Library Memes

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Salutations!

As part of my INFO 5410 Integrated Technologies in Libraries course during Spring 2023, I was tasked with creating memes by utilizing one of the platforms discussed in the textbook, so I went to Canva and made the following three memes.

The one below is my favorite (and current desktop background) because I personally identify with the different librarian-ish aspects of the pictures. All of the films/TV show librarians depicted are favorites of mine. Can you list them all?

I had way too much fun making all these. Hopefully they will make you giggle!

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

Books About Women During World War II: A Library Collection Selection Project

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Salutations!

During my INFO 5040: Developing Library Collections during Summer 2023, I was tasked with selecting a non-fiction topic and analyzing what resources should be added to a library, based on what titles were available at two different academic libraries. It was fantastic to work on the book selection process from topic identification to title compilation, with the result being a 40-title list.

Project Topic: Women in World War II

Reason: One of my recent favorite books on the topic of women during World War II is Code Girls: The Untold Story of The American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy. The depth of research woven into narrative prose is quite appealing for a non-fiction book, and I have a few other books about the diverse ways women served during the historical period; these books from my personal collection became the foundation for this project. I found the specific Library of Congress (n.d.) Subject Heading for this category of information to be “World War, 1939-1945–Participation, Female” (p. W-255).

Reflection: From combing the internet for title suggestions, I learned to be more open-minded to reviews from unexpected yet valid sources; rather than relying on NoveList alone, I branched out to inventory available online from the bookstore of the National World War II Museum and even took a recommendation from NPR. One aspect I did not consider to be of great importance was the publication dates of the titles I chose. Given I was dealing with history, I assumed the date of publication was not as vitally important as it would be for science and technology titles, so publication dates were not included on my 40-book list. Depending on the topic, I realize publication dates might have more of a bearing on title selection. In a future position involving collection development, I also might need to provide at least an acknowledgement of having read reviews about the titles I select, a fact I discovered when working with NoveList entries that provide access to reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus as available depending on the title. These compiled reviews might prove useful in supporting a selection decision when submitting title lists to different groups of library constituents.

Goodreads Book List: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39464934-sarah-hope?shelf=women-in-ww2

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

Reference

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Library of congress subject headings beginning with w [PDF]. https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCSH/W.pdf

The Goal of Collection Development

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Salutations!

Rather than the goals of collection development having changed drastically since the early days, the difference between collection development of then versus now lies in the process, materials, and formats having changed (Howard, 2011, p. 10). The first of these linked statements has truth woven in it, even when taking into account the historical views of quality compared to quantity of the collection and whether the librarian was acting in a predominately educational role for the community by offering “good” books (Huynh, 2004, p. 20-21). Regardless of philosophical views, the overarching goal of collection development is “building a coherently connected selection of appropriate items intended to serve an easily identifiable body of users” (Disher, 2014, p. 2). The ultimate goal of almost every library collection can well be said “to check out its material” (Disher, p. 94)!

The process, materials, and formats have changed. It is true that the materials and formats have shifted to include a wider variety than librarians dealt with in previous decades. Since collection development encompasses “all the steps from preparing a budget to eventually placing the book or material in the collection” (Howard, p. 10), the process has remained virtually unchanged, based on what I see in the literature. Materials and formats have definitely expanded over time. Libraries, once only dealing with print books, experience shelves holding audiovisual materials, including DVDs, audio books, and compact discs (Disher, p. 58), and links in OPACs to various electronic versions of items on the shelves for circulation. Within the non-book materials available, my public library offers kits patrons can borrow from the Teen collection, such as a waffle iron, popcorn machine, ukulele, and crochet hooks, akin to the “American Girl dolls” available for circulation in “Washington,” “fishing equipment in Minnesota,” and the “bicycles in Ohio,” all of which are contributing to the growing “library of things” movement across the United States (Mead & Dankowski, 2017). Formats of books and audiovisual materials have also changed over time, with print books morphing into eBooks, books on cassette moving to CDs then streaming, and VHS tapes becoming DVDs becoming Blu-rays and streaming.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

PS. This was originally written in INFO 5040: Developing Library Collections during Summer 2023.

References

Disher, W. (2014). Crash course in collection development. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

Howard, J. K. (2011). Basic selection tools: 21st-century style. School Library Monthly, 28(3), 9–11.

Huynh, A. (2004). Background essay on collection development, evaluation, and management for public libraries. Current Studies in Librarianship, 28(1/2), 19–37.

