I didn't have as much time to find resources this week as I'd hoped to, so I've only got a few bits and pieces at the moment.
One of my main worries about possibly doing collection development is my own reading habits. I tend to stick to science fiction and fantasy, with an occasional splash of historical fiction and whatever nonfiction looks interesting at the moment. When I worked at a public library, the desks were near the YA or Teen fiction, and I ended up reading books from a much wider variety of genres. The problem is, I just haven't kept up with it since hitting grad school.
The first place to start is probably with the reviews in School Library Journal and Library Journal, which admittedly must be decoded to some extent.
Then there are book review blogs. While it's easy enough to find book review blogs that focus on teen and YA literature, it's a bit harder to figure out which of them actually have value - a blog that gives everything 4 or 5 stars and avoids any hard criticism at all is probably not as useful as one that has both types of review.
A teen/YA book review blog (and general book-related issues blog) that I found recently and really like is Bookalicious. The author is willing to provide reviews of books she did not like, and say why.
Finally, a nice thing about YA and teen authors nowadays is that many of them are very active online. They read books by other YA authors, they interact with their audience via Twitter, blogs, emails and websites. It's an excellent environment for discovering new books and authors.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Professional Development Mondays
Well, I had my first interview for a professional position this past Friday. The interview made me realize just how little experience I have with what goes in to programming and collection development. For the latter I at least have my project from my Contextual Inquiry and Project Management class; my group did an analysis of the collection development process of a local library. However, I failed to remember this might actually be relevant experience when asked what my experience with collection development was.
But programming and instruction... there, I have very little experience.
So, since I don't seem to actually be using this blog, how about I give myself something to actually do with it that might motivate me to post something interesting here. I'll set myself the goal of finding resources for collection development, programming, and instruction in libraries, specifically for youth/teens, and I'll post about what I'm learning on Mondays.
But programming and instruction... there, I have very little experience.
So, since I don't seem to actually be using this blog, how about I give myself something to actually do with it that might motivate me to post something interesting here. I'll set myself the goal of finding resources for collection development, programming, and instruction in libraries, specifically for youth/teens, and I'll post about what I'm learning on Mondays.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
On Teenagers and the Internet: AKA, don't be a jerk.
The other night, during a break in my Material Culture class, my classmate Liz started telling our Professor about the whole Constance McMillen debacle. He hadn't heard of it at all, which is surprising considering how saturated liberal news media sites seem to have become in it. First, Constance couldn't wear a tux and take a girl to the prom. Next, they canceled prom so she couldn't go. Then, fake prom for her and a few of the special needs kids, while everyone else went to real prom. And now, Facebook groups harassing Constance, while others harass the teens bullying her.
The worst part, of course, is that very few of the teenagers harassing Constance have set up their privacy settings on Facebook, and as a result, the people harassing them have access to things such as, say, phone numbers. Addresses. Information about who their best friends are, who their relatives are. As Liz said last night, it's as if they're in complete ignorance of just how public a space Facebook is and how dangerous such a public space can be.
Now, do I agree with these teenagers? No. But that doesn't mean I can't worry about keeping them safe, both on the internet and in the physical world. Because they are kids. Because they deserve a chance to grow up and look back on their high school years and think "Man, I was a jerk".
For me, listening in on this conversation set off all kinds of alarm bells in my head. I've spent the past couple of weeks putting together a cover letter for a Youth Specialist Position, and have spent a lot of time thinking about why I want to work with teenagers as a result.
Because, let's face it: I'm only 23. High school was not all that long ago, and I didn't have a very good time there either. So when this job appeared, I found myself sitting there for a while, wondering what on earth I was thinking, applying for a job that involves working with teens.
Then, I realized: I care about what happens to them. I've got just enough distance from my high school years to realize that in high school, we were all young, most of us were stupid, and most of us were miserable, in some way or another. That hasn't changed at all in the past 6 years. I want to help teenagers be less miserable and be safer and be more prepared for whatever it is that comes after high school for them.
Part of that is information literacy instruction, both for teens and for their teachers. I remember being in class and having teachers tell me to just Google it when it was time to write papers. I didn't learn how useful databases were until I took my reference class in grad school. I'm pretty sure we had library trips in undergrad to learn how the databases work, but I'm also pretty sure none of them stuck, and I actually had no idea how many databases Smith had until I looked in to it last year during my reference class. And I know that a lot of teachers are STILL telling their students to "just Google it". My fiance admitted to doing it himself, saying he assumed that his students would be able to search intelligently and make judgments about the veracity and relevance of the information found. (At which point he was probably glad we're still long-distance, as he only had to deal with my enraged screech via Skype.)
