So.  Our hospital system’s libraries provide a Table of Contents service.  I’m in charge of the ToC for Administrators, a monthly aggregation of the latest issues of journals relevant to administrators that we subscribe to the full text of.  As I’m sure many of you are aware, e-journals are not all on the same platform.  On my Admin ToC, there’s even a non-e-journal (I think they call them print?) that I have to post the .PDF copy of.  Here’s what the page looks like:

So you click on a title and you’re taken to the most current list of articles for that journal, maybe on the Ebsco platform, maybe on Ovid…maybe even on the Gale Health & Wellness Resource Center *shivers*.  All the full text is available to employees, but of course there a multiple clicks involved, and you have to save PDFs, and what if you just want a nice set of the articles you want to read later?  Our doc is a a tech-saavy guy, he knows how and that he could spend the time saving everything he wanted to read later, but what if he wants to just circle the ones he’s interested in, then pass it on to his assistant (or me) to nicely package everything together?

Can he do this:

+    —–> folder—–>assistant/me?

Does that make any sense?  Any help would be appreciated.  Oh, and the app?  Yeah, bonus if this is something my doc can do on his iPad.  I’ve had some thoughts/suggestions:

• Springpad (captures URLs, which don’t work because of authentication issues, but it does let you easily e-mail things to others, and you could always say “I want 1 & 2 from this one” instead of circling…)
• Instapaper (I don’t this would really work at all)
• Skitch (seems overly powerful for what we want to do, and isn’t an app)
• BO.LT (pretty cool tool for capturing and sharing webpages, but the authentication issues again come up…)

UPDATE: after looking at Jing, I’m thinking this tool might be my best bet…but it’s still not an app.  Is there anything like this available for iPads?   

Hacks, tricks, and all other alternate work-arounds are also welcomed!  This is something of a last ditch effort, and I thank all of my readers in advance. 

Because “getting to know you” is the point I’m at in my relationship with my collection.  I have 64 books so far, but who’s counting? (It’s for statistics, I swear!)  That’s a pretty small number.  These 64 books were the books ordered for me by the Libraries Director, but from here on out, everything ordered will be coming directly from me!  And so I have a pretty special opportunity to know what I have, I think.  I’ve always been in awe of the librarians who know their collections inside out.  How do they do it?  I’ve known people in big academic places who can find you anything in their physical collections (and who did a pretty damn good job online, too).  History of Medicine folk are the best.  It’s not that big a deal to pull out the Vesalius, everyone knows you have that, but when you nonchalantly point to an old dusty thing that contains the home remedies of a local woman from the eighteenth century, I’m impressed.  If you’re one of them, care to reveal your secrets?  I’m guessing it involves something like a lot of time, and a mind like a steel trap.  I’d like some shortcuts.

But back to my own opportunity: while the books are cataloged at the big hospital, I get to process them.  This involves a lot of fun stuff like putting call number stickers on the binding, placing card pockets (yep, still have those!), and the oh so fun stamping of a certain page with “Property of” to thwart the theft of our expensive titles:

And so I get to hold every book that will go on my shelves (once I get the shelves…) in my own hands.  I think that’s kind of nice.  Maybe next I’ll ask them out to dinner.  But that’s probably as far as I’ll go.  I don’t want Rex to get too worked up.

“Professor Henry Higgins: Marry Freddy! What an infantile idea, what a heartless, wicked, brainless thing to do. She’ll regret it. She’ll regret it! It’s doomed before they even take the vow.”  (this closing quote worked a lot better before I remembered that whomever played Freddy did not sing Getting to Know You, but maybe there is a strange resemblance between him and Julie Andrews?)

One last pic: isn’t my little collection cute?  I love them all equally.  But the Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary most equally of all.

But I have my own bone to pick with ebooks.  You see, I blame them for the current state of my little library.

