Home - Library

3/17/2010

Thinking about the future of collections

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at a meeting of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium considering the implications for libraries of e-readers and downloadable electronic books. I was pleased to be invited, because it gave me the chance to clarify my thinking about this complicated topic.

I spoke about the OWHL's experience with our two Kindles and new nook,

and our plans for a set of 5 Sony PRS-300's that we have just ordered.

I talked about the diverse electronic collections that we currently have, and our plans for future collection development. And then I confessed that I had far more questions than answers, and what I really wanted to do was to share the questions with the group, to see what my colleagues are thinking about these topics that keep me up at night. Despite an excellent discussion, the questions mostly remain unanswered. So I have decided to pose them to you.

1. Can we foresee a point in time when we (libraries) no longer collect physical books? What is the time line? What do we do with the print collections that we currently have?

2. With the pressures on our budgets, how long can we afford to collect the same book in redundant formats? (Print, Large print, CD audiobook, Downloadable audiobook, eBook?) If we have to give some formats up, which ones will go? How do we decide which formats to collect for any given title?

3. We belong to a library consortium. Our delivery systems were set up to facilitate the sharing of physical items. What are the implications for Inter-network Transfers of the explosion of electronic content? Freed of geographic limitations associated with physical transfer, could we share materials with a much larger group of libraries?

4. The FCC has indicated that it views broadband access as a right, and has published a 10-year plan to get us to ubiquitous, very high speed connectivity. Consequently, we should anticipate that residents of poorer communities who are currently electronically disenfranchised will have the ability to download books (and movies, and audio.) In this case, how long should we continue to collect CDs and DVDs?

5. What are the implications for shared collections (such as our in NOBLE) when individual libraries decide to purchase (or lease) electronic materials under contracts that limit the materials to that library's patrons? How should the records for these materials appear our shared catalog?

6. Should we provide subscription access to e-book collections for use on the user's own device? (We currently do this for downloadable audio) If our patrons can select and download titles from these collections without coming to the library, how can we add value to the transaction?

7. Given that many of the books that we select never circulate, should we dedicate a portion of our book budget for the purchase of ebooks to be installed (and loaned) on library e-readers “on demand?” If we do this, what counts as a circulation, the loan of the device, or the use of the title?

8. It’s not an ereader, but will the iPad change everything?

Can we afford to acquire ereaders before we see what happens with the iPad?

Feel free to share your ideas.

Posted at 2:30 PM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Events | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/9/2010

For Special Collections, Digitization is a Win/Win

Sometimes the goal of providing our users with access to materials conflicts with our responsibility for preserving those rare and delicate materials. Many of the valuable materials in our Special Collections are old and fragile, and could be damaged by even the most careful use. We would like to make these materials available digitally, but have neither the equipment nor the resources to undertake a major scanning project.

Fortunately, the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library containing almost two million books, already includes full-text electronic versions of many of our titles.

Consequently, we can provide access to the materials by linking from our catalog record for the print volume to the Internet Archive record for the electronic version.

For example, go to the OWHL catalogue and look for Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Gates Ajar (1869.) Notice that the record contains an Internet Archive icon. This means that with one click you can go directly to the full text of the book. You can read the book online, send it to your smart phone, or download it in a number of formats—including those for the Kindle and other ebook reading devices. All illustrations, marginalia, or other markings in the original book are reproduced exactly.

Unlike Google’s Book Search project, the Internet Archive is non-profit. Internet Archive records never contain ads, and the materials are very stable. Tim Sprattler, our Special Collections librarian, is systematically working his way through our collection to add these Internet Archive links to all of our Special Collection books that have already been scanned as a part of the project.

But what about our Special Collections materials that are not part of the Internet Archive? That is where non sibi comes in! The project continues to grow as libraries send their unique, public domain materials to be scanned. Fortunately for us, one of the scanning venues is at the Boston Public Library. Tim will be headed there over the spring break, with a set of about 20 titles to add to the project. To offset expenses, donating libraries pay 10 cents per page for the scanning services. The first collection to be scanned will include the novel My Three Years at Andover by James Lee Perrin, PA 1902, writing under the pseudonym Ewer Struly. In addition, we will contribute several small books that were part of a series of lectures written by Samuel Read Hall, the first Principal of the Teachers [English] Seminary at Andover. The first edition of Lectures on School-Keeping, published in 1829, has already been scanned. We will be contributing the 3rd edition, published in 1831, which includes a chapter on how to locate a school and lay out a classroom.

Posted at 11:43 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Archives | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Watching TV without paying for Cable

The “resource of the week” isn’t exactly academic, but it will soon be spring break for most members of our community. So I thought that this might be a good time to introduce one of my favorite search tools—Clicker. Clicker is a free, web-based search engine for online television, movies, and music videos. Depending upon your viewing preferences, if you have a broadband Internet connection you may be able to watch the shows that you want to watch at your convenience without paying cable fees.

