Edtechkat

Alan Levine created the same digital story fifty different ways using fifty different online tools. Something to save up for later … 50+ Ways to Tell the Dominoe Story

During the last OLE workshop, 33 participants were asked to rate a list of things we do using library management systems as:

• Core: a process that is an absolutely necessary part of any system, which all libraries perform
• Significant: not a core process, but still important
• Shift: a process that could be shifted to another unit / system outside the library
• Stop: a process that we could stop doing completely

They put little coloured dots on paper to “vote”. The resulting priorities are fascinating: http://oleproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/ole_process_prioritization.pdf

(The OLE project is trying to create specs for an Open Source Library Management System for Research Libraries, being led by Duke University. They have a $145 000 grant to do this. The National Library of Australia is a partner and a couple of months ago there was an OLE workshop at Swinburne for Australian research libraries )

There is an interesting conversation happening on a few blogs about how we prioritise clients who are asking reference questions via different means. They are worth reading in full and the comments are just as interesting as these posts. The two posts below provide a background to the discussion:

• Ask-a-Librarian Services Need a Reboot . David Lee King looks at various library’s policy documents about how they will prioritise clients seeking service in person, via telephone, via email and via chat. He is deliberately provocative:

Please don’t tell me that you can somehow only serve those customers who actually walk into the library and up to your physical reference desk, but can’t get to the customers who call or email or IM or txt you in a timely fashion. I’m not buying that.

The problem isn’t the volume or the format of the question, but the way your reference services are arranged. Rearrange it. Now. Please.

• Separate but not equal? Meredith Farkas looks at the discussion generated in the comments and adds the perspective of serving the distance learner in a university library.