Do you see any bookshelves?  Me, neither.  There’s actually a lack of furniture in general.  And you know why?  Because the vendor that outfits the libraries in our system has gone bankrupt.  Lack of demand.  Before you feel too sorry for me, I should reveal that supposedly they will be able to finish our (custom) project, but there’s a delay while they figure out the paperwork and get the bank to release the money to pay the installers.  But just in case, I’m taking suggestions.  A fireplace was brought up by one intrepid patron who stopped by (today was opening day!).

But in all seriousness, this does seem to be one little sign of the times.  And one I hadn’t really thought of, higher up in the food chain.  And not a bookseller.  But what interests me more is what this means for the hospital library space.  I’m all for the embedded librarian and I’m not particularly attached to any ideas of what a physical space should be, but I also think that the “library as place” concept has some worth.  It’s not a waiting room.  It’s not the computer kiosk in the hall environmental services has to stand up to check their e-mail.  It’s a little bit of an escape, and a headquarters for providing services, even when I’m out and about.  And so it becomes something of a physical representation of those services.  I’d like to think I could do my job without it, but I’m really glad I have it, and that the plans for it include a “professional corner” as well as a separate area that’s a little warmer and more inviting.  It kind of embodies me. 

But first that furniture has  get here.  I’d be cool with a fireplace, though.

And to be completely fair, I should probably blame e-journals more than e-books.  Let’s have a moment of silence for the binderies.

• This is my first “real” job.
• I will be the first person working in this brand new library in a brand new hospital.
• However, I will not be completely (forever) alone; I have an amazing group of fellow librarians elsewhere in the system to support me even as I am “solo” within my locale.
• I am a hospital librarian.

I just want to focus on the first and fourth bullets for a second.  Because I want to come back to this post in a year and see how it’s going.  But as it stands right now, I’ve realized that this is what I’ve been working towards for the last 5-6 years and I’ve “done it”.  Maybe it’s weird to aspire to a job that put me in so much debt and doesn’t pay *that* much. but I put blood, sweat, and tears (lots and lots of tears) into this, and in the end, I’m pretty sure I’ve discovered that it’s worth it. I guess maybe i shouldn’t say that yet, since I haven’t actually had even a day in my space, but I do know that I have no regrets. And that was the most terrifying thing, through the grief that kept me from making friends through much of library school and then the years apart from people I love, that it might not be worth it. And I knew I wouldn’t know until I reached a certain point. That point is right now.  I think i did a pretty good job of living life, and if it really hadn’t been worth it and I had left the field, I would have been able to move on because I do have amazing friends and family who inspire and motivate me, and things I love doing outside of my career. But it is a an amazingly good feeling to be here and say I’m pretty damn happy to be a hospital librarian.  It feels right, you know?

And so tomorrow I will see if I have any furniture and start to document the life of a new medlib in a new library.  Things of more substance than the above personal “yes!” moment, like how much free stuff you can get from NIH.  And how to build a collection from nothing.  And thoughts on going to non-librarian professional conferences.  And how an iPad can be incorporated into a medlib’s daily routine…Okay, you might have to wait a few paychecks for that last one, but it’s coming.    And I’d love to have you along for the ride!

But I’m a tease.  I’m exhausted, I’ve only had the first of many days of new job orientation and don’t really know what I’ll be doing, and I just moved to a new city without my husband or cats where I’m renting a room that I have to access by ladder (okay, it’s actually really cool).  So this post is not much more than a promise to myself and to you to make this space into something more than it has been, and in the very near future.  Stay tuned for actual medical librarian content!

I can’t just leave it at that, though…So I’ll share my new organization’s values.  Because the people I met today have created a place that really embodies them, a place where I’m more than a little excited to be working.  Without further ado:

• I believe every patient deserves the best care.
• I believe in responsibly managing resources.
• I believe in accountability, teamwork, and respect.

The first person was suggested at orientation, so that we all (from the very first day) understand that we are each responsible for making sure the values are upheld.  And yeah, that’s something I can definitely believe in.  And they are obviously applicable to my new role!  How do you feel about your institution’s values?

