructors (including librarians) traditionally gave instruction when it worked for their own schedule, or for when they thought students *should* have the information (e.g., at the beginning of the semester). That time is not necessarily when students are most receptive to that information. Finding the intersection of student need and student receptivity is a tricky prospect, and requires flexibilty.

For instance, there are faculty members who have online office hours the night before homework assignments are due, because that is when students both need and are willing to listen to the relevant information. Students who are writing papers often do so in the week (or day) before the assignment is due--that is when they are most receptive to information about how to structure their paper, how to find information to use in the body of their paper, how to configure their bibliography. Short of reference librarians giving middle-of-the-night library instruction, how can we get that information into the hands of students when they both need it and are listening to what we have to say?

This is something we are actively thinking about in Atkins, and there are already a few possible solutions that we are working towards. I'd be interested in hearing what you think are really effective ways of reaching people with the information they need to have to be successful. What has worked for you?

Now on Mobile Devices

2011-07-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

I'm participating in Blogspot's beta testing of the mobile interface of their site. So, if you're not already reading this on your phone (ha), try it out here:

New York Public Library and Thinking about Workspaces

2011-07-01T12:51:00.000-07:00

I had the great good fortune to spend a few days in New York City this past week, and managed to stop in to the NY Public Library for a little while.

My kids told me it felt like a museum, but to me it feels like a cathedral dedicated to books. All that marble, all of that art, all of that lovely architecture, surrounding a collection and a space for accessing that collection.

And not just the collection, but also the internet (and the informative places therein)--so, it's a cathedral to information, really. A place for you to find what you need, and also to get help if you need it. Heady stuff for academics. And for non-academics who love information. ("Information: it's not just for books anymore.")

Photos are only permitted in the Catalog section of the Reading Room. The other half of the Reading Room looks very similar, except there are not desktop/catalog computers in that space. People in that part of the reading room were working on laptops if they were working on computers.

The Catalog Reading Room looks like this:

It is a beautifully appointed room, with brass lamps at strategic places at the long wooden tables, so that when the natural light that streams through the windows is unavailable, people can still work.

The lamps also delineate the tables as workspaces for multiple people.
There were people working singly, but also in pairs:

The walls are lined not just with marble, but also with books. The further back you go into the room from the information desk, the less desktop computers/internet terminals there are. People seemed fairly evenly distributed throughout the space until I got to this point:

The sign says this:

I was particularly struck by the lack of people at these tables. I wondered if it was because this was the catalog room, and people needed to be closer to the catalog computers. But then I went into the other half of the Reading Room, and found the same situation: a sparsely populated laptop free zone.

Further investigation in the building, not far away, revealed this:

This room is not as big as the Reading Room, but it's pretty nice, for a room that's not the Heart of the NYC Public Library.

But I really can't figure out the logic of separating out people who work on laptops from the rest of the people who are working in the Reading Room. It feels archaic, like "no click zones" are now. I didn't have time to interview anyone who worked at the library about it, so they may well have their reasons, but it felt like an unnecessary segregation to me.

Of course, the NYC Public Library has lots of space, and clearly can provide lovely space that is separate for its laptop users (a luxury we, and many other public university libraries, simply do not now and never will have). But check out the ceiling of the laptop room:

and contrast it with the one in the Reading Room.

In a cathedral to books, I know which space I'd rather be working in, laptop or no.

A picture of the SF public library

2011-05-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is lovely and amazing.
In a series of watercolors, an artist attempts to capture the essence of the San Francisco Public library. I particularly like the sketches of each floor, where it's clear that different things are happening in different places, and that all of them qualify as legitimate library activities. An excerpt:

New Places for you to Work (edited to give credit where due)

2011-05-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Joan Lippincott and Sarah Watstein came to talk to us in the library this past semester about learning spaces. We were shown photos of a variety of library spaces in a wide range of places. I was particularly inspired by a picture of a picnic table tucked under a chalkboard in a friendly outdoor nook. And I thought, "we can do that."

Thanks to the quick work of our facilities staff, when you come back for the summer sessions, or even if you are not coming back until the Fall, there are new workspaces waiting for you! There are now chalkboards in the outdoor area just outside of Peets. We are lucky in Charlotte to have nearly year-round outside-friendly weather. Enjoy!

Questions for you! Just in time for finals...

2011-05-04T08:13:00.000-07:00

...but in this case, there's no such thing as a wrong answer.
We'll have easels up soon, so you can write your answer hard-copy if you like, but I thought I'd put the questions here in case someone (you, perhaps) might be inspired to answer them here.

We're trying to get at what people think about the library, and have been presented with some questions that might help us do that.

Please answer in the comments:

1. 1. If the library as it is now were a car, what car would it be? What car would the library be if the library were everything we wish it to be?

2. 2. If the library were to be a song, which song?

3. 3. If the library were an actor/actress, who would it be?

Mobile Devices and how people use them

2011-04-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

This is a great snapshot of mobile devices usage at UW--I believe the stats are campus-wide, not just in the library.

If you go to the library.uncc.edu URL on your smartphone, you'll see that we've got the beginnings of a mobile site. In thinking about developing the new mobile site, we need to think about library things that people are likely to do on their phone (as opposed to on their laptop, in person, etc). That means knowing the sorts of things that people already do on their phones (or tablets).

I see tablets and smartphones (as well as laptops and regular cell phones) as a part of student workspaces in the library all of the time.

