Instructors

Last year, I had a request for a Library Instruction class from an instruction I had not yet met. No problem, I sent off an email negotiating the class subjects and after a bit of effort was informed of what the instructor wanted.

My first hint that the instructor was going to be, not difficult, but not a breeze, either, was when I spent more time telling him where we could meet (the library, which is on your way to your classroom) than finding out what he wanted me to teach his class.

The biggest hint that the instructor was going to be difficult was when the first 10 minutes of class was spent arguing with students over what was due when. You know how it is, the whole manipulating of the instructor to shorten the time given to acutal instruction. But then came my big mistake. Stupidly, I made the assumption that the instructor had informed the class of the assignment.

Nope.

I was 1/3 the way through my shpeal before someone piped up saying what was I talking about? That's when I used the technique of repetition. Since they didn't have a sheet of paper telling them what the assignment was, I repeated over and over again, "Two Books, Two Articles, Two Websites" etc.

I informed the class that I would email them a handout (which I do for all my LI classes) with the assignment and the relevant databases.

During last summer semester, that handout appeared in the hand of a student at the reference desk. Wait a minute, I recognize that! Who did an LI class for this instructor? Checked the calendar, no LI class.

The instructor was using my handout as the assignment and the equivalent of an LI class. He actually expected students to be able to research an essay from a handout that was meant to reinforce/remind what I taught, not explain how to do research.

This morning (Thursday) I received an email - could I please give this instructor the link to the online form to schedule an LI class for next Monday? Rolling my eyes, I sent it to him, knowing he probably wouldn't use it (he didn't) and dreading that I would have to take his class, even though it was at the main campus (that's my day to work main campus).

I was informed of his request for an LI class, and could I teach his 6-7pm class? Oh, sure. He'll send over the assignment, and when he does, forwarded to me.

Why bother, I wrote the thing.

This is almost as bad as knowing I'll be teaching an LI class the Wednesday night (6:30-8pm) before T-Giving.

Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween. Not because of the candy, or because Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner.

No, I love Halloween because it's one of the few times I get to show off. Between the decorations in the library, the candy I give out, to the "Haunted Mansion" PowerPoint presentation I show in the library complete with sounds (for some reason, I have a drop-down screen in the library), but mostly because of the costume I get to wear (that I made, btw), I get to surprise folks (love the double-takes) and be someone weird and get away with it.

I think it's appreciated, too. Oh, I get the usual, "nice costume", but today, I actually had a student hug me for "getting in the spirit".

Enjoy the Holiday!

Am I wrong?

I figured anyone involved in computers, like those in an IT department, would know about CSS, aka Casscading Style Sheets. Even if they've never done CSS, I'd think they'd have heard of it. I've done it, but only for a professional profile site, and I haven't touched that since I got my current job.

And yet, both the part time IT lab facilitator and, as I just learned, the full time IT lab facilitator don't know much about CSS. In fact, the part timer had never heard of it.

Am I wrong in my assumption or do I live in the Twilight Zone?

Grammar question

When refering to the college's archive/s is the proper term "Archives" or "Archive"?

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this, but I haven't done the research yet.

*edit*

A similar issue came up at the SAA Conference, or rather, the Lone Arrangers' Roundtable dinner. We discovered that we all say "The Archives is", making "archives" singular. I likened it to "Archives" as place, versus, "archive" as thing. I guess I decided, depending on if you're talking about the place or any general archive, when I refere to my archives, I use the plural/singular. But if I'm talking about an archive of any ol' stuff, it's singular.

Clear as mud?

Organizational Structure

I'm almost done with an organizational structure for the archive - at least on paper. There are a few things I need to research or make a judgement call on to decide where to put them, but I can always change my mind later. The hard part is getting the basic structure in the first place.

Then, I can start rearranging the materials themselves. After that, I go in and see if the labels on the boxes truly match the contents inside.

When I did my practicum for my MA in Public History, I arranged and described the campaign papers of a state representative whose organization system was non-existant. I think there could not have been better training than that for what I have to do now.

My way of attack was to start with big piles and then separate them into smaller piles, then those into smaller piles, and so on. That's essentially what I'm doing now. Trying to find themes or related items, grouping them together, then finding a place for them in the structure I created.

Well, truth be told, I adapted my structure from another academic's archive. Wake Forest University, to be specific. It's not radical really, it's just a reflection of how the college is structured, which goes along with the original order idea. So that's the basic idea I used. The hard part, though, is that the college kept restructuring itself. The library, for instance, was under Instruction, went to IT, and now is back under Instruction (*edit* now calling itself "Learning") . Being that I am a librarian and in charge of the archive, I decided to put the Library Services under Student Services, rather than under Instruction or IT (which are under College Department).

As long as it makes sense (and I plan on releasing my structure for opinions from my cohorts) it should suffice.

