Wikipedia will be taking down its English language site Wednesday 1/18/12 in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Read more about Wikipedia’s decision on PCWorld.

Wikipedia joins Reddit and BoingBoing, who will also shut down on Wednesday in protest of the proposed legislation. The webmasters and founders of opponents to SOPA and PIPA agree that something needs to be done about internet piracy, but argue the bills in their current forms will enable the type censorship happening in Iran and China. Internet heavy-hitters such as Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Twitter, and Tumblr have also vocally opposed the legislation but none have committed to the blackout on Wednesday at this time.

“If you want an Internet where human rights, free speech and the rule of law are not subordinated to the entertainment industry’s profits, I hope you’ll join us,” said Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing.

Research Works Act:
The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has introduced the “Research Works Act,” aimed at Open Access Policies that allows the public access to federally funded research. Under this Act, all projects funded by the NIH will no longer have to be freely accessible 12 months after acceptance for publication. This would not keep the funding from happening, it would just require one to purchase publicly funded research or subscribe to the journal it appears in. Read Information Today‘s explanation of the “Research Works Act” and what it will do to federally funded research written by GSLIS’ own Robin Peek.

Right now I have two library jobs. One as a Research & Instruction Librarian in an academic library, and the other as a Adult Services Library Technician in a public library. I love them both and have yet to choose what kind of Librarian I want to be when I grow up. I thought I would share with you some of the reasons I stay at both and why I am still struggling to decide what kind of Librarian I want to be.

Academic
One of my favorite aspects of working in an academic library does not appear in every academic library. I love the challenge. I currently work in an academic library within a school that focuses on engineering. Everyday is a challenge and the students here push me further every day. One minute I will be helping a student search for patents on non electric breast pumps and the next I will be attempting to help a group of students who are working on flooding problems in Thailand. The work here is immensely interesting and I love the experience I am getting here. This is my first professional job, and it is a lot of fun to encounter different types of librarians. This library is small, and I would LOVE to work in a large academic library to see the differences between large and small academic libraries. Maybe my next job will be in a large academic library, who knows.
Another reason I love working in an academic library is the students. College aged students are a lot of fun. Yes, you have to work on creating a professor barrier, and that is an entirely different post I don’t know if I want to write, but getting to know the student workers, the students who love to do homework in the library, and the college environment is a lot of fun.

Public
Working in a public library is amazing. It is so rewarding to help someone find a job or helping a person find information about a long lost relative. Yes, I could feasibly do that in another kind of library but there is one thing only a public library can bring me. Every August the library gets inundated with young students who do not like to read but have to complete the required summer reading. This is my favorite time of year, because I get the chance to convert kids into readers. It is so much fun asking young boys and girls about their likes, then finding that perfect book for them. I have had dozens of parents come back and ask for more, telling me their son or daughter has never read a book with such enthusiasm and asking for another recommendation. It really makes me proud of what I do.

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Note that you can switch careers, that is not a huge deal in Library Science, but once you decide what kind of library you want to work in, most people stay in that kind of library for the rest of their careers.

At my library we have a library chat function. (This is present at many academic libraries – even Simmons Library!) I love library chat. As I mentioned in my previous post, Notes from the Field
#1, I try to keep the chat window unobstructed throughout the day because I like to respond as soon as possible. Even if I say “Be right with you I am helping another patron” I like the person on the other end to know I am a real person and I am at the computer. In my Reference and Social Informatics classes we discussed library chat. I was always a fan of chat because I grew up with AIM and I gchat and fbchat all the time while I am at home. Library chat is another way to reach out to patrons and seems effective on pulling in some of the more shy patrons. On some occasions the chat can lead to research consultations. (Those are sit down meetings between a librarian and either a single or small group of students.) Right now we use Meebo for our library chat, but we are looking into some other chat services such as Library H3lp. Library H3lp also includes a text a librarian feature that we do not have at this time but we are polling students to figure out if it is a service we want. At Simmons GSLIS they stress the need to stay as up to date as possible with technology. I will keep you up to date on the library chat situation, we just started talking about the library chat change this week. Has anyone ever used a library chat service before? (As a patron or library staff member?)