Like this:

Do you use your smartphone to Google things? What kinds of things? What kinds of work do you do on your tablet (iPad, or other)? Is it different from work you do on other kinds of computers (laptops, desktops)? Are you Macs or PCs, and what difference does that make in the kinds of work you can do in the library and/or with library digital resources?

An Anthropologist in the Libraries of LA

2011-04-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

No, not me. No field trips for me, yet.

But I was sent this link to a great interview of the new head of the Library Foundation in LA--this gentleman is a trained anthropologist who did fieldwork in the Amazon, as well as many other non-library related jobs (among them, running the Sundance Institute, and while he did that, starting the documentary division of that film institute).

He clearly sees the LA libraries as community resources, not just (as if they ever were) dusty book repositories. He describes libraries as "21st century spaces."

So do we, here at Atkins. More and more of our collections are digital, in part because that is one of the best and most effective ways we can increase our patron access to world-class collections. In thinking about space, we are thinking about the work you need to do, which includes the need to use books but also includes computers, digital materials, and eventually, information formatted in ways we haven't even imagined yet.

What does your library mean to you? Is Atkins "your library?" Or is it the public library back home? Or in your neighborhood here in Charlotte? Where are you when you are "in the library?" Are you here in the building? Or at home, "in" our website?

Zombie Library!!

2011-04-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Alright, this graphic novel approach to library orientation is fantastic.

Who's going to write one for Atkins?? Anyone??

A Google A Day--Trivia Questions to help investigate how people use google to search for information

2011-04-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

So Google has a self-described "anthropologist of search," and his blog describes his new "A Google a Day" trivia game.

The game itself appears to be the point of much of the coverage--although at least one journalist sees the game as a potential search tool in and of itself. Hardly anyone points out that what this game will actually do is allow Google to gather information on how people do search. (this is not a secret--Google says that's what they're doing) I wonder if they will share with the rest of us what they learn, or just plow their knowledge back into Google. I wonder if we could ever do something similar with the way that people search for information in our library.

People who know far more about search technology than I do doubtless have much to say about Google's efforts. What do you think about their using a trivia game to gather information?

A North Entrance??

2011-04-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's true. We're getting a New Entrance to Atkins. It will be on the North Side of the building, facing the Prospector, Burson, Smith, and the CHHS buildings.

This will mean big changes for the ground floor space--there will be more of it, for one thing. What are the sorts of things that you want or need to do when you enter the library? What sorts of things do you need to do after you enter? What kinds of things do you need just before you leave?

What do you think that should mean, in terms of what we put in that space?
Let us know.
The easels are up again! And if you don't write on them (or post in the comments below, or email me, or talk to someone at the Info desk....) we can't know what you're thinking about this.

So, get writing!

New Stuff, and New Stuff Coming Soon (edited)

2011-03-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Atkins website has been tweaked again, and includes a New Books widget that is a fun way for you to browse some of what's new on our shelves.

We'd like to hear from you about other fun and useful things you'd like to have on our website. What about a new way to deal with group study room reservations? What would you like to see in a mobile app for library resources? How could we build QR codes into the mix?

Maybe you have been wishing for something that's none of those things on the list.

Please send in your ideas, and we will have a vote for the top three. Those three items will be sent to our programmers, and they will make the call about whether or not we can make your dreams a reality! Prizes will go to the people whose ideas end up being turned into actual programming.

Even if the ideas you send us are not programmable, they will tell us a lot about what you want from our website, and we always need to know that.

The meaning of "library," and thinking about privacy

2011-02-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

This job gives me endless opportunities to observe and hear about the different meanings that people assign to libraries.

I was recently thinking about this when at the public library (the University City branch). So many of us come to university libraries straight from our experiences at school and public libraries. Public libraries are places that, to my mind, are coded as private, domestic, homey spaces, much like public schools. They are places where we assume we will be safe (or should be safe, which is why assaults at libraries and schools are so jarring). They are places that are an extension of our homes--they are places where we can be taken care of, learn things, make mistakes and still be OK. Libraries are where we go if we don't have a desktop computer at home, or if ours is not working. They are where we go for books about gardening (to help with our gardens), cooking (to help us eat well), and an array of fiction, DVDs, and music CDs (to help us when we are bored). Our experiences with public libraries are personal ones. Perhaps this is why public librarians are so fiercely protective of their patrons' privacy, in terms of what they borrow. The assumption is that people check things out of the library because they need that information in their everyday lives. A book about bomb-making, checked out at a public library, can mean something very particular, something personally sinister, because of the private connotations of the space.

University librarians are just as fierce in their protection of patron records as public librarians--the entire profession sees patron privacy as a crucial part of how they do their jobs.

It is NC State Law that libraries have the right to refuse to share patron records, except for in very specific circumstances. The law is as follows:

North Carolina General Statutes § 125-19, Confidentiality of library user records

(a) Disclosure. -- A library shall not disclose any library record that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific materials, information, or services, or as otherwise having used the library, except as provided for in subsection (b).

(b) Exceptions. -- Library records may be disclosed in the following instances:

(1) When necessary for the reasonable operation of the library;

(2) Upon written consent of the user; or

(3) Pursuant to subpoena, court order, or where otherwise required by law.

It is traditional for most library catalog systems NOT to keep patron borrowing histories on file. That way, even if authorities come in with a subpoena, there is nothing to share. Patron privacy is provided by default, in the lack of history-keeping.

