Rudy Leon

During my very exciting talk at Computers In Libraries last week, I made a statement specific to the conversation we were having, that certainly has the potential to be taken and misunderstood in other contexts. The conversation was about what will libraries be if the books go away? if the physical, shelved content that is often perceived to be “library” goes away.

In that context, I said it doesn’t matter if we own the content or not, we will continue to do what we have always done, which is to facilitate access to content. Libraries have relied upon networks to share resources not locally owned for ages, and we can happily continue to do so. None of us needs to own it all.

Within this context, our ownership or not of the content does not matter.

In other contexts, it matters a great deal

The future of libraries is of course a complicated thing, a Hope diamond of facets of possibility. And, as Margret Mead said, we shape that future with the decisions we make today. I was looking at one set of decisions –are we a library if there aren’t physical artifacts? (and I say, yes. Hell yes. Of course. And went on in detail as to why i believe that to be a self-evident truth

Can we be a library if we don’t own content, but only lease and license?

That’s a very different question.

And the answer is no. I want to go on the record. If the question is to own vs. license or lease, we must own. We must stop licensing and leasing. And if we feel compelled and declare we must keep leasing and licensing, we must stop sacrificing our budgets on half-hearted ill-suited mission-destructive licenses as if we were buying.

In the context of perpetuity, and in the context of first sale: We. Must. Own.

In the context of my ownership or yours, in the context of interlibrary lending and loaning agreements, my ownership does not define me as a a library, not does yours. We can happily library in a shared collection environment. A shared collection of content we as libraries own.

It’s become evident to me that it’s time to start blogging again! The first year at my new job is behind me, and in that year my social media presence has gotten away from talking about library things. Which is unfortunate, since I still do and think library things all the time.

So, yay! I’m back!  

As I mentioned, it’s been a year since I started at UNR. Exactly, to the day! It’s been great. I mean, the folks I work with actually support each other! They don’t always like each other, no place is such a heaven as that. But they are kind and supportive and generous in their understandings of each other (this has been my hardest adjustment. My readings of people’s motivations was badly & dangerously skewed.).  It’s s something I am still adjusting to, honestly. I hope I never take it for granted.

We are a land grant, with a medical school. We’re the state flagship (yes. we are. Us. UNR.) And we are a very leanly staffed Carnegie Intensive Research 1. 18K undergrads, hugely productive research faculty, the full slate of graduate programs. 22 librarians, including the admin suite and all our adjunct/contract library faculty. And we do amazing and cutting edge stuff. We think outside the box on the topic of “library”. Most of the time. We are the future of the academic library — in both the most positive and kinda frightening ways. I love being here. Not every day is nirvana, there are always ups and downs and aggravations and wishing I got my way when I didn’t. But it is such a very good place. 

In terms of daily work, I’m an instruction librarian. I liaise to Political Science, Communications Studies, and our Gender, Race and Identity program  I am also liaising to our student senate (and creating a student library committee). And I’m doing a really neat project with Burning Man; we are the place to come to study Burning Man, and have a complete research collection on the festival. close to a dozen faculty on campus do research around Burning Man, as well as a large cohort of graduate and undergraduate students. But it’s all rather secret. Not anymore! 

I love being a liaison . I missed it terribly while at Illinois, and am thrilled to be back in to it. Teaching is one of my favorite things, a close match with faculty outreach. And I get to do a good amount of both. We have plenty of the freshman comp classes here (which I do not love. I have whole soapbox on that I might be inspired to polish up and pull out at some point…), but I have the pleasure of having a lot of faculty who have not seen a lot of use for library instruction in the past. I say “pleasure” because it’s a downright thrill to see that change. Anyone who knows me knows this is a challenge I am more than eager to rise to, and I have made significant impact. 

The Thing That Will Eat My Life has turned out to be data. I hate data. I don’t understand data. I’m a religious studies scholar, and a librarian! I do words, not numbers. But, my faculty do data. So I’m learning a lot about it. Mostly, I’ve learned that we don’t have much support for it, and that such a situation is shockingly common. I spend far too much of my waking time thinking about where a library like mine, and a librarian like me, fits into supporting the data cycle. I’ve got workflows I’m struggling with, work projects underway, and the next research project will probably be related to how libraries handle data sets. 

There’s more happening — work related to applying the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries project here; changing up our popular reading space & collection; end of year budget issues; research projects about the future of libraries, about liaison relationships and faculty outreach; my ACRL Leadership discussion group and IFRT stuff; me grappling with leadership, management, making change and jousting at various windmills.

A happy, busy worklife.

