New Experiences with enthusiasm

It's been a really wonderful couple of weeks since I began my Law Librarian rotation. I am meeting some of the most interesting people there, and it reinforces, energizes and engages my intellectual curiosities in many ways. Dwight King is such an amazing Librarian. He has the right demeanor to engage students and faculty of law; it also helps that his sense of humor is priceless. Beth is AWESOME. She is our research assistant and she keeps all of the research librarians abreast of whatever we need to do our jobs. Warren and Chris are almost the same as Dwight; they are intelligent, practical, and take a lot of pride in servicing students and faculty; we have great comedy in our dept.. This evening, I will be attending Mass, Cocktails, and dinner with the entire Law School Faculty. The Dean has been gracious and wonderful to me in welcoming me to the Law School. I look forward to engaging everyone in a more casual and relaxing setting.

I am documenting my Law Library experiences on another blog, so if your're interested, please check out this link: http://residentlawbrarian.blogspot.com/

I will be back soon to this blog when I can.

I created a new blog

The Resident Lawbrarian

ARL Library Survey Results 2005-2006

ARL Academic Libraries, FY 2005–06*

	Men	Women	Combined
Total Filled Positions	2,935	5,061	7,996
Average Salary	$63,984	$61,083	$62,148
Average Years Experience	17.0	17.2	17.1
Total Number of Minorities**	278	641	919
Minority Average Salary**	$58,711	$56,957	$57,488
Minority Average Years Experience**	13.8	14.8	14.5
Total Number of Directors	49	63	112
Average Salary of Directors	$169,856	$168,146	$168,894
Average Years Experience of Directors (filled positions)	31.6	31.1	31.3
*Excludes law and medical libraries. **United States only. Source: ARL Annual Salary Survey 2005-2006 dataset.

Business Ethics Web Links & Librarian In Residence: The First Year

It's been quite a while since I last posted on my Blog. Lots of information comes rather frequently across my desk, through listservs, and in the mail at home and in my office. I will post some interesting web-links for the information "junkie" out there.....

Business Ethics - Web Links
GreenBiz.com
Helps companies integrate environmental responsibility into their business practices.

Canadian Business for Social Responsibility (CBSR)
Includes information useful for companies wanting to improve its social responsibilities.
http://www.cbsr.ca/

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The Librarian In Residence: First Year Completed as of August 1, 2006
I am still very much excited to be here at the University of Notre Dame for many professional reasons, but also for personal reasons. On the professional side I really appreciate all of my colleagues in the Library as well as across the University who have made me feel welcomed here. That has made all the difference in how I approach my work, how I work in collaboration with colleagues, and how I manage my time.

One of the many pluses with my residency is that I get a travel allowance to which I just returned from attending my very first ALA Conference in New Orleans. I brought along my daughter, and we enjoyed every moment! It gave her a chance to learn about all the many different aspects of librarianship. She met a lot of children librarians and they really engaged her in conversations. Being that the two of us are not introverts, we found it challenging at times because by nature, librarians are introverts. That was a challenge for the two of us at times, but I think we managed to make the most of the conference.

A real plus is that I ran into former classmates, one of my professors, and my former dean who always expresses her pride in me each time we run into each other. That always makes my day! My daughter and I made sure we patronized small/Mom & Pop typed restaurants because they are really struggling. The plus side to this was that we ate really good down-home food at a fraction of the cost in a fine restaurant.

Beginning August 1, 2006, I will begin to post some thoughts and reflections about my work as a Resident Librarian. The reason that I haven't done this before is because I wanted to have a full year of working in University Libraries at the University of Notre Dame first. My fellow resident, Felicia Smith has done an incredible job with her Blog; so much so, I felt I should also do the same.

Here's to much insight about being a Librarian In Residence!
--Leslie

Information about Women's Health

Good Afternoon All:

I came across an article published in Indiana Libraries, Volume 24, no.3 entitled Women's Health: Beyond OB/GYNE. Her article was based on a presentation, Women's Health: History in the Making, given as part of the Indiana Library Federation (ILF) Women's division program.

