The Utah State Library sponsored the most useful, most fun class in September, at both the Provo Library and the State Library. Traci Lesneski of Meyer, Scherer, and Rockcastle Ltd. came and presented on “Placemaking at your Library.” She was so great! She has tons of insight into what makes the interior of libraries more patron friendly. Here are the slides she presented.
Here’s what she talked about:
Changing expectations of library users and its impact on library design
Principles of Placemaking and how it relates to a library user’s experience
10 Steps to a better library interior
Recent library projects and what people are doing now
Attendees brought photos and floor plans of their libraries to re-design their own library spaces. They came away with ideas for what to do. I even came up with a way to redesign our library space here!
Some of the things that really made me think:
There has been a decrease in print materials per person in the community in the past few years
There has been an even steeper decrease in reference materials
Audio and video materials are on the rise, and e-books are skyrocketing
The public can’t get enough computers or technology
The shift is from:
Housing resources –> connecting to resources
Print centric –> user centric
Solitary –> solitary/collaborative (some solitary space is still needed, but so is collaborative space)
Mono-task –> multitask
Introverted –> extroverted
Fixed –> adaptable
And, finally, I really liked her 10 steps (make that 12 ??)
My very best takeaway seems to be: embrace color.
Thanks, Traci Lesneski, for the enlightening discussion. See you soon, I hope!
Google doesn’t have it all. That’s even true when it comes to finding government documents that are in the public domain free of copyright. Many governments documents not on the Internet are only available in print at depository libraries and archives. They are often difficult to identify in online catalogs, and when finally identified, it may require some traveling to gain access to them.
I’m going to share a nifty new application called BookMyne that, at least for Utah, may allow you to find documents in seconds. If you’re a state employee, the State Library will even have them delivered to your office.
In this example, you’re assisting a committee member to understand the original intent of Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act and you need access to the original guide to the Act produced by the Utah Attorney General’s Office in 1992. It’s not on current websites though some of the later revisions including the 2005 edition are in Utah Government Publications Online. For this exercise you just need to know that nearly all print state publications back to the 1970s are physically available at the Utah State Library and that all state employees are eligible to receive a library card to check out materials.
You didn’t know that? Yes, it’s true, and the card can be used to access all the Public PIONEER databases from your home or wherever you may be. For that reason, my USL library card is one of the few cards that I keep in my wallet to accompany me wherever I travel. To get yours, simple call or email Ruthanne Hansen at the Utah State Library (801.715.6758).
The next step (you only need to this once) is to download and install BookMyne from the Apple App Store. It is a free iPhone/Ipod Touch application from SirsiDynix that also works on the iPad. SirsiDynix is the company that provides the library cataloging software for dozens of academic and public libraries in Utah including the Utah State Library. The app installs automatically without any configuration needed. If your using an iPad, click the 2X button to enlarge the app to the full size of the device.
BookMyne uses your current location to list for you all the SirsiDynix libraries within a range of up to 300 miles. You can move a slider to reduce this range down to ten miles. Here’s the simple procedure:
1) From the list of libraries select USL Government Publications and touch the star under its name to select it as the current library. You’ll need to enter the number on your card in the space labeled Library Card Number. Unlike the web catalog access, you only have to enter this once and the application remembers it. Leave the Nickname field empty.
2) Click the search button and enter your keywords. In this example I’m simply enter the words Government Records Access and Management.
3) Click the radio button opposite titles of interest in the result list or click the title to read the full catalog record.
4) Click the Save button to email the record(s) to any email address, place a hold, or to save it to a personalized list. In this case, click Place a hold.
5) Choose whether you want to pick it up at the library or have it mailed to you (via state mail) and click Confirm. That’s all there is to it. If you choose to have it mailed, you’ll have it at your office in two business days.
The application also allows you to view your account to review your check outs, cancel holds, and pay overdue fines. You can click the Libraries button to easily backtrack to add other libraries where you might have library privileges. This includes the BYU, Utah State, UVU, and many other Utah academic and public libraries. Click on the Suggested button and easily link to Goodreads to get suggestions for books in your local library that might interest you.
BookMyne is much easier and faster to use than logging on to the Web to use a library catalog. Since it supports multiple libraries (limited to SirsiDynix Symphony connections at present) there’s all the more reason to use it if your library is supported. In any case, you know that the Utah State Library is, and now you know now, too, how to get quick access to all those older state publications that have not yet been digitized.
Ray Matthews is the state library’s Government Information Coordinator and administrator of Utah Government Publications Online
Did you hear? OCLC’s Innovation Lab is going to start a new project: a web presence for every library. They will focus on the small libraries in America. It’s pretty exciting and offers some real possibilities to stand-alone’s that want to get a site!
The award for the most entertaining government publication of the Year has to go to Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2010. It’s a guide to the 100 most wasteful federal spending projects of the year. Coburn, known as a champion of fiscal responsibility in his opposition to earmarks and unchecked government spending, identifies $11.5 billion worth of wasteful spending. The reports gives each target a humorous and engaging title such as “Carrousel Museum Takes Taxpayers for a Spin” and “Federal Study Investigates Cow Burps.”
Unnecessary office printing costs taxpayers $930 million in waste each year.
Wasteful Printing
The Department of Defense (DOD) spends $1.4 billion on office printing, 34% of which, according to the 2009 Lexmark Government Printing Report, is unnecessary. The average federal employee costs their agency an average of $500 each year in office printing. This doesn’t even factor in the negative environmental impacts of the 6.5 billion pages of paper consumed annually.
The printing of government publications by the Government Printing Office also takes a big hit. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, Sen. Coburn questioned the purpose of printing the federal budget, asking, “How many people actually read the printed budget of the President, the printed one? One, maybe two?”
