Sutherland Shire Libraries Staff News

Ken's Farewell

The day started with a sighting of the library van swinging out of the carpark with Ken at the wheel and Scott assuming the navigator position. They were back in record time perhaps just for the food??

Meanwhile back at the library, the kitchen was abuzz with preparations for the morning tea. And oh what a gourmet selection. After initial attempts to stick to fruit, cheese and nuts, all willpower was abandoned when faced with Gwen's brownie slice.

Ken was in good humour and obviously looking forward to his new life away from work. He was presented with a wallet and 2 gift cards. Dianne had also thoughtfully put together a Home Library goodie bag as a reminded of what he will be missing out on.

Ken has been a familiar face in the library since 1984 and despite the odd grumble or 3, has delivered your Storytime packs and crates - usually with all the bits that were meant to be in them - intact.

We would like to wish Ken all the best for the future. More time for dancing - yay.

Ref Rap - Sparkle @ the Library Part 1

On 31st March and 1st April some staff, including myself, participated in the program 'Sparkle'. For some reason, whenever I think of Sparkle, I think of cheerleading so it was with some uncertainty that I entered the meeting room on Day 1. Rather than finding poms poms and tiny skirts (which I'm sure Library staff would look great in!) to my relief I found lots of butchers paper and bright textas. The next two days were filled with a wide variety of different activities and discussion. Some of the main areas covered included how to sparkle, good customer service and handling difficult people. The following are just some of the things that were learned. Other Staff that attended Sparkle might have something to add.

How to Sparkle - Sparkle is based on the Five Principles of B.E.A.M.S ie.

Being Present
Enjoyment and Fun
Attitude is everything
Making a difference
Supporting each other

We were asked to brainstorm ways that we could effectively carry out these principles in the Library. This was a very creative exercise with some interesting results. For inspiration, we looked at the video FISH!, a short documentary about the happiest Fishmongers in the world. These guys were absolutely nuts (in a good way)! They don't just sell fish, they throw it to each other and get customers involved. Some workers went down to the Fish Markets just to be entertained at lunchtime. The FISH! philosophy emerged from these fish markets i.e. Be There, Make Their Day, Play and Choose Your Attitude. While I think throwing books at Patrons and each other could raise a few OH&S issues, there have got to be ways that we can act like ridiculously happy Fishmongers in the Library.

Some of the ideas included more team working exercises, knowledge and skill sharing, goal orientated tasks, using humour in the Library and enthusiasm towards customers. Some of the more creative and fun suggestions included Library games, staff sports teams, social outings, dancing, music, dress-up days ( I'd completely support a day where staff must come to the Library dressed as Fishmongers) and my personal favourite, staff massages!

One of the most effective points made in the video was that you need to choose your attitude. According to this philosophy, everyday you make a choice - to be happy or sad. So why not choose to be happy (even when a Patron is quite upset about their hold fees), because happiness has that annoying habit of being contagious. If you ever happen to achieve full happiness at all times, then please share your secret!

I'll talk about customer service and handling difficult people in Part 2. For now, see if you can think of any other ways we can sparkle in the Library - and get creative! Post your ideas below. For inspiration see this website: http://www.fishphilosophynetwork.com/

Karen B.

Manga Workshop

During Youth Week we held a Manga Character Design Workshop. During the 2 1/2 hour workshop teens learnt how to design their own Manga character. By the end of the afternoon 29 characters were created and one was chosen as the best. The lucky winner was awarded with special Manga design paper kindly donated by Althea and Fiona the workshop trainers.

Following hot on the heels of the Manga Workshop many kids joined us in the School Holidays for our Movie Madness activities. The staff dressed to the nines ready to walk the red carpet and many of the kids dressed as their favourite movie characters. They enjoyed playing the memory game, celebrity heads and making their own Hollywood Star.

New title in the Hot Topics series: Prisoners

Prisoners are from highly disadvantaged backgrounds, characterised by poor education, unemployment, social exclusion and poor physical and mental health. This new title outlines the background and current environment of prisons with case studies, as well as the relevant international law and overseas comparisons.
Lending and reference copies at all branches. An excellent resource for students.