I am citing her article's bibliography because I have been fortunate to give library patrons some good links to some critical health information about women.

Chao! ---Leslie

Check some of the information sources out:

Hamilton, J., & Parry, B. (1993). Sex-related differences in clinical drug response: Implications for women's health. Journal of the American Medical Women's Association; 38, (5): 126-132.

What's next for women's health research?
http://nih.gov/news/WordonHealth/apr2003/womenshealth.htm

Our bodies/our selves. (2005). Boston, MA. Women's Health Book Collective (BWHBC).
http://ourbodiesourselves.org/

Gender Medicine: About the journal. (2005).
http://gendermedjournal.com

Partnership for Gender Specific Medicine at Columbia University.
http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/partnership

Online Social Networking

Integrating new technologies into the academic classroom is an interesting concept that I have been exploring the last couple of months. The following talks about these "networks" more explicitly. Enjoy! -Leslie

'Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.' - Douglas Adams in "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet"

According to Listible's Complete List of Web 2.0 Products and Services (Drewly / January 23, 2006), there are now at least 162 such resources; many are tools and services commonly designated as ' social software', and among these, social networking stands out as the most obviously social category, in the way it caters to basic human drives to socialise and form communities. In this issue of WWWTools for Education we focus on this tip of the Web 2.0 iceberg, and look at educational applications both proposed and in practice.

Trends in How We Use the Net.

• The Pew Internet & American Life Project's report on The Strength of Internet Ties (2005) explores the ways in which the Internet facilitates, broadens and reinforces social networks, and its burgeoning role in supporting everyday decisionmaking by providing access to expert advice and the opinions of peers. Most cited decisionmaking areas are: education, health, personal finances, shopping, housing and employment. The full text makes interesting reading, and is available as a PDF .For a brief review , see also Internet Helps Boost Social Contacts: Study (The Sydney Morning Herald: January 27, 2006)
• In What Is the Platform? (September 23, 2004), Adam Bosworth muses on a shift in emphasis from software to timely access to information and the community at large - 'The platform of this decade is going to be around access to community, collaboration, and content... services, not boxes' . See also a large body of opinion and comment at this blog.
• This position is supported by citations in Gina Kim's Internet Keeps Its Users Sharing (Detroit Free Press: December 30, 2005) - the top 7 sites at Google's 2005 Year-End Zeitgeist comprise social networking services MySpace and Orkut , and sites facilitating the sharing of music and information.

Social Networking Update.

• The MySpace Generation (BusinessWeek : December 12, 2005) - the commercial take on Generation @'s quest for social identity. The good news is that Facebook has been making money since January.
• In Teens Hang Out at MySpace (USA TODAY: January 08, 2006), Janet Kornblum ranks social networking sites and compares visitor numbers across 2004/2005; in rank order from the top - MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, Bebo, Friendster, Linkedin and Orkut (a very select group of 83,000 - you have to be invited by an existing member, even if you do have a Gmail account).
• Wade Roush's article, Social Networking 3.0 (Technology Review :: November 18, 2005) is something of a progress report - increasingly, members are using networks for practical purposes: finding jobs, locating services, and coordinating group activities.
• I want t Set up a network of contacts, or join other existing networks is a small selection of resources underscoring this trend.
• Seven Principles of Social Networking (Dave Pollard / How to Save the World : July 14, 2005) suggests guiding principles for ongoing development; in summary:

1. Social Relationships Must Meet Four Preconditions: mutual trust, respect, context, and self-disclosure between the parties.
2. Relationships Require a Conversational Ice-Breaking
3. First Impressions Matter.
4. Information Conveyed by Observation Counts More Than That Conveyed by Language.
5. Collaboration is the Miracle Glue of Relationships.
6. Every Interaction Carries the Burden of Our Entire Networks.
7. Social Networks are Complex Systems.

• See also Stephen Downes' comment .

Mapping the Field.