Mead, B., & Dankowski, T. (2017). the LIBRARY of THINGS. American Libraries, 48(6), 48–51.

The Purpose of Collection Development

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Salutations!

When one stops and think about it, the purpose of the library and collection development are tightly intertwined. If a library is located in a botanical garden, for instance, with its purpose being research on botany, then its collection development strategies will focus on botanical materials in different formats and ignore information regarding other topics, such as Shakespeare’s sonnets. Similarly on a smaller scale, Disher (2014) stated “books on the library’s shelves…share a common purpose,” so the role of the collection developer, “therefore, is to collect items that illustrate to the community that a unifying purpose or goal prevails” (p. 1). The community’s needs and interests fuel the purpose of the library, since “public libraries exist for the communities they serve” (Disher, p. 4), which resultantly informs the work of collection developers.

Huynh did a fantastic job providing an overview tracing the history of book selection from the early 1900s to what we now know today as collection development. I found the comparisons of such categories as philosophy, selection, and evaluation to be quite helpful in seeing the shift in thinking over the years. One particular statement struck me as corroborative of my views on the linking of library purpose with collection development, in that Huynh (2004) declares that “the collection development philosophy is heavily dependent upon the purpose of the libraries” (p. 31), so it follows that what items are purchased and made available fluctuate while the purpose “has swung like a pendulum, from educating to entertaining or ‘edutaining’ the public” throughout the decades (as cited in Huynh, p. 31). The current trend regarding collections and services for public libraries “heavily leans towards public demand” (Huynh, p. 19), evident in Woodward’s goal for libraries to morph into bookstores, driven by evaluating circulation rates and responding to customer demands (as cited in Huynh, p. 36-37). As Huynh points out this customer-driven model illustrates how quickly perspective of what is important enough to last beyond popular culture fads and “raison d’être” (p. 31), that is “reason or justification for existence” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.), can be lost. Without a balance of reason coming from clearly delineated purpose, as well as collection development policies and procedures, libraries will not be able to handle the stressful expectations society places on them. “Instead of being many things to all, should public libraries strive to be a few things to some?”  (Huynh, p. 31).

 

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

PS. This was originally written in INFO 5040: Developing Library Collections during Summer 2023.

References

Disher, W. (2014). Crash course in collection development. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.

Huynh, A. (2004). Background essay on collection development, evaluation, and management for public libraries. Current Studies in Librarianship, 28(1/2), 19–37.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Raison d’être. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved May 11, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raison%20d%27%C3%AAtre

 

Reflections on using TinyCat and Wix

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Salutations!

For my INFO 5410 Integrated Technologies in Libraries course during Spring 2023, I was tasked with various product reviews and mini-research projects dealing with several aspects of library technology that made me quite happy that I truly need to know out in the real world is the email address of my library’s IT department when something happens in the Reference and/or Children’s departments and not that I have to be fixing such things myself.

Two of the assignments I am most pleased with my work are:

Hopefully my reflections on these two technology products and their usability for those of us in library work who are not IT computer people will be useful.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

Sense of Purpose, Peace, and Professionalism

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Salutations!

Among the myriad of important things I gleaned from INFO 5000: Introduction to Information Professions in Fall 2022, the top 3 things are as follows. I really felt like I had grown so much both academically and and professionally in my understanding of LIS during this course.

  1. I found a sense of purpose in Rubin and Rubin’s (2020) detailed discussion of the library’s basic organizational structure (p. 71), since it highlights the vastness of the profession I’ve chosen to enter. The organization, broken into three categories of User services, Technical services, and Support services (Rubin & Rubin, p. 71) which, regardless of type of library being analyzed, provide numerous employment opportunities for many different individuals, whether or not they are in the field of librarianship, such as IT, HR, and personnel facilities maintenance, and security (pp. 76-77). Libraries can be highly important in the communities they serve, beyond merely the patrons and librarians who interact around materials.
  2. I found a sense of peace on all the different types of libraries expounded upon in the textbook, since it helped me over some of my guilty feelings from my choice to switch decidedly from the role of school library media specialist to anything else library-related when beginning this MSLIS program this past January [of 2022]. I now see more clearly and firmly that the switch has nothing to do with my supposed “failure” in one realm of library, as I wrongly thought; rather, it is my adventurous nature and the ability to see all the open doors this degree will offer that I want to try out in my professional life; there are so many different types of libraries and different roles within those organizations that it will become merely a question of what do I want to do for the present season, not “here’s what I am duty-bound to do for the rest of my career, whether I love it or not.”
  3. I found a sense of professionalism through the coursework that helped me grow in my evaluative skills when it comes to scholarly sources and forced me to think about aspects of librarianship as a profession that I had previously considered; before this class, neither I had considered what impact one important LIS figure can have on today’s practices, nor had I even thought about the various men and women responsible for great strides in our profession, often by merely doing their jobs to the best of their abilities and becoming famous in the process inadvertently. As Shakespeare (1601/1988) penned in Twelfth Night, “ ‘Be not afraid of greatness’– ’twas well writ. / ‘Some are born great’ – /  ‘Some achieve greatness’ – / ‘And some have greatness thrust upon them.’ ” (3.4.37, 39, 41, 43).

