In the Library with the Lead Pipe welcomes guest author Adrian Whatley. Adrian Whatley is the e-Resources Librarian at Austin Community College. She views her job as connecting students to the information they need in the easiest, most time-efficient manner possible.

Poster Advertising the Student Library and Technology Use Study

Part One: Setting the Stage

Austin Community College Library Services (ACCLS), like many academic library systems, is coming to terms with an increasingly tech savvy student population that will ultimately transform the nature of the work we do, the services we provide, and the content we offer. Instead of relying on assumptions and overheated trendcasting, we wanted to hear from the students themselves: the devices they own, which social networks they frequent, and what types of tech-oriented services they would like to see from us. Our goal was to ascertain the facts that would lead to the oft-lauded data-driven decisions that all libraries seek. To that end, we conducted a college wide student library and technology use environmental scan.

The idea for doing the survey germinated in the Summer of 2009, while collaborating on a webpage that would feature a collection of links to online searching, citing, and organizing tools. After musing about what students might find most useful, we had a “Why don’t we just ask them?” moment. Ellie had recently interviewed Char Booth about her research report, Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (A Research Report), which she felt was an especially good example of hard data about student technology use. Moreover, Adrian had attended Booth’s presentation at the 14th Annual ACRL convention in Seattle, and had been very impressed by the insightful, and in some cases, counter-prevailing wisdom of the results. We batted around the idea about replicating the survey at our own institution. Would the social network usage of ACC students mirror OU’s?¹ How would community college students differ in their rate of technology adoption? And most importantly, would they friend us on Facebook?²

Part Two: Getting to Yes

Every institution has its own structure for approving projects. ACCLS functions primarily through a team structure, but was also engaged in creating a project proposal form that would allow individuals to propose projects for themselves, or for a specific team to tackle. We were very excited to take on this project ourselves, so we brainstormed approaches and settled on filling out the application for an ACC Innovation Grant as a way to organize ourselves before presenting our proposal to library management. The application process for the grant necessitated the completion of a scope and purpose statement, planning report, budget request, and project timeline. The documentation process proved invaluable to us as we pitched the project and conceptualized its deployment at ACC.  Because we had done the initial legwork of nailing down timelines and formulating grand strategies, it was easier to focus on important details, such as honing the phrasing of the survey instrument itself.

While we didn’t receive the Innovation Grant, we received strong support for the project from our library dean, who facilitated our goal of offering a cash prize rather than an electronic gadget (a move that created additional administrative hoops). She also provided extra adjunct librarian hours to afford us time off the reference desk to focus on the project.

Part Three: Nuts and Bolts

Austin Community College consists of eight campuses throughout central Texas serving roughly 44,000 students with nearly three quarters of our students attending part time. Each campus has its own library, and in 2008, all eight libraries combined had a door count of 1,124,027 and 1,014,250 hits on our homepage.³ The fact that our virtual and actual visits are nearly equivalent highlighted to us the need for a serious and measured evaluation of technology use among our student population in order to further develop digital services. We spent the Summer and Fall of 2009 determining our scope and purpose, defining the research questions, and developing the survey instrument with feedback from our colleagues. We also evaluated several types of survey software, and decided that SurveyMonkey provided the best delivery and analysis options.

Our goal was to survey the entire ACC student body. The survey itself consisted of 7 demographic questions, 21 multiple-choice questions about library and technology use, and 3 open-ended items that queried general student experiences with ACC Libraries. While drafting the instrument, we quickly found that we wished to ask many more questions than our respondents likely had the patience to answer, so some focusing of direction was necessary.

We put a lot of effort into making the survey as short as possible and ended up tabling many questions that we would have liked to ask (though we did save them for future use). Our primary criteria was, “How would we use the results from this question?” With that as a guideline we decided  to cut common survey questions like race and gender, which may have been interesting, but wasn’t going to impact whether or not we create a mobile website or offer text messaging reference. We kept demographic questions about campuses and majors so that we could gauge how representative our sample was and provide bibliographers with custom profiles. With our editors’ red pens in hand we also cut questions about information literacy, search strategies, favorite resources, and library website usage, deciding that that cell phone usage and general comfort with technology would be our main foci. We probably should have cut even more, both to increase the response rate and to reduce the amount of work needed to process and interpret the results.

Bookmarks

Promotion and distribution of the instrument took place in February. The survey was open to all ACC students and available from March 22 until April 16. We collected a total of 1,097 responses (87.8% completion rate). Promotional efforts included: a link on the library homepage, a splash on the ACC homepage, posts to the ACC faculty listserv, a presence on the library’s blackboard tab, bookmarks, posters, table tents, links on the desktops of the computers in the computer lab, links on the Student Life website and Facebook pages, and an article in the student newspaper, The Accent.  Our colleagues also greatly assisted in the marketing of the survey by directing students to it at the conclusion of library instruction sessions and reference interviews.

Part Four: Death to all open ended questions!

Ellie was able to pull together the main responses almost immediately thanks to the simplicity of reporting in Survey Monkey. Coding the responses to the open ended questions was, however, another story entirely. We decided to put our graduate school research methods course to use. We reviewed the responses independently to come up with categories, met to finalize agreed upon categories, coded the questions independently, and met again to agree upon codes. In hindsight, this was overkill. We could, theoretically, tell you our intercoder reliability now, but for our purposes, it really doesn’t matter and it added an enormous amount of time and energy to the whole process. We were able to create and demo a slideshow of graphs of the results to the multiple choice questions at multiple library meetings in May. It took us until November to complete the coding and data crunching for the open ended questions. We feel it would have been preferable to have more of the results available sooner to capitalize on the initial excitement. We would recommend cutting several steps, perhaps just reading the questions separately to brainstorm categories and attach initial codes and then meeting to come to consensus.