Because of the way social software is put together, the field doesn't lend itself to neat definition, classification or categorisation - here are a few thoughts on the subject:

[Tom Coates'] Working Definition of Social Software... ( Plasticbag.org: May 08, 2003) - '... a particular sub-class of software-prosthesis that concerns itself with the augmentation of human social and / or collaborative abilities through structured mediation.' This is explored at length in appended Comments.

In A Nomad's Guide to Learning and Social Software (IDEANT: November 01, 2005), Ulises Mejias sets out to 'explore the role that social software can play in new models of learning and participating in society.' Although tensions arise when traditional pedagogical principles and teaching practices seem compromised by the possibilities afforded by new technologies, re-evaluation is essential. He concludes that social software can 'positively impact pedagogy by inculcating a desire to reconnect to the world as a whole, not just the social parts that exist online.'

He recognises the inherent ambiguities, but presents a working list of the kinds of applications associated with social software: they include:

• relationship management systems e.g. Friendster

• distributed classification systems e.g. del.icio.us.

• peer-to-peer file sharing systems e.g. BitTorrent

• content management systems e.g., blogs, wikis.

• syndication systems e.g., RSS aggregators

• multiplayer gaming environments.

- and quite a few more...

His Social Software Affordances course at Teachers College, Columbia University (Fall 2005) makes full use of available social software tools - see the course blog for a fascinating read.

Sidebar links to related readings and individual student sites on the Blogroll constitute a valuable supplementary resource.

Expect to see a case study on Social Software and New Pedagogies sometime soon.

Social Networking Services in Education and Career-Building.

• In the first instance, most educators have probably seen these services as distracting nuisances at best, and possibly even as dangerous to students. Andrew Trotter's Social-Networking Web Sites Pose Growing Challenge for Educators (Education Week: February 15, 2006) puts a substantial case for caution - the most positive comment here is that 'it's getting the kids involved' ', and that like all fads it will run its course.
• There are however many common interest networking sites which serve educational purposes to various degrees, e.g.,

. BookCrossing - a read-and-release scheme for book-lovers and their books.

. CampusNetwork (Columbia University) - journal-based student networking; interesting gallery collection.

. Classmates - contact maintenance, reunion updates, work & careers directory, college directory.

. Collegester - emphasis on student loans.

. Delphi Forums - find and join forums e.g., Education & Alumni Forums.

. gradFinder - reconnect with former classmates.

• Many librarians see potential uses for social software - see for example getting out there (Walking Paper : November 25, 2005): see also Spiffy New Charts of Librarian Blogger's Survey: Web 2.0 Tools at Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology - a Weblog by Michael Stephens.
• Schools, blogs, Xanga, MySpace...What's it all about, Alfie? Part V (Elizabeth Ditz / I Speak of Dreams: December 12, 2005) - the personal and educational value of social networking, blogs and blogging: surely real needs are being filled?
• Social Networking Sites (Jon Stewart / Comedy Central Media Player: Daily Show, Trendspotting) - a lighter look at Myspace, Friendster, Facebook; some satirical comment. Could be a quick classroom resource.

Selected Popular Social Networking Services.

MYSPACE:

• MySpace: A Site with 26 Million 'Friends' (Alex Williams / IHT : September 01, 2005) - an introductory overview.
• Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace (Danah Boyd / American Association for the Advancement of Science : February 19, 2006 - how teenagers use MySpace for identity production and socialisation; profile-writing provides an opportunity for self-expression and self-actualisation through language, imagery and media.
• MySpace Education for Parents (Brenda Rindge / The Post and Courier: November 17, 2005) - one mother's experience. Perhaps we should write a course on MySpace Education for Students?

FACEBOOK:

• A Quick Guide to Facebook.com (Maggie Haskins / SI On Campus: December 02, 2005)
• For indications of popularity and links to similar sites, see Alexa's Traffic Rankings .
• Facing the Facebook (Michael J. Bugeja / The Chronicle of Higher Education : January 23, 2006) - yet another unwelcome distraction, or a tool for diagnosing the causes of inadequate educational outcomes?
• Examining Facebook.com (Michelle Felter / Phi Delta Theta Fraternity ) - the University of Missouri uses Facebook to monitor policy violations; employers use it to screen job candidates.
• Cleaning Up Their Online Acts (David Epstein / Inside Higher Ed: October 03, 2005) - lots of interesting feedback from students and faculty.

