The Liminal Librarian

Catching up further, I saw this on in AL Direct — this guy stretches his library’s tiny collection development budget with sites like Paperbackswap and BookMooch. Smart!

On the same day, Clark had packaged seven books to ship out — paying all the postage personally — though he said both the incoming and outgoing stacks were smaller than average. Web sites make it possible. Clark has 800 books listed on www.bookmooch.com, 1,500 on www.swaptree.com and 2,500 on www.paperbackswap.com. He keeps a wish list of items he’s looking for, as do librarians and individuals all over the world. Computers do the matching.

In an era when any publicly funded institution has to spend wisely, Clark manages to make a lot out of a little. His annual buying budget of $4,400 comes from donations, grants, and proceeds from the library’s endowment. His salary and other operating expenses are covered by contributions from the towns of Hartland, St. Albans and Palmyra.

While he said the library has enjoyed steady public funding in recent years, it still operates on a bare-bones budget. Clark is the only employee, paid for 34 hours a week. There are situations like that all over Maine, said Stephanie Zurinski, the Maine State Library’s central Maine liaison.

Why the heck not? Especially for a smaller library that needs to maintain a tight and very current collection — what a great way to make use of weeded items and donations. And check this out:

Since Clark took over at Hartland Public Library four years ago, the collection has grown from 16,000 to 24,000 items and the formerly meager DVD, audio book and music collections now fill numerous shelves, according to Clark. Circulation has tripled to about 75 books a day and the patron list has grown from 700 to about 1,250

I’m darn impressed that he pays for the postage himself out of that 34-hour-a-week salary, too. I don’t know what he’d call it, but I’d call this Library 2.0 in action.

Tags: bookmooch, clark, hartland, l2, libraries/librarianship, library 2.0, maine, paperbackswap, swap

So I am catching up on the email that piled up while I was at Internet Librarian, and saw this in one of the LJ newsletters:

In an unusual partnership called “Borrow Anywhere, Return Anywhere,” all public, college, and university libraries in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, will lend all their materials to any library card-holder in the province, with no additional fees.

Now, that’s cool. Are there any programs like this in the U.S.?

Tags: borrow anywhere, nova scotia, return anywhere

Is it just me or does anyone else find this weird? I ran across this press release from ALA-APA re: looking for course providers for their library support staff certification program.

On October 1, 2009, ALA-APA will begin accepting applications from education providers interested in offering courses for candidates in the Library Support Staff Certificate Program (LSSC). The LSSC is the first national, voluntary certification program for library support staff.  Course providers may be organizations or individuals with the expertise, training, and resources to offer courses online or face-to-face.  The ten competency sets for which courses are needed are in the areas of foundations of library services, technology, communication and teamwork, access services, adult readers advisory, cataloging and classification, collection management, reference, supervision and management, and youth services.

Potential providers complete a course approval application, and submit a course syllabus, a description of the course’s teaching methods and assessment plan, and the instructor’s resume.  The course must cover all the competencies in a competency set.  The fee to be considered for approval is $100 each of the first and second courses submitted, and $50 per class for each additional course.

Candidates will have at least a high school diploma or equivalent, and have worked in a public or academic library for at least one year.  Candidates have the option of completing approved courses or submitting online portfolios that demonstrate their achievement in six of ten competency sets.

The application will be evaluated by a committee of American Library Association member volunteers using a course evaluation rubric.  Reviews will be held periodically throughout the year and ALA-APA will notify applicants of their status.  Approved courses will be publicized and available to all LSSC candidates.  Courses that are approved will maintain that status, barring major changes, for four years.

Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the LSSC Program is in a testing phase in five library organizations across the United States.  The program will begin accepting candidates in January 2010.  Based on survey information and other expressions of interest, project staff estimates that at least 300 library support staff will participate in the LSSC program in the next three years.