The open ended responses did provide an interesting look into many of our and our students’ assumptions. For example, a number of the responses to our question about texting services made it clear that students did not know they could renew books online. We had a different question that asked students what services they were and weren’t familiar with and 32% responded that they didn’t know they could renew books online. However, the open ended responses made much more of an impact on us. So, to be clear, we’re not saying don’t use open ended questions, just don’t worry about being quite as thorough as we were.

Part Five: Results!

For full summary of results, or to follow along with graphic representations of the data while you’re reading, open the slideshow.

Before detailing responses, we would like to caution that this is a convenience sample rather than a probability sample. Nearly half (47%) of respondents learned of the survey through the library website, so results are skewed towards students who use the library website. [slide 2] However, we were pleased to see a large response number (total started survey: 1,250, total completed survey: 1,097) and a wide variety of majors represented, with the highest being Nursing (151, 12.4%) and General Education Transfer Credits (98, 8.1%). [slide 4]

Overall, we had generally positive feedback, in particular, that the library is valued as physical quiet space to work/study. Students reported physically coming to the library (63% 2-3 times/week or more) more than using the library website (45% 2-3 times/week or more). [slide 12] This mirrored the Informing Innovation results which also showed a greater use of the library building than the library website (p. 67)

We saw from Booth’s report that the study had a side effect of increasing student awareness of library services. With that in mind, one of our questions was a bucket list of every service we could think of. Of the items with low awareness, the biggest takeaway in our eyes is letting students know about their library account and how to access it online. [slide 14]

Students showed general confidence in their searching and technology abilities, but not in web design or fixing computer problems. While they tended to feel that their research skills were at least adequate, there was a sharp decline in their confidence from using the Internet for personal use to using it for school to researching with library resources. [slide 17] These results were nearly identical to those from Informing Innovation (p. 63).

About half (47%) of our respondents owned smartphones. On the assumption that we have a disproportionately tech-savvy sample, we can hypothesize that some smaller percentage of the whole student body have smartphones. Slightly fewer (44%) owned VHS players and only 53 students (5%) owned e-book readers. [slide 20] It is interesting to compare these results to the 2010 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, which found a 3.1% ownership of e-book readers and 62% ownership of smartphones among its respondents (p. 42).

We made an error in formatting the computer and laptop ownership question⁴, but generally we found that most respondents did own a computer. Seventy students (6%) reported having no internet connection at home, and another 21 (2%) used dial-up. The same number of students reported having wireless and broadband (about 60%). A quick glance at the data showed that many students selected wireless without selecting where their wireless was coming from, so the broadband/cable/DSL adoption is likely closer to 90%. [slide 22] Ellie was particularly interested in this section of the survey. She has had several students refuse e-books as potential sources saying they didn’t have computers and/or internet at home. If we combine our students with dial-up and those without internet at home, that means nearly a tenth of our students don’t have the tools to use our online resources. If we are correct in the assumption that this sample was a particularly tech savvy subset, the number could be larger.

We  asked students how likely they were to embrace new technologies. The responses trend slightly above average, enforcing our assumption that our sample is slightly skewed towards the tech savvy. [slide 25] The ECAR results (p. 39) were similar however, so it could also simply show a trend of people preferring to consider themselves average or above.

Another portion of our survey listed a wide selection of social networking and other online activities and asked respondents how often they participated in each. Texting and Facebook were the only two answers with high “every day” response rates. Watching videos on Youtube and reading wiki articles were the highest “2-3 times a week” responses. Most other options had high scores in the “never” category. [slide 26]

Most (96%) respondents own cell phones. [slide 29] Offered a selection of cell phone activities, text messaging scored highest in the “every day” category, with “never” being the most common response for most other choices (including post to Twitter, read or contribute to blogs, download music, watch videos, read e-books). [slide 30] In terms of interacting with the library, students would most like to use text messaging to receive renewal or overdue notices and to renew materials. [slide 32]

More than half (66%) of respondents’ cell phones can access the internet [slide 33] and there was generally high interest in using the library website on their phones, with the most positive responses for finding hours, locations and phone numbers, checking their account/renewing books, and searching for books. [slide 34]

Facebook was the top social networking site both in terms of reported use (45% use it all the time) and in willingness to friend the library (25%). All other choices (including Twitter, MySpace, Second Life, delicious, and more) scored highest in either “never use it” or “never heard of it.” [slide 37] Facebook was also the overwhelmingly preferred social network of respondents to the  ECAR, while MySpace was a distant second (p.11). Of the 484 students who wrote in the open ended section answering, “Would you like the ACC Libraries to have accounts on any of these sites? Why or why not? What type of information would you want the library to share?” the top categories of replies were:

• Yes, Facebook (97)
• Content – Events (49)
• Negative feedback about social networking sites in general (32)
• Content – Contact Information (31)
• Negative feedback about the library being in a social space – these are personal/private spaces and/or non-academic (25)

Nearly half of respondents chose Firefox as their preferred web browser, though we believe this question may have been inadvertently skewed by offering “Google Chrome” as a choice rather than just saying “Chrome.” We believe the high choice of Chrome (21%) can at least partially be attributed to students selecting the search engine Google rather than the browser. This belief is based on additional write in answers choosing Yahoo! as their preferred browser. [slide 39] (To the best of our knowledge, Yahoo! does not currently offer a browser, though they may have in the past, so we cannot entirely rule it out.) More than half (59%) of respondents customized their browsers [slide 40], and 56% indicated interest in a library related-plugin. [slide 41] (Luckily, ACC already offered the LibX toolbar).

