Book covers

I love book covers, they make such a first impression and sometimes a lasting one.

Working as a Librarian, people often describe books by their description (the big white one etc) instead of their title or contents.

Peter Mendelsund’s Cover is a compendium of his last eleven years of work as a book jacket designer. Found via Book by its Cover

Books and art

From Articulate: Eye Candy the Librarian

Art and books. A union that makes, for me anyway, print books preferable over ebooks. Not only can they make a design statement in a room (eg: with spines colour coded) on shelves, they make a statement about the value placed on books and reading by the owner and in some way constitute a 'collection' of sorts. "A home without books is a body without soul." Marcus Tullius Cicero. That certainly rings true for me.

I have just finished Malinche by Laura Esquivel. I was originally attracted in a second hand store to its lovely cover. I liked the quality of the paper, the artwork and the colours of the cover. I had read her books before so also knew I would probably enjoy it at some level. As I was finishing the book in bed last night I realised the cover is actually a folded up codex (so called by the author) and designed by her brother I think. Some of the sections of the codex are used as illustrations throughout the book.

Finding journals online

My last legal research refresher session was titled 'how to find journals and journal articles online'. This is not an easy task these days and in the end I wound up summarising by encouraging attendees to try a few searches and if they don't locate the journal within 5 mins, to contact the library. The issues that we face during this transition from print to online journal access is that we subscribe to journals via multiple publisher platforms and the library catalogue, as well as offering links to articles via abstracting services such as Informit and Proquest. Access to titles changes regularly as publishers offer more content online and we add titles to our various subscriptions. Patrons want one service which offers search facilities across all journals we have access to, an A-Z list of titles, sortable by subject and full text searchable. I know there are some publishers offering this but the changeable nature of journals and content ownership means that even these are unlikely to offer the perfect solution.

One of the biggest problems with training patrons in the use of subscription databases, library catalogues and other systems is that they don't use them often enough to practice and remember what they learn. We try to focus more on ad-hoc skilling by helping a client search for something as they need it (the just in time v just in case debate again). Doing it this way may mean that clients miss out on updating their research skills and learning about new functionality and search tips via training.

It is a Catch 22 situation. Due to advances in technology and the uptake of social media in libraries, we can now offer automated, targeted alerts, using RSS feeds and mashups. By integrating these tools and federated, googleesque searching my organisation has developed an online library presence to deliver many of the traditional library services. However those same advances and technologies, used by the library and by externals such as publishers mean that without the right skills and with increasing time constraints, clients are still reliant on librarians to run searches, conduct research and to filter information and provide alerting services.

I think we are still a long way from becoming redundant.

On a lighter note - more pretty library/book art from here via Librarian in Black

Scooting Librarian?

scooting about in the library By jessamyn on scooter


This blog post title caught my attention, being a scooterer and a librarian. The scooter in question is not the type I ride though, alas (I wish they would come up with different names for kids scooters, Vespa type scooters and mobility scooters). So, it looks like a great idea, I love libraries that offer 'shopping baskets' to patrons and this is another way of making a trip to the library less physically taxing.

Anyway maybe I could start up a mobile Librarian service 'Scooting Librarian' bringing resources and research assistance to you.

Gift list for librarians

Gift Guide for Library and Book Lovers An Internet Hotlist on Gift Guide created by Library Advocate.

My favourites:

Book shelves
Books in Art
Bookmarks
Purses
and of course lots of lovely items on Etsy

Research is changing.....

I am currently studying for a Certificate in Criminal Intelligence and this semester am doing a subject called Strategic Intelligence Practice. I was reading my study materials last night and was amazed at the all too familiar issues raised by the authors in regards to intelligence analysts. They are facing a challenge to retain their place in organisations due to access to the internet and open source intelligence materials. Educators are impressing on analysts the importance of adding value to their products by including recommendations in their assessments. There are several reasons why they have been reluctant to do this in the past and due to the increase in freely available material, policy makers and managers have started doing their own research and bypassing intelligence analysts.

They face the same dilemma as librarians, is it our job to answer client questions or provide access to sources only. Analysts know that forecasting is difficult to guarantee and so may prefer to provide facts and conclusions and stop short at supplying recommendations. We are often faced with a similar problem with clients asking a research query (often one they don't fully understand) and hoping we'll provide an answer rather than advise them on sources to consult.

It seems that intelligence analysts are striving to gain recognition as a profession, such as librarians (yes, we got a mention), lawyers and doctors have. Much of what they do is very similar to our research function. They liaise with clients within an organisation, gather information, data and intelligence (all of the usual problems with definitions apply) and organise that material into a strategic intelligence assessment or some other type of product or report. The tools, raw data and methods they work with may differ from ours but the imperitive to market themselves, increase their skills and gain recognition are very similar to ours.