XANGA:

• Xanga is a community of online diaries and journals; provides access to an extensive range of Blogrings
• The Value of Xanga (Bud Hunt / Bud the Teacher : April 22, 2005) - 'for those counselors willing to pay attention, and those students willing to share, online journals can be a valuable tool for assessing the well-being of students.'

FRIENDSTER:

• Friendster was designed as a dating/friendship service - now also offers blogging, p2p file sharing, photo albums and profile tracking (a controversial feature).
• danah boyd's many Publications, Installations, Presentations & Workshop Papers explore social software in terms of personal realisation through identity-construction and self-expession - see for example her take on the repurposing of Friendster to reflect individual needs and practices in Autistic Social Software (2004).
• See also an annotated selection of her work at My Friendster Publications ( apophenia: October 24, 2005)
• Posthuman Friendster (Bryan Alexander / Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education: August 18, 2003 )- do nonhuman or spoof identities play a role in defining personal identity?

BEBO:

• Bebo focuses on social networking for School/College Students and Alumni; wide range of features - private messaging, including Skype voice calls; calendaring and clubs; sharing writing/drawing on virtual whiteboards; blogging and sharing photos; creating personal quizzes. Links to guides on Safety and Cyber Bullying. Looks like a responsible contender for the K-12 environment.

TRIBE:

• Tribe features thousands of common interest groups based on the idea that connected people get things done.
• Online Social Networks Are Havens for Job Hunters (Jeanette Borzo / The Wall Street Journal Online: September 23, 2004) - using online social networks to build contact lists and find employment.

LINKEDIN:

• LinkedIn - used mostly for business connections; find the people, jobs and services you need through people you know and trust, while strengthening/ extending existing networks. Groups Currently on LinkedIn are listed in Professional Organizations
• Alternatively, see CollectiveX is Better Than LinkedIn (Michael Arrington / Techcrunch: February 10, 2006) - 'CollectiveX is completely group-focused. You must be associated with at least one group to join and all of the activity focuses on your groups.'

GATHER:

• Gather - a place where people can publish and share points of view; content is created by Gather members. Looks like a good place for creative expression. Registration and profiling required.

Readings

• SocialSoftware (Christopher D. Sessums / January 23, 2006) - a remarkable wiki-based overview presentation.
• Social Machines (Wade Roush / Technology Review: August 2005)
• As We May Interact? (David Wiley / iterating toward openness: February 19, 2006)

In the News.

• Google Introduces Web Page Creator (Chris Sherman / Search Engine Watch : February 23, 2006) - there's a waiting list of hopeful users. The significance here is the suggestion that this may become Google's answer to MySpace.
• Keep current with the I want t collection of resources - now listing over 300 applications, and continually updating.
• imeem! is a new free instant messaging service

Future.

• Social Networking & The World of Learning is an audio file at Elliott Masie's Learning 2005 University site, commenting on future developments in social networking in terms of collaboration, knowledge management, and talent management. The PDF transcript is also available.
• Social Software and the Future of Conferences – Right Now (Vicki Suter, Bryan Alexander, and Pascal Kaplan / EDUCAUSE Review, January/February 2005)

BOOKS.