You probably know that lots of your favorite shows are online, many of them for free. But finding a specific episode is complicated by the fact that there are thousands of shows spread among hundreds of different sites. Clicker indexes all of these shows and “delivers them in one seamless, organized experience so you can easily discover what's available to watch (and what isn't) online, and where to watch it.”

Clicker provides access to more than 450,000 episodes, from over 6,000 shows, from over 1,200 networks, tens of thousands of movies, and 50,000 music videos from 20,000 artists. Unlike Hulu, (www.hulu.com) Clicker doesn’t host the shows. Hulu is a very popular repository of free (if you are willing to watch commercials) TV but (under contract with the suppliers) Hulu only makes the last several programs available. So what happens if a friend recommends a series and you want to start from the beginning? That’s when Clicker comes in handy. For example, while there are no free episodes of The Shield (starring Michael Chiklis, an Andover native) available on Hulu, Clicker lets you know that there are 34 episodes available for a fee from Amazon, or for free from Netflix if you are a member of Netflix. From that screen, you can procede right to the specific episode of your choice. Clicker also allows you to create “playlists.” If you follow a particular show, Clicker will add new episodes to your playlist as they become available.
Check out this free tool over the break.

Posted at 8:17 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Featured Resource | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/2/2010

Reading a book on the Nook

The OWHL not only strives to meet the needs of our users, we also aim to anticipate those needs. Consequently, we have been staying abreast of recent developments in electronic books, and cautiously experimenting with e-reader devices and materials. Currently we have two Amazon Kindles and a Barnes and Noble Nook. One of the Kindles is a “first generation” model, and is available for loan to interested faculty and staff. The other is a Kindle DX (the large version) and is dedicated to our online subscription to The Boston Globe. It is available for use in the library by any member of the community.

E-reading devices have recently been getting a lot of publicity, and while e-books still make up a small percentage of total books sold, the “adoption curve” is increasing steeply. The devices claim to offer a reading experience comparable to that of a book, with several advantages. The first advantage is that they offer instant gratification. Many e-reading devices connect to electronic bookstores via 3G cell phone networks, without any monthly charge for that service. Therefore, obtaining content is as easy as searching for a title and pressing a button. Another advantage is portability. The devices are able to hold hundreds of titles, which certainly simplifies packing for a long trip. Finally, it is possible to instantly resize the font, even while reading. That advantage alone has won the loyalty of middle aged readers.

The newest addition to our e-reader inventory is our Nook. From our perspective, the Nook has several advantages over the Kindle. First, it uses the ePub format, which is becoming a standard, rather than the Kindle’s proprietary format. Consequently, it may be used to offer thousands of public domain materials. Second, it “works” with Overdrive, the leading supplier of electronic books to libraries. We anticipate being able to offer a set of titles through Overdrive in the near future. Third, it permits materials to be “shared” from one Nook to another. This is a critical feature from the perspective of libraries, and is not possible with the Kindle.
But how does it stack up against a “regular” book in terms of the “reading experience?” To answer that question, I undertook to read a book on the Nook.

The Nook is a slim, lightweight device about the size of a small paperback book. It has an uncluttered face with a two-part screen. The upper screen features e-ink and serves as the reading area. The lower, smaller screen is a full-color touch screen, and serves for navigation. I deliberately did not read the manual, as I wanted to determine how easy it would be to use the reader. It was entirely intuitive. A “sleeping” Nook presents a digitized portrait of a literary luminary, and you are prompted to press a button to “wake up” the Nook. Once it is activated, the navigation screen presents four icons, and allows you to go immediately to your book in progress. If you are only reading one book, it returns you to the screen where you left off. If you are reading two or more books, you simply set bookmarks so that you can return to the right screen.

E-ink, as advertised, provides a pleasant reading experience. It would be easy to forget that you are reading on a device if the Nook had a book-like cover that permitted you to hold it like a book. Instead, it is a bit like holding a large cell phone. While that is a bit disconcerting to me, since I have considerable muscle-memory devoted to the book-holding position, it is unlikely to faze younger readers.

The navigation within a book is entirely simple. Buttons at the level of your thumbs allow you to “turn the page” with either hand. Other buttons permit backtracking, but they are positioned so as to minimize accidental use. While there is an instant delay as the screen refreshes, it is probably no more disruptive than turning a physical page. I am now 2/3 of the way through a book that was originally printed in 384 pages, and I have not had to recharge the battery. The book that I am reading electronically cost the OWHL $9.99. The print copy retails for $25.95, and the audio download is priced at $29.70. We have purchased both the e-book version and the audio book version. So far, we haven’t purchased the print version.