So, what will I probably be writing about? the importance of faculty outreach (and the joys therein); why I hate the freshman comp class as the recipient of such a disproportionate amount of librarian time and energy; information literacy and research instruction successes and failures  zotero; the changing nature of our own perceptions of libraries; technology in education; Burning Man; librarians and digital workflows/digital workflows as research literacy. And anything that crosses my mind as I read teh interwebs and get to thinking about the world around me.

I’m happy to be writing again. I just hope it’s a pleasure to read!

I’m long overdue for a status update!

Brief update: I have moved! And it is good. I am happy. Very happy. Happy has become my default state.

I’m really enjoying Reno. The West suits me, the mountains are breathtaking, the people are kind and generous and sometimes very wonderfully odd. Being new has good points, but I am starting to realize I haven’t been “new” in any substantive ways since 2005. And I’d forgotten how hard it can be, without touchstone people and the complete absence of anything familiar. It’s exciting, and wonderful, in so many ways. But as the shine wears off I suspect I will have to remember all those old strategies for how to be new (reading in coffee shops, picking up hobbies, remembering to leave the apartment…). Luckily, I want to do all these things!

So, gorgeous locale. Good people. Exciting work. Wonderfully friendly and collegial colleagues. Men who look as I believe men should (and even one or two or so who might be dating me…). A happy cat.

Less briefly: I knew coming here that my job wasn’t entirely defined. That’s cool though — it’s the first time ever I’ve take a job that existed before me, so it’s more defined than any other job I started! My title is Reference and Instruction Librarian. This semester there’s some reference work (at a combined service point, so for the first time ever I’m learning Circ stuff!). I won’t likely be doing any actual instruction this semester (due to timing) but am part of a number of groups and committees looking at instruction and I’m really enjoying all of that!

A number of folks have left recently (mostly retirements) and many jobs are being redefined, so the subject librarians will be working together to discuss the spread of departments amongst us, and hopefully what it means to be a subject librarian. I’m really excited about this kind of engaged approach to unit self-management, and am very excited about what I hope is an opportunity for us to build common ground about what we will be doing as liaisons. I’ve been reading widely on this topic, and am excited to dig in. (for what it’s worth, my take on this is relationships. It’s about building relationships.  Everything else flows from that)

There’s also enormous potential right now in Instruction. We do a lot of instruction, but not in structured or scaffolded ways, and we could be doing a lot more. I’ve had a lot of good conversations about what we might be doing in this area in the near future. Most is on hold waiting for the new GenEd plan to be released from the committee. SO MUCH POTENTIAL!! I’m pretty excited!

I do, however, need to start saying no. I’ve said no to a couple of things, and let’s hold off for a moment on a couple of others. But here is what I have said yes to so far (in addition to regular hours on the combined research services service point — which means I am learning a LOT about Circ!):

• Summon implementation group. I’m a little over my head at this point, but that’s OK. The expectations are for me to have more input when we get Summon and think about how we want to display and teach it.
• Teaching and learning group. This is the group talking about Instruction. Very exciting!  Below are some of the things we’re discussing and working on
  • first year IL
  • infoLit request form (ridiculous how many ideas I have for this!)
  • Thinking about how we advertise/market/talk about our services
  • We will discuss impact of Summon on. IL and on library/community interfaces
  • Hopefully, please soon, programmatically thinking about IL, about scaffolding, about goals
• Pinterest. I have started a Pinterest board for the Knowledge Center. It’s not quite ready for prime time yet, but I’m having a good time getting to know our resources (and my colleagues. This is such a highly collaborative project!). The Knowledge Center has so many, and so many kinds of, great visual artifacts. More to follow on this front!

• Freshman fair. I’m working with a colleague to design a freshman experience that is superior to the tours currently offered. I built something like this at Potsdam, and am excited to see what we can pull off on a larger scale here (more than twice as many students…)
• Student advisory group. The fantastic Lisa Kurt and I will be working with student government to develop channels of input from students to the libraries. We’re not sure at this point if it will be a formal Advisory Group, or take some other shape. But I’m so excited to work with Lisa on this, and get to know our students!
• Onsite user experience group I’ve asked to join this committee, and think I can make some valuable contributions. As Learning Commons Librarian I devoted a lot of energy to space use concerns, and Lisa is on the Virtual UX group, so between us we should be able to communicate student concerns & ideas effectively for the entire library environment
• Library website task force. I just said yes to this. How could I say no??
• Curiosity committee/subject specialists This is the group working to reformulate how we do liaison work, in relation specifically to faculty, but it’s brand new and has lots of potential. This is my Dean’s brainchild. Have I mentioned how much I love my Dean?
• Usability group The always awesome Aaron Schmidt was here before I started, and showed off how to do quick and dirty usability testing. Two of my colleagues started this group of 5-6 of us to get the ball rolling, and make usability testing part of our culture. We had our planning meeting, and I am in awe of the speed at which we can make things happen here!

