Electric Librarian

Wikipedia & Libraries

libraryjournal:

Via: Open-Site.org

What do you think of this infographic?

Welcome to reality.

I think librarians should jump on board with helping to edit and improve Wikipedia’s content. We’re some of the most well-equipped people to do it, and with our profession’s demographics we could easily hit Wiki’s 25% increase in female editors. 

Something that jumped out at me:

56% of students will halt research if little information is found on Wikipedia.

I don’t know what the details are on that particular statistic, but to me it says that if we can help make sparse and inaccurate Wikipedia entries better or a little more comprehensive then perhaps that 56% of students will be inclined to continue their research - perhaps at the library? perhaps using the excellent source material cited by contributing librarian editors?

I think librarians have the power to make the best of this, but part of me worries that the majority of us will be too busy navel-gazing and bemoaning the sad, sad loss of the obsolete print version of Encyclopedia Britannica.

As others are pointing out, too, it’s not like Encyclopedia Britannica is suddenly dissapearing for good. All of its electronic versions are still around, and are still being bought and paid for by libraries. It’s only the print version that is passing away. Another thing: Wikipedia is hardly the only thing responsible for this. There are a lot of other great online, electronic resources comparable to E.B. that are available to students these days. The expensive, one-stop-shop model of encyclopedias aren’t as important in a networked information world. 

Some Advice from Kansas State Librarian Jo Budler

On March 1 I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a brownbag discussion on “Overdrive vs. 3M” with Kansas State Librarian Jo Budler. For those of you unfamiliar with her, Budler has been something of a trailblazer in the ebook negotation sphere of libraryland. The condensed story is that when the popular electronic lending platform OverDrive changed the Kansas State contract – so that the consortium no longer owned their e-books and audiobooks, but only licensed the right to lend them for the life of the contract – Kansas State Librarian Jo Budler took on the enormous task of ending their contract and transferring the Kansas library system to the cloud-based 3M platform. Her response to OverDrive has caused something of a shake-up in the e-lending landscape.

The discussion covered a lot of different things, including a look at what is creating the tension that is driving a wedge between publishers and libraries. I won’t rehash everything, but below are two highlights that really stuck out for me.

On the Future of Libraries and Publishing:

Another thing that was discussed was the possibility of libraries becoming a “one-stop-shop” for books, where users could have the option to actually buy a book as an alternative or in addition to borrowing. Budler thinks it could very well happen and thinks it can be a positive thing for libraries to stay relevant and useful. I initially had some very mixed feelings about libraries selling books like that, but I’m getting used to the idea the more I think about it and it seems like a good way for libraries to stay competitve with companies like Amazon. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that patrons have used their libraries to discover new books that they later buy. This would just be taking it to the next step. However, one of the issues with talking about something like that is the fact that anecdotal evidence doesn’t carry much weight with publishers who are terrified of going the way of the music industry. We’re at the point where we really need some hard, empirical evidence to back up our claims. 

What can all librarians start doing immediately to effect change with regards to licensing issues?

In answering this question, Jo Budler’s advice was this:

Start writing to publishers. Start talking to people. Tell publishers that, as a reader, you want them to sell to libraries and that the two should be partners. Tell publishers and others that libraries are not the enemy. It isn’t enough for librarians to just complain to each other anymore. 

News: Library Research Databases Have Terrible User Interfaces

Ok, so that’s not really news. From the Atlantic:

Librarians want students to specify their search terms, but that rarely happens: “Regardless of the advanced-search capabilities of the database they were querying, ‘Students generally treated all search boxes as the equivalent of a Google search box,’” simply clicking into a text field and typing away. Problematic, yes — but why shouldn’t they be able to do that? Why shouldn’t the software be able to help them out?

There is some truth to this, but I think it’s worth pointing out that most students generally don’t get the most out of Google by just typing whatever into the search box - there’s quite a bit of literature on advanced online searching. There’s a case to be made for having a more faceted user interface in such cases.

But that’s a little pedantic. Do students really need that level of advanced search all the time? Most databases really do suck when it comes to this, and while librarians don’t have direct control over the creation of the UI’s - that’s the vendors’ job, remember - we can certainly work on asking for something.

I have personally always hated EBSCO Host’s UI. It’s really just awful, and I sometimes get headaches looking at it:

For what it’s worth, I am beginning to se a trend in libraries trying to move away from this, more with the OPAC search but also some databases. It won’t happen overnight, be libraries need to really push for something that their users actually can and want to use. I’d love to know which databases and library resources other people think have the best UI’s.