We ended with three open ended questions:

What do you like MOST about the ACC libraries? (988 replies)
Top responses:

1. Staff (268)
2. Ease of use (213)
3. Quiet (164)
4. Computers (146)
5. Collection (133)
6. Facilities (82)
7. Atmosphere (64)
8. Hours (49)
9. Resources (48)
10. Printing (42)

What would you CHANGE about the ACC libraries? (930 replies)
Top responses:

1. Nothing (260)
2. Provide more computers (117)
3. Provide more space (83)
4. Stay open longer hours (82)
5. Provide more books (76)
6. Specific/one of a kind complaints (46)
7. Enforce quiet (39)
8. Provide more study rooms (27)
9. Provide more seating (24)
10. Printing (23) / Outlets (22)

The last question asked whether they had any other comments. The top two responses far outweighed any others and they were, “no” and generally positive feedback.

Part Six: Missteps and Mental Models

We had hoped to create bibliographer reports like Char Booth did, breaking down responses by subject area, however only a handful of categories had enough responses to make this worthwhile. We have also offered to run any requested analyses, but have had very few requests.

We already mentioned our formatting mistake on the computer ownership question and the issue with offering browser choices. We also had a few questions that asked, “If the library offered X…” and received write in replies along the lines of, “I didn’t know you did that,” telling us either the student didn’t read the question clearly enough, or we didn’t word it clearly enough.

Other responses revealed more about our students’ mental models. Some responses showed student assumptions on how the library and technology interrelate. Others revealed assumed relations between physical areas or services that are run by different departments. Here are a few examples of ACC students’ misconceptions that we encountered while reading open ended responses:

• All traditional library materials (books, articles, videos, etc.) are available electronically.
• Lack of distinction between a phone application and the internet/web.
• Lack of distinction between a browser and the web.
• Lack of distinction between copier and printer.
• Lack of distinction between computer labs and library.
• Lack of distinction between other ACC service providers and library.
• Assumption that if the library offered text a librarian we would be giving out librarians’ personal cell phone numbers.

Some of these are just interesting without being particularly problematic. Ellie noticed an increasing number of students standing in front of the copier looking for their print jobs, but was much more understanding of the confusion after seeing her doctor’s office’s all-in-one giant copier/scanner/fax/printer. Some signage may be helpful, but the issue doesn’t have much impact on student success or on how students view the library.

Complaints about computer labs and wireless service however, do effect how students view the library. They are also, both fortunately and unfortunately, handled by a different department. The confusion is particularly understandable since in many buildings the computer lab is physically inside the library. We hope to address a number of these issues in a public response to the survey. We will also be sharing a final report with the college and highlighting items of interest for specific departments.

Finally, there are those more esoteric issues that are much harder to tackle. We can create a tutorial or link to an explanation of electronic publishing or a definition of a browser, but how do we get students to watch it and how do we know if they understood? And how much does it really matter? If they can get online, check their email, register for classes and get the research they need to finish their paper, is it hurting them if they “clicked the blue e” without knowing what a browser is or how it’s different from an app? As technology lines blur, how important is it to fully understand all the distinctions? We’d love to hear your take.

Part Seven: Still to come

We are writing this article and our final report to the college at the same time. Some of our preliminary recommendations include:

• Publicize the library account features and how to access your account online. – e.g. place a library account bookmark in each checked out book for a week.
• Create a “Did you know?” page on our library website. Review open ended answers to “What would you change” and list items that were requested that we already provide. Also provide brief answers to items that are out of our control – e.g. computer labs are run by a different department, library does not control the wireless.
• Run a “You asked, we answered” promotion – e.g. promoting Library Anywhere and the LibX toolbar as a response to survey results.
• Create a simple short explanation of textbooks. Cover that the library doesn’t purchase textbooks & why. Explain that student services makes the decisions on how many and which textbooks to purchase. Tips on how to improve your chances on getting a textbook (clean record, completed form, etc.)
• Address mental models – provide an explanation of how books end up online (that not every book is available as an e-book).
• Investigate checking due dates and providing renewals through text messaging.

Some of our results fit the standard pronouncements about student social media and technology use (everyone is on Facebook, text messaging is the current hot thing), but  some of our library-oriented results in particular surprised us (the students particularly value the library as place and want the librarians to enforce the rules – especially keeping the facilities quiet).  We hope that sharing our experience has encouraged you to adapt Booth’s template for your own institution.

Hangtags on the posters

Thanks to Char Booth for her inspiration, hard work, and feedback on this article, and to Emily Ford and Eric Frierson for their feedback.