Ref Rap: EBSCOhost Databases Part 2

In Part One I talked about some of the interesting databases on EBSCOhost. Now I’ll talk about some of its useful search features and applications. Please feel free to add to the following list:

• EBSCOhost contains a number of 'how to' tutorials including 'Basic Searching for Public Libraries'. These tutorials are available from the 'Help' page of EBSCOhost and are a useful way to get to know the database.
• The opening search page of EBSCOhost (from the online databases link) reveals all search options. You can hide this by clicking on the 'Search Options' link (located below the search box). Alternatively, you can view the options by clicking on ‘Search Options’ again. This is a good application for those Patrons that may feel overwhelmed by a vast number of choices - many are probably used to Google basic search.
• There is a 'Smart Text Searching' option. This allows you to type up to a page of material in the search box. EBSCOhost will identify the relevant search terms and find related material. You can also use 'Smart Text' to search article abstracts. For example, I did a basic search on 'Kevin Rudd' and viewed the first result. On the right side of the screen there is an option to ‘find similar results using Smart Text Searching’. When I selected this option it conducted a search using the article abstract – very useful and far less time consuming than typing the information directly.
• You can view and hide your search history just by clicking on 'search history' below the search box. This is useful if you want to come back to old search results later.
• Each search result has a small 'magnifying glass' icon next to it. Hover the mouse over this icon to reveal information about the article and its abstract. This saves the user from having to go into every article to determine whether or not it is relevant.
• When viewing search results, you are given the option to 'cite this article'. By clicking on the relevant icon, EBSCOhost will give you the article citation in a number of different referencing styles. It is possible to copy and paste the relevant citation or transfer it to your bibliographic management software (eg. Endnote). Anyone who has ever spent what feels like an eternity on an assignment only to spend another eternity painstakingly typing up references will truly appreciate the value of this feature.
• Patrons are able to email or save relevant articles and may receive RSS feeds and alerts for selected searches. They can also sign up for their own EBSCOhost account (using an email address). This will allow them to store articles, videos or images of interest in a personal folder.

Have you heard enough about EBSCOhost now?

Well, I’ve only just covered some of the search features. If you want to discover more, try the following questions I was given at the training. It would be great if you could attempt at least one of the questions below and post your search strategy in the comments box. There is more than one way to find most of the answers (and no straightforward 'right way') so it doesn’t matter if you post on the same question as someone else. You can post anonymously if you feel uncomfortable about revealing your identity.

1. I need some information on Angola. What is the capital city? What is the official language? Can you email me a picture of the flag please?
2. Do you hold the journal Nature? They often quote it on the ABC. Can I read the latest issue?
3. I’m a fan of the royal family and some time ago I read an article in a women’s magazine about women journalists remembering where they were the day Princess Diana died. I’d love to find the article again. Can I have copies of the pictures too?
4. We are studying Barack Obama’s Inauguration speech. I need some examples of speeches by other US presidents. Inauguration ones would be good (Hint: Limiter Primary Source Documents will be useful).
5. I have eggs, tomatoes and cheese. What can I make for dinner tonight? (Hint: watch out for plurals and American spelling; is there a "Document Type" limiter that could be useful?)

Karen B.

Google Book Search Settlement Agreement

Here's an update about the agreement reached between Google and authors and publishers about the future use of books digitised for the Google Book Search program. It's food for thought...

Increasing access to books: the Google Book Search settlement
agreement by Daniel Clancy, Engineering Director for Google Book Search

If you were at ALA Midwinter this year, you may have attended the panel where Paul Courant, Karen Coyle, and I discussed the settlement agreement that Google announced with a broad class of authors and publishers this past fall. The agreement, which settles two lawsuits brought against the Google Books Library Project, proposes to dramatically increase access to millions of books in the U.S., while at the same time expanding the opportunities for authors and publishers to earn money from their works. The agreement also provides a wealth of new opportunities for libraries, academics, and researchers, a few of which we'd like to share with you:

