It is disconcerting to find that information changes almost instantly on both phone and pad. It should be doing that on the laptop, too, but XP can’t handle the new features.

So, now the question is: do I even need a laptop any more? Almost all my stuff is in the cloud on Dropbox, Flickr, Shutterfly, Google Docs, and now iCloud.
Even Overdrive, from whom Sacramento Public Library gets most of its digital collection, now has apps, and very few of its downloadable items need to go through the desktop Media Manager any more.

If I do decide to forego the laptop, I’ll need to upgrade my printer to one that can print directly from the iPad and iPhone. Right now, it needs a helper application to be running on the laptop to handle those wireless jobs. Sigh.

A factor not covered during the class is that Central is the back-up for the other 27 branches in the county and for other partner libraries in other counties. Factoring this in would definitely affect what we keep and what we lose from the reference collection.

Now I need to summarize my thoughts and insights and share with the branch manager and reference staff. I got the clear impression that the instructor’s agenda was to let most of the reference collection circulate and keep only a small (20 titles) core collections in reference. I certainly agree that we have much in the reference collection that could circulate, and we have more that is old and should be withdrawn. Our public, like the constituents of other libraries, is finding more info online – indeed, many governmental organizations are ONLY publishing online now, so there is nothing to shelve. In order for us to remain relevant, we need to spend our very limited resources on materials and services that are useful to our public TODAY, and not try to maintain a library that supports the nostalgia of staff.

Currently, those needs include assistance and skills related to self-help legal issues and finding jobs, including getting an email address, becoming conversant with Microsoft Excel, finding and filling out employment applications, and creating and filing resumes. Oh, and faxing service! (Who the heck still wants materials faxed?) In my experience, those who are seeking that kind of help have not been regular library users, and so they also need a refresher about library cards. A typical exchange:
“Yeah, I need to go on your Internet?”
“Our public computers are on the 3rd floor. You will need a library card to log on. Do you have a Sacramento library card?”
“Um, I think I used to have one a long time ago. Can you look me up?”
“Sure thing! Let me see your photo ID. … Hmmm … I guess it has been a while! Are you still living at …”

And once the library card issue is fixed, off they go to the 3rd floor, where staff now learns they are “computer-illiterate”, have no email account, and will need a lot of coaching to be successful at the particular online task they’re working on today. Add to that the certainty that they will probably not be able to accomplish it all within the time slot, and that they are completely unprepared to save their work on a flash drive so it doesn’t get wiped when the computer refreshes for the next user. Multiply this by about 5 people per hour times 8 hours per day … and it’s easy to see how someone could infer that libraries are now learning centers for the “computer-illiterate.”

The funny thing is that libraries have always seen themselves as learning centers – albeit for self-directed learning, not for technology classes. Library staff has become the tech guide for a whole class of people that used to be confident and capable, and now feel hopelessly out of their depth and behind the times. What’s changed is what people are coming in to learn. And it’s not available in the reference collection.

There are still students working on assignments, but there are also many authoritative reference resources online that are more up-to-date than our dusty reference tomes. Students can use these resources from home and school, those without a computer or internet connection can use the library’s equipment and wifi. And so, I can no longer justify spending unholy amounts of money on print resources that will be outdated next year and need to be replaced for an additional unholy sum.

A colleague and I are going through my library’s reference collection this summer, removing the deadwood and making recommendations for what to let go and what to replace. I’m hoping that the class we’re taking will reinforce our mandate to provide the resources our community needs, instead of preserving the outdated tools of the past.

Looking at all the old, one-of-a-kind books I am removing from our collection, I feel a nostalgia for the sweat equity I put into learning about print sources: the hours spent examining indexes, introductions, scope notes, imprints, editions. The getting-to-know-you feeling that comes from that initial “handshake” with a book. In another time, these tomes were useful and used. Today, the bindings are worn, the print is faded, the knowledge contained inside updated in other sources. They are superseded. I’m weeding them. The shelves look empty, but I feel good that the books that are left will be used more, now that the outdated volumes are gone.Books like those I’m weeding have a place – just not in this public library.

Research libraries still exist on college campuses and as private institutions. I use them myself, and am grateful for the librarians that had the foresight to know which books would have lasting value for researchers. Those old books will always have a place to call home, complete with book sofa, like this 1867 document in the New Orleans Historical Collections.

So I decided to use the time to become familiar with the names, events, and political background of the Riot. The Library staff were very helpful, and brought me three books that were, in themselves, quite interesting.  The first was a “slim” 596-page volume, the “Report of the Select Committee on the New Orleans Riots”, published by the Government Printing Office in 1867. It is a verbatim transcript of the hearings, testimony and interviews with most of the people involved.  The second was Caryn Cosse Bell’s meticulously researched “Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718-1868 (Louisiana State University Press, 1997.)  And the third was Gilles Vandal’s doctoral dissertation, “The New Orleans Riot of 1866: the Anatomy of a Tragedy (1978).

By scanning the references in the dissertation, I found a handful of newspapers of the time, which, upon querying the reference staff, led to the discovery of a union list: “Louisiana Newspapers, 1794-1961″ (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1965.) This volume listed many dozens of newspapers published in New Orleans during the time.  Which led me to wonder how, when today, cities are struggling to maintain 1 or 2 newspapers, the City of New Orleans was able to support so many different newspapers.