University libraries are professional spaces, places where people do the work of scholarship. If someone checks out a book on bomb-making, it's more than likely because of a research project, and the connotaitions of that act of borrowing are less sinister than they would be at a public library. The function of the university library transforms patron attitudes (somewhat) towards privacy--if the university library knows more about borrowing/viewing habits of its patrons, it can actually better serve those patrons by directing them towards materials that they are likely to find interesting/useful. Some of our patrons have actually asked for us to direct them, within the catalog, to resources that they might find useful (much in the way Amazon suggests things based on your purchasing and viewing histories).

If we were to do this, we would have to keep patron viewing/borrowing history somewhere on our servers. Should we ever be served with a subpoena, we would have materials that we would then have to hand over. So our patrons would have to choose, between more targeted, Amazon-style recommendations from the library catalog system and absolute privacy.

I wonder which one you would choose?

The future of books

2011-02-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

Recently the Atkins library participated in a day-long symposium on eBooks. The keynote presentation was given by Dr. Mark Nelson, the CIO for the National Association of College Stores. He gave a riveting talk about the potential of the new, electronic textbook: customizable material, online supplements, video tutorials, interactive quizzes, portability, and much more.

During the panel discussion afterward, UNC Charlotte Student Body president Megan Smith gave the student perspective on textbooks, and e-textbooks in particular. One of the points she made was that undergraduates do not highly value textbooks--they read them if they have to (i.e., if their grades will really suffer if they don't read them), but if they can get away with it, they won't. Textbooks are expensive --just about any college paper has a regular feature article on just how bad it can get-- and part of the cost-benefit analysis involved in buying texts is: can I sell it back? Or: can I buy it used? The buying and selling of used textbooks is a crucial part of student expense management, and eBooks do not offer such options. It's hard to even lend an e-text to a friend, much harder than simply handing them the book.

This is the clash between what book sellers and publisher would like to sell students (framed as "what students will be doing in the future,") and what students actually need. Perhaps the content of textbooks is better delivered electronically. Does it need to be an e-book? Could it be online content, instead, independent of an e-reader? What connection is there from what the e-book industry (and their allies in publishing) would like to happen, and the work that students are engaging in, in their everyday lives at university?

In my observations of students in the library, and in the classroom, I see them using a variety of media--they might or might not have laptop computers, but they always have something that is paper, either a notebook, a textbook, printed out articles, or (frequently) all three of those. I see people using their smart phones, but not so much for the studying part of their day as for the other parts of their day--the keeping in touch with friends and family, the scheduling of their activities (yes, that includes academic scheduling, when to get to class, etc). Paper is still very much a part of the everyday lives of students. They write notes on paper, they highlight paper textbooks, they write in the margins of articles printed out on paper. Some of those functions are incorporated into the latest e-readers, and I'm sure those functions will get more effective through time--but at what financial cost?

At a time when tuition costs are rising, and it's increasingly difficult to find employment, assuming that students will be able to pony up for an expensive electronic device when they are already struggling to acquire the paper materials they need for classes is a flawed assumption.

I will be interested to see what happens in the future. What do you do, to get the materials you have to know to do well in your classes? Professors, how will you (or will you) change what you require your students to read for your classes?

Information on Library eBook resources can be found here: http://guides.library.uncc.edu/ebooks

A library story

2011-02-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

I heard a story yesterday, from a faculty member in the College of Education, about the renovation of Atkins library in the late 1990s. During that renovation, the two separate pieces of the library, the original building (opened in 1964), and the tower (completed in 1972), were to be connected by a wrap-around structure (what is now the ground-3rd floors of the library). A new brick facade would make the three structures feel connected aesthetically as well as physically.

The original plan was to use a state-of-the-art method to face the building with bricks: a top-down method! The entire campus witnessed the bricks being put on, the facade creeping down the building.
Finally it was finished. Except then, the bricks started to fall off.

The facade had to be replaced, this time with a less-revolutionary (but more effective) bottom-up approach to laying the brick surface.

Top-down didn't work! I love this as a metaphor for how a library, and indeed a university should function. Attention needs to be paid to the grass-roots actions and needs of the university community: students, faculty, and staff alike. Out of an understanding of those everyday priorities can arise effective policies. That is a large part of the rationale for the Atkins Ethnography Project--to ground the decisions we make as a library in a fine-grained knowledge of what our patrons are doing, what they think they need, and what we can effectively provide.

Quiet Zones and where to do work in the library

2011-02-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that furniture is being moved around in the library this semester. Last semester, we moved carrels out of the ground floor (near the Library Cafe), and moved in the couches, chairs, tables, and whiteboards that are there now . As of this semester, carrels have been moved from the second floor, on the eastern side of the atrium (in front of the glass wall, in front of the periodical stacks), and replaced by open tables and wooden chairs.

Where are the carrels being placed?

Some of them went to the western end of the library, along the curved wall of windows, overlooking the SAC. Most of them are going up to the third floor, where open tables are being replaced by carrels.

Why all the moving around? We are trying to take furniture that speaks of quiet study (carrels) and move it into spaces well-suited for quiet study (the western end of the library away from the main entrance, the third floor). We shall see if those furniture-based signals translate into actual quiet. Carrels also make it harder to do group work. By providing more space on the first, second and ground floors for groups to get work done, we provide a place for people to go when they need to be constructively noisy.

This is on my mind not just because of the furniture moving, but also because of a recent suggestion box entry which stated, "There are many things library could do to provide a good/quiet environment for students who want to study, But library really doesn't do any."