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

References:

Rubin, R. E. & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.

Shakespeare, W. (1601/1988). Twelfth night, or what you will. (S. Wells & G. Taylor, Eds.). (Compact Edition). (Original work published 1601)

Books Filled with Culture, Education, and Pleasure: WPA Library Services Across the US

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Salutations!

During the Final Research Project for my INFO 5000 Introduction to Information Professions, I felt like I was working in a mini-thesis and thoroughly enjoyed myself since I was getting to delve into a historical aspect of librarianship that has long fascinated me – packhorse librarians in my native Kentucky in the 1930s – and even broaden my originally narrow topic to see the vast assistance afforded libraries during the Great Depression by the WPA.

Aside from a meticulously-written paper, I turned my extensive research into a narrated PowerPoint presentation entitled “Books Filled with Culture, Education, and Pleasure: WPA Library Services Across the US.” Here is the link to the resultant YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeL03PEhGys. Enjoy!

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

Stereotypes: What do The Pagemaster, Dr. Abigail Chase, and Larry Daly all have in common?

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Salutations!

Most are likely well aware of the pervading “librarian stereotype,” — middle-aged female with graying hair in a tidy (or messy) bun wearing glasses and cardigan who owns cats — and I, for one, feel completely at home embracing and embodying most of the perception of the LIS profession nowadays, with the exception of “crazy cat lady” being a synonym of “librarian” since I’m a dog kind of gal. Glasses used to be part of my “librarian” persona complete with neck chain and hair in a bun; cardigans will forever be my superhero cape.

To my knowledge, there is not a stereotype for “information scientist” that has to do with gender, physical appearance, personality, and habits. The first mental picture that comes to mind when I think of the term “information scientist” is a combo deal of Doc Brown from the Back to the Future trilogy in the 1980s and Mr. Dewey the librarian-turned-pagemaster from The Pagemaster movie in the 1990s. Great Scott! I just keep seeing Christopher Lloyd in my mind’s eye. It seems ironic to me that gender roles in librarianship began as male-dominated where “bookmen” worked in sophisticated academic institutions “because they were scholars, not custodians” (as cited in Rubin & Rubin, 2020, p. 272) in the middle of the nineteenth century and completely morphed into a profession dominated by females, so much so that Garrison was quoted as referring to nineteenth-century librarians as “tender technicians,” because “women occupied professions distinguished by their nurturing characteristics… librarianship among them” (as cited in Rubin & Rubin, p. 541). I think Garrison must have been alluding to the late nineteenth-century or even the twentieth-century, due to the fact Rubin and Rubin point out, that by 1919, out of the fifteen library education programs in the country, ten had been founded by women (p. 278), with the majority of students in such programs at the time being women. 

I also find it interestingly doubtful that Stauffer’s masculine model in LIS schools is discussed as still existing today, having roots in the dominant cultural view of Dewey’s day, notably “a distinct separation between the appropriate work for males (leadership, administration, bibliography) and females (routine clerical duties and nurturing functions such as children’s work)” (as cited in Rubin & Rubin, p. 276). The gender pay gap specifically does not seem to play a role in the librarian and information scientist stereotypes; Rubin and Rubin reported on a 2014 Library Journal salary survey which declared “women made 89 cents for every dollar made by men” generally in different positions across library types (p. 310), while “data from 2017 showed that women were paid less in systems, web development, and programmer positions but had a slight advantage in digital acquisitions and digital curatorial positions” (as cited in Rubin & Rubin, p. 310).

