eReaders: Practical Help via InfoPeople

One week into InfoPeople’s online course, “eReaders: Practical Help For Patrons,” I’m seeing a pattern: high patron interest in ebooks, high patron frustration with the processes and their devices, high awareness by library staff that we should be able to offer patrons more help, and high frustration on the part of staff with their unfamiliarity with the growing number of different e-reading devices.

In fact, that pattern mimics what’s going on at my library. We’ve coped by hiring Library Technical Assistants whose main job is helping patrons with the online public computers, and helping with other technical issues – like e-reader help.

I’ve already gained two very important pieces of information: a picture-chart of all the available e-readers, and a tip that the user manuals for most e-readers are findable online. If the next three weeks continue as the first has begun, this will be a very worthwhile course.

Flipped!

I’ve been seeing more than a few articles about the new teaching phenom: flipped classrooms. Simply put, “flipping” reverses the traditional teach-in-school, practice-at-home teaching model. Students instead watch instructional screencasts or videos of the lecture before class as “homework”, and receive guided and targeted discussion and practice with the instructor in the classroom.

There is some evidence that flipping is effective in engaging students, in improving grades, and even drop-out rates. My own anecdotal evidence from my first semester as an instructor is that when my lecture notes went up in advance of the class, discussions in class were more productive, and students remembered the lesson well in subsequent class sessions.

Applying this to the library setting, there are all kinds of possibilities. If I required – okay – encouraged – groups to visit the library’s web site in advance of a presentation or program, and gave them certain things to look for, would that increase the effectiveness of the actual presentation? Would that increase traffic on the web site or in-person visits?

For school classes, if I give the instructor a video to show the class before their visit – say, a tour of the library building and introduction to key staff, or a preview of materials they will use for research – would that make the blur of a 5-floor building tour more memorable? Help to focus rambunctious students during a short visit? Gotta try it out!

Tax Season Is Upon Us

It’s an annual rite of the new year. Because of our centralized phone service, all calls for information about AARP’s and VITA/TCE’s free tax prep help at our branches and also for tax forms and booklets, come in to one desk. To serve our callers, I poll all 28 branches about the status of help and forms availability. I place a chart  at each phone workstation and post a copy on our Intranet so it’s also available for our branches. And then we brace for the calls.

Based on 20 years’ experience, at least 50% of the calls we get between now and April 15 will be about forms, booklets or tax help. As it gets closer to the tax deadline and help timeslots fill up and tax booklets run out, the calls will be more urgent and desperate. It makes me feel desperate, too, knowing there will never be enough help to fill the need. The people who call are often those who are elderly and do not have enough computer knowledge to e-file their own returns.

What’s the answer? I don’t know. The IRS is no longer mailing booklets directly to taxpayers. More libraries are declining to carry the forms and booklets, and instead show people how to visit the IRS and Franchise Tax Board web sites to find and print the forms they need. Fewer volunteer tax preparers are willing to set up shop in the library meeting rooms, making it even harder for seniors to get help. E-filing is easier, but some people are unable to complete their returns within the 1-hour time slots available on our public computers.

Any chance we could skip taxes altogether this year? Thought not.

3M Cloud Discovery Station at SacLib

There was a small launch ceremony complete with ribbon-cutting, demo on the discovery station and an iPad by the 3M rep, and SacLib staff standing by to assist patrons with getting the app and downloading their first 3M Cloud titles. One of the attendees won the drawing for a Nook HD –  grin as wide as a mile.

I remember visiting the 3M booth at ALA in New Orleans two summers ago when the company was just about to launch its cloud e-book service, and thinking that 3M had taken every torturous procedure of OverDrive and made them simple. Certainly, our patrons thought so today, as they downloaded the app voluntarily during the demo and proceeded to borrow e-books at once.

I have to say I’m a fan of this new e-book platform. Library patrons can read on their phones, e-readers (except Kindles) and tablets (including Kindle Fire), and there’s even an option to read books on their PCs. It’s plain which titles are available now for checkout because of the big green Check Out button, and returning e-books early is a simple click of red Return button. Titles sync among all of a patron’s devices. Audiobooks are  apparently in the works as a future enhancement. But most importantly, 3M has an agreement with the publishers who pulled their titles from OverDrive, and those popular works are again available through 3M in digital format. Win-win, for sure!