I just don't think this is true. Our work is far from finished, but we are trying, with the right placement of furniture and policy, to provide both quiet spaces (the third floor, the ground floor in the compact stacks room, and all of the tower floors) as well as spaces where people can work with a steady (yet manageable) level of noise.

Part of the job of keeping the library noise levels manageable is, frankly, up to the people who use the space. Once we've made it clear on our end where you can do what kind of work, it's up to you (and your classmates and colleagues) to find the place that fits. And to pay attention to the furniture cues around you, and also to what other people are doing in the space in which you find yourself.

So, working in a group? Try a table on the first floor. Or a group study room.--we've created several more study rooms in the last semester. Or a table on the second floor near the atrium. Or the new collaborative study space on the ground floor, near the Library Cafe.

Working by yourself, but don't mind a dull roar around you? (maybe the noise actually helps you focus?). Anywhere in the library can be right for you.

Need a quiet place to focus? Try the Halton Room, at the back of the main floor of the library. Or anywhere on the Third Floor. Or the western end of the first and second floors (overlooking the SAC), or the second floor back in the periodicals, in the eastern part of the library. Or try the tower floors, or the desks in the compact stacks room, on the ground floor.

We are working all the time to figure out what you need to do, and to try to configure spaces in the library to facilitate that work. As new furniture arrangements (and occasionally, new furniture) appear, you can help by giving us feedback on what works and what doesn't.

You can do that here: http://library.uncc.edu/suggest/

Or by commenting on this blog, sending me an email, or even by leaving a message at the Info Desk.
And we can see what gets used, and what doesn't, and work further to make things into a better fit.

One final note: loud phone conversations feel out of place everywhere. But that's a larger etiquette problem, one not easily solved by the library alone!

Academically Adrift? More like, Liberal Arts Rule!

2011-01-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

Arum and Roksa's book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses is getting lots of press these days, and the links are flying fast and furious among my colleagues who work both in and out of college classrooms.
Inside Higher Ed summarizes in bullet points:

"

45 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" during the first two years of college.
36 percent of students "did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning" over four years of college.
Those students who do show improvements tend to show only modest improvements. Students improved on average only 0.18 standard deviations over the first two years of college and 0.47 over four years. What this means is that a student who entered college in the 50th percentile of students in his or her cohort would move up to the 68th percentile four years later -- but that's the 68th percentile of a new group of freshmen who haven't experienced any college learning."

And the Seattle Times makes the headline a lament: "Study: Students slog through college, but don't gain much critical thinking."

What I think I find most fascinating is the reporters' choice of what to focus on, i.e. that "large numbers [of students] didn't learn critical thinking," etc. I think the real story is the efficacy of a liberal arts education in facilitating those ...very things. I think this could be used as an argument to strengthen the very things that are now being cut in budget times--the traditional liberal arts and sciences--and in fact to require a solid degree in those before moving on to a professional degree. Imagine: financiers with critical thinking skills!!

Responding to the U Times editorial on Library etiquette

2010-11-30T11:04:00.000-08:00

Shanequa Perry raised several interesting issues in her recent editorial about how students should use the space in Atkins library(11/23/2010). I’d like to take a chance, as the anthropologist in the library, to respond to some of her concerns, and give a little context for some of what she’s seeing.

I’ll start by saying that Atkins can never be all things to all people—but the space we have and the resources we offer should be as accessible as possible to as wide a variety of community members as we can manage.

One of the first things the editorial mentioned in Atkins was the widespread presence of non-academic websites on her classmates’ desktop computers: Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’d add to that list YouTube, GoogleMail, Hulu, a wide variety of news and entertainment sites, and gaming sites. In my observations of student behavior and computer use at Atkins, I’ve noticed that in addition to these non-scholarly sites (they are referred to in the editorial as called them “procrastination” sites, and many would agree), students are on Moodle, doing WebWork, using MS word or Excel, and even accessing resources through the Atkins website. At any given moment, people may be doing work, or taking a break from their work. Some students are in Atkins between classes, and so take a chance to check email, take a break, play around on Facebook, or watch a fun clip on YouTube before getting back to class. Some students are in Atkins for a long time, and are settled in to work on a paper, a problem set, or some other time-consuming assignment. Perhaps the moment you see them on FB is the break they are taking after working for a couple of hours. Perhaps you miss the point where they flip from YouTube over to WebWork. Think about how you do work--do you work non-stop for hours on one thing? Or do you take breaks? Do you have only one window open on your desktop? Or do you have everything open at once, school-related and not?

It is incorrect to say that there is a no-food, no-drink policy in the library. In fact, we have vending machines!

It was decided long ago that it was important for students to be able to stay in the library if they needed to keep their focus. Bringing food with them, and taking a snack break before getting back into their studies allows for them to get more work done than if they had to go down to Peets, or even all the way down to the Prospector, Cone Center, or Student Union for a meal. It’s not just about the time spent going to get food, but also about the loss of focus possible when you bump into friends on the way, chat about the weekend, and then oh wait where was I in this chapter….?

