Getting from here to there

My family tells a story about my first day at kindergarten. I was a stay at home kid, so the first day of school was quite traumatic, but I was encouraged to go by being told, “When you go to school you are going to learn how to read books.”

I was so excited! So, I went to school, and when I came home I was in tears. It had not gone well. My family, anxious to figure why I was crying so hard prompted, “Was someone mean to you? Did you fall down? What happened?”

My lip started to quiver, and I replied, “I did not learn how to read today. You said I would learn how to read today and I didn’t.” Of course, they all found that quite amusing.

I am thinking about this story, because, of course, I suddenly want to know everything about the User Experience, and also, I want our libraries to be fully invested in UX ideas. Whoa! One letter at a time please!

So, we are already busy saving funding for libraries, and worrying about staffing, and what are we going to do if we start asking questions of our users and they want things?! Well, that may indeed happen, and it is an opportunity for a rich user-centered conversation. If users do want more hours, and you can’t provide them because of limited funding, let them know. Let them help you to serve them, and to come up with innovative solutions to meet the need. Maybe more people in the community can volunteer, or maybe some of them would love to donate some money, and had not known that it was needed at their favorite library.

User Centered Design doesn’t happen overnight. And so, what are the first few words to learn? If you only have five minutes, what can you do to start to infuse UX into your library?

Here are ten things:

1. Start reading UX books. Take five minutes to browse UX in your favorite online bookstore.
2. Send out a 2 question survey to your users. Anything! Make it open ended, and start the conversation! Put it on Facebook if you have that, or slips of paper at the reference desk if you don’t.
3. Watch several videos at Human Factors International. (They are short!)
4. Sign up for HFI’s free newsletter.
5. Visit Steve Krug’s website.
6. Browse Studying Students by Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons.
7. Read Designing Better Libraries latest post.
8. Sit in your public space for five minutes and just watch and listen. How is the space being used? How is it not being used? What surprised you? What made you smile?
9. Watch Andrew Crow’s The 5 Minute History of User Experience Talks about the evolution of the UX industry. Forecasts that multi-channel experiences will bring new experiences, and new industries into the field.
10. Read Library Journal’s The User Experience column.

 

Digital Storytelling in Education

Video as a part of journals as been on a roll. I haven’t bought it yet, but I love the concept of JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments. And, some of the chemistry journals have been slowly adding in author talks, etc. around the edges of publishing.

But this week had two big happenings in video publishing!

IOP announced earlier:

IOP Publishing launches video abstracts in New Journal of Physics – 04
Feb 2011
The New Journal of Physics (NJP) has announced the launch of video
abstracts as a new integrated content stream. The new feature is
expected to give all authors the opportunity to go beyond the
constraints of the written article to personally present the importance
of their work to the journal’s global audience. The first examples of
the new author-supplied videos are now live at

http://www.njp.org/videoabstracts
.

And then, today, I saw this:

U.S. Department of Energy
Oak Ridge, TN – Scientific videos highlighting the most exciting research and development
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE<http://www.energy.gov/>) are now available
through ScienceCinema<http://www.osti.gov/sciencecinema>. The multimedia search tool was launched
today as part of a one-day workshop, “Multimedia and Visualization Innovations for Science,”
jointly hosted by Microsoft and the International Council
for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI), held in Redmond, Washington.

As mobile use increases, the availability of watching videos on mobiles will increase, so I am thrilled that more are becoming available. But, more than that, I love the ability of scientists to capture more than what they might be able to put into a scientific article. How inspiring this could be for our future scientists!

I know this puts a lot of pressure on other publishers to do the same, but perhaps authors can help with this effort.

At Rice, we are starting a new film contest. We had a contest last year too, and one of the submissions was a fantastic biography piece about why a student had chosen to become a cognitive science major. Most likely, students involved at the university level in telling their digital story, will want to incorporate that same skill into their academic portfolio, and even, their lab work.But, if the skills are developed at the undergraduate university level, or high school level, they will already have them when they start their research work.

There are fabulous resources for digital storytelling. Some of my favorites:

• CogDogRoo: 50 ways to tell a digital story
• Lisa Spiro’s links on digital storytelling
• Lawrence Lessig on writing for the 21st century (50 minute address on YouTube)

Student said, “I have never been to a library.”

I am giving more and more general tours at my library these days. Today, I gave a tour to a group of high school students. Smart kids, and they asked good questions. But, I have to say I was seriously alarmed when two of them said that they have never been to a library. Not to any library! Really? I wish I could have had the opportunity to ask them more about this.
Is the library too far to drive to? Do they have a fabulous home library? Do their parents not like the library for some reason?
I have been quite sure, up to this point, that libraries serve a fundamental purpose in society, and will always exist.
But what if they don’t? What if teenagers stop going to them? What if parents stop taking their kids to the library?
As a kid I used to walk two miles to my public library in the summer, and then two miles back home with my treasures. I remember being a part of the Texas Summer Reading program in San Marcos in 1976, when you got a little soldier for each book you read to make up a patriotic battle scene. And, sometimes, they showed us movies, like,  A Wrinkle in Time. I would not be the person that I am today without that experience of a warm, welcoming public library.