I’m rereading John Seely Brown in preparation for a talk this weekend at ALA, thinking about how the library as a workplace fits into the learning environments he describes. Knowledge workers must be information fluent, and poised to dive into always changing interfaces and the steady flow of new, world-changing gadgets and tools. The same 21st century skills we talk about infusing into our students must also be infused into these workers who are not in school, perhaps not terribly engaged with or passionate about the work they do (or more tragically, would like to be engaged and passionate but are thwarted by 20th century understandings of knowledge work)

these quotes are discussing the play and learning modes of MMOGs, but i believe the content should be equally applicable to the world of library work.

Play amounts to assembling and combining whatever tools and resources [available] will best help,the learn. The reward is converting new knowledge into action and recognizing that current successes as well as failures are resources for solving future problems

Can you imagine the strength of a knowledge-based workforce allowed to engage their jobs in this way?

Game worlds are meritocracies–leaders and players are subject to the same kinds of assessment–and after-action reviews are meaningful only as ways of enhancing performance

I especially love this one. Past happenings are only relevant to the degree that they allow us to improve and move forward. Punishment is not the goal, only learning from the past in order to keep creating a better future. And all employees would be subject to the same feedback processes, and all employees would be equally accountable to their teams.

Things are super busy in The Life of Rudy right now. A lot of important paperwork has been signed, my house is on the market and has to be packed and lived in while still looking “staged”, and I have about 5 weeks to tie up all the loose ends at work and make the move west.

While that’s going on, I have a few projects coming up that I’m pretty excited about.  Next week, the ACRL InfoCommons Discussion Group (I’m co-chair) will be holding it’s first virtual meeting (info on joining the virtual session is at the end of this post). Donald Beagle will be talking about his recent ECAR paper “From Learning Commons to Learning Outcomes” (subscription required). I’ve worked hard on trying to take advantage of the opportunities virtual offers for interaction. Despite a great program, great speaker, and a great group of usual attendees, I’m nervous. The physical meetings are well attended, and have great discussion, and I really want to  capture that same energy. I’ve also long wanted to carry that energy through the time-between ALA meetings, and this virtual meeting offers a chance to see how we might make that work (and will provide some pointers for midwinter meetings for the new ACRL Leadership Discussion Group, which I hope I can arrange to meet virtually in Spring).

I hadn’t planned on attending MidWinter this year, but Elsevier invited me to be on a panel at their Digital Libraries Symposium (Beyond the Database: Digital Services Enabling Patron Success). I’m on a panel with Jason Casden and Steven Smith , but I’ve got 25 minutes all to myself (that’s a light year at ALA!), and will be speaking about staff skill development and training to support effective development & use of digital services, as well as the importance of staff skills in supporting researcher needs. Expect lots of discussion of play, of creating affordances and mentoring dispositions, constructivism and John Seeley Brown

I start at UNReno March 1, but I’ll be heading MidWest almost as soon as I’m unpacked, for the Minneapolis-St. Paul-based Library Technology Conference. I love this conference (not just because it’s on my birthday and gives me an excuse to visit some of my favorite people). Smaller conferences always make me happy. This one has great people, good organizers, and could use another day or so! I’ll be speaking on Breaking Down the Silos: Technology, Socialization, and Culture Change.

That’s all that’s currently scheduled I hope I’ll be speaking in May at the Canadian Learning Commons Conference in Calgary, and am planning something to present on Outreach and relationship building at Anaheim in June (in addition to chairing two discussion groups and doing some program planning….). I guess the call for Internet Librarian in October will be out some time soon, too…

It’s good that I consider work a close relation to play, right?It’s the only way around the truth behind “all work and no play….”

InfoCommons Discussion Group Meeting Details:
Add this meeting to your calendar: https://ala.ilinc.com/calendar/zwfwpkm/rzbswbf
Title: ACRL Info Lit Commons Virtual Midwinter Meeting
Date & Time: 01/11/2012 at 11:00 AM Central Time
Duration: 3 hour(s) and 30 minutes
Leader: Rudy Leon

Join this meeting:
Let us see who you are! Upload your picture: https://ala.ilinc.com/picture/rzbswbfnpxpymcv

Want to prepare your system ahead of time? https://ala.ilinc.com/systest/zwfwpkm

iLinc System Requirements: http://www.ilinc.com/services/support/requirements

Participant Quick Reference Card for joining and attending an iLinc session: http://www.ilinc.com/pdf/documentation/Participant-Reference-QuickStart.pdf

Need assistance? Click here.

Learn More about iLinc Web Conferencing at www.ilinc.com

I am so excited to finally announce that I will be joining the great folks at the University of Nevada Reno’s  Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center in March.