Three Quarters Through the Semester

Challenge #1: The textbook from 2009 stresses as important standard works reference titles no local libraries can afford to buy. Oh, we used to have them a few years ago, but tight times forced us to make hard decisions. In many cases, libraries have either dropped the subscription, substituted an e-resource, or allowed old editions to remain on the shelves.

Challenge #2: Since 2009, people’s information seeking habits have changed drastically. Mobile devices have proliferated, allowing people to be online on demand. Many questions that would have been brought to the reference desk are being self-answered by searching online  instead. The kinds of questions that are now being brought to the reference desk are tech questions about e-book downloads, music downloads, photo uploads, and how to establish a free e-mail account in order to fill out online job applications. Enquiring LIS students want to know: Will there be jobs for us after graduation?

Challenge #3: With all the changes that have occurred over the last 3 years, what will librarianship, and especially reference services, look like in the next 3 years? There’s no end of talk about embedding in community businesses and organizations, creating partnerships, outreach, social media and virtual reference. The general last-gasp consensus is that libraries will endure, and there will always be books of one sort or another, but that the services will be transformed. Libraries are now becoming “maker spaces” and providing a supermarket for non-traditional library services, such as passport application processing, self-publishing, continuing-ed centers with classes in Office software and job seeking skills.

Really? for this we need higher education? I feel like a buggy-whip manufacturer in the new age of gas-powered automobiles.

So why bother learning about reference interviews and how to “read” a book in 5 minutes in order to know its content and be able to show people how to use it?  Am I teaching a new generation of buggy whip makers? What skills should those entering the library field have?

I’m not the only one to be writing about this – we’re all going through an identity crisis right about now. The profession is changing, and traditional librarians are becoming obsolete. We need to stop tossing straws in the wind  and start asking people what they expect from the library. And then give it to them.

11/27: Michael Stephens carries this further in his article in Library Journal.

Teaching What I Know

I’m “stretching,” as they say in motivational presentations. I’m going “outside the box.” I’m teaching a weekly Reference Services class in the LIT department of my local community college without benefit of any experience in a formal academic setting.

Although I’ve taken many face-2-face and online courses, I’ve never thought much about the prep that has to go into presenting 54 class hours. I have an assigned textbook, and the learning outcomes are already established. My job is to divide the work into weekly segments, create and grade relevant assignments, upload additional supplemental readings, draft quizzes, arrange for guest lecturers and field trips, and do this while holding down my regular 40-hour/week job at the public library.

I’ve never thought about dividing up the work I do into discrete segments for students who will graduate with a Library Technician degree. It’s like trying to draft written instructions for getting dressed, or brushing your teeth. My work is something I do without thinking; creating sequential lessons for teaching the work I do is challenging.

I am looking forward to this new part of my life. Demand for library technicians is growing, as librarians pursue other aspects of service – particularly in public libraries. Here’s my chance to make sure my students have a realistic understanding of the profession, a marketable skill set and an awareness of all the different kinds of libraries they may choose to work in after graduation. Depending on funding, of course.

Hey, Teach!

When I was 15 and volunteering in the Central YMCA summer fun “Project” with Bill Suzuki, I decided I wanted to be a special ed teacher. The Project was probably grant-funded and was intended to mainstream students from the target school, Diamond Head School for the Deaf and the Blind, into regular YMCA activities. There were about 15 deaf and blind kids enrolled, many with other disabilities as well.  The work culture at the Y was inclusive and collegial, and I thrived that year as a volunteer, and returned for 5 more years as a paid Counselor.

Fast-forward 6 years to college graduation: no ed courses, no foundation on which I could base a career other than a Bachelor’s degree in German Language. I toyed with an Army career until my dad talked me into enrolling in library school. (How he knew there was such a school is still a mystery to me.)

Fast-forward again 40 years to 2012, and I am finally getting my opportunity to teach – though not special ed. I’ve got some excellent mentors who are providing me with good questions for my orientation, which happens next week. Stay Tuned!