Additional Resources

• Full survey instrument
• ECAR Study
• Informing Innovation
• The Physical and the Virtual: The Relationship between Library as Place and Electronic Collections

1. Ellie in particular was interested to see if danah boyd’s findings about class and social network preference would be visible in our results. We certainly did not see the animosity towards MySpace that Booth saw in her results, but we did still see Facebook as the primary player in social networking sites for our students.
2. Not so much.
3. Data from the ACC Student Factbook
4. We asked how long they had owned their laptop and desktop computers. We misconfigured the question such that they could not select the same answer for both.

Photo Credit: Andy Snow Photography

Welcome to a special audio edition of In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Ellie Collier talks to Char Booth, E-Learning Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book length research report recently published by ACRL and available as a free download.

We’ll be talking about Char’s path to librarianship, the importance of mentors, the process of writing and publishing her book and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Transcript:

Welcome to a special audio edition of In the Library with the Lead Pipe. I’m Ellie Collier, reference librarian at Austin Community College and I’ll be talking to Char Booth, E-Learning Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book length research report recently published by ACRL and available as a free download which is linked to in the transcript.

We’ll be talking about Char’s path to librarianship, the importance of mentors, the process of writing and publishing her book and much more. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Ellie: For starters, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Your path to librarianship? What you maybe did with undergrad or other jobs or interests that sort of took you here?

Char: Sure, my path to librarianship was actually kind of short in a way. I left Texas to go to Reed College when I was still pretty young. I got a history degree up there. It’s in Portland, Oregon. And, like many people who graduate from liberal arts colleges, I had no idea what I was going to do. So I spent about a year just temping at Portland State University, trying to figure out what I was going to do. And my mom and I have this really good relationship. She’s a smart lady, and I was trying to figure out what to do and she suggested “Why don’t you look at library school?” And I thought, “Uh… No.” But then I looked into it and it was actually a strangely perfect fit. Sshe was just trying to get me back to Austin and the iSchool at UT Austin is where I ended up going. So, that was basically my path. I wish it was more dramatic, but that’s it.

Ellie: That’s a very direct route, yeah. I just read that great post you wrote on advocacy on info-mational, which included your plans to sort of let that genuine passion you have shine through whenever you’re talking to faculty. So where along that very brief path did that passion develop?

Char: What I was talking about is that I think a lot of librarians who work in higher education have … it’s not necessarily an inferiority complex, but we sometimes get a little bit self conscious when we interact with faculty in terms of how we advocate for libraries. We usually go about it really practically, “I can do this for you, I can do this for you.” But some of us feel a little bit shy about talking about our convictions as librarians. I think that most of us have very strong convictions about being librarians. We might feel a little bit of vulnerability around that, but I recently have had some conversations with professors, faculty members, and graduate students at Berkley and elsewhere that have really let me know that showing people the veracity of my passion about librarianship and my advocacy for it really can help them get insight into what brings people to academic libraries, what we can do for them, what we can do for students – the real breadth and depth of our profession as opposed to people’s impressions of it, which are never correct. They’re just not complete, they don’t have enough depth. So, anyway, all this passion really came from my experience at Reed College with the research culture there and the library culture there. It’s an extraordinary undergraduate library. It supports students. Kids at Reed are invariably super nerds and we’re really self-interested researchers. We all have to do these really intensive senior theses and we live in that library. And they’re really sweet to us. The librarians are extraordinary. They let people drag cots in there. And when we all graduate we burn copies of our thesis in front of the library and it’s this crazy revelry. It just really instilled this idea of a research culture and libraries supporting students and I’ve never forgotten that. It’s what I aspire to.

Ellie: That’s fantastic!

Char: Oh my god, yeah. It really is. It’s amazing, I miss it.

Ellie: I’m one of those anomalies, I think, that I managed to get into library school having almost never entered any school library. And I’m in community colleges now, and I love it, but yeah, I think I went into my library twice at Penn State, ever, the whole four years.

Char: You know what’s funny, I was always in the library at Reed, but it was really the place of it that I loved. I didn’t take enough advantage of the reference librarians there, which I find really ironic now, but I was just, “Oh, I know it all. I can do it. Whatever.” And then I realized how ignorant I was. It’s kind of incredible how much I didn’t know at the time. So that’s really filled me with this desire to help kids know that they don’t know everything, especially smart kids. And I’m at Berkeley now, and they think they know what’s going on, but they totally don’t.

Ellie: So you went and got a second masters in instructional design. So what led you to that degree and what’s that brought in to your work as a librarian?

Char: Oh so much, so much. I’m so glad I did that honestly. I got a second masters, it’s a Masters in Education, and it’s focused on instructional design and Computer Education and Technology, so this idea of bringing technology into education and how you teach that and how you learn about that and all those things. I got that degree at Ohio University in their College of Education while I was working as a reference and instruction librarian there from ’06 to ’08. Ohio University is an extraordinarily supportive library system in terms of professional development. They’re excellent. They basically paid all of my tuition, save maybe…

Ellie: Nice.

Char: …5-10% of it. Very nice. And I just worked really hard on it. I discovered that I’m really fascinated by learning theory and pedagogy and all of these things. And it gave me a lot of practical skills: in flash design, in instructional design, and all of these things that, had I known they existed in library school, or had they been subjects that were available in my program I really would have gone after. But I just didn’t know that’s what I needed to do. I also met a lot of K-12 educators who are full time teachers. They have a lot of strategies on how to motivate people. They have a lot of insight into how people learn. I just realized that I had not been taught enough about teaching to be a librarian. I think that’s an endemic problem in library education. We’re not taught to be educators even though that’s what we are. I think that in order to thrive we’re going to have to focus more on that in general.