The stereotypes regarding archivists and museum workers that spring to mind also come from the entertainment industry; they are either highly intelligent and sophisticated consistently like historian-cryptologist Dr. Benjamin Gates and archivist Dr. Abigail Chase in the National Treasure movies or extremely bumbling and inept, at least at the onset, like the night watchman Larry Daley in the Night at the Museum movies. Honestly, I think I watch too many bookish or library-themed movies and absorb them way too easily; I find myself actually adding bits of different characters I admire or connect with on some level into my personality and modus operandi, sometimes even my speech pattern, which one of my work-friends finds hilarious. I’m totally going to make a librarian meme someday with solely film/TV librarian images that are important to me in the style of the “What My Friends Think I Do” memes.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

Reference: Rubin, R. E. & Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.

*Telephone ringing* Reference department, Miss Tyler.

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Salutations!

One of the assignments for INFO 5000 Introduction to Information Professions in Fall 2022 tasked me with researching a professional specialization within the multifaceted world of librarianship. The assignment opened my eyes to the uniqueness of the LIS profession as a whole, from an association-level, and introduced me to a whole sub-section I honestly wasn’t aware even existed as a unique organization of like-minded professionals. I chose the Reference & User Services Association [RUSA] (2009), a division of ALA, that identifies itself as “a network to educate, empower, and inspire its members to advance the evolution of the profession and better serve users in a continuously changing information society” (para. 1); its members are primarily LIS professionals typically in “Reference Librarian” positions or equivalents. Among a plethora of things I learned about the association, I appreciated the fact that RUSA (2006) undertook in its bylaws the responsibility to “[stimulate and support] excellence in the delivery of … reference and information services, readers’ advisory, collections development, and resource sharing for all ages, in every type of library” (para. 2).

After completing this report, my ideas about possible career directions have changed slightly, yet this process has also reinforced existing ideas I held about my LIS career. So, short answer: yes and no, which might seem quite non-committal. Let me explain, though, with a flashback that has a movie tie-in.

Story time! Ever since I first watched it as a little girl annually around Christmas time with my mom, one of my favorite librarian films is Desk Set, which revolves around the reference department of a broadcasting company in New York City’s glitzy Rockefeller Center (Lang, 1957) run by four intelligent, funny, mature, sophisticated women with amazing wardrobes. In childhood, I considered them to be cinematic representations of “real librarians,” and this movie sparked a resultant keen interest in reference work before I could articulate the specifics. I merely liked how intelligent the women were, how they had whole passages of books memorized, and could answer any question posed to them with some research time, while totally loving the chic 1950s styles. I formed a naïve assumption that Bunny Watson and her staff were synonymous with all of librarianship that I considered “genuine,” which for a long time meant practically anything library-ish outside my limited experience in elementary school library media centers. Honestly, I didn’t consider myself a “genuine librarian” when I was teaching K-5 library lessons; there are days even now, when I still don’t deem that time “true librarianship,” due to the confines and stress I faced. Still, at times, unpacking that mental baggage.

Anyway…I’ve since grown up some in my views on librarianship… a bit; this MSLIS program, and particularly the professional specialization report project, has illuminated my understanding to realize Reference is simply one concentration among many; interestingly, the iconic film of my childhood was mentioned in one of my LIS textbooks as containing many examples of ready-reference service (Wong & Saunders, 2020, p. 14), which I took as rather a divine nod of approval that I am presently pursuing the proper educational path for myself, and I will likely someday specialize in the reference area of librarianship, at least for a portion of my future LIS career. Even prior to this specialization report, I had begun negotiating a shift in my department affiliation at my public library, wanting to increasingly work in Reference upstairs, compared to Children’s downstairs; as of today, my schedule will be updated to reflect training in Reference in early December 2022 before taking a Monday evening shift consistently, with the hope that more Reference shifts will open so I can formally swap out those for existing Children’s shifts in my schedule.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

PS. One of my favorite parts of Desk Set is where librarian Sylvia Blair answers the telephone and has this one-sided conversation: “Reference department, Miss Blair. [Pause.] Oh, yes, we’ve looked that up for you, and there are certain poisons which leave no trace, but it’s network policy not to mention them on our programs” (Lang, 1957).  She is so polite yet firm on library policy that such information cannot be given out over the phone.

PPS. Ruthie Saylor, the newest member of the team, usually end the calls with “You’re welcome. Call us anytime” (Lang, 1957), which I find myself doing on the phone at the library!