As our collection development policy evolves to encompass these new formats, we would very much like to hear from members of the PA community regarding your interests and preferences.

Posted at 4:22 PM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Electronic Resources | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Celebrating Women’s History Month in the Archive

The Archive is celebrating Women’s History Month by featuring materials from the original Abbot Archive. The materials in the Abbot Archive are not as detailed or well organized as materials in the PA Archive, but there is some interesting material on the school life of the Abbot girl. For example, a letter from the brother of Mary E. V. Shearer, an Abbot girl in the early 1870’s, spoke about her attending Dr. Taylor’s Greek language lectures at Andover after graduating from Abbot Academy to improve her skills before going to college. The extent to which Abbot girls attended classes at PA before the merger is not known, and might make an interesting archival research project for a Brace Scholar. The Archive also contains a pamphlet written by Elizabeth Robins, a successful American actress in the late nineteenth century. Ms. Robins moved to England after the death of her husband, became a suffragette, and wrote her pamphlet The Woman’s Secret in 1908 in support of Women’s Right to Vote. Our copy of the pamphlet has a letter dated July 14, 1908 from Ms. Robins to a Mrs. Mackay talking about the possibility of using the pamphlet as a basis for a lecture tour. This tour apparently never happened. If you’d like to see these or any other materials in support of Women’s History Month, stop by to speak with Interim Archivist Tim Sprattler.

Posted at 4:18 PM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Archives | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/1/2010

Recommendations for Spring Break Reading

It’s no surprise that librarians are voracious readers. Just in time for spring break, we thought that we would share with you some of the books that we are currently reading or have recently read and enjoyed.

Stephanie recommends The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett. True crime meets bibliophilic lust in this shocking story about a con artist obsessed with building a world-class collection of first edition books. Get a behind the scenes look at the antiquarian book world – Bartlett spins a very readable narrative from a decade-long string of thefts in library archives, bookstores and rare book auction houses.

Celeste is reading a book that came highly recommended – The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. This first novel gradually climbed onto the best seller lists after its publication last year, and has remained there. Set in Jackson, Miss. In 1962, at the beginning of the civil rights movement, it tells the story of a time when “black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver.”This book is also available in our collection as a downloadable audiobook.

I am enjoying The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell, which I am reading on the OWHL’s Nook. The book begins with a massacre in the remote Swedish village of Hesjövallen and ultimately spans three continents and 140 years. The sympathetic protagonist, Judge Birgitta Roslin, is only tangentially involved in the case, but tenaciously pursues complex clues that she believes the police have overlooked. Battling health problems and a failing marriage, Roslin’s quest to find the truth becomes deeply personal. This book is also available in our colelction as a downloadable audiobook. I'll be done with the book before the break, so stop by the OWHL if you are interested in borrowing the Nook.

Sara is planning to read the latest book by one of her favorite authors, Nick Hornby. Juliet Naked received a starred review from Publisher’s weekly, proclaiming that Hornby has returned to his roots with “music, manic fandom and messy romance in his funny and touching latest, dancing between three perspectives on fame: a sycophantic scholar, an appreciative audience member, a fabled singer-songwriter who can't see what all the fuss is about.”

Susan is reading a non-fiction book by an Andover Author. Loon: A Marine Story by Jack McLean. “In Loon, McLean takes readers from Andover’s privileged campus, to the infamous Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, to the battle at Landing Zone Loon in the rugged hills along Vietnam’s Laotian border. During that period, Jack transformed from a sheltered boy, into a Marine, and ultimately into one of a handful of survivors of a horrific three-day assault during some of the heaviest fighting of the Vietnam War.” (Review at Amazon.com)

Posted at 11:36 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Print Resources | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

eBook of the Month for March

With the passing of JD Salinger this past year, interest has revived in his iconic work, The Catcher in the Rye. The OWHL is happy to announce that thanks to the generous support of Chelsea House Publishing, we are able to offer unlimited free access during the month of March to a book of full length critical essays devoted to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye from the series Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations. Edited by master scholar and Yale University Professor Harold Bloom, this comprehensive study guide presents a selection of the best current criticism and includes critical essays reflecting a variety of schools of criticism, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, a bibliography, and an introductory essay by Harold Bloom. We hope that this book will tempt you to explore our extensive eBook collection. J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations will be provided with free, unlimited access March 1-31, 2010. You can get access to the book on or off campus by following the link to Netlibrary from the A to Z resource list on the library web site.

Posted at 10:29 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Featured Resource | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/18/2010

What is a book?

Last fall, Scott McLeod of the Dangerously Irrelevant blog posted the following rhetorical question:

What constitutes a “book” these days? When books become electronic and thus become searchable, hyperlinkable, more accessible to readers with disabilities, and able to embed audio, video, and interactive maps and graphics, at what point do they stop becoming “books” and start becoming something else?

