Collaborative text reference

It's been a week since the launch of the nation's first collaborative text reference service - My InfoQuest. It's led by the Alliance Library System and participated by over 30 libraries from all over the country.

I'm not a texter myself but always interested in how libraries can use texting (and other new technologies) to serve the user community. Text reference is definitely a good idea and I'm curious about the types of questions that users ask when they text librarians, and how librarians answer them given the limits of message length - one message can't be longer than 160 characters and it's going to be a challenge for librarians who are used to being thorough and compelete.

By the way, the Handheld Librarian Online conference is coming up soon - apparently librarians are very active in search of new ways to deliver services. :-)

Back from Denver

I spent last week at the ALISE conference in Denver. There were a bunch of interesting presentations and the ones that caught my attention were mostly related to reference education. I've been thinking about designing a course specifically on digital reference lately as I notice it's getting harder and harder to canvas the important issues of this topic in a ref intro class. After all, there's only so much room in a reference intro class to talk about the digital venues via which reference service can be provided.

The reference researchers at Drexel University have created a learning community for reference instructors to share experiences teaching digital reference and learn from each other. It's a fabulous initiative that's built on the use of the question answering component of IPL in reference education. I'd be happy to learn more about it and see how I, as a reference instructor, can benefit from this learning community.

Social nature of librarianship

Librarians are social creatures, especially in the virtual world. You can always find them on the forefront of online social networking technologies -- Facebook, Twitter, Friendsfeed, and many other such sites I never even heard of.

Although I understand well the appeal of connecting with others on the Web, I can hardly find time to do it myself. So I'm constantly amazed by how my colleagues keep up with the fancy sites and widgets that propel them to mingle in the virtual world.

This morning I discovered the "retagrr" site while visiting Stephen Francoeur's Twitter page. He has a "retagrr" page that neatly displays his Web presence - you will gasp at how busy he is traveling across the Web. One must be very good at time management to be able to maintain the presence in all those social networking sites. :-) I have to say I happen to be very inefficient in that department, so I'm not an active participant in the online social world in our profession. But networking with your colleagues via the Web indeed creates new venues for the exchange of information, thoughts and ideas - as Thomas Friedman puts it, it flattens the world.

Tumbled libraries - my prayers are with my colleagues in China

I've been closely following the news about the horrendous earthquake in my home country China, especially the conditions of the libraries in the cities/towns that were affected by this disaster. If you can read Chinese, you can get the update from the website of Library Society of China.

Almost all the libraries in the area close to the epicenter of the quake toppled and quite a number of librarians were buried under the rubbles. Some of them have been rescued after being trapped in the debris for three days, but some others are still nowhere to be found.

It's extremely difficult to read all about this, and my eyes welled up every time I saw the ghastly pictures of the quake aftermath. Let's just hope all this will be over soon, but the scars left by this tragedy will haunt us for years, and decades to come.

The InfTubey Award

I stumbled upon this on the web -- the InfoTubey Award -- an award given out to libraries using videos to promote their programs and services. It's indeed a fabulous idea - both the award and the video promotion!

I have always wanted to create video podcasts introducing American libraries to my Chinese colleagues -- shooting footages at various different types of libraries, interviewing librarians, and providing a glimpse into the American library system for librarians in China.

Unfortunately, my plate is quite full at this moment, but if I could get some help and tech support, I'd definitely make it happen.

librarians in uniforms

I teach reference, and one topic that often comes up in class is "how to make a reference librarian more approachable". Of course, personal traits are important - you need to exhibit your willingness to help via eye contact, warm smiles and relaxing body gestures. In addition to that, I always ask my students what they think of things like name badges and uniforms that could make librarians more identifiable, thus more approachable. Almost unanimously, they agree that it's fine for academic librarians, but never for public librarians. One of them commented that "I don't want strangers calling my name when I'm walking on the street." Fair point.

In the United States, we rarely see librarians wearing badges or uniforms. But in China, it's quite common. I worked at a university library in China five years ago and librarians there are given uniforms, but they don't have to wear it. The so-called uniform is more like a lab coat; some of my former colleagues did wear it to work, but I never liked it.

In some other Chinese libraries, especially in the affluent regions, uniforms are quite well-made. A few months ago I saw on the web pictures of female librarians in uniforms from a public library in the east coast of China, and I was amazed by how much they looked like flight attendants. Dont' get me wrong -- in China, flight attendants are one of the pretties professions.

Apparently, these beautiful uniform-wearing librarians have been in the public's praises. In oriental cultures, well-dressed, smiling, gentle and courteous professionals are definitely a strong manifestation of the concept "service-orientation" .

aNobii and Library Thing

I've used both Library Thing and aNobii to join a social network of book readers who share my tastes and preferences. Both sites are easy to use, but aNobii has more individulized options and a more aesthetically pleasing interface. The downside is that it's only a Beta version, and not nearly as popular as Library Thing. I guess I'll just have to keep my accounts on both sites and see if the traffic in aNobii increases. Right now, there's not much activity going on and some features of the site are not used to their full potential. I hope one day it can blossom into something similar to Dou Ban in China, which has the same service infrastructure as aNobii, but is much better promoted and used.