• Social Capital And Entrepreneurship (Philip H. Kim, Howard E. Aldrich / Now Publishers Inc, 2005)Paperback: $37.50 ISBN: 1933019107
• Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (Howard Rheingold / Perseus Books Group, 2002)Paperback: $10.88 ISBN: 0738206083

Source: Graeme Daniel 27/02/06, http://m.fasfind.com/wwwtools/m/2788.cfm?x=0&rid=2788

Musings at the beginning of March 2006

Greetings....
I can't believe I let an entire month go by; lots of interesting things happening in the world of librarianship. Check out the following:

A Disaster Relief Website with good information:
Center for International Diaster Information (CIDI)
This site was established to handle public inquiries and to provide education on how to respond in a useful & productive manner in times of disasters.
http://www.cidi.org

Interesting Books In Print:
John McWhorter's Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America
ISBN: 1592401880; 2006 by Gotham Books-Penguin Group, New York

Mary Francis Berry's My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the struggle for ex-slave reparations. ISBN: 1400040035; 2005 by Alfred A. Knopf-Random House, Canada.

Julius H. Bailey's Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865-1900. ISBN: 0813028426; 2005 by The University Press of Florida.

Interesting Articles:

That Good Education Might Not Be Enough
American workers at all levels are vulnerable to outsourcing, experts say, posing a challenge to the assumption that more schooling is the answer.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outsource6mar06,0,4152173.story?coll=la-story-footer

A Degree Program called "Digital Media Studies" at my Alma Mater:
University of Detroit Mercy
http://digital.udmercy.edu/


Enjoy!
-Leslie

News of the Library World

From the January-2006 issue of "College & Research Libraries":

HBCU's Library Alliance launches new Web-site:
http://www.hbclibraries.org

Simmons College has received a $1.8 million dollar grant to prepare a new generation of Vietnamese librarians to run some of the country's largest university libraries and to help further its educational system.
http://www.simmons.edu/gslis/

The University of Notre Dame Libraries

I just wanted to say in this space how much I enjoy my opportunity here at the University Libraries at the University of Notre Dame as a Librarian In Residence. I went to a gathering of Librarians and other University Library Personnel to hear the annual State of the Library Address by our Director, Ms. Jennifer Younger and the University's new Provost, Mr. Tom Burish. It was a good experience, and I was really pleased to hear that the libraries are an important aspect of university life. Some of the funds from the recent Fiesta Bowl will be used to enhance our libraries here. This is an exciting time for our libraries.

The Library's web-link is located at:
http://www.library.nd.edu/

Also, one of my duties as a Librarian In Residence is to provide Library Instruction within University Libraries for our First Year Composition and First Year Seminar students. We have created a wonderful resource page at the following link:
http://www.library.nd.edu/instruction/resources/index.shtml

Check it out, and please feel free to offer comments.
Leslie

Civic Engagement

In the mail today, I received the most recent edition of College & Research Libraries monthly publication. One of this month's features is on Civic Engagement as an important component of higher education. They had a wonderful listing of web-sites for readers to engage this subject manner in a very profound manner. Check out the following, and feel free to share your thoughts on the types of information you found.

Have a wonderful day,
Leslie

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Definitions of Civic Engagement
Campus Compact
http://www.compact.org/about/detailphp?id=42

Civic Engagement Projects & Resource Centers
The American Democracy Project
http://aascu.org/programs/adp/default.htm

National Alliance for Civic Education
http://www.cived.net/

Citizen ship and Service Learning Education (CASE)-Rutgers University
http://case.rutgers.edu/case/default.asp

Assessment
Assesssment of Individual Civic Engagement
http://aascu.org/programs/adp/toolkit0104/Assessment/Campus_Assessment_Tools.pdf

Happy New Year! - 2006

Greetings to all who read my Blog:

I enjoy the beginning of a new year. A new year of endless possibilities, hi's and low's, and most importantly, a new year of growth and gratitude!

I had a chance to read some of the short stories in a book I purchased during the time of my birthday in 2005. The name of the book is entitled, "An Anthology of African American Writing: Gumbo: A Literary Rent Party to Benefit the Hurston/Wright Foundation" Edited by Marita Golden and E. Lynn Harris. The short stories included in this text are AWESOME! This book was published by Harlem Moon-Broadway Books of New York, 2002. ISBN: 0-7394-2979-5.
The web address for the Hurston/Wright Foundation is: http://www.hurston-wright.org

Until my next posting........
Leslie