I will be joining this team as a Reference & Instruction Librarian, and am really looking forward to working with this innovative, collegial, and generous group of folks.

My interview with the folks at UNR was so wonderful (it felt like a 14 hour brainstorming session!) I know I’m going to love working with such and engaged, curious, probing, kind, generous, and collegial team. I don’t know my departments yet, but I do know that I’ll be spending time on instruction, reference, and collection development (I miss instruction and collection development!), as well as on strengthening liaison relationships to departments and student groups.

The Knowledge Center is an exciting place. The space was built three years ago, with a goal of being “at the intersection of knowledge and innovation” (I know right? It’s a dream come true for me!). It’s a gorgeous space (exterior shots here, interior ones here), technologically rich, heavily used, and completely student-centered. Their @1 technology floor is amazing, supporting data services, visualization, poster printing, media production, and with an integrated gaming space. I love that the building was built with robotic storage attached, and even more that there’s a video loop playing near the request desk  about the robotic storage. They take their students seriously, and they visibly assume intelligence, curiosity and creativity all across the building.

Have I mentioned they have all the cool toys too? How can I not be looking forward to working with a group of folks who built a building like that, have a Surface, have a Kinect going at all times, and also painted the walls of the science library whiteboard? And are seriously engaging with the possibilities having a couple of 3D printers will afford? They have a button maker, and made the news for their holiday tree made from weeded bound periodicals.  While still remaining completely engaged with the academic processes of research and information literacy? In a beautiful space where students can feel like serious people or playful people, as they choose?

In addition to all the wonderful things I know about the folks I’ll ge to work with at the Knowledge Center, I’m also really looking forward to living in Reno. It turns out to be a surprisingly exciting place — and I don’t meant he casinos! Although, they definitely help the economy, and will ensure that I’ll finally get to see Cirque De Soliel. But Reno has mountains. MOUNTAINS! Oh, how I miss the mountains! On three sides no less! It’s 40 minutes from Tahoe, 4 hours from SF. Reno has a pretty strong arts community (the whole month of July is an arts festival) and some really nice independent restaurants. Including several vegetarian and vegan places, as well as a place owned by someone who used to chef at the French laundry. They also have the important things: a robust co-op, a bunch of farmer’s markets. a Trader Joes, and a Whole Foods. Ethiopian, Thai, and Indian restaurants.  The cost of living is comparable to Urbana and yet it’s right on the California border. It’s climate is great, high desert, no  humidity, the Truckee River runs through town, and did I mention the mountains?? Plus, it’s The West. Big West. Open West. A state I know almost nothing about but am already developing a romantic attachment to — gold mines, great history, Burning Man, legal prostitution is just so strange, and wide open spaces! I may finally take up horseback riding. And alpaca farming and weaving

Things may be a little quiet here the next few weeks, as I put my house on the market and pack and clean all the things and head West. I’ll pop in later this week with details about some exciting speaking engagements and programs on my travel horizon, but other than that, I’ll be busily packing, sorting, tossing, and dreaming of mountains.

This has been the season of virtual conferencing for me. I’ve given two talks via Elluminate, had training for iLinc, and am organizing my first virtual discussion.  I’ve been trying to think about how best to move presentations and discussion into this new environment, and am pretty excited about the possibilities.

Before I gave my Library 2.011 talk, I attended Debbie Faires fantastic talk “Don’t Just Sit There! Tips for Engaging Participants in Online Sessions“ and took advantage of her tips to make my own talk more engaging. Elluminate has some great features, and I found the shared whiteboard features very useful (you’ll see in my slides how I created blackboard moments and asked participants to share on the large white board space. I think it worked really well).

I’ve also just scheduled a virtual meeting for Midwinter for the Info Commons discussion group. We put a lot of thought into how to move our very popular physical discussion into a virtual environment. We’re limited by the capabilities of iLinc, which mostly meant we wouldn’t be able to indulge my first idea of replicating our breakout tables into virtual rooms.

The first thing we did was schedule a great speaker, and a good topic. Instead of introducing and highlighting their Commons,  Don Beagle will kick us off with a presentation about his recent ECAR white paper ”From Learning Commons to Learning Outcomes.” We’re also breaking away from our usual time constraints; Don will have time to give a full presentation and build upon more recent publications and also address questions that folks have asked him about his paper since it’s publication. (we have also left more time for discussion than we normally have during the tightly scheduled conference).