I was thinking of this during the past week, when I came across a book that was difficult to catalog. At the OWHL we don't have a designated Tech Services librarian who does all of the new materials cataloging. Rather, the Instructional Services (IS) librarians each select materials for their associated academic departments, and we abtain OCLC catalog records through our consortium. The IS team "enhances" the records of these materials when they are received, adding subject headings, contents notes, and other access points that we know will be useful to our students.

Last week I was working on the book - Give my poor heart ease: voices of the Mississippi Blues. This printed book of interviews comes with a CD of music and a DVD of videos related to the content. My dilemma was that our ILS constrained me to choose a single "material type" for the item. Because it is a printed book, the logical material type is "book." The problem is that students doing a catalog search for books on the blues might find it, but if they really wanted a music CD of Mississippi Blues (and wisely limited their search to CDs) they would not find it. Nor was it clear to me how anyone would ever find the video. We run automated lists of new materials to direct people to new CDs and new DVDs, but those lists rely upon the material type indicator to allocate new materials to the appropriate list. Under the current system, nothing can appear on multiple lists. This might change under our new open source ILS, but not soon enough to solve my current problem.

We decided to create three records for the item--one each for the print book, the CD, and the DVD. They will be shelved so as to maximize the potential for discovery, and each item will reference the other "parts." The inelegant solution got me thinking about a future time in which the original "book" is not printed, but is digital. An electronic full-text book could be seamlessly associated with its digital parts. In the current case, for instance, you could read an essay and then immediately stream the associated video clip or listen to an MP3 of the music. Now that would be user-centered access!

I have always been a lover of printed books, but I am not so naive as to suspect that they will be with us forever. There are just too many ways in which electronic access can offer a better experience. And the proliferation of excellent e-readers, smart phones, and hybrid notebook computers means that the "reading" experience doesn't have to be compromised.

So what is a book? For me, the essential element is the content rather than the delivery system. As we move into this exciting new world of electronic resources, I believe that reading will be enhanced rather than diminished. In the meantime, the OWHL will continue to work hard to assure that our readers discover all of the materials that they need to explore all of the questions they have.

Posted at 11:24 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Print Resources | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/17/2010

Enter OWHL’s Academy Award Contest

The 82nd Academy Awards, honoring excellence in the film industry, will be held on March 7. In order to promote our DVD collection, the OWHL is sponsoring a contest open to all members of the PA community. To enter, you must predict the winners in three categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. Many of this year’s Oscar nominees are included in our DVD collection, so you can check out the movies before you vote. All entries that match the results in all three categories will be entered into a raffle. The top five winners will each receive a DVD of the Best Picture, and there will be additional consolation prizes. Pick up your entry at the circulation desk in the library. Only one entry per person, please. The contest closes at 3:00 pm on March 7, and the winners will be announced on PANet on Monday, March 8. See the list of Nominees on the library display wall, or visit the official Oscar site at http://oscar.go.com/.

Posted at 8:48 AM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Events | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/16/2010

Listening to Students

For the past few years the OWHL has had a Student Advisory Committee. Students are our most important constituency, and we realized that if we wanted to continually improve our program, we needed to understand what spaces, resources, and services they needed and wanted. We had been periodically convening student focus groups, but established a standing committee in order to obtain input from the same group of students over the course of the year. I was able to arrange for the SAC to count as the students' mandatory work duty, so recruitment was not difficult. We are able to get a balance of students by gender, graduation year, and boarding and day. We deliberately sought both library users and non-users, and we invited some students whose behavior had been particularly challenging. The input from the SAC has been invaluable.

This year, instead of having regular weekly group meetings, we are experimenting with a different format for the committee. Each student has selected a time for "work duty" and is matched with a librarian partner. Each week we develop a task for each student to do with supervision by the librarian. They have conducted usability studies of our online catalog and other electronic resources, helped us select citation software, solicited input from their friends on topics of interest to us, participated in a trial of an online information literacy assessment, and completed an extensive survey of their use of technology. The students are pleased to be working one-on-one with their partner librarians, and we have learned a lot about how our students approach real research. They have provided us with insights that we have used to make changes in our web site, our "marketing" of resources, and the arrangement of our space. The students on our SAC all have social networks. It is our hope that they will share what they have learned with their friends. We have some preliminary evidence that this is true. We recently accelerated the purchase of a new citation tool because it was the clear favorite in a head-to-head competition with our existing product. We had arranged for our SAC to test the new tool, but the outcry when the trial was over came from many students NOT on the SAC who had been directed to the trial by their friends!

In subsequent posts, I'll describe some of the specific tasks that we gave to the students, and summarize our results.

Posted at 3:49 PM by Elisabeth E Tully | Category: Information Literacy | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

RSS Feed

1 - 10

Library