But the other part is doing what I can to educate teens about the Internet. It's a public space that encompasses most of the world, and it seems like a lot of people don't quite grasp that it is. Children and teenagers growing up in this increasingly digital age are often not taught how to protect and represent themselves online, in many cases because their parents don't know how to either. Teens strike me as especially vulnerable, since this is a point in life when a lot of them are exploring and forming different identities, and a time in which the harsh words of their peers can have the strongest impact.
The worst part, of course, is that very few of the teenagers harassing Constance have set up their privacy settings on Facebook, and as a result, the people harassing them have access to things such as, say, phone numbers. Addresses. Information about who their best friends are, who their relatives are. As Liz said last night, it's as if they're in complete ignorance of just how public a space Facebook is and how dangerous such a public space can be.
Now, do I agree with these teenagers? No. But that doesn't mean I can't worry about keeping them safe, both on the internet and in the physical world. Because they are kids. Because they deserve a chance to grow up and look back on their high school years and think "Man, I was a jerk".
For me, listening in on this conversation set off all kinds of alarm bells in my head. I've spent the past couple of weeks putting together a cover letter for a Youth Specialist Position, and have spent a lot of time thinking about why I want to work with teenagers as a result.
Because, let's face it: I'm only 23. High school was not all that long ago, and I didn't have a very good time there either. So when this job appeared, I found myself sitting there for a while, wondering what on earth I was thinking, applying for a job that involves working with teens.
Then, I realized: I care about what happens to them. I've got just enough distance from my high school years to realize that in high school, we were all young, most of us were stupid, and most of us were miserable, in some way or another. That hasn't changed at all in the past 6 years. I want to help teenagers be less miserable and be safer and be more prepared for whatever it is that comes after high school for them.
Part of that is information literacy instruction, both for teens and for their teachers. I remember being in class and having teachers tell me to just Google it when it was time to write papers. I didn't learn how useful databases were until I took my reference class in grad school. I'm pretty sure we had library trips in undergrad to learn how the databases work, but I'm also pretty sure none of them stuck, and I actually had no idea how many databases Smith had until I looked in to it last year during my reference class. And I know that a lot of teachers are STILL telling their students to "just Google it". My fiance admitted to doing it himself, saying he assumed that his students would be able to search intelligently and make judgments about the veracity and relevance of the information found. (At which point he was probably glad we're still long-distance, as he only had to deal with my enraged screech via Skype.)
But the other part is doing what I can to educate teens about the Internet. It's a public space that encompasses most of the world, and it seems like a lot of people don't quite grasp that it is. Children and teenagers growing up in this increasingly digital age are often not taught how to protect and represent themselves online, in many cases because their parents don't know how to either. Teens strike me as especially vulnerable, since this is a point in life when a lot of them are exploring and forming different identities, and a time in which the harsh words of their peers can have the strongest impact.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Being a list of things to do...
I keep telling myself to write in here, and failing horribly. I suspect the fast-approaching end of the semester may have something to do with that. This does not, however, mean that I haven't been thinking of things I want to write about, so here's a list:
- Pam Samuelson's talk from February (!) about the Google Books Settlement. I've done some meandering and poking about into this stuff in other places, but her talk at SI gave me a better idea of what the Google Book Settlement is like, and how it relates to copyright law.
- Book Review of Sister Light, Sister Dark by Jane Yolen. The reasons I think this is a really cool book are probably some of the same reasons I am a really huge geek.
- Book Review of The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle by Deva Fagan. I picked this up as an ARC at Midwinter, and have been meaning to write a book summary and review of it. Complete with links to TV Tropes, because I am an evil person and it would be fun.
- Pictures of books from work. I've got interesting bindings, more moldering tomes, and some really pretty illustrations from manuscripts.
- Pictures of science fiction and fantasy book covers from the 80's. Some of them are really, truly horrible, in the best way possible.
- Adventures in cataloging my personal library on LibraryThing and my yarn stash on Ravelry.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Book dust in my nose!
Today, I disbound a bunch of Connecticut Public Records from the 1890's.
As you can see, these books are in really poor condition. The leather is moldering, in most cases the front and back covers are detached, pages are falling out, the works. Some time in the last, oh, 100 years, the leather on the spine decided to become one with the paper and glue beneath it, making it a challenge (and in most cases, an impossibility) to remove the spine in one piece.