Ellie: And that ties back too, to what you were saying about talking to faculty and I think it was Emily that commented on your post too that being able to speak their language just helps so much.

Char: Oh my god yes, totally. Totally. And librarians are really good at speaking other people’s language. That’s what we do. That’s what we do at the reference desk. That’s what we do when we catalog books. That’s what we do when we design all these different information products. We’re very good at having insight into other people’s interests, research cultures, disciplinary vernaculars, all of these things. We’re adaptable to that. And tying that with the educational missions of libraries is very natural. And it helps us advocate for what we do because we can couch it in terms that are understandable, not only by different disciples, but different levels within those disciples. Higher education institutions are giant complex hierarchies and you’ve got to be able to get at each level of that hierarchy in order to really be useful, I think.

Ellie: So speaking of Ohio and of all these sorts of different areas we pull through, I know that you are a Texan at heart. And so now you’re been off in rural Ohio, now you’re off in Berkeley. What’s it been like going such different places? What sort of culture shocks, if any, have you run into?

Char: Have I run into culture? Yeah. Are you kidding? No, there’s no difference between Ohio and Berkeley, I’m sorry. [laughter] Yeah, totally! I think a lot of us who are kind of early career librarians, you know, will go, get our first job and it might be somewhere interesting where we never thought that we would live. Case in point, Ohio? I didn’t really know much about Ohio. Or the University. It was a job that I got and man was I lucky because it was a perfect fit. It taught me an extraordinary amount about my own interests, how to be a good librarian because I was supported and mentored by everyone I worked with. Extraordinary place. I cannot say enough positive things about it. It’s a model institution. I also really had the opportunity to get outside my urban self. And learn that there’s really no sense in thinking that one can only live in one kind of place. It’s that same kind of ethic of adaptability. I ended up adoring living rurally. It’s been actually a bigger culture shock moving to this urban area where, apparently everyone wants to live, but it’s a real challenge. It’s a very competitive culture out here in general because it is so desired. The opposite was true in this odd way in Ohio, but it was so wonderful to live in a place that was really built on community and making relationships that lasted and were supportive and it was just such a friendly and kind place to live. And it was just gorgeous. And institutionally every university has a different institutional culture and I’m really fascinated by that. And just the idea of regionalism in general. So, I really am interested in the places that I work and my goal is always to love my job, so I only go places that I truly believe that I can do that. I think in terms of development in one’s profession, it’s excellent to work for different types of places because it gives you such a better perspective on what you can offer, the kinds of problems that can develop, the kinds of things that can develop to address those problems and it’s good, not always to move too much, but different types of experiences are really important. But, in terms of comparing things to Texas, I mean, there’s really no comparison.

Ellie: Of course, of course. So, switching gears, you were named a Mover and a Shaker and you were selected for the first class of ALA’s Emerging Leaders. What motivated you to try for those opportunities?

Char: When I applied for Emerging Leaders it was super early on in my career at Ohio University. I decided to apply for it because I’m the kind of person that just goes for professional development opportunities because I like to learn about stuff and I’m really a very collaborative person and I thought it would be a good way to get insight into the hugeness of ALA, which can be really inscrutable when you’re getting started. ALA’s this giant organization, you don’t even know where to turn in it if you want to get involved. So I applied for that. I was encouraged to apply for Emerging Leaders through a couple of different mentorships that I’ve had. I’m also a person that really believes in forming professional connections and being mentored. I naturally gravitate towards mentorships, in terms of me being a mentee, because I really respect the knowledge of people who have been around the block a few more times than I have in terms of their careers. It’s really, really important to perceive how we can create mutually beneficial professional relationships. And I’m not talking about some kind of noxious ladder climbing here. I’m talking about getting good work done, learning from people and having that be a really validating personal relationship builder in your career. And, I don’t know, I’ve got really good manners so people tend to like that in the folks that they work with. So, anyway, I think that one of my strongest mentors from library school, Dr. Roy, who is ALA past president, I think she encouraged me to do it, which is great. I like to have an impact on the things that I care about. he way you do that is by taking those kinds of opportunities when they come to you. Emerging Leaders was a really good experience for me. And of course it’s always about the people that I end up meeting. I was able to meet and work with Jenny Levine, who writes The Shifted Librarian and who’s an amazing person and one of my closest librarian friends now. She was one of my project groups’ in Emerging Leaders contacts within ALA. So that was awesome. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you do things like Emerging Leaders or you get nominated to be Mover and Shaker. At the reception at the Mover and Shaker thing I met Michael Stevens and Meredith Farkas. I work with them both, I love them both. And that’s how it goes. So it’s all about making personal connections out of professional opportunities and doing so in a way that is genuine and respectful and intent on the greater good. I think that’s really, really critical.

Ellie: I want to second what you were saying about networking, not in that awful way.

Char: Because it sounds all circuit boardy. It makes people seem like implements that have these connections that may facilitate things and make things happen. But really it’s another aspect of enjoying the work that you do and making the work that you do have more impact.

Ellie: Yeah. And, I mean, I would even call probably almost everyone that I’ve met in those opportunities and remained friends with, friends, so to me, even though, I know that it is networking, it never feels like it at the time, it never has any of those sort of negative connotations. Yeah, I just sort of want to replace that with the idea of friendship.