I’ve also asked the Discussion Group members to consider putting together 2-3 slide decks about their assessment projects and findings, and get those to me ahead of time (so I can upload them).  This way, we can show and share assessment instruments, graphical and statistical findings, or anything else, in ways we have never taken advantage of  in our physical meetings. And since they will have to come to me ahead of time to be organized and uploaded, I’ll be able to look for common themes in the submissions and draw parallels with the lead presentation, thus allowing me to be a better facilitator.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this works; it definitely has taken more time to organize & imagine than the usual Discussion Group meeting. I have a feeling it’s going to be worth it — and that I’m going to learn a lot doing it too!

And in case you might like to attend, here’s the meeting info:

Information Commons Discussion Group Midwinter meeting (virtual)

For Midwinter this year, the InfoCommons Discussion group will be meeting virtually. We’re very excited to try this out. We’ve reserved an iLinc room via ALA, and will meet January 112012, 1-2:30 pm Central Time. The log-in instructions are below, and on the Connect space.

Our Midwinter discussion will continue the assessment conversation we had at Annual 2011. Don Beagle will kick off our meeting with a 20-minute presentation based on his EDUCAUSE report, “From Learning Commons to Learning Outcomes.” This report was posted on Sept 27 by the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR), and within 6 weeks had become the #1 most-downloaded ECAR research bulletin of 2011. Don’s comments will also go beyond the ECAR report to look in more detail at 1) recent research into cultural impacts on user expectations of service delivery (especially pertinent to “Affect of Service” as measured by LibQUAL+® ,  and 2) recent research by Derek Rodriguez into library impacts on student outcomes in capstone courses, and how this might be adapted for Commons model assessment.

I’d like to extend this invitation to all of you: if you have information about service assessment at your Commons that you would like to share, please feel free to put together a PowerPoint slide or two and send that to Rudy Leon by January 9. Because of the nature of iLinc, I will need to upload slides ahead of time. Slides are not necessary if you want to participate, or contribute! But if you do have something visual you want to share, we have the opportunity to do so.

We’ve scheduled 70 minutes for discussion following Don’s presentation. I’m very excited about this, and hope you are as well.

Meeting Details:
Add this meeting to your calendar: https://ala.ilinc.com/calendar/zwfwpkm/rzbswbf
Title: ACRL Info Lit Commons Virtual Midwinter Meeting
Date & Time: 01/11/2012 at 11:00 AM Central Time
Duration: 3 hour(s) and 30 minutes
Leader: Rudy Leon

Join this meeting:
Let us see who you are! Upload your picture: https://ala.ilinc.com/picture/rzbswbfnpxpymcv

Want to prepare your system ahead of time? https://ala.ilinc.com/systest/zwfwpkm

iLinc System Requirements: http://www.ilinc.com/services/support/requirements

Participant Quick Reference Card for joining and attending an iLinc session: http://www.ilinc.com/pdf/documentation/Participant-Reference-QuickStart.pdf

Need assistance? Click here.

Learn More about iLinc Web Conferencing at www.ilinc.com

I was just looking over the Penn State Library’s LibGuide on the “Sandusky scandal”. It’s a fantastic example of how libraries can curate current event sources for researchers, and I’m so glad to see the trend is catching on (I initiated libguides of this kind when I was the Learning Commons librarian at UIUC. I always love to learn about other current event libguides). It’s a way libraries can be supremely helpful to early researchers, and help students learn about events in their life.

I can only imagine the challenges around putting together a guide like this on a campus undergoing the trauma Penn State is currently dealing with. It maintains a complete neutrality and evenhandedness, just collecting the sources.Emily Rimland did a fantastic job.

I keep struggling with my impulse to add a tab for library resources, for context for the topics of pedophilia, football politics, ethical conundrums*, and abuse of power. I can’t decide if their inclusion would be of even greater assistance to young researchers grappling with the story? Or would including the context, and thus explicitly naming the issues, politicize the guide? I like that current events guides can put the library in the path of a student’s curiosity, bridging news to subscribed content. But I’ve never taken on the creation of a guide like this in fraught times (I’ll admit I ducked creating one when the UIUC high level administration was felled one by one by the admissions scandal.)

I’ll add Emily to my list of brave librarians. And keep this guide bookmarked as a great example of a library resource as outreach.

* for lack of a better phrase. I’m thinking here about the psychological phenomena around making difficult decisions, and knowing what ‘the right thing’ is in any given situation.

We have a discussion list!

I’ve added the folks who signed the petition, and will make sure everyone who gave me a go-ahead in the comments here also gets added. If you don’t fall into either of those categories, please feel free to add yourself to acrlleadershipdg@ala.org, following the instructions after the jump.

If you haven’t used Sympa software before, you’ll need to create a log-in and password at http://lists.ala.org

Once there, choose the “send me a password” link (if you do not already have one) and provide the form with the email address from which you are subscribed to and/or registered as an owner of any lists.  You will receive an email with your password.  You must then use your email address as your login ID, and log in to the Sympa web interface.