People persistently tell me that the library is a place for them to focus. So of course, other people talking can be a problem if the way you focus is in absolute silence. But many people use background noise as a way of gaining focus. I’ve heard over and over, “if it’s too quiet, I can’t think.” Of course, there are limits to how loud useful noise can be. This struggle between quiet and reasonable noise is a constant one in university libraries, and we obviously have not come up with the perfect solution yet. Some things we’ve tried so far include:

Designating the 3^rd floor as a QZ. I know (because many of you have told me!) that there continue to be noise problems—some because of people who continue to use the 3^rd floor as a study hall, even though it’s no longer the space for that. Old traditions die hard. We probably need to think about the furniture configurations up there, too.
The floors in the Atkins tower now have wireless--so you can get away from it all, and still have access to the internet
There are more computers on each floor, especially on the third floor, so that there can be quiet computing space as well as constructively noisy computer spaces.
We've added more group study rooms, which are bookable online, and which provide spaces where you can either shut the door and study quietly, or shut the door and have group discussions.
The new group study areas on the ground floor, near the Library Café. Having new spaces that encourage group study, we hope, will encourage people to leave the QZs quiet, because there are now better places to make constructive noise.

The editorial also covered sleeping in the library. Speaking as someone who’s taken a fair share of library naps, I think this might be one of the things that we take on when we go to a 24-hour space. People study at all hours of the night and day here now, and sometimes, they need to recharge—and can’t go all the way home to do so. Until recently, people had to use two chairs to get a good nap space—unless they happened upon the One Library Couch.

Now there are more couches, and more obvious chances to sleep. As with eating, these are things that people do outside of the library, sure, but providing space for sleeping and eating (within reason) to happen in the library allow people to find focus and get their work done.

In short, while the editorial has good points, there is also an argument to be made for a variety of legitimate ways to use the library. The tricky part is getting all of those different ways to use the library working in harmony with each other. It’s a continuing challenge. Please help by continuing with your feedback, and by working in Atkins!

Thanksgiving is over, but it's never too late to be Thankful

2010-11-29T04:17:00.000-08:00

The Chronicle of Higher Ed's Thomas Benton has a column out listing the things he's grateful for in academe. Libraries made the list, (I want to say, "of course"), and he's worth quoting in full, here:

Libraries and librarians: Our colleagues who are information professionals provide us with the scholarly resources we need for our research and teaching, and they do so with minimal recognition and considerable pressure to adapt to rapidly changing technologies. While the Internet has been a boon to scholarly research, the physical library is—more than stadiums, more than student centers—the heart of the academic enterprise: It's a place for solitary reflection as well as serendipitous encounters in the context of intellectual seriousness. Nothing can replace libraries as places, even if they are no longer primarily based on the circulation of printed materials.

What are you thankful for on campus? Does the library make your list?

Thinking about how students do research

2010-11-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

bear with me now, I'm going to start ugly with a reference to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In it, the "Shadow Scholar," a.k.a. a writer for a custom-paper mill, details his process, and justifies at length his participation in students' elaborate (and expensive) schemes to get degrees (not just bachelor's degrees, but M.As, and even Ph.D.s) without doing the work.

His contempt for the education system as a whole is palpable. That's not why I'm referring to this article here. What struck me was his description of his "research" process:

"First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling.

I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way.

After I've gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I've refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I'll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph."

This sounds terribly familiar. I've been spending good chunks of this semester interviewing and observing students while they are doing their research, and the first stop for many is Google, the second stop, Wikipedia. When they tell me they go to Wikipedia, they also tell me, "just for a start," and "I know professors don't like it, but I just want to get a sense for what is out there." I suppose the technical term for what they are doing with Wikipedia is a browse, but they can also (and do also) browse on Google, and, for that matter, on the library's website.

Many of our student profess to never going into the library, either. Or at least, to never using the library's resources. "I can find everything I need online," is an oft-expressed sentiment. When I ask what "online" means (because there's an awful lot from Atkins available online these days), they clarify: "Google." They get to articles via Google, they find books on Google books, and they also find (and use) information in a variety of websites (mostly .edu or .org sites, because many were taught at one point that the URL suffix can be one hint as to a website's reliability).

Some, but not all, students realize that the articles they get to via Google are actually available because of the Atkins library (that is, we pay for access, so that you can get to them). Some, but not all students, realize that there are books in Atkins that could be helpful to them in the stacks. Some, but not all students, are aware that websites are not ideal sources for research papers.

When professors insist, students seek out books. When professors insist, students seek out peer-reviewed journal articles. In the absence of that insistence--and sometimes, even in the presence of that insistence--students do the work that is expedient. They find good-enough sources, and write good-enough papers.

When do students do better than "good enough?" When they are working for a class they love, especially one in their major. When they are the kind of student who will go onto graduate school, because they love the process of research. When they are returning students, who have a very clear idea why they are at a university, and so want to get the best out of their experiences there.

If students are in a required class, a class they perceive to be a hoop they need to jump through to get to the next thing they would like to do, then they will do "good enough" work.

And if they don't see the point in doing the work at all, or if they are completely overwhelmed and don't know where to begin to start the work themselves, they might turn to someone like the "Shadow Scholar."

Chief Cultural Officer--the utility of anthropology to corporations

2010-10-18T08:10:00.000-07:00

Universities are not Corporations (yet!), but do share aspects, in part because they are large organizations. This is an interview tidbit on why it's important for corporations to be aware of the importance of culture> I would argue that the same is largely true for Universities.

McCracken Interview

Ground Floor Reconfigure

2010-09-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've noticed something different about the Ground Floor--new cafe name, furniture rearranged, carrels moving out.

Now it's REALLY different. Check it out.