The LSSC Program was approved by the American Library Association to be an official certification of ALA in July 2009.  More information about the LSSCP is available online at http://www.ala-apa.org/lsscp.  Please direct questions to Jenifer Grady at jgrady@ala.org or 312-280-2424.  The program will be managed by the American Library Association-Allied Professional Association.

ALA-APA: the Organization for the Advancement of Library Employees is a service organization to the American Library Association and has as one of its missions supporting salary improvement initiatives for library workers.

Now, I don’t mean to be snotty, because I like a lot of what ALA-APA does. But is it strange to request a $100 fee just to be considered to teach one of these courses? Or is it just me?

Tags: ala-apa, application, certification, courses, support staff

… Oak Brook man hates libraries, children, puppies. Here’s more about him in the Daily Herald.

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

“I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me,” Sydney said solemnly. “It will never be the same without the people you fired.”

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn’t stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine “Connie” Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

“Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is,” Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children’s librarian) and two part-timers to stop “whining” and raise the money themselves.

“I don’t care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books,” Xinos told them.

“Don’t cry crocodile tears about people who are making $100,000 a year wiping tables and putting the books back on the shelves,” Xinos smirked, apparently referencing the fired head librarian, who has advanced degrees and made $98,676 a year. He said Oak Brook had to “stop indulging people in their hobbies” and “their little, personal, private wants.”

Sydney was upset and “her little friend was in tears” after Xinos spoke at the meeting last week, says mom Hope Sabbagha.

I applied at this library once. Kind of glad I don’t work there now! Oy. What a classy guy — he’s like a Disney villain.

Tags: library, oak brook

Going to Internet Librarian this month? Want to talk about publishing with InfoToday? Have book ideas to kick around? Drop me a line… and I’ll buy you a coffee! Or maybe even lunch — yes, lunch. Such a deal.

Tags: il, infotoday, internet librarian, publishing

I started a “deals” blog at mashupmom.com earlier this year, and have been fascinated by the search statistics. The top searches are generally all some variation on mashupmom.com, mashupmom, mashup mom, mashupmoms.com, mash up mom, and so on. So I’d idly been wondering why, in 2009, people were still putting entire URLs into search boxes.

And then I started playing with Swag Bucks, and found out one reason. Swag Bucks will probably not make your librarian hearts happy. It’s a “search to win” search engine that proclaims that its results are “from Google & Ask” — but then when you delve deeper, you find that it shows only about 30 results for any given search, of which about 1/3 to 1/2 are sponsored. And no one really cares. I posted about it over at Mashup Mom, too, but here for instance are the top results from a search for “swine flu” in Swag Bucks:

And, here’s what the same search looks like in Google:

Hmm. That’s not the same. So why do people use it? Because it’s “good enough” — and, more importantly, because every time they search they get the chance to win “Swag Bucks,” which they can then redeem for PayPal cash, gift cards, or other prizes. Out of sheer curiosity, I’ve been playing with it for 3 days off and on for nonserious searches, posted the referral link they gave me on my other blog, and am pretty close to cashing out for a gift card already. So you start to see the appeal — and if you hang out in the deal blogosphere, you’ll see people hawking it all over. (MAKE MONEY FROM SEARCHING! FREE MONEY! SIGN UP NOW OR MISS OUT!)

Here are a couple of comments I got over on the other blog:

I’ve noticed that SB searches aren’t *quite* as good as regular searches, but it typically doesn’t make much of a difference. The best way that I earn SB’s is by “searching” for a website instead of just typing it into the address box. For example, when I wanted to come here just now I did a search for Mashup Mom instead of actually typing in http://www.mashupmom.com. It does always make me laugh though when the correct link is something like the 3rd one on the list. It is the EXACT address minus the W’s! How is that not 1st!? Overall, I like SwagBucks. I’ve only earned 142 SB’s so far, but hey, I’ll take it. I’m saving to get a Kindle from Amazon!