Once logged in, you should see a number of discussion lists.  If not, click on ‘Open Discussion Lists’ and you should see acrlleadershipdg@ala.org. You can also search for this discussion group in the search box.

Click on this discussion group and click on subscribe

To celebrate the confluence of National Library Week (April 14-20), National Library Workers Day (April 16), and National Volunteer Week (April 21-27), we profiled Library employees who contribute their time as volunteers in the community in an exhibit.  We also had a special breakfast on National Library Workers Day to celebrate those that contribute so much to the Library.

Going along with the Campus Day of Service, Library Employees were involved in three different types of service projects.  Some Library employees also took part in the mammoth campus wide meal-packing project that packaged over 80,000 nutritious meals for food pantries in our area. This is the progress report on the Library’s community service projects.

Book drive for C-U Books to Prisoners (http://www.books2prisoners.org/).  - Approximately 400 books were donated through collection boxes placed in Main Library.

Volunteering at Champaign Public Library – Library employees volunteered in the Children’s Department and Circulation Department last Saturday, helping with basic tasks.

Fundraiser to buy laptops for the UNCC – Library employees raised $ 671 to buy two laptop computers plus a USB mouse and carrying case for each laptop for the kids and tutors to use at the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center (http://urbanaconnectionscenter.org/.)

Janice Mitchell, the founder and director of UNCC, thanked the Library on behalf of UNCC.  She said the laptops will be put to good use and were badly needed.  She stated that just earlier in the week, they had a guest presenter  but didn’t have a laptop for their power point presentation.

Sue Searing said it best when she stated, “The University Library shines in its ability to help others in need. The theme for National Library Week 2013 is ‘Communities Matter @ Your Library.’  And we keep on proving it’s true!”

Thanks to everyone that helped make all of these events a big success!

Secure Your Mobile Devices

Smartphones and tablets have taken portability to a new level.  But increased mobile access to your data and the university’s data also comes with increased risk if your device is lost.  Set a login pin and enable remote wiping to mitigate the damage later.  Take this easy step now to help recover your laptop if it is lost in the future.

Did you know?  One study showed that 95% of people that found an unlocked smartphone tried to access sensitive data on the phone, and only 50% tried to return it after that.

Information from CITES.

Getting to know you….all about you!

Each month we interview someone in the Library and learn a little bit about them.  Today we are getting to know Heather Murphy.

Heather works in the Office of Library Advancement as the Assistant Director of Advancement for Publications and Public Affairs.  She says her job is really all about communication…producing newsletters, annual reports, brochures, and other printed pieces which speak to Library Friends, students, faculty and staff, along with the general public.  Heather also works with the media to share stories and news about the Library and its services.  She chairs the Strategic Communications and Marketing Committee and dabbles in social media by maintaining the Main Library’s Facebook page.  In addition, Heather oversees the News and Events and Calendar sections of the Library’s website.

Where is your hometown?

Dalzell, Illinois…a little town near LaSalle-Peru.  I grew up here and attended the same school from kindergarten through 8^th grade (there were 10 kids in my graduating class).

What did you have for lunch, where and with whom?

I wish I could say fresh guacamole and chips at Maize at Green and First with my husband, but sadly it was tomato soup at my desk today.

Best high school memory?

Having my driver’s license and being able to drive to school…and to lunch off-campus.

By the way, my worst high school memories always involved P.E.

What does a perfect weekend afternoon consist of?

Not having to run errands!  Instead…having a little time to myself with my favorite cup of coffee and then maybe going to a matinee and sharing a big bucket of buttered popcorn with my family.

What is your favorite childhood book?  Do you still have it?

I don’t have one from my childhood, but my favorite to read with my children is Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (Mo Willems).

What is your favorite book today?

A have lots of favorites, but my current favorites are The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) and A Fault in Their Stars (John Green).

If you could travel anywhere where would you go and why?

I would love to travel through Europe for a month and visit France, Greece, Italy, and the UK.

Do you have a favorite pet?

No pets right now.  Although sometimes I think my children qualify.

What is your favorite movie?

Too many to count!  Although I recently re-watched The Adventures of Tintin and found it to be visually stunning and quite amusing.

Who do you take after, your mother or your father or both?

I think I take most after my mom when it comes to independence, self-discipline, and stubbornness, but I get my sense of humor and my compassion from my dad.

What would you order for your last meal?

A piece of wedding cake with lots of buttercream frosting.  I am completely serious.

Who do you have on your iPod?

Everybody I think.  You’ll find everything from Bob Marley to Coldplay to Led Zepplin to Justin Timberlake to Neil Diamond.

Favorite TV show?

I wouldn’t be able to narrow it down to just one.  Some of my favorites include Downton Abbey, Modern Family, Mad Men, and Top Chef.

