Aaron the Librarian

Myself and some others have noticed a dearth of presentations on Virtual Reference over the past few years.  I wonder why?  Too much “nuts & bolts” or “how I dun it gud” presentations on the topic in previous years?

Would a more philosophical presentation/discussion raise interest?
Is virtual reference a brain-dead obvious service these days?

Here’s a list of possible themes/questions which I wonder about / think might be good for discussion points:

Themes:
Co-browsing — requirement/superfluous?
Typos — acceptable/omgwtfbbq no way?
Follow ups — email/chat/phone/f2f appointment?
Reference Knowledgebase — use chats to fill/make stuff up/guess what users might want or need?

Questions:

“What are the basic requirements for “Virtual Reference”?
IM?
Avatars?
Reference Blogging?
Meebo Widgets on every page?

Brainstorm with me!

Feel free to comment on Friendfeed if you prefer, though some new commentary on the blog would make me feel good, too

After much [seemingly “behind the veil” to non-task-force-members] researching and discussions, the ALA Task Force on Electronic Member Participation has developed some questions needing answers.  Question One concerns “Open Meetings.”  See the ALA Council List archive for the full message sent out to Council. (excerpted below)

If you have comments you would like me (as your Councilor at Large / vocal proxy) to make officially (whether on your behalf or in the aggregate) regarding this request for comments, I’ll be watching and participating in the comments below as well as in my various aggregated social media feeds.

So, some history and then the request (note the N.B. below the request) ::

The Open Meetings Policy originated around 1970 because the “library press” (I wonder which ones?) wanted to attend ALA Executive Board meetings.  “Open” and “Closed” are not defined in the policy and are not addressed in any “interpretations.”  No goals and/or reasoning for or against is provided by available historical documentation.  “However, there have always been limitations to the “reach” of the Open Meetings Policy, deriving from physical, logistical, and financial factors.” The Open Meetings policy has never been applied to between-meeting correspondence of any kind which is/was part of “regular work of the association“.

…the Task Force has concluded that expansion of electronic participation in association governance requires not a new policy, but a new Interpretation of the existing policy.

(which, to me, seems appropriate)

…the Task Force is asking for input from Councilors about what they believe the benefits of open meetings to be, what we should hope to achieve by having open meetings, and, if it is impossible at this time to implement “the purest form” of open meetings, what the nature of “open” means in an online environment, and what kinds of access to what kinds of information would be sufficient to satisfy our desire for openness in Association governance.

N.B. these caveats:

Specifically, this request for input is addressing “providing a mechanism for people who are not members of particular governance entities (committees, task forces, boards, etc.) to know what those entities are doing.”

Specifically *not* about electronic participation by members of these entities and *not* about electronic access to “non-meeting activities” of those governance entities.

The 2008 ExLibris Mid-Atlantic Users Group meeting will be held October 2&3, 2008 at Shippensburg University.  The location was finalized about a week ago, the program proposals request announcement is forthcoming (really soon, I hope), the hotel with discount is something like $60.

Here are some relevant links:

EMAusers.org (soon to be updated with EMA2008 info?)

ExLibris Mid-Atlantic Google Group (discussions and more info)

gMap of Shippensburg University (EMA location is the Ceddia Union Building [the CUB], at the corner of Lancaster Dr & Cumberland Dr - parking is available off Baseball Access Rd)

Oy, I don’t think I kept up with the discussion at all… here’s the #BarCampOhio feed

We started out with “community generated content” and morphed through “using patron usage data for enhanced services” (and should it be “opt” in or “opt out”?) then into “enhanced records - do users want this & what enhancements do they want” on into various discovery tools - Solrpac is very nice (I wanna try a beta for MPOW - can I have an extra few days per week?)

That’s all I can come up with - no real take aways at the moment… post-prandial & post-sponsor speeches chaos ensues

So here it is, less than a week to go before Library/BarCampOhio, and I’m totally dry on ideas (which haven’t already been done to one degree of teh awesome or other).  If you were going to go to a LibraryBarCamp what would you want to discuss / hear ideas about?  How about a hackfest?

Thanks for your ideas!

1. The ALA Washington Office will host the DC CopyNight meetup on Tuesday, August 5, 2008. The event will run from 6:30pm - 8:30pm.  There will be food, refreshments, and free copyright sliders.

Discussion topics: Georgia State copyright lawsuit and other current copyright news and issues.

If you’re interested, please take a minute to RSVP so we know roughly how many people are coming. The ALA Washington Office is located at 1615 New Hampshire Ave NW, 2 blocks from Dupont Circle. Hope to see you there!

Cribbed from the District Dispatch Blog

Does this sound like a description of incoming college students to you?

In “On Stupidity” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the author (Thomas H. Benton) says he “see[s] too many students who are:

·         Primarily focused on their own emotions — on the primacy of their “feelings” — rather than on analysis supported by evidence.
·         Uncertain what constitutes reliable evidence, thus tending to use the most easily found sources uncritically.
·         Convinced that no opinion is worth more than another: All views are equal.
·         Uncertain about academic honesty and what constitutes plagiarism. (I recently had a student defend herself by claiming that her paper was more than 50 percent original, so she should receive that much credit, at least.)
·         Unable to follow or make a sustained argument.
·         Uncertain about spelling and punctuation (and skeptical that such skills matter).
·         Hostile to anything that is not directly relevant to their career goals, which are vaguely understood.
·         Increasingly interested in the social and athletic above the academic, while “needing” to receive very high grades.
·         Not really embarrassed at their lack of knowledge and skills.
·         Certain that any academic failure is the fault of the professor rather than the student.”

While I certainly see some students in their own similar little nirvanas, many of them are also engaged and engaging, intellectually curious and grounded.  Neither Benton nor I are pessimistic about how today’s new students think, since every generation learns differently.

The missing piece in today’s academic meme of “student-centered services” is students are not brought face to face with the realization that we *all* think differently, we all need to be able to speak to other people both from our own frame of reference as well as from theirs.  Communication and communication modes are a two way street — sure, the professor needs to be able to communicate so the students can understand; but the students also need to learn to communicate so the professor understands the students’ understanding.

In the larger view, “student centered” doesn’t mean change everything for the student’s ease of understanding, it means take the time to learn to communicate with the student and teach the student to communicate with people who think/operate differently.

How can we take the extended arguments of the Enlightenment and make them accessible to today’s shorter attention span?

If you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay Area on August 6th and you’re interested in what the Congressional Internet Caucus thinks about the state of the net, consider stopping by the State of the Net West event. If I were in the neighborhood, I’d be there.

From State of the Net West

Overview

In August The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee in collaboration with the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara School of Law cordially invites you to attend the 2nd Annual State of the Net West Conference on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008, in the California Room at the Benson Center of the Santa Clara University School of Law, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The discussion will feature leaders of the Congressional Internet Caucus, including Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, Congressman Mike Honda, and Congressman Bob Goodlatte. Other participants will include West Coast academic scholars, public interest advocates, and industry executives during a series of discussions on current, important technology policy issues. State of the Net West is designed to channel West Coast thought leadership from the academic community and private sector to help inform the technology policy issues being debated in Washington.