Towards a New Alexandria

I can't believe that this is the last week of class. It seems like we just started on our journey to learn about academic libraries and now it's almost over. And to partly reflect back, I wanted to touch on the New Alexandria.

In the beginning of this semester, we were asked to discuss the similarities between the Alexandria libraries and current academic libraries. A few days ago when I was reading the online version of Library Journal, I came across an article about a blogger's summary of The New Republic's article "Towards a New Alexandra: Imagining the Future of Libraries".

Author Lisbet Rausing discussed how copyright and the high fees of journals and online databases can cause the downfall of academic libraries as we know it. Because of these issues, scholars are unable to pass around and share information like scholars did during the time period when the Alexandria libraries were around.

But, Rausing says there is some hope. Many journals are open accessed and peer reviewed. Some academic libraries, like Harvard, are putting some of their collection in a public domain Website. Rausing would like to see academic libraries, universities and other institutes to find ways to open up their research to the general public so researchers' works will not be lost forever because they were not used.

So how do academic libraries open up information so everyone can use it? It is something that will have to be looked at over the next few years. For academic libraries to be new Alexandrias, they must find a way to open up their information to the public. It will be interesting to see how academic libraries will evolve in the future and see if they will become 21st Century Alexandrias.

Using Wikis at Academic Libraries

For those who have been following this blog knows that my library has been working to drag our university faculty into the 21st Century. On Thursday, my coworkers and I met with several professors on the use of Wikis. They want to learn how to use Wikis to communicate with each other (and students) and share note and ideas. One of my coworkers gave them examples on how Wikis are used in other departments at MUSC and how it has helped them.

The MUSC Library also has a staff Wiki, where we post information about our departments, events and future plans. It is a good way to keep track of what is happening in our departments and keep all of the information that we have in one place.

I came across a journal article a few days ago called "Using Wikis in Academic Libraries" by Samuel Kai-Wah Chu, a professor at the University of Hong Kong. In his study, where he interviewed librarians at 48 universities around the world, only 33% (16) of them were using Wikis for work and 8% (4) were planning to use them in the near future. Since it looked like many of the university libraries were not using Wikis and/or had no plans to use them, many of them used blogs and other ways to share information.

I think Wikis can be beneficial to academic libraries because staff members can share information among each other without sending out a lot of emails back and forth. And if they have a question or needed to find some information that happened at a meeting, they can refer back to the Wiki to find that answer.

Another reason that Wikis can be beneficial is because librarians and other staff members can promote Wikis to faculty, staff and students. They can show them that sharing and discussing information among each other can benefit everyone involved. Academic libraries should embrace Wikis, not only to benefit themselves, but the university or college as a whole.

Author's note: The journal article can be found in the March 2009 edition of The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Are Academic Libraries Changing Too Slow?

Earlier this week, I've read two articles about a recent study done by the nonprofit group Ithica S+R. The results show that many college faculty are not using academic libraries as much as they used to. Some rather use general search engines and electronic resources/computer databases than go to the library. These articles were featured in Library Journal and Inside Higher Education.

So if college faculty are not going to their libraries and are depending on Google, what should academic libraries do? Academic libraries should reach out to staff as much as they reach out to students. They should go to departments heads and deans to advertise their services. They should also reach out to other faculty members by visiting their offices and classes to spread the message of the library. They can even try an open house or a library fair where all of the services are featured. And hopefully, this will also help promote the services to the students because the professors will be promoting the library.

A suggestion that the study gave was for libraries to move away from print materials and go towards electronic resources and databases. There is a double-edged sword about getting rid of print materials. It's good not to have print materials because that will allow more room in the libraries for other things. But it's also good to have print materials in case the databases break down or students can't find what they are looking for in the databases. There are also several materials that only come in print form. It is up to the individual library to decided what is best for them as in terms of their collection.

Some academic librarians feel that the study was to promote "the end of academic libraries". Of course, we don't want academic libraries to be obsolete. What is needed is for academic libraries to reach out to all the people that they serve and to be on the forefront in the evolution of materials and information.

The Kindles are Jealous: A Tech Fair at an Academic Library

For the last few weeks of my life from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I have been working on my library's Tech Fair. We did one last year, mostly focusing on Digital-e, our program in which students and faculty can check out items such as Amazon Kindles and Flip video cameras. This year, we decided to go all out and invited vendors to the event. We also opened it up to staff and other area colleges to present what they are doing with technology.

The event, which was yesterday, was a big success. We had classes on the first and fourth floors that discusses the different technologies that the university or the company they represented offers. Some of the demonstrations included how dentists can make crowns, how to use Endnote, and how to use Tegrity. A demonstration about our new digital library was on the third floor.

We also had a number of well-known vendors on the first floor, including Dell, Apple, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. One of my coworkers recently got an iPad, but the Apple representative did not have one. Luckily, my coworker was willing to show it off to help out Apple and it was a hit among those who visited the booth. Next to the Apple booth was our Digital-e booth and because of the iPad, not many people looked at the Kindles (hence the title of this post).