What can’t you live without?

That’s easy.  My family…and my iPhone.  : )

If you could invite three living people to dinner who would they be?

President Obama, Tina Fey, The Blogess.

Happiest memory?

The birth of my son and daughter.

What was your first job and how much did you make?

Working in the cafeteria at the Mitsubishi plant in Normal, IL when I was in high school.

Do you have a hobby or something you do to relax?

If I can find the time, I like to read, bake, scrapbook, rollerblade, and knit/crochet.

Do you have a bad habit?

My husband says I leave the lights on when I leave a room.  I vehemently deny this.

How do you handle stressful situations?

I try and put things into perspective which helps.  A massage never hurts either.

Best piece of advice anyone has given you?

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Best advice that you would give?

Life is short. Use the good dishes.

This year’s Outstanding Undergraduate Student Worker winners are Greg Blaszczuk, Literatures and Languages Library and Lillian Helms, Grainger Engineering Library and Information Center.  Greg and Lillian received $500 (after taxes) and a commemorative framed certificate.

Cindy Kelly, head of Human Resources submitted the following from the nominators to tell us about the winners.

Greg’s duties in the Lit and Lang Library are Circulation, shelving, and coverage of weekend and evening hours.  Greg has been with this Library for all four years of his Undergraduate time.

Greg began as a freshman working assignments in both the English and Modern Languages Libraries, demonstrating to his supervisors from the first day an unusual degree of maturity. His intimate knowledge of the collections and patron needs in each library well suited him for the arduous challenges involved in merging the twain, synthesizing the best from each into a new organic whole. As we all know, patrons do not stop needing assistance and access just because two large libraries are metamorphosizing into one, and Greg was there to supply leadership and institutional memory to the main mission. Even during finals week in a notoriously rigorous and demanding major (Computer Science), Greg made his talent and energy available to the fledging library unstintingly, volunteering for extra hours and duty assignments. He provided invaluable insight into workflow issues, and proved to be a key member of the team.

Fresh challenges appeared with the conversion of the new Literatures and Languages Library from the Dewey Decimal schedule of classification to that of Library of Congress. Much painstaking work was required, with both time and detail of the essence, in the accurate remarking, shelving and shelf-reading of the merged collection.  Greg has been responsible for weekend and evening hours, opening, closing and running the Library with no supervisory support, or resource beyond his own considerable experience.  Greg has been a completely reliable surrogate, self-reliant yet quick and efficient in communications regarding unexpected anomalies or glitches in the system.

As a student employee at Grainger Lillian covers all Circulation duties including explaining Grainger’s reserves policies. She checks out conference room keys and laptop locks. As a Lead Student Assistant she is a member of the payroll team, and has acted as ‘Duty Officer’ to supervise other student employees when there was no staff person working. She also shelves, shelf reads, and shifts materials.

Lillian has been an undergraduate student employee at Grainger since May 16, 2007. We often comment that Lillian has library work in her blood. Her mother is a school librarian and she came on board as a student employee with all of the background, skills, and desires to be an excellent employee that anyone could hope for. She is a supervisor’s dream come true.

Reliability is synonymous with Lillian. She is always on time, if not a few minutes early. When she works during the summer, or during interim sessions, and has longer shifts we have to remind and encourage her to take breaks.   All of our staff trust her judgment and know that they can assign her any type of project. She has taken on responsibility for many projects and we know that she will follow our instructions to the letter. She is the ‘go-to’ student of choice.

Lillian takes initiative to give us ideas or suggestions.  Lillian’s professionalism is top notch. She has to interact with undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, community patrons, as well as Graingers diverse staff, grad assistants, and librarians. I’ve never heard her be anything other than polite to even the grumpiest patron or community person who may be harassing a student employee or other patrons.

Lillian stands out among the outstanding students.  Her supervisor says Lillian is one that she will never forget.

Congratulations Greg and Lillian!

This year’s Outstanding Graduate Student Worker Award goes to Cate Kompare.  Cate received  $500 (after taxes) and a commemorative framed certificate.

Cindy Kelly, head of Human Resources Office wrote the following to tell us about Cate’s nomination.

Cate’s nominators report that Cate has gone beyond the level of excellence that is usual for the graduate assistants in RRSS.  Cate’s contributions have enriched both services at the Information Desk and the careers of her fellow graduate assistants.

Cate took the initiative last semester to develop a Savvy Researcher workshop about organizing your job search.  This job search session has been well-attended and appreciated by Library users.   Cate has also managed the graduate assistant training schedule for the past two semesters.  She meets with the GA supervisor to brainstorm a list of topics and possible instructors, then contacts instructors, adjusts the schedule as necessary based on instructor availability, schedules rooms, posts the schedule on the department’s wiki, and notifies the graduate assistants a day or two in advance of each meeting about the topic is, who is leading the meeting, the location, and what they need to bring with them to do to prepare.    Cate has creative ideas for training sessions and thinks carefully about the logical sequence of sessions.