Expanded access to millions of in-copyright books: Librarians have been providing access to books for thousands of years, and over time they have increased the size of their collections and broadened their reach into the community. The agreement dramatically expands the reach of Book Search Library Partners by enabling readers across the U.S. to preview millions of in-copyright out-of-print books preserved in their collections. Readers will be able to search these books through Google Book Search and where previously they have only been able to view bibliographic information and a few snippets of text from the book, they will be able to view a limited preview (up to 20%) of the book to find out if it suits their needs. From there, they can click through to a list of libraries which hold that book, to online bookstores (which carry used books) or to purchase instant online access to the rest of the book so that they may read the book in its entirety. Free online viewing of books at U.S. public and university libraries: In most communities, your local library is one of your primary access points to information. Through this agreement, public libraries, community colleges, and universities across the U.S. will be able to provide free full-text reading to books housed in great libraries of the world like Stanford, California, Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan. A newly-created Public Access Service license will allow full-text viewing of millions of out-of-print books to readers who visit library facilities. Public libraries will be eligible to receive one free public Access Service license for a computer located on-site at each of their library buildings in the United States. Non-profit, higher education institutions will be eligible to receive free Public Access Service licenses for on-site computers, the exact number of which will depend on the number of students enrolled. Institutional subscriptions to millions of additional books: Imagine never having to ask a patron to wait until a book is returned or arrives through interlibrary loan. Beyond the free license described above, libraries will also be able to purchase an institutional subscription to millions of books covered by the settlement agreement. Once purchased, this subscription will allow a library to offer patrons access to the incredible collections of Google's library partner when they are in the library itself as well as when they access it remotely.

Services for People with Print Disabilities: One of the advantages digitization presents is the opportunity to enable greater accessibility to books. Through the agreement, the visually impaired and print disability community will be able to access millions of in-copyright books through screen enlargement, reader, and Braille display technologies. New Research Opportunities with the Creation a Research
Corpus: The vast database of books that Google is digitizing is not just a resource for readers, but also a one-of-a-kind research tool. The agreement allows for the creation of two research centers that will include a copy of almost all of the books digitized by Google. These research centers will enable people to conduct research that utilizes computers to process or analyze the text of the books. Examples of the types of research they will facilitate include automatic translation, analysis of how language has evolved over time, next generation search technology, image processing research and others.

This agreement would not have been possible without the work of
librarians who have preserved and maintained books for years, and Google Book Search's library partners, who worked with Google to make so many of them discoverable online.

Ref Rap: EBSCOhost Databases Part 1

In March I attended EBSCOhost Database Training at the State Library. EBSCOhost contains some great databases covering a ridiculously wide range of topics (I recently found articles on the history of roller coasters – in my opinion a very relevant and important subject that just isn’t studied enough)! We specifically looked at three databases within EBSCOhost:

• Australian / NZ Reference Centre
  This includes coverage of SMH and the ‘Daily Telegraph’ as well as magazines such as ‘Woman’s Day’, ‘Ralph’ and ‘Sports Illustrated’ (minus the images!). There are also a number of international publications such as ‘Time’ and ‘Shakespeare Studies’ (good for students forced to study this complicated topic). So next time someone asks for a magazine we don’t have in print, you don't need to necessarily turn them away empty handed. Check out the list of publications in this database to see if it’s available.
• MasterFILE Premier
  This database contains many International Journals plus treaties, speeches and political transcripts. There are a number of excellent resources for students including biographies, images, maps, flags and country profiles. It includes publications such as ‘New Scientist’, ‘National Geographic’ and the ‘Economist’.
• Science Reference Center
  Hands up if you can spot the American Spelling! Many databases and publications within EBSCOhost are from the US and I found that many of my search results reflected this. Nevertheless, this database has some great publications for those pesky school assignments including ‘Science and Children’, ‘Science Activities’ and ‘Science News for Kids’. Have you ever had a student looking for science experiments? You can find them here. You can also restrict search results within this database to those suitable for students in Years 5 – 8 or Years 9 – 12.

There are another three databases that we didn’t look at:

• GreenFILE
  This covers everything green – think Climate Change, alternative energy and big cat conservation. Unfortunately, the majority of the database consists of abstracts and citations rather than full text however, if a Patron really wants an article that’s not available, they could always request it through document delivery.
• Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts
  the name says it all. It covers lots of library and information science journals and contains lots of abstracts. Once again, article request is a possibility.
• Literacy Reference Center
  This contains information about many popular authors as well as the full text of various stories and books eg. I found the story ‘The Canterville Ghost’ in HTML format. I also found critical literature on Chaucer and ‘The Canterbury Tales’ – the painful text I had to study as an HSC student!