Library Exhibit

Well, our exhibit was a bigger success than I thought. Our guestbook is full of names and our mid-day programming was well attended. Our evening programming, not so much. Not counting those already involved in the exhibit, there were three the first night and four the next. Too bad, too, because the talks were very informative.

I can't say I'm sorry to see it go (tomorrow), but I did learn a lot about the logistics of setting up an event. For instance, finding a venue, marketing, recruiting people to participate, learning that if you say "Lunch & Learn" either know to provide food, or specify light refreshments served, etc. Being the extreme introvert that I am, my partner did a better job getting folks to respond than I did. However, I think I liked the program I designed more than the ones we got from marketing. I need to work on my social skills, but I am improving, if slowly.

Registration, Part II

After further use, I've discovered the user account process is different than what I wrote before (or it was changed, yet again).

It actually goes:

• Personal Info
• User Agreement
• Password (apparently it does take)
• Security Questions
• Username
• Login

They are no longer requiring students to answer the security questions before setting up their password. However, in three months or so, when they have to reset their password, will they remember what they put for answers to their questions? Maybe, but they won't remember if they capitalized it, put a space there, or added "St." to the address.

It's better than it was, but still annoying.

Being a guinea pig is not fun.

My college is one of the beta testers for a new statewide database system for our records and registration. Today is the first day for new students to register for classes. I am helping them set up their student computer accounts and then, helping them register. So, basically, two systems.

While the latter works properly, it's not helpful, and the former is just not working right.

To register, students have to set up their computer accounts, or they can't log into the computers, much less log in to register. Our IT department came up with the system and during the first year, the steps rarely followed in the proper order, but at least it wouldn't give students a useless screen. It should go: Personal info --> User agreement --> get ID/username --> Set up security questions --> Click "Done" (don't get me started on that one) --> "I forgot my password" (how can I forget something I haven't set up yet) --> Answer two of three security questions & enter password at the bottom (which few see because they have to scroll down. They just go ahead and hit enter and never bother to read the red warning text telling them they didn't enter a new password).

However, the process today seems to be

• Personal info
• User agreement
• get ID/username (once, even this failed to appear)
• Set up password (which doesn't take)
• Login page

This process is the old system, but since the password doesn't take, and the security questions are set up, the process is screwed. Now that I know that, I know to have them start over from the beginning and miraculously, they can set up their questions and then their password.

The problem with registering is that most of the classes on this campus are full and who wants to go to another campus, and reportedly it takes 20 min. for the testing results to be recognized by the registration system. Wanna bet? The first few students couldn't register for classes they'd tested into but I have had a few that could, later in the morning.

There were a few other issues, too. One person started setting up their computer account and got through most of it, but when I said to start over again, it said account not found. Moving to another computer fixed that problem. Then there was a student who was in one system but not the other. She had already set up her computer account, but it wasn't working and the username didn't look right. So, I tried looking up her computer account, but she wasn't there. Eventually she could redo the process. Then there was a student who had just set up her questions and just as quickly, forgot her answers.

I'd go on, but I've got to enter these into Footprints before the next wave. On to the afternoon!

*edited to add* And now it is 79.6 degrees in the library, down from the high of 80.2.

Well, I'll be...

Despite the short notice and, I thought, vague and not terribly interesting topic, we had ~15 people at the first NOAA talk (I didn't include the librarians).

This exhibit may not be the dud I thought we'd made it.

Library Exhibits

One of my fellow librarians volunteered to plan an exhibit celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association. The posters are provided free from the Smithsonian (they created the designs and sent out copies) and we are responsible for displaying them and additional programming.

Suffice to say, this exhibit was one of those things that ends up being more work than you thought. I suggested involving our GIS program and little did I know, I was volunteering to help.

We were lucky to get an actual gallery (budget restraints meant they had to cancel the original exhibits), but the rest was difficult. We mounted the posters on foam board--easy, if low tech--but when it came time for the labels, the script we were given was a reiteration of captions on the posters themselves. The frugal person in me decided to let it be, but others decided to be more professional and have labels along side the posters. The gallery coordinator had volunteered to print them out, so I quickly did what I could given the label sizes specified and sent them over. Now I know why she just wanted to print them.

Then came the programming. I was all for inhouse speakers to give a talk or two to faculty, staff, and students for Professional Development credit. We have a GIS/GPS program so we had some folks who could talk about charts, and surveying, and equipment, and the like. Well, marketing got involved and suddenly we're involving the public. So, we added some folks from the county to talk about the history of the city and the tools and software they use. Scheduling was difficult because of July 4th, vacations, and wanting to be consistent, not to mention we were late getting started on scheduling for the public. In the end, we have two Lunch & Learns and two evening programs lined-up. I feel sorry for the speaker this Wednesday. The email announcements only went out today, so I imagine there won't be many in attendance.