Now that I talked about my job search – I figured I would talk a bit about my job as a “Research and Instruction Librarian”

I spend a significant amount of time at the Reference Desk, either as a direct contact or a “backup”. As the direct contact I sit at the reference desk and wait for questions. While I wait I am normally working on other projects such as LibGuides (I will be posting about LibGuides later) or other projects and planning) but I always try to look as warm and as available as possible. Because our reference desk is part of our larger “information desk” I often stop confused looking students and ask them if I can help them with something. It is important to be as welcoming as possible because many users are hesitant to ask questions. One of my favorite things about this “Information Desk” is the fact that the Reference desk section is lower – more like a normal sized desk. The computer at this desk has two monitors – which are great for helping students see source comparisons, and it lets me keep the library chat box open and not hidden behind windows. When students come for reference questions I am able to have them sit down next to me – which I prefer over my past experiences at a high-up desk and turning the monitor. This allows for what I feel as a much better user experience. The students can sit next to me and take notes. I feel that I am getting more significant reference interviews with this set up. While we work on addressing their information needs I often open up an email and begin writing out the different steps we took. I also include different searches we construct together and links to vital articles. This way I get to reinforce the skills I taught the students and I also get to open a line of communication between the student and myself outside of this one interaction. Once the reference interview is over and I do my little wrap up, I send the email and ask the students if s/he has any follow up questions to either stop by or email me the questions. At my library we record every interaction with our patrons on an online database. Sending the email to the student also gives me a record I can duplicate onto the database. We use this to track what we do here at the library (to justify our existence) and to use for training. For the student workers (Research Assistants) we give them some of the real reference questions and ask them to answer the questions as part of their training every year. As a new librarian this feature has helped me grasp the type of research done by patrons of this library and has also informed me of some of the lesser known databases offered at the school. Every week each librarian brings his/her difficult reference questions to a meeting where we discuss best practices and suggest different measures to take in the future. This helps educate us all as well as provide effective team building exercises. As the new librarian I must say that I love this feature and I learn new things every single meeting.

I took Reference my 2nd semester of GSLIS and after that class I knew I wanted to be a Reference Librarian. I love working one on one with researchers as well as providing training on different resources available at the library. If you are thinking about Simmons GSLIS and sit in a class, I suggest sitting in on a reference class because you will learn so much about how we librarians remain vital to academic pursuits even in the age of Google.

Well that is all I have for now – I will follow up later in the week with some more notes from the field. If you have any questions feel free to comment below and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Any questions about Simmons GSLIS itself can be addressed to gslisadm@simmons.edu

Job Searching

While I was an immensely busy individual during school it was my goal to have at least 1 interview booked before graduation. Before the finals rush of work I applied to every job I was remotely interested in. Before graduation day I had 2 interviews and the following week I got a 3rd. With the economy the way it is, I had a back up plan as a paraprofessional librarian (where I worked throughout school)

Phone Interviews

Does anyone actually like phone interviews? How can people see my stunning personality over the phone? On top of that, I think I use the phone 5 times a week. Cell phones aren’t for talking people – they’re for texting /web-searching /IMDB’ing /social networking – but for talking? Let’s be honest the only reason why I talk on the phone is because texting and driving is illegal (and unsafe). But, phone interviews still happen. Two of my three interviews were over the phone. My favorite part of phone interviews (Yes, it is possible to enjoy phone interviews) is the fact that I could have notes in front of me. I felt very prepared and did not have to stress about addressing the entirety of a question because I wrote it down. I got a lot of advise on what I should be doing during the phone interview. I was told to stand up that way I would more easily command attention. I was also told to wear a suit as if I were going to an in-person interview. I tried that with my first interview and I did not feel any different. While I do think I did well and I did make it to round two of these interviews (another phone!) I was not offered the job. For phone interview for job number 2 I rocked (wore) shorts and a t-shirt and I sat down at my desk. I was significantly more comfortable with myself and I was able to crack some jokes and think more about my delivery than my posture. I was offered this job after second interview.

