In January I reported in this blog how an alumnus was interested in finding his college chemistry textbook that he used in the 195os at the Newark College of Engineering (forerunner to NJIT). Using a little detective work, I was able to find it for him in the stacks. Some weeks ago we received a shipment of several boxes of books donated by a retired professor of Biomedical Engineering. We catalog books that are appropriate and give to students duplicates or outdated materials. In one of the boxes I found:On July 26th I wrote a blog entry titled Administrative Glut about an article in the Education Life section of the New York Times. It was a preview of this book:
Dreifus, Claudia, and Andrew Hacker. Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids, and What We Can Do About It. New York: Times Books, 2010.
About a day later Claudia Dreifus commented on my entry. I even made friends with her on Facebook. Since I work for a university, I just had to buy the book. I wasn’t going to wait to get it from a library. :) It is not my objective to provide a thorough book review. One such review may be found at http://tinyurl.com/25vfj6s
I always use a personal approach in my journal entries. ( I really don’t like the term blog)
All universities including NJIT have characteristics of a business. They make money from tuition dollars, the government, and grants. They obvious spend money and owe it to students to do it responsibly. I am going to think in terms of a cost benefit relationship.
NJIT was not at all mentioned in this book. Our university has an office of communications that provides information to the public of the positive attributes of NJIT. None of their efforts reached Dreifus or Hacker. We are just not a household name. But on the other hand on page 105 the authors cited a few engineering schools for abysmal teaching:
I highly suggest that a sign be placed directing students to the Circulation Desk. The clerk can refer a real reference question to a librarian who is in his/her office during the reference shift.
I actually heard that at Rider University there is a plate at the reference desk with the name and phone extesnion of the librarian on duty.
Reference librarians can be more productive working in their offices and coming out when their is a quesion that requires a professional to answer it.
I received an e-mail yesterday from Flora Grabowska saying that she is leaving her position as Science Librarian with Vassar College to relocate to Fairbanks, Alaska to become librarian at the Keith B. Mather Library at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska. I become acquainted with Flora through the METRO Science Librarians SIG. She was certainly an asset to this group.Registration is $69 for one person and $99 for a group at one terminal. It would seem to be a "no brainer" to have several people come to one site and attend the conference. I posted on the VALE listserv that I am willing to host this at NJIT. This was the people could split the cost.
I haven't heard from anyone after about 4 hours, but I will give it some time. If anyone is interested they may contact me at Bruce.Slutsky@njit.edu .
Some of the points that were made during the talk:
--The IDEO method of design thinking in five steps
--The user experience can be improved through a design process.
--We can design a future-proof library by using a design thinking approach to make it happen.
Don't hesitate to contact me.
“Innovation is in our DNA and has resulted in new ways to present content, to find or deliver content”
The second speaker was Allan Barnett of the Institute of Physics Publishing. He stated:
IOP Currently publish 65 journals, over half with partnerships of other learned society publishers
It provides 14,000 peer reviewed articles per annum; Includes Turpion and AAS.
In 2009, over 15% of our journals with Impact Factor over 5, and 20% over 3.
Majority of our titles, offer free access to all new content for 30 days from online publication.
Physicsweb.org and Nanotechweb.org are two specialist portals that it provides.
Some of its innovations were being:
First STM publisher to provide all its content online; now with comprehensive journal archive;
First STM publisher to provide z39.50 compliance;
First STM publisher to offer forward citing;
It has 350,000 articles and over 550,000 preprint articles.
Performance Indicators 1995-2009
We all have our comfort zones as we search databases. We are familiar with the basic commands and operations, but are reluctant to explore more advanced features. I have used Science Direct at the NJIT library for many years. Today I met with the Product Manager and Human Factors Engineer from Elsevier to discuss new enhancements for Science Direct.
I explained that I rarely used that database for subject searching. If the Serials Solutions Database provided by the NJIT Library says that we have an Elsevier journal, it will direct the user to the exact article within Science Direct. I pointed out that I use Scopus for subject searching. There is a link within the Scopus bibliographic record that points the user to the full-text which would be in Science Direct if the journal is published by Elsevier.
Today, I was able to familiarize myself with these special features of Science Direct:
It was a very fruitful discussion since I can now teach these features to my patrons.
The difficulty in arranging focus groups is that students are very reluctant to come even when offered compensation and a free lunch. We are asking them to give up an hour of their time. Perhaps they feel that what they say would not change a situation. We can also attribute this to apathy. Even a successful focus group only has about 10 participants. Such a small sample can never give representative feedback. I feel that a focus group works best when evaluating a product rather than a service.
A user survey is not perfect, but it at least reaches more people. It should be designed to take no longer than 10 minutes to complete. It should be more than just multiple choice questions and allow users to make comments. As an inducement to participate, an award (gift certificate to the bookstore) should be offered to one person in a lottery.
What service does the library provide which is not available anywhere else on campus?
During exam periods, it is almost impossible to get one. How can the Robert Van Houten Library provide more group study rooms to attract more people to the library?
Bound periodicals which take up most of the space on the second and third floors are now used minimally. I would love to see most of the bound periodicals consolidated so that the entire third floor can be devoted to those rooms of various sizes. I would insist that the bound periodicals be placed in a storage area that is readily accessible for users.
Problem - Design innovations cost money which is very scarce these days.
When I first came to NJIT Joel Bloom told us "We are as good as our weakest point." For all these years lack of funding has thwarted much of the strategic planning in the library.
Just my thoughts on a Friday afternoon.