So, over the past 6 months, a few things have changed.  I graduated, so I am now able to “officially” call myself a librarian.  Unless you have to actually work as a librarian to call yourself one…I have my MLIS, and I am currently working as a Content Indexer.  Basically, I help maintain the content on MSN Shopping.  I’m quite happy to have a job, and I’m enjoying the fact that I don’t have homework anymore.  I’m living in a new house with a slightly different set of roommates, and my fiance and I have set a date for our wedding (but it’s not until 2009).  That’s the news.  I’m kind of busy enjoying my life, and I don’t have the fresh ideas popping up from class discussions anymore (for now…).  So I’m going to put this blog more or less on hold.  If I have a mind-blowing idea that I want to be able to reference in the future, I’ll put it up here, but maybe don’t hold your breath.    I may start a new, more personal blog, but that will remain to be seen.

 So, for my final entry for the time being, I’m going to post an idea that’s perhaps not outstandingly original, but it has been floating on a sticky on my desktop for some time. 

 Most libraries have regularly scheduled staff meetings, correct?  I’ve sat in a few of these at a couple of libraries as a student staff member.  Changes in policy, library events, and similar topics seem like pretty standard meeting fare.  I’d like to see some time in these meetings where frontline staff (basically, ANYONE who EVER could have contact with library users) take a few minutes to share an interesting comment/reference question/feedback/suggestion that he/she responded to (along with the response) since the last meeting.  Just to start a dialog and to help others respond to similar inquiries/comments in the future.  Kind of a living wiki.    And obviously, someone could keep track of all this info on an actual wiki.  But my thought is creating just a wiki isn’t useful if no one is using it.  And sometimes it’s hard to see the point of one.  Actually having a conversation may draw people in that wouldn’t normally.  And it’s a little more informal; you could use these dialogs to track patterns and look for new areas of service and policy, or it could simply be a time to learn from each other’s strategies and maybe even share a sense of solidarity at some of the things that can come up…

If you know of somewhere this or something similar is done (doesn’t have to be a library), please share! 

Moving along, I wish you all the best.  Thanks for reading!    If all goes according to plan, I’ll be back, and maybe I’ll have stories to share about actually implementing some of my scattered ideas.  In the meantime, you can find me at some of my online hangouts:

•  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ultimatelibrarian/ 
• http://del.icio.us/ultimatelibrarian/
• http://www.43things.com/person/ultimatelibrarian
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/ultimatelibrarian

До свидания, друзья!   

Do you use OCLC WorldCat? How? As an individual? As a library/institution?

Let me know, I’m interested.

iEdge 2007 is a good example.
The 3 themes of the conference are information is people, information is social, and information is practical.

Keynote speaker: Stu Weible

• People: the problem of identity on the Internet
  • Kim Cameron’s Identity Blog
• Social: social network fatigue? Are we social or anti-social?
  • ‘Online Tool Use Survey’ undertaken by the JISC funded SPIRE
    project
• Practical: where are the libraries? are we creating things that don’t match our users’ needs?
  • OCLC WorldCat Local: coming soon!!

Global Libraries Initiative (Darren Hoerner, Gates Foundation; Kara Fox, iSchool)
(Information is Practical)

• The Internet is a crucial tool for the dissemination of information.
• Why public libraries? Ideally situated, librarians are great moderators.
• Strategy: Research, resources, and sustainability
• What & Why: Need and Readiness are the criteria partnerships with other countries are based on.
• Grant-making research process: global scan of countries, goal to target transitioning economies; next steps looking at individual countries and contract with outside research firm (using research template) and stakeholders in-country.
• Challenges include finding effective means of research (in-country more effective), bias/neutrality (triangulate with other sources in and outside country), much of the information is difficulat to find or old.
• Grantee research built into grant
• Chile example: 100% of public libraries now have computers, help promote small business and agriculture.
• UW Graduate Research Assistant role: contributes to research and evaluation at all phases, brings in an outside perspective.