In person interviews

I like talking – so in person interviews do not terrify me. Yes I get nervous, I think everyone does, but I don’t worry about heavy breathing when I am in person – like I do when I am on the phone. There are obvious things: wear a suit, be on time, etc. but I want to stress the importance about being yourself. In the end of my process I had two job offers to choose from. One as a Research & Instruction Librarian and one as a Medical Researcher. I chose the former not just because I liked the job details more, but also for the team. I chose to work in this library because I wanted to be part of that team. All of our personalities seemed to work really well together and I had no doubts in taking the job.

Working as a Librarian
I have been here over a month now and I must say I absolutely love being a Research and Instruction Librarian. I love to teach (I’ve written about that in past blogs) and I get the opportunity to meet with students in a one on one basis as well as providing “research consultations” for groups of students. Later in the year I will start working with entire classes but I am still getting acclimated to the workings of this Library/University.

I will be attending the Admission Event/Session October 12, 2011 as an alumni panelist – so if you like to meet your truly – come on down! There are Admission Events all year (if you want to avoid meeting this guy) check here for more dates.

I am sure I will write more throughout my first year as a “Big Kid” Librarian so stay tuned!

We also recently had Academic Advising Day, which is pretty much Orientation for Grad School. This is the time when you are a new student meet some professors, some other students starting the program the same time as you are, and your advisor. It is also when you pick your classes for the first time. This can be very stressful for some people, but honestly I never understood why people were stressed about classes. I always just picked what I could, and if I missed a class I wanted I simply planned out the rest of my schooling to make sure I could get a particular class in my time at school. Simmons is really cool and really flexible about things so just ask for some help and everyone tries to pitch in and offer some help/advice.

Below is a link to the gsliscast, the podcasting site for GSLIS. In there you can find some lunchtime lecture series and the recording of this past academic advising day. This also will give you a pretty good indication of the different types of events we offer at Simmons GSLIS.

http://gslis.simmons.edu/podcasts/

Bye for now!

I read the first book because it was one of the summer reading assignments for the middle school in the town I work for. Our library purchased around twenty copies and our Children’s Librarian was very excited about this book. I could not take the book out during the summer because there were so many children who needed it for credit. So, September came and I was consumed with school work, and reading another leisure book. By the time I got around to checking out the Hunger Games it was already finals .

I picked up the first book 2 days before a paper was due. I intended to just read a few chapters as a break from the paper. Boy was I wrong. I could not put the book down. I had to take a break from the book in order to finish my paper. Instead of going to bed I chose to finish the book and take a nap before work the next morning. When I got to the library I grabbed the last two books. Luckily it was the weekend and I read book 2 on Saturday and book 3 on Sunday. I planned my weekend off so that I could finish all of my assignments and not have to worry about getting them done throughout the week. That concept was scrapped because I only cared about Katniss and Peeta.

Library School does offer time for diversions, but try to avoid them during mid-terms and finals week.

Class 1: Medical Libraries – I am very much interested in Special Libraries (my career goals involve government libraries). Medical Libraries sounded immensely interesting and was recommended to me by a number of GSLIS Alums. We are a few weeks into the class and I love it. Everything about Medical Libraries is interesting. We just took a field trip (yes this building is on the same street as the Palace Road building but still it was a grad school field trip!) to the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Library. There we spoke to the director of the library and its head of reference services. It was interesting to see a library with a small collection of books and a huge collection of online resources. The director anticipates not having a print collection soon and he is okay with that revelation. While I do love me some books I think in the medical world there is no longer a need to maintain medical print books, as digital copies fit better into a field that changes with discoveries made almost daily.

Class 2: Competitive Intelligence – This is an all online class and I was very hesitant to take it because I am an admittedly bad class blogger, but I decided it would be best if I blocked out time weekly to do the homework, and it is exactly like going to class. The professor also does lectures that we can listen to on our own time throughout the week. She also has her own knowledge management firm so it is interesting when she brings up her own personal experiences versus what the text book says. (Side note: she knows the author of the text and gets you a huge discount!)

Class 3: Digital Publishing – In this class our major project is to create a business plan for a business that does not have a digital presence. Our “client” this semester is the Cambridge Farmers markets. I am so excited about this project that I am sure I will blog about it later once we get started. The clients are coming next week to present their product to the class and our final is our presentation to the clients. Talk about real-world experience. I do not think I have ever been so excited to do class work.