Although I didn’t meet my objective, the exercise allowed me to visit two libraries in New Orleans that I would probably not have ventured into otherwise, given the rich offerings of the ALA conference and the need to walk about in the heat and humidity that is the norm in New Orleans during this time of year.  I also have some starting points for further research.

E-books are hot at ALA this year, too, and one of the most eye-popping sessions was “The future is now: e-books and their increasing impact on library services.”  It looks like there are two movements converging: libraries buying and circulating e-book readers, and the provision of DRM-free e-books that can be read on many devices.

Jamie LaRue contends that “the bullet has gone into the brain of established publishers; we’re just waiting for the body to fall.” This is based on stats he presented showing that established publishers are producing only 7% of published e-books now. With the proliferation of self-publishing venues like Smashwords, it’s easy to get your e-books into the hands of buyers without going the agent/publishing house route. He suggested that one scenario has libraries buying the entire output of an e-publisher, and just deleting the titles we don’t want to keep.

Chris Harris gave a brief overview of the available e-readers, and then Brewster Kahle and Peter Brantley talked about Open Library, which buys e-books (rather than licensing them) and makes them available for loan to the public through participating libraries.

California libraries will soon be participating in Open Library through the advocacy of the California State Library. This will probably put a lot of pressure on publishers and other e-book vendors, and ultimately make the experience easier and more intuitive for patrons who are all thumbs.

Library Ideas, LLC seems to be taking this arena seriously. Freegal is their music download service, and they are just launching a new product: Freading, which will make e-books available the same way its music is: unlimited simultaneous downloads of both new and older titles, but with the DRM that manages the check-out period.

My perfect e-book experience: the titles are discoverable either from within the e-reader or the library’s catalog; they are always available (no hold queue); downloading is simple and can be done from any device; the checkout terms  are clear, and the title can be transferred to multiple devices during the lending period. If I don’t like it, or if I finish it early, I can return it any time during the lending period.

I do not own a dedicated e-reader; I do, however, read e-books on my iPhone during my morning and evening bus commute, and on the iPad while reclining in the La-Z-Boy. I have Nook, Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, Bluefire, FreeBooks, and OverDrive apps installed on both. I don’t like to buy books, because I rarely read them more than once, so if publishers, vendors, and libraries can get it together to create a model that works as well as lending print copies, I will be in e-book heaven!

However, family history research is notoriously full of plot twists and brick walls. So far, there is no mention of him at all in the card index to New Orleans newspapers, nor in the city directories for 1867-68. NOPL subscribes to NewsBank’s historical Times-Picayune, and again it was a dead-end.

So tomorrow I’m going to visit the New Orleans Historical Collections in the French Quarter to see if there might be something there that would provide additional information about this elusive ancestor.  Wish me luck!

It was a panel “conversation” among librarians from a public library, middle school library, and others about using audiobooks to engage students and their families.  Major points included the benefits to ESL students of hearing spoken English outside a classroom context, providing cultural enrichment through use of narrators with appropriate accents, providing “personal shopping” services by matching the length of audiobook selections to the length of a car journey, and showing kids it’s OK to do other things while “reading with their ears”: drawing, playing computer games, watching the Windows Media Player visualizations, jogging, etc.

But the MOST interesting fact to come from this session is a program called Sync, in which a classic YA title is paired with a contemporary title, and both are able to be downloaded as MP3 files free AND free of DRM from OverDrive for one week.  You get to keep the books forever and put them on any listening device. A couple of pairings, for example, include Shiver / Romeo & Juliet, and Immortal / Wuthering Heights. Sync also offers text alerts when new free audio books are available.

All the panelists were on the original Odyssey award committee, and all review audiobooks for Booklist. Mary Burkey provided a link to her blog, Audiobooker,

For a mere ten bucks, I signed on to partipate in ALA’s Libraries Build Communities work day. Due to an e-mail mixup, I missed the opportunity to select my project, so I was assigned to the St. Bernard Project. This is a nonprofit group working to help those still displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed or damaged 100% of the homes in this parish.

Eighteen librarians were bused to two houses (nine on each team), and we worked for 6 hours removing debris from inside the house, mowing down the weeds in front, removing the brushy jungle that had grown up in the back, and painting the street side of the house.

Just as we were wrapping up, Kevin, the owner, stopped by with his son to thank us for helping to take his house one step closer to rehabilitation.  They’ve been living in their truck for the past 6 years, unable to afford the repairs necessary to make the house habitable again.

Although the weather was hot, we had plenty of water, and a nice breeze for most of the day. Altogether, a satisfying way to give a homeowner a leg up, and great advertising for the library!

The reason I feel privileged is that, in addition to all the library stuff I’ll get to see-do-learn, I can spend a couple of days after the conference trying to find more information about my mom’s great-grandfather, Noel Crosswell, who lived in New Orleans for a few years in the 1860s and allegedly was recognized by that city for services performed during a yellow fever epidemic. If I can corroberate the story, I’ll be very pleased!