Char: Absolutely, and when you’re getting started, networking is a terrifying concept. I would hear the word networking, I’d be like, “Oh my god, I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even have business cards, how am I supposed to network with anyone?” Networking, all it is, is building relationships that originate in your genuine interest in what you do.

Ellie: Well said.

Char: and finding other people that can help you do that. And that you can help do that. And it’s awesome. So, I’m all about that. You have to learn how to communicate well. It’s about being nice and not being opportunistic.

Ellie: Yeah. So you do tons of stuff. You’ve had all these presentations, the Cyber Zed Shed, you Skyped into a presentation, I’m sorry I don’t have which one in front of me…

Char: Oh man, that was scary.

Ellie: You’ve done ACRL, Computers in Libraries, Future of Libraries. I’m sure I’ve missed some. How did you get hooked up with some of those? How have they impacted your career?

Char: I just applied for them. A couple of the presentations I’ve done have been invited but most of them are the kind of thing where you submit your proposal and they accept you or reject you. And I’ve got plenty of rejections. It’s about, does your idea fit the program and do they have space for you and all that stuff. And I’m weird, I like to present. I really, really like it. I hated it when I started. I was as nervous as anybody else, but I’ve just grown to love being in front of people in a way that is challenging to me and hopefully engaging and interesting for them in terms of the content that I’m talking about. It’s a great challenge and that’s really what it’s all about. So most of them I applied for, a couple of them I’ve been invited to. It’s amazing to watch a good presentation and I try really hard to give a good presentation. And it’s an excellent way to kind of develop my skills in presentation technology and different ways to try to express ideas. I’m really interested in visual design too, so when I make a presentation I like it to be pretty beautiful, I try. So it pushes you forward. And again, it’s a great way to connect with people and hear really good questions and think about the things that you’re doing in ways that you wouldn’t have ever thought about because you get this feedback from other institutions. You talk for 20 minutes about something that happened at your place and then 10 people come up asking questions through their institutional lens. And [you realize], “Oh my god, that’s a completely different working culture, I never anticipated that problem. In that context it would work totally differently.” It’s so important. Presenting is very fun. It was never something I had to do for tenure. It just kinda happened. But you do have to have that professional development support. It’s expensive to travel. One of the reasons I was able to do that, I should just mention this again, is that OU gave such extraordinary travel funding. As long as you’re involved, as long as you’re presenting, as long as you’re active in the things that you are doing, they would fund you. The same is true at Berkeley, maybe to a lesser extent. OU is really out of the ballpark in terms of what they do or did for people. The funding situation all over the country is a little dicey right now, so I may be speaking of things that are not quite the same. But that was a great opportunity for me.

Ellie: Do you have any favorite conferences or presentations you’ve given?

Char: I like ACRL a lot. My first presentation, the one that really gave me the idea that I could enjoy presenting professionally at conferences and that it was a thing that I wanted to continue doing, was Cyber Zed Shed back, I think it was in, was it ’06? ACLR ’07? It was the first thing I ever presented and I was scared out of my mind but it went really well and I enjoyed it. I like the vibe at ACRL. I gave a presentation at the last one in Seattle. It was extraordinary. It was excellent. The audience was great. I cracked them up the whole time, which was rad. I like ACRL. I do.

Ellie: Nice. So also speaking of all of the stuff that you do, how do you stay sane? Do you make an effort to divide your personal and professional life out? Do you blend it all together?

Char: You really want to know what I do? I get up at 4 or 5 in the morning every day.

Ellie: Oh my goodness.

Char: That’s what I do. So I don’t really work much at night. That’s how I divide my personal and professional life. I don’t work at night, but I certainly work at 4 or 5 in the morning. I write a lot and if I have a presentation I’m doing or something, that’s when it gets done. The early morning hours are really good for that because there’s really no other distractions. It’s very quiet, it’s a very focused time and I’m obviously a morning person. So that’s good. You can’t be happy professionally if you’re not happy personally. So, you can’t just privilege one and not the other. Yes, I work very hard, but I also have a lot of interests and I care a lot about librarianship. I care a lot about what I do. So it brings me great personal satisfaction and joy and I’ve met a lot of people in my profession that are true friends and that do what I do, but I have plenty going on outside of that. And that’s good.

Ellie: So you’re getting up super early in the morning, is all of the sort of stuff we’re talking about stuff you take care of during that time or is any of it on work time?

Char: I’m really busy at my job. I have an amazing job. I do a lot of really interesting things and a lot of them involve a lot of networking and outreach and meetings and building different collaborative partnerships at Berkeley. It’s difficult to do anything but my job at my job. That said, I am encouraged to work on the types of writing things that I work on when I can. It’s not discouraged by any means. I have a lot of support from my administrators, from my bosses and I work for some pretty awesome people at Berkeley. So, if I have the time, it’s not like the time is not mine to work on professional stuff, but I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. That’s what important at my work, but yes, I am supported in my professional activities as well.

Ellie: Excellent. So talking about writing, ready to transition into the book a little bit, can you talk about the process of writing that, a whole book? And was that one part of your work at Ohio or again, sort of totally extracurricular?

Char: The book that I just published through ACRL, it’s available as a free download with a sample research instrument, a sample questionnaire, if anybody wants to download it and try to do the same environmental scan about students and technology, that’s available. You can also purchase a hard copy, but it’s definitely meant to be accessible to the widest possible audience.