So, what will you do in this new space?
Will you do the same things?
Will you have to find another place to go?
Have you ever worked on the ground floor before? Do you think you will, now?

Google Instant and psychic searching

2010-09-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well the latest news about Google is that it's trying to predict what you are searching for instantly. The results come up as you are still typing what you are looking for. The early verdict is "clever, not psychic." I wonder if it will turn into a kind of game--what is Google thinking I'm searching for?--very like when people allow their phones to complete the words they are typing, even (and especially) when it's the wrong words.

The impulse to know more than users do about what users are searching for can get us into trouble. I'm not saying that users of library resources always know what is possible, when conducting a search. But it is possible for information specialists to go too far in assuming they think they know what people are looking for--or how they should be looking for it. Information scientists are trained to organize information, and to retrieve it from information systems, but are not always working with systems that are intuitive to users. Thinking that information science provides the best way to organize information can get in the way of library users finding the information they need--or even, perceiving the library as a good place they can go for resources. If the organizing structures of the information resources are too challenging, people can give up.

I wonder about Google Instant. Will people respond well to Google presuming that it can know so much from so little initial data? Will Google build in the right kind of flexibility. so that people can find what they are actually looking for, not just what Google thinks they are looking for?

For the holiday weekend, some fun for bibliophiles

2010-09-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Click here to watch the video

I am trying to figure out which child I can give this book to, but I think that the people in my life who would most love it are grown-ups who sometimes just want to sit down with a BOOK.

On metadata, Google, and why we still need librarians and libraries

2010-08-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education takes Google to elaborate task for its inadequate metadata.

What is metadata? It's a word that I was utterly unfamiliar with up until about 6 months ago. And my grasp of its meaning is still that of a non-expert. My definition of "metadata" is: the descriptive data attached to the electronic records of library materials, be they books, articles, or other documents/items, that allow for search engines to find those materials. (I am sure my colleagues here will correct me when I am wrong--or elaborate on that definition if they find it inadequate). In short, if there is bad or incomplete metadata, the best materials for the searching patron may never turn up, when they type in subject categories, author names, book titles, or publication dates.

Google's massive book-scanning project inspires a great many alarmist conversations among academics, and I have my own reservations about the Google-ization of academic publishing. But it seems clear to me that, if Google is going to do this, with the purpose of making nearly all of academic publications accessible and searchable, they should at least do it correctly. This article points to the errors already embedded in Google's metadata, and highlights the potential trouble for scholars if those errors are allowed to persist.

Do you expect to be able to find useful information when you Google things? How can you expect it, if there are such serious flaws in their methods? Perhaps this is a hint that Google is not actually the be-all end-all of academic search, but remains just a starting point.

Among the messages I take from the article today is the one that states: Google should be employing actual metadata experts in their books project. And also that, for now, the need for librarians and their expertise is not going away anytime soon.

They're not just for feedback (updated)

2010-08-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

The whiteboards in the library were never intended to primarily be vehicles for feedback (although they are occasionally used for that, and that's fine).
They are there, fundamentally, so that people can use them while they're studying in the library. They are on wheels so that you can move them to a space that works best for your group. We know that the whiteboards in the study rooms are tremendously useful to the study groups that use them, and when it's midterm or finals time, we want it to be possible for the entire library to be one huge study room.

So, not only are there these portable boards, but there is a new set of whiteboard surfaces along the wall of the Atkins ground floor, just outside of the cafe downstairs (used to be Ritazza, now it's Peet's).

Here's an example of what someone did with one of the whiteboards on the second floor.

And there are whiteboards on the ground floor now, and people are using them, too (thanks to Donna Gunter for this picture):

What else helps you study in the library? How are you using the spaces in Atkins?

A New Year, in the Fall (updated)

2010-08-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

I've been an academic for my entire adult life, and so New Year's for me falls in late August. It was fitting that the weather changed just enough today to make it feel like Fall was really just about here.

Today was the Atkins Library's Week of Welcome day, and we were out in force, giving students "smart pills" with our latest brochure, and connecting students to the resources they need to do their work here on campus. We also had up the ever-present easels, and people wrote on them.

We asked four questions. I'll post the first one now, and update as we get the pictures ready.

Where do you like to Read and Write ?

Question 2:
What do you think Librarians DO?

Question 3:
Who do you talk to about assignments?

Question 4: What do you need from the library? We got two sets of responses, because we erased the full board and started over about halfway through our WoW session.

What are your answers to these questions? Are they different than the ones above? Answer in the comments!

Library Ethnography at the American Library Association meetings (ALAs)

2010-06-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle of Higher education had this article on ethnographic research in libraries. One interesting side-effect of this article is the comments that follow--seems some people don't see ethnography in libraries as "scholarly research." Well, that's arguable. I'm biased, of course, but I think that any ethnographic endeavor is about increasing understanding. And if we engage in ethnography to influence library policy (as we are doing here at Atkins), we are using that increase in understanding to make policy better fit with the needs of our patrons. I think that's also legitimately "scholarly."

Suggesting that applied work like ethnography done in libraries, or in military situations, or in corporations, cannot possibly be "scholarly" is defining away a big chunk of anthropological research, for what I think are largely political reasons, having nothing to do with scholarly integrity.

Anyway.
Any of my colleagues actually attend the session on ethnography? Alas, I was unable to be in DC for the ALA festivities.

Concerns of Students: the example of one anthropology class at University of California, Riverside

2010-06-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

This video was created by an Intro to Anthro class at UC Riverside this past Spring.