While many state and local governments and federal agencies are now printing their publications digitally, Congress itself still hasn’t figured it out. The Congressional Record has been online for fifteen years yet it is still printed in paper at an annual cost of $25.25 million. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl says that about the only thing that the 4,551 daily copies are used for these days, “is filling up recycling bins on Capitol Hill.” Coburn shakes his said saying, “It’s all online.” Why are we still printing it? His answer: “Because we’re inept.”
Okay, blame it on librarians. Both the Congressional Record and the Budget of the United States Government are on the Government Printing Office’s Essential Titles List which mandates the need for certain publications be sent to depository libraries in paper or other tangible formats. The American Association of Law Librarians (AALL) supports their continued printing and paper distribution because they are “core documents of our democracy” and because the Library of Congress only recognizes paper or microfiche as archival formats.
Squeaks
GPO is also dinged for its pricing of a comic book about a Superhero Mouse that teaches children “why printing is important.” Anticipating high demand, GPO printed 5,500 copies but priced them to sell at $5.70 less than the cost to produce. GPO calls the loss a marketing expense. Coburn says that taxpayers, “who footed the bill for the project — might have another name for it.”
An agency video publication, “Snapshot of America” produced by the U.S. Census Bureau cost taypayers $2.5 million to run as an advertisement during last year’s Super Bowl. It tanked. Media critics gave it the lowest score as the worst of all the Super Bowl commercials. This was only one of many publishing projects in a $133 million campaign to educate Americans about participating in the census enumeration. To Coburn’s chagrin, “none of these strategies appears to have produced an increase in census returns.”
The Wastebook cites at No. 4 in the report a $615,000 prestigious National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the University of California Santa Cruz. This grant, one of 51 awarded by IMLS, is to develop a groovy, innovative, “socially constructed” archiving system to digitize photographs, flyers, T-shirts, and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead. The report notes the net worth of the Jerry Garcia estate and Phil Lesh at roughly $40 and $35 million respectively and wonders why taxpayer funding for libraries is footing the bill to archive the band’s memorabilia?
My personal favorites of waste are the “Study of Why Political Candidates Make Vague Statements” (cost $216,884), “Study of Why Americans Voted in the Election” (cost $2.3 million), and the “Office for Retired Speakers of the House of Representatives” (cost $440,955).
Following Dr. Coburn’s prescriptions (he is an obstetrician), governments can save real money.
Accreditation Report
Let me give an example. Before we went digital, Georgia Loutensock at the Utah Office of Education sent 19 copies of every School Accreditation Report to the State Library for distribution to depository libraries. Now that she sends only digital copies to the Digital Library, her agency has cut their annual printing costs by between $1,000 and $1,200 or by 80%. Multiply that savings by the average 10,000 publications that we receive yearly, and the digital library is saving agencies of state government over $10 million each year in printing costs!
I’m hoping that the Wastebook will become an annual New Year’s tradition. It provides a wake-up call reminding the country of our need to trim the “wasteline.”
So, how much did Coburn’s report cost to print?
“Zero,” his spokesman John Hart tells Reuters. “We didn’t make a single printed copy. There’s something called the Internet.” Doh!
The Senator could have spent a few bucks, though, to hire a proofreader. It’s missing eight pages of its table of contents.
I went to a good presentation by Marriott Library and Eccles Health Sciences Library on QR codes. QR stands for quick reference, btw. The notion is to have a code that someone can take a photo of with their handheld device, and the device will translate that code to the information represented underneath. A QR code is a two-dimensional barcode that can be small or large. It can be huge, as on the side of a building.
Here’s a QR code about my Trading Spaces Mentoring Program:
Libraries can use QR codes in all kinds of ways:
Paintings or photos in the building
Map of the library
Search the library catalog
Place holds on books
Summer Reading signup
Upcoming events
New book arrivals
Contact information
Any text at all
If you can print, post, or tweet it you can QR it
In order to access QR codes people need:
A handheld device with a camera and the internet such as a smartphone, iphone, droid, one of the many products that are widely used today
A QR app which can be found at the app store or at a variety of places on the internet
It’s really easy to create QR codes. You need a QR code generator and there are so many that are free, it’s easy to get one. Just look online. The one that I used to make the above QR code was Delivr. The one that Eccles is using is BeeTagg.
There are tips for creating QR codes, for example, don’t have a long url, the image will be too finely grained. Shorten it first using a url shortener within your QR code generator, or use another such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com
Also, make sure you are pointing to a version of something that is made for handheld devices. A url to a very large website won’t be readable on the handheld once they get it, so that’s lame.
There’s more, I hope to hold a training on QR codes in the near future. Stay put.
Sincerely, Colleen (p.s. here’s my contact info, try it out on your iphone)
Wanted to drop you a note to tell you that the Netlibrary seminar I attended Nov 4 online was really really helpful. I learned a bunch of new stuff on Netlibrary — how much is now available for Ipods, the different consoles available to download to computers, directly to Ipods and MP3 players and netbooks using the minimal program, how to search by narrator (something some of our patrons rave about), how to find helpful cheat sheets, that Ebsco had bought Netlibrary and that they’ll have a new downloading deal next spring. And lots more. I immediately wrote a column for the Reaper, our newspaper, about how many more e-audiobooks can now be downloaded to MP3s and Ipods. We’ve got some patrons asking for training on e-audiobooks, including such folks as local truckers, a member of our library board, and one of local night guards who drives around the jail all night. I am hounding Linda to encourage every librarian on staff to actually DO a download so they can understand the process.
the State Library. Traci Lesneski of Meyer, Scherer, and Rockcastle Ltd. came and presented on “Placemaking at your Library.” She was so great! She has tons of insight into what makes the interior of libraries more patron friendly. Here are the slides she presented.
at really made me think:
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