Elile: That’s fantastic.

Char: That project originated as local research at Ohio University. I was on this technology team and I worked with my manager, another mentor of mine, Chad Boeninger, who’s an extremely smart librarian. He has a blog called Library Voice that’s really excellent. He really had this idea that we should get better grounded in the technology and library culture of our actual institution in order to develop better technology products and I completely concurred, so spearheaded this long term research project and the report that I produced for that. I was also simultaneously working on it as my master’s report for my education degree. Those two documents merged, and then I expanded them a lot and ended up writing on that for another 6 to 8 months and published that as the actual book/research report through ACRL. So, it was a document that had a long life span and a lot of different iterations that really helped me get excellent insight into what I was trying to say. It’s local research findings, but it’s couched in this language of how to research your own institution to understand what it’s trying to tell you about what it needs from its library, not just in terms of technology, or this kind of minimum insight into the students that you’re serving. “Do you like the library? Yes or no?” It’s about really getting a handle on the culture in which you exist because that’s the culture that you serve and it’s different than any other library culture on the planet because that’s the way it works.

Ellie: I think that’s fantastic.

Char: What I’m trying to do is inspire people to couch themselves in that culture. You reflect it, those are your people. Don’t stop looking at national studies, read the national studies and then use their research instrument to inspire your own research. See if your people are a reflection of those people, or if they’re not a reflection of those people. Then you can build products that respond to their requests. It’s very important.

Ellie: I think it’s great that you touch on that. I find that a lot being in a community college setting, where they talk about, well, incoming freshman this… I’m like, mmmm, yeah… not my audience… So yeah, thank you for that.

Char: Part of the reason I wrote this report in such detail and tried to really show how specific the library culture at Ohio University was is because people arrive at different institutions of higher learning based on a variety of different factors, their class privilege, their prior academic performance, their location, their region… It’s this really complex demographic and social and cultural admissions process. So that creates these little microcosms that are completely unique and that libraries can learn to respond to. And work with. And understand. Instead of just saying, “We’re the library. You need some help?” Being a person that’s interested in that kind of regional, institutional, organizational culture, I think we should learn how to gain better insight into it. And ongoing insight, not just a one shot survey, but figure out how to figure out your context.

Ellie: Mmmhm. And so, moving on with the process of the book, what was the publishing process like? Did you approach ALA? Did they approach you? What was the timeline for publishing? We already talked about writing, but…

Char:  I’m working on a different book project right now on instructional technology, pedagogy in libraries, reflective practice, all of those different things. That book I was approached by ALA editions to do as a consequence of being named a Mover and Shaker, which is something that I think is a common experience for folks that get that award. They get a lot of publication opportunities out of it. Which is great. But, for the research report, I just cold called Kathryn Deiss at ACRL. Cold emailed I guess you could say. I had met her through Jenny Levine and I thought maybe the project might be of interest to her. I had the good fortune to also be edited in that process by Joan Lippincott, who’s really an amazing thinker in our profession in terms of these issues of technology in libraries and integrating our institutions into the institutions that support us and things like that. So, it was a really serendipitous process. The entire publication timeline, I guess was about August to April. So however many months that is. I can’t count very well apparently. But I had already been writing on it a while, as I said. A document existed, it just needed to get shipped into shape so to speak. So, I revised it, I worked on it. Did a lot more analysis. Formatted the document itself. And they let me design the whole thing. Which is an incredible experience by the way. Cover to cover. I designed that book. And it was wonderful. Thank you Katherine, thank you Joan. Thanks to Dawn Mueller at ALA. All of them were great during that process.

Ellie: So you designed it into the PDF too? How did it come about that they offered the free version?

Char: Well actually, I pretty much insisted on that. I always imagined it as a free download. I didn’t even think that it was going to be in a print publication version, but one thing led to another and it ended up being a good length for a soft cover research report. So, that’s fine, but I always imagined it as a free download. I really considered that it’s primary form. And of course it’s great that it’s available in a different format, but in my mind it originated as a web based document, download.

Ellie: Alright, so, moving on. I know that the TechSource people are going to cover a lot more of the content of it, so I just want to latch onto the one idea that sort of struck me, which was that one of the most interesting aspects of that Skype project was your open, transparent reporting on the decision to sort of reevaluate the service. And I really like this shift towards publicly discussing and learning from projects even when they might be deemed failures. At my college we’ve been doing an IM pilot through Meebo, and we’re considering dropping that for various reasons. Can you talk about the decision to reevaluate the service and who all’s involved in that and what sort of feedback it was met with?