Some feedback about the library

2010-05-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

The whiteboards that we put up for students to use while studying for finals are also being used as feedback boards, which is great.

This one is currently on the Third Floor (click on images to enlarge):

A zoom on the important part, as far as we are concerned:

Sorry for parking services, but glad that you all are loving the library. Keep the feedback coming, the good, bad, and ugly.

Special Collections and Access to Library Materials

2010-05-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

I think a lot about how libraries are perceived these days. I have met students who see libraries as wonderful welcoming places, and others who find libraries intimidating and institutional. It's not just students who feel that way about libraries--a scholar and librarian writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that he, had an encounter with a special collections librarian that made him feel unwelcome. I should say here, I'm pretty unsympathetic to his dilemma, descending as he did on a private library of unique items, and expecting to be able to page through the books right off. However, I think it's interesting fodder for conversation.

In fact, I think the most interesting part of that column is the comments section--it contains a lively discussion about what librarians and patrons want from Special Collections. I think that many of the same points can be made about libraries generally. It can frequently be difficult to balance what patrons desire with what is necessary to keep the library functioning well, and to provide access to information.

So, how do you feel about libraries? How do you feel about Atkins in particular? Now that people are using the library 24/7, it seems busier than ever. I think at least some of you are here because you like it.

Or am I wrong?

Vending Machines!

2010-04-29T13:48:00.001-07:00

Well if you're going to be here 24/7, you might as well have snax.

A Safe Library

2010-04-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Now that the tower has wireless access, there is a lot more opportunity for students to work up there. The prospect of more people working in the tower, plus the 24 hour library during the month leading up to finals, has led to some people wondering about the ways that the library is trying to keep people safe.

So I asked around, and learned several useful things from our security chief.

First, security patrols the entire building every hour, but not necessarily at the same time each hour, because they don’t want to establish a pattern. When it’s after dark, and they find people by themselves in the tower, they usually add one round on that floor to the usual sweep, to check on that person. Sometimes, they let the person know that they are alone on that floor, in case they want to move.

There is an emergency button near the elevators on floors 5-8, that can be pressed if there is a need for police/security. Even if a person does not talk, it’s registered that the button has been pushed, and security has to tell the police not to come, if they find out it’s a false alarm. Otherwise, the campus police come automatically.
There are emergency buttons in each elevator, as well. They look like this:

Our security chief said, too, that this is a very safe library—since the 24 hours experiment has started, there have been no incidents.

Is this your experience of the library? Did you know about the emergency buttons?

If your experience is different, please let us know. Problems unidentified are problems that don't get fixed.

POWER IN THE TOWER

2010-04-26T14:36:00.001-07:00

I have been informed by reliable sources that we now have wireless internet throughout the entire library building, bottom to top, lobby to tower.

So, NOW where are you going to do your work?

Tell me!

Weekend Pop Culture Library References

2010-04-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Well I work in a library now, so I can't help but notice references to librarians, libraries, etc in my everyday life.

NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell me had not one but two library-based riffs this weekend:

a question about really old library fines,
and
in their Limerick Quiz (second question):

And Doonesbury features an archivist and an important primary source.

Passive Aggressive Library Signs

2010-04-19T10:45:00.001-07:00

a colleague shared this with me:

Passive Aggressive Library Signs

I wonder which ones you wish were at Atkins...

Wordle, Reference Desk Help

2010-04-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

A representation of what you all asked for from our reference librarians, in the space of one week in March. (with the help of www.wordle.net).
Anything look familiar?

And here's a wordle that includes what the reference librarians did, not just what they were asked:

How not to be in the Library

2010-04-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

A co-worker shared this link with me. I'm sure many of you can relate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHqdz-g8tQk

A Quiet Zone Experiment

2010-04-07T09:41:00.000-07:00

On the Third Floor of Atkins, which is now a Quiet Zone, you can now find some of these:

Both skeptics and supporters of self-policing in the library will soon have information about whether it's a feasible way to try to keep Quiet in the QZ.
Skeptics seem to be of the mind that 1) UNCC students are incapable of policing themselves, and 2) that it's somehow the job of library staff to make sure people keep quiet all the time, in all areas of the library. These cell citation pads are scattered in the Third Floor Quiet Zone as a way of giving license to self-police. And maybe, to add a little humor to the stress of trying to find a place to study in the run-up to final exams and research papers.

So, let me know if you use one. Or if you receive one.

24/5, so it begins!

2010-04-05T18:15:00.000-07:00

Well this is what many of you begged and pleaded for. It's happening-- a 24 hour library. It will be 5 days/week up until reading day, and then 24/7 for the rest of Finals.

So, what are you doing in the 24 hour library?
Group study?
Paper writing?

What are the advantages to you?
What problems are you encountering?
Etc.

Please, do tell.

Macs! And other Computer things

2010-03-29T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, we're working on adding about 35 more computers to the total in Atkins Library--10 of them will be Macs.

We are limited, right now, in where to put them, because of the limits on where ethernet connections are.

But, working within those limits, we might have some flexibility. Here is where we could use a little more information.

What kind of furniture do you like best, when you have to sit and work on a desktop computer? And be specific about what kind of work you are doing when you are at the desktop. Do you like the big tables? The carrels? The circle-pod thingys on the first floor? What about the furniture makes your work easier or harder to do?

Are you doing work in groups? How does your group use the desktop?