Cate has become a mentor for the other graduate assistants and their de facto leader.  Her excellent communication skills serve her well in all aspects of her responsibilities.  Her work at the information desk and virtual reference desk is exceptionally good.  Cate has found the balance between professional bearing and approachability that invites library users to ask their question without being apologetic, and she inspires confidence that they will get a thorough and accurate answer.

Cate has amply demonstrated the professionalism, initiative, creativity, reliability, and quality of work which are the criteria of the award.  Congratulations Cate!

Be Safe Working Out of the Office.

If you work on university business outside of your office, don’t forget to protect the information you’re working with.  The university has resources available to help, including the Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which creates a secure connection to the campus from wherever you are in the world.

Please note because of the licensing agreements required by the providers of the University of Illinois Library’s online resources, and because guest accounts can now be created by anyone at the University, the Library needs to use NetIDs rather than VPN login ability as the indicator of whether you are an individual who’s authorized to use the Library resources. The Library’s licenses do not allow campus guests to use their online resources.

If you have a NetID, you will be able to receive off-campus access to Library resources by logging in to the Library’s web site when prompted. Guests will not be able to use their VPN identities to log in to the NetID-protected Library web sites. Make sure that you search for materials through the Library Gateway in order to receive full access.

More information about the university’s VPN can be found here.

Did you know 4,631 people downloaded the university’s VPN client in 2011.  The university VPN client has been downloaded over 24,000 times since its release in late 2007.

Information from CITES.

Getting to know you….all about you!

Each month we interview someone in the Library and learn a little bit about them.  Today we are getting to know Michael Fleming.  Michael works in Library IT as the Help Desk Coordinator.  Michael says his job is to oversee the day to day operations of the Help Desk while working on long term projects such as Lync implementation, Voyager Sys Admin, and the Library IT Survey.

Where is your hometown?

-Madison, Wisconsin

What did you have for lunch, where and with whom?

-Falafel at the Red Herring with my wife

What does a perfect weekend afternoon consist of?

-Watching an F1 race with my family.

What is your favorite childhood book?  Do you still have it?

-Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. I don’t still have it, unfortunately.

What is your favorite book today?

-House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

If you could travel anywhere where would you go and why?

-Hawaii.  Although anywhere with a beach sounds nice this time of year.

Do you have a favorite pet?

-Boca my cat.

What is your favorite movie?

-Night on Earth

Who do you take after, your mother or your father or both?

-Both

What would you order for your last meal?

-Something that took a while to cook

Who do you have on your iPod?

-Mostly kid music lately.

Favorite TV show?

-Top Gear

What can’t you live without?

-Family

If you could invite three living people to dinner who would they be?

-The Dalai Lama, Warren Buffet, and David Letterman

Happiest memory?

-When my daughter, Maggie was born

What was your first job and how much did you make?

-Teaching sailing.  I made almost nothing, but it was fun!

Do you have a hobby or something you do to relax?

-Playing with my daughter is pretty relaxing.

How do you handle stressful situations?

-By going for a walk or bike ride to relax.

Best piece of advice anyone has given you?

-Nobody normal works in a library.  Which is a good thing.

Best advice that you would give?

-Work in a library.  It will always be interesting.

Do you have someone that you would like us to get to know please contact Zoe

Having trouble reading your Voyager reports?  Do you get tired of scrolling all the way back to the top of the page just to remind yourself what row you’re looking at in Excel? Here is a quick tip that I learned from Amanda Hatland, a graduate assistant in the Undergraduate Library and Business Information Services to avoid that frustration.

Click on the “View” tab in Excel. In the “Window” group, click “Freeze Panes.” This will reveal three options. The first, “Freeze Panes,” allows you to customize which rows and columns are frozen simply by selecting a cell in the spreadsheet. Anything above and to the left of the selected cell will be frozen. The second option, “Freeze Top Row,” automatically freezes every cell in the top row of your spreadsheet. Finally, you have the option to “Freeze First Column,” which will freeze anything in the left-most column of the spreadsheet. If you want to unfreeze cells at any time, simply go back to the “Freeze Panes” button. The first option will now be “Unfreeze Panes.”

Now you can keep your rows and columns straight!

For more Excel tips visit Microsoft Excel:Quick Tips.

From the J. Geils Band:

Freeze frame, freeze frame
Freeze frame, freeze frame
Freeze frame, freeze frame
Freeze frame, whoo, and I freeze