So,  on that note, a link to save our Texas libraries.

Ethnographic work and scientists

I came across an interesting article yesterday: Exploring a New Model for Preprint Server: A Case Study of CSPO. The abstract says:

this paper describes the introduction of an open-access preprint server in China covering 43 disciplines. The system includes mandatory deposit for state-funded research and reports on the repository and its effectiveness and outlines a novel process of peer-review of preprints in the repository, which can be incorporated into the established system of promotion and tenure. This state-initiated innovation is considered to have been well incorporated into the established scientific communication system despite the sociological differences between the various disciplines served by the repository.

More about this paper in a minute.

The  first physics archive of preprint articles, arXiv, was originally developed by Paul Ginsparg, in 1991. It started out as a place to put preprints in physics, and now includes astronomy, mathematics, computer science, statistics and several other discliplines.

It first lived at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and is now hosted and operated by Cornell University.

The operation of arXiv is currently funded by Cornell University and by the National Science Foundation.

Last year, Cornell asked  institutions to make annual voluntary contributions based on the amount of downloading utilization by each institution. 

They put up a very helpful list at
http://arxiv.org/help/support/2009_usage
which details out the name of institutions, percentage of total institutional downloads, and number of article downloads. My institution did give a voluntary contribution, because it is the right thing to do, and they posted a nice branding message at the top right of arXiv page for local visitors that says, “We gratefully acknowledge support from Rice University.” I am proud of this, and happy that our users know that we support this great effort.

But, many of the high-use US state institutions were not able to contribute, either because of lack of funds, or because of procurement regulations.    Will Cornell move to a true subscription/controlled access model for ArXiv? What happens to those of us that DID send a check last year? Do we have to send another one?

So, back to the article: The Chinese preprint effort, CSPO, at
http://www.paper.edu.cn
, was set up in October 2003 by the Center for Science and Technology Development, an agency of the Ministry of Education in the Peoples’ Republic of China. According to the article, “CSPO serves as a platform for scientists to exchange their ideas and research results quickly and aims to minimize the loss caused by the time lag between research and publication. The server applies the Chinese National Standard GB/T1374-92, the Code and Classification for Disciplines, and currently accepts preprint drafts in 43 disciplines.” The system includes mandatory desposit for state-funded research and reports on the repository.

So, I am left with some questions and would love to start a study about information-seeking scientists revolving around preprint servers! Warning: I don’t have answers for these questions, at least not yet!

• Will a global preprint server be possible at some point?
• Do my physics/statistics/etc. scientists at my U.S. institution use only the arXiv, or do some of them also search in the preprint servers of other countries, like this one from China?
• China seems to be more successful in rolling in support for publication in a preprint server into the promotion & tenure system-why is that?
• Does the U.S. have a mandate to make sure that our scientific preprint servers continue to exist and thrive? (Ok, I say yes to this one.)

 

 

 

 

As We May Evolve, Backstory

Thanks to the wonderful folks over at ACRL; they published my short post today: As We May Evolve. This is the backstory. Last year, in the Spring, I got to take a great History of Science class from Dr. Cyrus Mody. His class was fantastic, and introduced me to several great history of science writers, including David Kaiser. We had to write a 15 page paper, and I found myself wanting to do a history of science librarianship, focusing on the importance of physics librarians. But, that wasn’t what happened. Early on in the process, I found the great paper by Mark Bowles, and David Kaiser sent me a chapter of his forthcoming book: American Physics and the Cold War Bubble. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press.) And, I learned about the chemists. Also, I learned about Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He had issued a report in 1945 to President Roosevelt, entitled “Science – The Endless Frontier.” His views also appeared in a paper called “As We May Think” in the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly. He called for scientists to make more accessible the vast store of knowledge and thus extend man’s physical and mental powers. Reading between the lines, you can hear his call: libraries, and librarianship, is overwhelmed; scientists, move to action! From his experience working with some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare, he observed their information and communication needs. He saw great potential for focusing their knowledge in a new direction and developing instruments to give command over information. Dr. Bush called for a new relationship between thinking man and our knowledge.

The legacy of Bush lingered in the air for many years. In 1965, J.C.R. Linklider had been sponsored by the Council on Library Resources, Inc to write a book, Libraries of the Future.  He admits in his forward that he had hoped that this book would be a small step in the direction to which Bush had pointed in his pioneer article, but that he had not actually read the article until he finished the book. His omission of Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” from his bibliography was noticed, and when he was advised to read it, he added to the forward, “Now that I have read it, I should like to dedicate this book, however unworthy it may be, to Dr. Bush.   (Linklider, viii).  Future Libraries details much about a future of libraries where access is easy, and computer systems enable greater information storage, organization and retrieval.  In the years after World War II, science and technology prospered, and the era of big science grew exponentially.

I didn’t learn any library history in grad school, so I have to say I am forever grateful to Dr. Mody. I still am looking for stories about early physics library history too!