References:

Lang, W. (Director). (1957). Desk set [Film]. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.

Reference & User Services Association. (2006, July 7). Our bylaws. https://www.ala.org/rusa/about/strategic-priorities/bylaws

Reference & User Services Association. (2019, August 14). About RUSA. https://www.ala.org/rusa/about

Wong, M. A. & Saunders, L. (2020). Reference and information services: An introduction. (6th ed.). Libraries Unlimited.

Ranganathan: India’s World Librarian

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Salutations!

One of the assignments for INFO 5000 Introduction to Information Professions in Fall 2022 tasked me with researching an individual who was important in some way to the furtherance of librarianship. I initially wanted to research Henriette Arvam — she was nicknamed “the mother of MARC records,” and you can read here about her life and work on the LC blog around her death in 2006, reposing what The Washington Post published, likely as her obituary — yet I ended up choosing S. R. Ranganathan, named “India’s World Librarian.” Below is the TL;DR highlights of the essay I wrote.

S. R. Ranganathan was a self-made mathematics professor in India who became globally-renowned as “a library scientist par excellence” (Babu, 2011, p. 254); his vast contributions to the LIS theories and practices in our field included promoting library legislation in his home country, single-handedly developing the colon scheme of classification (Satyanarayana, 2015, p. 206), and penning numerous library science books and pamphlets, among which stand five pithy statements as the bedrock of librarianship (Mitchell, 2008, p. 2). In his seminal book, Ranganathan (1931) detailed exhaustively, through his inimitable linguistic style, his five laws of librarianship, namely: “Books are for use; Every reader should be served his or her book; Every book should be helped to find its reader; Save the time of the reader; A library is a growing organism” (pp. 336-337, 382). The book was so well-praised after its 1931 publication that one British contemporary openly confessed, “truthfully,” these laws “should be the guiding principles of librarians everywhere” (as cited in Sharma, 1979, p. 63).

The life and works of Ranganathan, as well as the research inspired by the Five Laws, were so interesting that my first draft of my paper was nine pages and needed significant editing and condensing to meet the seven-page maximum. Below are the top 4 things I found most interesting based on my research into a fascinating man; most are excerpts or abridgements of the text of my paper.  

  1. At a Korean seminar internationally commemorating the 80th anniversary of the five laws, Dr. B. Ramesh Babu (2011) referenced the work of a researcher showing the Five Laws have been loosely transferred out of the world of library science and adapted, in homage apparently, into such categories as railways as public utilities, public administration, jurisprudence, religion, and society (pp. 264-265).
  2. From the viewpoint of public librarianship, Holt (2010) spent a great deal of time ironically expounding upon the fourth law: saving the user’s time is “the most valuable gift that libraries could give to their constituents,” especially since time as a modern concept is “a precious commodity” (p. 75), and pointed out that the fourth law was written as a “service command, an imperative” (p. 66).
  3. As an academic librarian, a professor of library science, and arguably an enthusiastic library aficionado, S. R. Ranganathan lived, worked, and taught with “only one goal in mind: to improve libraries and to extend library service to the public” (Sharma, 1979, p. 58).
  4. Standing alongside many from 1931 onward, one reference librarian equated the timelessness of Ranganathan’s laws to the golden rule of mutual respect, enduring family traditions, the quintessential little black dress with sophisticated string of pearls (Rimland, 2007, p. 24). Neither the classic views and items of Rimland’s comparison, nor the five laws themselves, have lost their luster with the passing nine decades.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

References

Babu, R. B. (2011). Relevance of five laws of library science in the contemporary library world. Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science, 45(4), 253-269. Retrieved from http://journal.kci.go.kr/kslis/archive/articleView?artiId=ART001605574

Holt, G. (2010). Saving time: Ranganathan and the librarian as teacher. Public Library Quarterly, 29(1), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616840903563024

Ranganathan, S. R. (1931). The five laws of library science [PDF]. Madras Library Association. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b99721 

Rimland, E. (2007). Ranganathan’s relevant rules. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 46(4), 24–26. Mitchell, W. B. (2008). Reflections on academic libraries in the 21st century. Journal of Access Services, 5(1–2), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367960802197509

Sharma, R. N. (1979). S. R. Ranganathan: A personal tribute. The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), 14(1), 58–72.

Satyanarayana, R. (2015). Library profession and Dr. Ranganathan. Annals of Library & Information Studies, 62(4), 203–207.