I think, the next time I volunteer for something like this, I'll stick to making the brochures/programs, decorating the gallery (with fountains donated by me), and building the display in the Library's Lobby (which, didn't turn out as badly as I feared it would). I'll let the less introverted work with scheduling people for programming. I'm just not nagging enough to get people on the ball. My partner was able to do in two days what I had been unable to in two+ weeks. Although, I was in Second Life when someone from the GIS program strolled by and made the initial contact.

Personally, I think we're making this exhibit a far bigger event than it is. Labels for posters on foam board? Advertising on the college's main page? Programs printed on magazine stock by marketing (especially when marketing's idea for an arts leaflet meant dark brown text on black paper)? Maybe I'm too simple.

And the work is not done. I forgot to get a decent looking album for a guestbook, so I'll be doing that after work tonight.

SAA 2007

I'll be going to the Society of American Archivists conference in Chicago, despite it being the second week of classes at MPOW. Most archives don't work on an academic calendar, I gather.

I'll probably blog the sessions I go to, but I fear I'm too cheap to pay for internet access (especially when the hotel doesn't quote a price online), so unless the conference has free access, I'll post when I get back.

Second Life

My college has an island in Second Life, thanks to a League of Innovation grant. For the most part, it's just a bunch of office spaces (both faculty/staff & students) and a sandbox. However, I can see how online classes might use Second Life to add a more personal touch to group discussions.

For my part, I am building a library so I can use machinima to make tutorials. First up is a tutorial on how to find books by Call Number (LC). I'm beginning to think building the library will be the easy part. Lag in Second Life is notorious, but even more so when your work computers must not have much bandwidth. Despite the computer in the archives being more powerful (CPU & memory), my laptop beats the desktop computer in the archives, hands down. Unfortunately, since I have Vista on my laptop, I can't use the built in machinima tools to record video. All I get are static snapshots that record for the amount of time I try to record a video.

My SL avatar is Abby Nemeth, not to be confused with Abbey Zenith. :)

What I'm doing

Hmm, perhaps I put the cart before the horse, and should have made this the first post.

Much of this is in my profile, but I'll elaborate here.

I work at a large community college. I am in charge of a satelite campus library as well as the college archives. During the semester, I work at the campus library three days a week and the main library (where the archives is) two. Any breaks sends me to the main library.

My library is windowless, save the windows to my office I rarely use, the storage room, and the hallway. I've tried my best to decorate it and probably spent too much money doing it, but hey, I have to work here. Everyone likes my greatest invention of a poster of an outdoor scene with curtains around it to make it look like a window. It's an idea I had when thinking of how to decorate an apartment which only has windows on one wall.

Technically, I'm a reference librarian. Here's a range to get an idea of the questions I face (not word for word):

"I want to type something like a letter. Do I use Wordzzz for that?"

I'm assuming she meant a software program and not constructions of consonants and vowels.

"Is the printer set up for Blue Tooth?"

At the time, I had only a vague idea of what Blue Tooth was, but I was pretty sure our printer didn't qualify.

The archives is the biggest challenge. There's really no nice way to describe it, so I'll try to be vague. The organization is not to archival standards. In fact, materials have been taken out of their original order and filed in sporatic subject groups. I've gone through all the boxes and created a basic accession list. (Really, I was trying to get an idea of the kinds of materials so I'd have in mind where to put things as I created an organization structure.) I've given up trying to put things back in their original order. It would take too much time and I don't have enough provenance records to get everything back where it should. Instead, I am trying to reorder that list to some obvious, intuitive organization. To be transparent, I took a cue from Wake Forest University's archives and adapted their structure to my college. To make a long story short, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Finally, I'm not sure why I'm creating a blog. I'm not the type to advertise myself and I'm not the strong opinion type. My biggest fear is this blog will be reduced to a place to vent frustrations and otherwise show my failings. More likely it will die a slow death.

Scrapbooks

I'm interupting my development of an organizational structure for the archives and am working on a scrapbook. Two mini-problems have reared their head.

First, I noticed the scanner I was given cuts off the sides of photos and sometimes magazine articles. What's a bare bones archivist to do? Take a page from Hollywood. I'm using blue posterboard and a green file folder (colors chosen because that's what I had) as a frame for the photo or article, thereby tricking the scanner to scan the whole item. Of course, this means going back and editing out the frame, but I haven't thought of a better solution. And yes, recording all the changes I make to the image...

Second, I realized that I have a lot of the magazines/newsletters/etc. the articles came from. I wonder if it's kosher to just take apart one of the many copies I have in the archives instead of scanning them. Take less time and effort, to be sure, but I'd still need a digital copy if I ever put it online. Not to mention retaining the integrity of the scrapbook.