I also use my swagbucks when I’m searching for blogs… I type in mashupmom to get here or hip2save to get to her blog, etc. I still get swagbucks pretty quickly even though I do my “meaty” searches on Google. Very interesting post though. I wondered how the site makes its money! Good food for thought. Thanks!

So maybe the question isn’t about Google vs. librarians, but satisficing vs. librarians. It takes 45 “Swag Bucks” to get a $5.00 PayPal payment at the moment. I have done some light searching and am hitting just a couple of Swag Bucks a day — so there’s not a huge payout here. (I think people make more from referrals if they have a lot of “friends,” plus they play hidden extra code games sometimes.) But it’s like gambling: There’s always the chance that the next search will pay off big. Just one more! Maybe vendors should think about building something like this into their databases — there’s a way to increase usage!

Tags: swagbucks

Not to pick on NSLS.info again, but I’m catching up on reading my Friday newsletters. And hurrah! I’m on today’s, which talks more about the impact of budget cuts. (That’s not a hurrah for budget cuts, but for whittling down my email.) They explain:

There are several things we have done or plan to do in order to offset the budget cuts, including not giving any staff raises this year. We will also be cutting down on food provided at staff, board, and other meetings, travel, institutional dues, public relations, paper mailings, and supplies. We’re also looking for a more economic way to handle our phone system; more calls may be forwarded to voice mail. Unfortunately, the search for our vacant Member Liaison position has been put on hold. In the area of professional development, program fees will increase and the number of “big name” presenters brought in for programs will be reduced.

I guess I’m semi- “big name” — I do have three of them, after all! But I’m thinking we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this, and am wondering what the impact on conferences, professional development funds, travel, and association membership will be as new fiscal years and budgets roll around.

Tags: budget cuts, conferences, nsls, speaking, travel

I was catching up on email this week and saw yet another mention of a focus on the “survival” of libraries. Although the actual document they’re talking about is proactive and positive in talking about ways to transform and move forward, it re-emphasized how often we use words like “survival” and “endangered” and “uncertain” when talking about libraries and the future of our profession. When we come at it from that angle, it really does sound like we’re scrambling from survival, and not working from a position of strength. Reframing our language and our approach might help us come at these challenges from a different angle.

It also made me think about just how much perception is key, in anything. For instance: I run a resume posting service over at LISjobs.com, for which I charge $10.00 for the first six months. (The only area of the site, btw, that incurs any fees.) Reactions to there being a fee at all generally run the gamut from:

• HOW DARE YOU GOUGE POOR JOB SEEKERS?

to

• Is it really only $10.00? That’s so reasonable. Thank you so much for this site.

to

• You didn’t tell me there was a fee?!

(This last, apparently, from the non-reading type of librarian.)

Same service, same fee, but incredibly different reactions. Now, I’m wondering if there’s a way to tweak the language on the page so that I get a lot more of reaction number 2 — and a lot less of reaction number one (which, I’ll admit, is more rare). I already tweaked it a while back to avoid number 3, but this oddly hasn’t worked so well.

Tags: language, libraries/librarianship, LISjobs.com, reframing, survival

I was on the Internet Librarian conference site today and saw this under a new “Why I must go to Monterey” section.

Need help justifying your trip to IL-09?
Sometimes all it takes to get permission is using the right words.  Tell your boss why you MUST come to Monterey.  Here’s a draft memo to get your started . . .

Now, that’s interesting. Think it would work with your administrator? But I’m also wondering if this is a preemptive move, or a sign that registrations are probably down at this point — although it’s a little early yet to tell (this being an end-Oct. conference).

And on a personal note (and yes, full disclosure, I’m still affiliated with the ITI books division) — Internet Librarian is my absolute. favorite. conference. So if you think the memo would help, go for it, and I’ll see you there!

Tags: il09, internet librarian, justification, memo

So LJ is for sale again. Who wants to go in with me?

Tags: lj, reed business, sale