And if you have a laptop, what kind of furniture makes it easier to do the kind of work you need to do for your classes?

Struggle for Quiet in the Library

2010-03-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

Not everyone in Atkins expects absolute silence. Some of you are actively searching for spaces that are "just noisy enough" to allow you to focus. Spaces that are too quiet freak some people out, and don't allow them to concentrate.

Then there are those of you who want quiet quiet quiet. And when people are talking on their cell phones, or to each other, you get frustrated and move in search of new, genuinely quiet spaces.

Some of you want people who are noisy in the library to be "punished" somehow. I am struggling to figure out what that would even look like, in a context where we are all over the age of 18 and so, nominally, all grown-ups here.

When you encounter unwanted noise, is it in the "official" Quiet Zones? Does asking people to be quiet ever work? If you are trying to do quiet work on the first or second floor, why is that?

I am not trying to blame the victim here, I'm trying to figure out where the balance lies among all of the different ways that people (legitimately) do work, are quiet, make noise.

Should we be encouraging more self-policing? More peer pressure to keep Quiet Areas quiet? Is the Struggle for Quiet as big a deal as the suggestion box entries imply, or is this a vocal minority?

Help me out, here.

Spring Break OVER

2010-03-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

...and so now what do you have to do?

Are you writing papers? Studying for another test? Are you applying for graduate schools, and preparing for GREs? Are you getting ready for the job market?

UNCC's Spring Break is scheduled to fall exactly in the middle of the semester (which is why, apparently, our break doesn't realiably synch up with any other schools, colleges or universities in the area). When I was teaching, this was the time of the semester when I would assign writing that would be due at the end of the semester. I figured that, even if I assigned it at the beginning, most students wouldn't work on it until after Spring Break. I wonder if I was correct.

What does your schedule look like from now until May? How are you going to fit it all in?

Spring Break Library

2010-03-09T05:53:00.000-08:00

UNCC has a lot of students who stick around for Spring Break. I saw many of them in the library yesterday. Lots of people doing work: paper writing, test prep, tutoring, collaborative study. A few relaxing, watching videos, checking out DVDs from the Green Box on the 2nd floor.

Why are you in the library over Spring Break? Is this a chance to get work done before everyone else comes back? Do you like the library better or worse with less people in it?

When do you learn how to use the Atkins Library?

2010-03-05T06:04:00.000-08:00

I have, at best, a hazy feel for how UNCC students come to Atkins. My impression is that many are brought to the library, both in real space and in cyber-space, by their professors.

But when was the first time, for you? Was it freshman-year composition class? Was it a liberal studies class? Did you hear about the library during new student (freshman or transfer) orientation?

And then, what did that first time look like? Was it the only time you were told about the library? Did/do you hear about the library and its resources from friends? Family? Co-workers? Who do you trust to steer you towards the resources you need to do what you need to do at UNCC.

These questions are assuming that you were, in fact, told about the library. Were you?

If you don't use the library, where do you get the information that you need to do your assignments, write papers, pass your classes?

Quiet, or not Quiet

2010-03-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

The Quiet/Not Quiet Troubles plague University libraries worldwide, I think. It is, at the very least, an intense problem locally, here at UNCC. It seems to me that there are legitimate work-based reasons why people want to be noisy (well, reasonably so) in the library. Think of: group work, studying in pairs. And there are time-honored and important reasons to need quiet in the library.

And so, we have group study rooms. Noise contained in a room, people outside the room are happy in their quiet. But, what about when those are full? What then?

Is the first floor really ever going to be a quiet space? Is it reasonable to expect it to be? Should we continue to spit in the wind, putting furniture on the first floor, high-traffic areas, that signal "quiet study here?"

What if much of the first floor was an open space with places for both group and individual study, but with very little expectations that the space be "library quiet?"

Where, then, should the quiet spaces be?

What do you mean by 24/7?

2010-02-25T11:21:00.000-08:00

I'll start by talking to myself.

If you saw any of the easels in the 1st floor of Atkins in the last little while, you surely noticed (perhaps you even wrote) endless repetitions of "27/7!"

So, OK, we're working on that. We know you want it.

But I'd like to know more. Why are you in the library at 2AM? What kind of work are you doing in the middle of the night? What about the library makes it a good space for that?

Please do not think these are judgemental questions--just because I personally am incapable of pulling an all-nighter doesn't mean that people don't have good, solid reasons for doing so. I know people work all night long.

We need to know, why the library? What does it have (or not have) that other places don't (or do)? Where do you work when you can't go to the library? What does that feel like/look like? Does it depend on the kind of work? Are you coming alone? In groups? Is it only during finals week? All semester?

You see, how just reading words on an easel can only get us so far? Please enlighten me, in the comments.

So, here we are

2010-02-25T08:51:00.000-08:00

The easels are down, and I'm trying this instead. As the Anthropologist in the Atkins Library, my job is to find out what the UNCC community is doing, in going about getting their work done here at the university. In particular, I'd like to know what works and doesn't work for them here at the library.

We've had easels up around the first floor for the last several weeks, and I think we've reached the point of diminishing returns, where we are hearing the same suggestions over and over. Not that the suggestions are not good, but we've heard them now, and need to think about ways to act on the appropriate ones.

In the meantime, I need more feedback. And I'd like to be able to push back, and respond to some of the feedback you give us. One of the suggestions was that we have a blog, rather than easels or suggestion boxes. So here we are.