Yeah. Fun.
Apparently they originally belonged to the Hartford Public Library, judging by the bookplates. My favorite bookplate is the one from the Lending Department:
I especially like the bit about reporting all cases of contagious disease in the house where you live.
And now to go sneeze reddish brown goop for the rest of the day!
As you can see, these books are in really poor condition. The leather is moldering, in most cases the front and back covers are detached, pages are falling out, the works. Some time in the last, oh, 100 years, the leather on the spine decided to become one with the paper and glue beneath it, making it a challenge (and in most cases, an impossibility) to remove the spine in one piece.
Yeah. Fun.
Apparently they originally belonged to the Hartford Public Library, judging by the bookplates. My favorite bookplate is the one from the Lending Department:
I especially like the bit about reporting all cases of contagious disease in the house where you live.
And now to go sneeze reddish brown goop for the rest of the day!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
On copied books and copyright
The other day, I had a brief conversation with the boss of my boss, in which he mentioned a suggested change in the process for prepping Google Rejects from the external shelving facility for scanning. Apparently, in one meeting or another, Section 108 of copyright law came up.
Basically, Section 108 is what allows libraries to make copies of books they own, even if that item is not in public domain. The reason it relates to the preparation of Google Rejects for scanning is because it allows for the creation of preservation-quality copies of an item in poor condition and allows them to be accessed at the library, provided the library actually owns the original item.
A while back, I'd been looking at the preservation page of my undergraduate's library, and noticed a line about books beyond repair. Basically, what they do in the case where a book is beyond repair and further handling would destroy it is to make preservation-quality photocopies of the book, rebind these photocopies, and stick them out on the shelf instead. I'm not entirely sure what happens to the original items after this is done, but I suspect that they get disbound to some extent while being photocopied - books with brittle paper are AWFULLY hard to open up and keep in one piece - and the remains either get discarded or put into an external shelving facility, possibly with the value of the original item kept in mind while making this decision. Given all we hear about copyright and so on here in library school, I'd been wondering what gave them the ability to do that, and Section 108 is the answer.
Now, to hop back to the first couple of paragraphs: the reason my boss's boss spent a meeting talking about Section 108 is because an awful lot of the Google Rejects we're processing are in very poor condition when we get to them. There is generally a pretty good reason these items were rejected from Google's scanning process. Maybe the covers were detached, maybe the binding was loose, maybe they were just overall far along in the process of falling apart completely.* So, one way or another, we have to deal with them. The non-unique items get disbound and guillotined, the unique ones stay intact, and for the most part, off they go to a vendor.** Sometimes, they're in such poor condition that disbinding and guillotining them seems almost kind.
Unfortunately, this process really limits the use of the original item from that point onward, since it tends to be just a collection of loose pages if it was a non-unique item. And, if the book is from after 1923, it's not yet in public domain, which means the library cannot put a full version of a digital copy up online.
However, if the item was already in really poor condition, the library is allowed to make a digital copy for preservation and make it available to people who are able to use the library's resources: students, faculty, and staff. ***
So the proposed change to the process of prepping these books for scanning is to take a few extra minutes and note the condition of the item beforehand. Originally, they'd hoped to hunt down books that had already been scanned and determine which ones they'd be allowed to put up online, but that ended up being far too labor-intensive. But adding a check to the condition of items as we process them is much less so, and a change likely to be instated.
*The other segment of books that gets rejected the most from Google's scanning process is the segment of books full of oversized items, which range from "Dear god this book is two feet wide" to "Dear god this book has 5000 pages". These books are a whole other issue.
**These books are all in the external shelving facility, which for the most part means that they do not get used very much and are quite often in poor condition and cannot be taken out of the reading room. Disbinding and guillotining decreases the cost of scanning by quite a bit, as they can be fed through an automatic scanner. In theory, when and if the DCU starts digitizing rejected books from the main stacks, there will probably be a different process for Google Rejects that have a greater potential for frequent use. In other words, less disbinding and guillotining.
***Which, of course, brings up the issue of whether a single copy of an item made via photocopies and a single digital copy of something are equivalent, which... they really aren't. A single photocopied copy of an item can only be used by one person at a time, while a digital copy can be used by multiple people at the same time, which makes their lumping together as the same sort of "single" copy of an item rather strange, even if use is limited to those who can normally use the library resources.