It took a lot of hard work to put the tech fair together. Many of our staff members worked long hours to make this event a success. We were able to give out door prizes at each class and we also had a Dell netbook donated to us for the grand prize. Most importantly, we were able to give faculty, staff and students technology information that they may would have never heard of. We hope that they use the information that was provided to help make their education a little bit easier.

We plan to do this event again next year (with more money) and hope this will help us with promoting new technologies to the university. See you next year, Artie.

Academic Satire - Japanese By Spring

The book I have read for my academic satire is Japanese By Spring by Ishmael Reed. The story focuses on Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a junior professor at Jack London College during the early 1990s. He wants tenure so bad that he is willing to conform to the school's ideological climate (which is for sexism and against affirmative action) and take racial slurs and actions from a student whose father supports the school financially. Understandably, he is upset when he finds out he is denied tenure, even thought he doesn't realized that he's not well liked among some of his co-workers.

While studying to learn Japanese (hence the title), his tutor Dr. Yamato becomes president of Jack London and appoints Chappie as academic dean. Chappie takes the opportunity of his appointment to settle old scores and gets revenge on those who have wronged him.

For the last two years, I have worked in academia at the MUSC Library. When I was a library technical assistant, I worked nights so I didn't have much interaction with the teachers. I did interact with the students a lot and enjoyed helping them with their needs. Now that I work on outreach for the library, I mostly work with the public, which some faculty mixed in.

The part of academia that Reed mostly focused on was with tenure and interaction mostly among the faculty. I personally thought that most of the people in the book, especially Chappie, were jerks and were willing to do anything to keep their jobs. Some of the students were jerks and racist. I don't know if there is a lot of gossip and back-talking around academia, but there was a lot in this book. But this really didn't surprise me because that happens or may happen at any job. Some of the professors cared more about tenure and satisfying the alumni than teaching the students. Some of them might not have loved teaching and may need to reconnect with themselves, as emphasized in The Courage to Teach.

I could actually relate to the book because of the time period and what was going on. The book focused on the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas (and Anita Hill), the earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989 and the 1992 L.A. Riots. There was a lot of social change at the time in regards to racism, affirmative action and sexism. Who would have thought almost 2o years later we would have an African-American president and a female Speaker of the House? I think that going through that period made America stronger and gave more opportunities for minorities and women.

This is my first academic satire and I hope I get another opportunity to read another one. I would recommend Japanese by Spring to my classmates and hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Turning an Academic Library into an Information Commons

Academic libraries are going through a massive change. When I attended USC more than 10 years ago, no food was allowed at Thomas Cooper Library, you could not check out laptops and there was no such thing as wireless access. Now you can do all of those things (and go get coffee without going to the Russell House).

Something that is growing in the academic library community is information commons. This is a library that offers vast spaces for students to study (by themselves or in a group); where people can get help with computer problems; and where students can check out not only books but cameras, laptops, Kindles and other tech gadgets. The information commons is to provide both active work among groups and quiet space for those who are working alone. It will also support interactive learning and training and skill-building activities.

Right now, the MUSC Library is in the process of transforming into an information commons (ours will be called Learning Commons). We are currently getting rid of a lot of our books and journals (many of our items are online), moving furniture and organizing to make sure our place makes our students feel comfortable when they arrive. Also, we have our Digital-e project, where students are allowed to check out the latest technologies.

This is an exciting time for academic libraries as many of them are also going to have information commons. This will allow libraries to serve students in ways they have never had before. When a lot of books and journals went online, many people stopped going to academic libraries because they could access them from home. The information commons atmosphere helps bring in students and makes it easier for them to study, complete their work and gather with their classmates.

Even thought we are one of the few medical libraries that will have an information commons, we hope at MUSC to be able to assist our students, faculty and staff as much as possible. Our changes will help make our library more accessible to our current students and entice new students to come to our university.

For examples of information commons (and to stay in the Southeastern Conference spirit), check out the information commons at the University of Kentucky and the University of Georgia.

Web 2.0 and Academic Libraries

I work at an academic/special library. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Library serves the students that enroll in the university (as well as their teachers) and the medical staff that works at our three hospitals. As a part of the library's Web 2.0 group, I (and my group members) have been researching how the Internet and social media (ex. Facebook) is changing the way college students learn. Here is an example of how a professor is using Twitter to interact with her class:

After receiving a request from one of the learning groups on campus, we decided to do a Web 2.0 class focusing mostly on Twitter. The discussion, called "To Tweet or Not to Tweet" had a student panel and more than 60 people attended the event (which filled up the room). While almost everyone in the room had a Facebook page, some of the professors that were in attendance seemed apprehensive about using social media in teaching. Some said they didn't have enough time. Others were worried about privacy. Even before we had the class, many faculty and staff members expressed their disapproval of the class and using social media, to the point where people tried to stop publicity for the event.

Web 2.0 and social media is not going away anytime soon. If there is something that could make learning easier for students, it should be used. As academic librarians, we should encourage faculty, staff and students to use all technologies available to us. We should also teach faculty how to use them so they can learn ways how to teach their students.

Our Web. 2.0 group does plan to teach more social media classes, including Wikis and Facebook. We hope that we will help people at our university embrace social media and the benefits it will have for students and themselves.