Global Libraries Initiative (Darren Hoerner, Gates Foundation; Kara Fox, iSchool)
(Information is Practical)

I also attended a panel discussion called “Patients, Clinicians, Insurers or Administrators: Who’s Your User? Can User-Centered Design Work in Health Care?”, and I checked out the poster session.

It’s MHO that this kind of thing would work in any setting. Academic libraries could invite posters from their student bodies as well as staff who wouldn’t normally get a chance to showcase their work. Public libraries could invite a local celebrity to be the keynote speaker. Special libraries could open the event to everyone within their organization, generating publicity. And there’s overlap here; I don’t want to limit any of these ideas to any one “type”.

Anyway, probably not the newest thought ever, but something I’d like to tuck away for the future.

Thanks, and good job, iEdge!

I’m asking this while sitting in the OCLC Social Networking: Best Practices for Libraries session at the ALA Midwinter conference.  (Notice how I linked to the wiki and not the offical site; how very social of me).

So, GrinnellPlans is kind of a unique social networking tool.  It was created by students for students (basically), but some faculty members have a presence.  Student groups are on there.  Your account never expires, so I as an alumna can read the plans of students graduating in ’10 (being 24 feels so old).  Say the library has a plan.  It’s even easier than blogging, it would be a great place to announce events (there is an “autoread” list; if a student puts the library on his or her list, the library will appear any time anything is updated), and put basic library information.  The way I see it, is that the library would not actively read other people’s (students, faculty, etc.), but would only check “planlove” (when someone links to your plan from his/her plan).  This could be a great feedback mechanism.

So, should the library go where the students are?  Would this be an invasion of some sort?  There would need to be a policy.  But the fact that faculty are now allowed to have a plan has opened the door already, in my opinion.  Some of the key principles mentioned by one of the OCLC panelists would be fairly easy to meet:

1) Have a plan (for the plan!  see above about announcements, feedback channel, etc.)

2) Train (the GrinnellPlans interface is ridiculously easy to use; Burling would just need to chose the position within the library that would be in charge; the webmaster might be an option)

3) Invite participants (it wouldn’t be hard to announce a library Plans presence to the library; signs, an announcement in the student newspaper, word of mouth using student library employees)

4) Top-down and bottom-up (both front-line staff and administration need to buy in and participate)

Okay, that’s it for now.  Stay tuned for any more ideas that come up during the next couple of days as the result of ALA.  And please comment!

re-solution: become a vegetarian again (except for sushi; i love sushi)
Check! With small free-range exceptions for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

re-solution: pay off the credit cards (work-study job raise, hurrah!)
More or less check; credit card balance is currently $0. Woot!

re-solution: put some of what i’ve learned and am learning to good use [in my MLIS program]; sharpen my somewhat dull blog skills, volunteer, get some job experience, etc.
Check marks for everything except the blog skills. Ah well, perhaps this year I should aim for skillz instead.

This year’s concern is money money money. I lost my job/internship at Amgen because headquarters decided to save money by not renewing my contract. My boyfriend of 5 years and I became engaged in October (I proposed to him), so we need to save for a wedding someday. And I want to travel. I actually bought a book on finances for people in their 20′s-30′s. And, to link this entry to something useful perhaps for others, I discovered the website www.bankrate.com. Could be worth passing on to some patrons or something.

I also wanted to share with you, tovarishi (that is, comrades), that I am writing this in class. An information technologies class, no less. I have a feeling that this will happen fairly often over the next 10 weeks, as I finally learn more about CSS and PHP and so on. And perhaps someday I’ll have a legitimate purpose for my blog that I can market to my superiors (ahhh!!) so that I can blog at work. How’s that for an idea? Marketing ourselves is becoming more and more important to us here in the library world. Making and keeping up a decent blog could be good practice (just don’t follow my example).

Happy New Year!