Basically, Section 108 is what allows libraries to make copies of books they own, even if that item is not in public domain. The reason it relates to the preparation of Google Rejects for scanning is because it allows for the creation of preservation-quality copies of an item in poor condition and allows them to be accessed at the library, provided the library actually owns the original item.
A while back, I'd been looking at the preservation page of my undergraduate's library, and noticed a line about books beyond repair. Basically, what they do in the case where a book is beyond repair and further handling would destroy it is to make preservation-quality photocopies of the book, rebind these photocopies, and stick them out on the shelf instead. I'm not entirely sure what happens to the original items after this is done, but I suspect that they get disbound to some extent while being photocopied - books with brittle paper are AWFULLY hard to open up and keep in one piece - and the remains either get discarded or put into an external shelving facility, possibly with the value of the original item kept in mind while making this decision. Given all we hear about copyright and so on here in library school, I'd been wondering what gave them the ability to do that, and Section 108 is the answer.
Now, to hop back to the first couple of paragraphs: the reason my boss's boss spent a meeting talking about Section 108 is because an awful lot of the Google Rejects we're processing are in very poor condition when we get to them. There is generally a pretty good reason these items were rejected from Google's scanning process. Maybe the covers were detached, maybe the binding was loose, maybe they were just overall far along in the process of falling apart completely.* So, one way or another, we have to deal with them. The non-unique items get disbound and guillotined, the unique ones stay intact, and for the most part, off they go to a vendor.** Sometimes, they're in such poor condition that disbinding and guillotining them seems almost kind.
Unfortunately, this process really limits the use of the original item from that point onward, since it tends to be just a collection of loose pages if it was a non-unique item. And, if the book is from after 1923, it's not yet in public domain, which means the library cannot put a full version of a digital copy up online.
However, if the item was already in really poor condition, the library is allowed to make a digital copy for preservation and make it available to people who are able to use the library's resources: students, faculty, and staff. ***
So the proposed change to the process of prepping these books for scanning is to take a few extra minutes and note the condition of the item beforehand. Originally, they'd hoped to hunt down books that had already been scanned and determine which ones they'd be allowed to put up online, but that ended up being far too labor-intensive. But adding a check to the condition of items as we process them is much less so, and a change likely to be instated.
*The other segment of books that gets rejected the most from Google's scanning process is the segment of books full of oversized items, which range from "Dear god this book is two feet wide" to "Dear god this book has 5000 pages". These books are a whole other issue.
**These books are all in the external shelving facility, which for the most part means that they do not get used very much and are quite often in poor condition and cannot be taken out of the reading room. Disbinding and guillotining decreases the cost of scanning by quite a bit, as they can be fed through an automatic scanner. In theory, when and if the DCU starts digitizing rejected books from the main stacks, there will probably be a different process for Google Rejects that have a greater potential for frequent use. In other words, less disbinding and guillotining.
***Which, of course, brings up the issue of whether a single copy of an item made via photocopies and a single digital copy of something are equivalent, which... they really aren't. A single photocopied copy of an item can only be used by one person at a time, while a digital copy can be used by multiple people at the same time, which makes their lumping together as the same sort of "single" copy of an item rather strange, even if use is limited to those who can normally use the library resources.
A brief introduction
I've put off starting a blog about being a library science grad student for so long that I'm almost to the point where it'll have to be a blog about being a librarian instead.
But really, that sort of blogging tends to turn into whining, so instead, I'll just be putting up various interesting things on a variety of topics, most of which will be related in one way or another to library science. Or being a library science grad student. Or being a librarian. Or young adult fiction. Or whatever is on my mind at the time, really.
Currently, I work in the Digital Conversion Unit at the University of Michigan as a low-paid student minion, a job I actually really love because I get to disbind and guillotine books in preparation for digitization by some of our vendors. Disbinding and guillotining books is an incredibly soothing process.
Hello, I'm Madison. Nice to meet you.
But really, that sort of blogging tends to turn into whining, so instead, I'll just be putting up various interesting things on a variety of topics, most of which will be related in one way or another to library science. Or being a library science grad student. Or being a librarian. Or young adult fiction. Or whatever is on my mind at the time, really.
Currently, I work in the Digital Conversion Unit at the University of Michigan as a low-paid student minion, a job I actually really love because I get to disbind and guillotine books in preparation for digitization by some of our vendors. Disbinding and guillotining books is an incredibly soothing process.
Hello, I'm Madison. Nice to meet you.
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