Char: Sure. What you’re talking about is this experimentation that we were involved in at Ohio University with Skype, using Skype for different forms of public service. We created a video call kiosk and did a pilot with that and we also set up what we called Skype In Reference on our reference desk, so people with Skype accounts could call and talk to a librarian that way or chat with them. The survey project came out of the fact that we were able to do so much experimentation at OU. The working culture is really supportive, a lot of people with a lot of creative energy in terms of creating library services that are worthwhile and innovative and just trying out all these new products, it was really fun. But at the same time, the more products you create, the more time it takes to staff them and the more that you want to make sure that they’re actually working out for you. And the Skype project was basically the first thing that we had done that was … You might call it ahead of it’s time, you might call it misdirected, you might just call it too much. So, it was a lot of work to create and staff, and it drew on our relationships with the systems department and it was a great experiment, but at the same time, the video kiosk wasn’t used consistently enough to really merit us being on it all the time, in terms of our talking heads on the screen. Our decision to reevaluate the service is this idea that a lot of people talk about, having things in constant beta and changing them up. It’s really about the flexibility to address the inevitable problems that come up. The fact that we are able to do that so transparently at OU is what gives us the motivation to talk about it and say, look, this is how we changed things, and this is how we tried to address the fact that the service wasn’t used enough. This is the model that we took on to try to mitigate those problem. When you work with emerging technology in libraries or in higher education or wherever, you’ve got to be able to switch gears when things don’t work right. We’re all treading new ground, not only in the technologies that we’re using, but like I said with the specific institutional cultures, different types of IT relationships. You can’t rely only on the testimonials of others. You’ve got to figure out your own context before you know how to make something work. So that was really where this idea of gaining more insight into people and what technologies would work and what would not work. That’s where the idea originated. To stop creating services from the seat of our pants and start trying to do it from a more informed vantage point. And the service being reevaluated, it’s an ongoing process. More people continue to adopt Skype and they’re still offering the service at OU in different forms, but they’re reevaluating having Skype be the element on that information kiosk that is called when someone says “ask a librarian.” They might just switch it to text chat because it’s easier for people. So it’s really you want to triangulate what’s the way people want to be able to contact you and go there instead of just the thing you think is cool at the moment.

Ellie: Amen. That was my last official question for you, other than sort of, what’s next on your list? Do you have any latest technology thoughts? Something that’s caught your interest that’s fun? That you’re working on now?

Char: So much actually. I mentioned before that I’m writing another book on library education. A lot of what I used to do at OU had to do with emerging reference technologies and now I have a lot more to do with teaching and learning and technology in those areas and those aspects. They all kind of blend together, but I’ve been really doing a lot more instruction and a lot more training and thinking about how to get people to use different types of learning technologies in libraries and how to connect the research mission of Berkeley with the Berkeley libraries via different technological means, so that’s on my mind right now in a lot of ways. In terms of what I’m doing outside of my immediate job, I’ve been thinking a lot about different types of interactive technologies. The iSchool at Berkeley is really excellent and it’s not really in the library paradigm anymore, but there was an exhibit on tangible user interfaces, student projects, this kind of hyper interactive type of design that involves a lot of immediate user feedback and very tangible, very kinesthetic technologies and they’re very interesting. I’m interested in seeing where that type of design goes for classroom interaction. I’m going to be keeping my eye on that for a while. Also, a colleague of mine at UCSD, a friend and colleague and also my perennial editor, Lia Freedman, and I are talking over this project that we want to call Bibliovox, which is this idea that it’s important to tell library stories in a way that retains our institutional memory and does what I was talking about earlier about talking about our passion, exposing a little bit more of our personality rather than just this caricature that a lot of people have in their minds about who librarians are and why we’re led to this profession. I think that we’re a profession of people who care deeply about what we do and about each other and about our patrons and about information and knowledge and research. And we are good people and there’s a lot of stories that need to be told. So what we’re thinking about is creating this online podcast archive if you will. Maybe a blog that people can call into, answer a specific question, or create podcasts of each other talking about their memories about libraries, their inspirations about the profession, how they think it’s changing. It’s kind of inspired by that project StoryCorps that you’ll periodically hear on NPR. So that’s another long term idea. And I really would like to try to think about how to replicate the research I did at OU across the University of California libraries. Who knows if that will happen, but it seems like it would be a really valuable project. I guess that’s another professional thing that I’m interested in doing and hopefully achieving. So, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on. But that’s the way I like it.

Ellie: Excellent. Is there anything else you want our readers to know that I didn’t ask?

Char: I’ve talked a lot about different types of working cultures and how I really think it’s very important to try actively to enjoy your job and to create a positive working culture at the place that you find yourself. I feel like this is worth mentioning because I talk to a lot of people right now who are getting out of library school and are having a really hard time finding jobs. I think a lot of us are getting funding cuts. A lot of us are worried about freezes and layoffs and all those types of things. During this type of time it can get pretty hairy inside academia and it can get really fierce and it can get kinda ugly. I think that this type of crunch time is a really good opportunity to try to foster more supportive workplaces and workplaces that give a lot of opportunities for internal professional development and collaboration. If you can’t go gallivanting around the country, see lots of different conferences, there’s plenty of stuff you can do locally to train each other and work with each other and build the relationships that make workplaces pleasant as opposed to unpleasant. Maybe this is just my cult of manners thing, but I really believe in it, why go to work at a place that doesn’t feel good to go to work at? It doesn’t make sense to me. I really think that people should cultivate an ethic of professional, collaborative, supportive collegial ethic. I think it’s absolutely essential. So mind your manners basically. Thanks mom!

Ellie: Indeed. Well thank you so much Char, this has been fantastic!

Char: Thanks for the interview. You’re a friend of mine, so it’s kind of funny to be in this situation. I’ve been really fortunate to work on projects that I really really care about and have had the opportunity to think really hard about and it’s awesome to be able to talk about them. If anybody reads the report and has any questions about it, just please let me know. I’m a nerd and I love talking about research. Just hit me up, my email’s in the back. All right?

Ellie: Thanks for tuning in and as always, we welcome your comments.