So have a look at EBSCOhost. Check out all those scholarly databases, or catch up on all the gossip in ‘Woman’s Day’. See what you can find that interests you and even comment on it here!

In Part 2, I’ll talk about the interesting EBSCOhost search features and applications.

Karen B.

CData Online

CData Online is a great tool available from the ABS which allows you to manipulate data from the 2006 census. While Sutherland Shire Council's Community Profile is great for finding statistics for the Shire and it's suburbs and comparing them to the greater Sydney area, CData allows you to create geographic areas as small as a collection district, or as a combination of collection districts or suburbs and view data as tables, graphs or thematic maps.

You can use CDATA Online to:
* Construct tables using 2006 Census Data
* Compare geographic areas * Create custom geographic areas & data groups
* Add totals and view data as percentages
* Produce thematic maps of Census data which can be exported and saved to a file
* Produce a variety of graphs of Census data which can be exported and saved to file.
* Export data in Excel or CSV format

If you register for this free service, you then have the ability to save your customised geographies, data items and tables for reference in future sessions.

While the service is reasonably user friendly, with an online user manual as well as online help, both Julie and I have some experience in constructing tables of local data so please don't hesitate to ask for help.

The Sutherland Shire Council's Community Profile at http://www.id.com.au/profile/default.aspx?id=150 is a great starting point for community statistics and will probably answer most statistical enquiries from customers. It also includes results from the 2006, 2001, 1996, and 1991 Censuses of Population and Housing for many key statistics. However, for customised geographies and data groups check out CData Online at http://www.abs.gov.au/CDataOnline.

Ref Rap: New Reference Books

The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry
Bib: 326730
Call No.: Aust Lit. 821.008PEN
Locations: Reference and Lending: Sutherland, Miranda, Caringbah, Engadine and Menai; Reference only: Cronulla; Lending only: Bundeena

This anthology contains poetry spanning the history of Australia from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries. It is different from many other Australian compilations in that it contains works from some lesser known authors as well as traditional ones. It also has a heavy focus on 20^th century Australian poetry and provides a viewpoint into a wide variety of themes such as migration and the feminist movement. It also give an insight into Australia’s past including convict lives. The poetry is divided into centuries with a short description at the beginning of each section. There is an index at the back and short biographies of all the known poets. This could be a good source for related texts in the HSC Area of Study ‘Belonging’, history students or those studying Indigenous languages and cultures.

P.S. I just used this resource to help a Year 10 student find poetry on Australian social conflict.

Australian Reptiles and Frogs
Bib: 333487
Call No.: 597.8CRO
Locations: Reference and Lending: Sutherland and all branches; Reference only: Miranda

This is a field guide to the wonders of nature, namely reptiles and frogs. This guide is well set out and very easy to use. It contains a surprisingly comprehensive introduction to the behaviours and appearance of reptiles and snakes including a section on how to identify snakes (this involves counting scales!). There is also a small section on snake bite first aid (for those who attempted to count a snake’s scales and were inevitably bitten). The book is divided into sections on frogs, geckos, dragons, monitors, skinks, legless lizards, snakes and turtles. Each entry contains information on a species’ appearance, behaviour, habitat, development and diet. It also contains a distribution map, and the species’ Latin name, family name, length (and number of mid-body scales for snake identification) and their status. There are no photographs of the animals, but there are colour drawings for each species. The author does note however, that colours and distribution can vary widely in reptiles and amphibians. While each entry is restricted to one page, the descriptions are quite detailed and the information is very interesting. This would be a great guide for those attempting to identify snakes and reptiles as well as students researching school assignments.

Has anyone else found a reference book that's been particularly helpful when finding information?

You're welcome to share it here!

- Karen

Ref Rap: Drug info @ your library forum - Kris

On a bright sunny day towards the end of February, I ventured forth to the big smoke and attended the annual drug info @ your library forum which was held at the State Library’s McDonald’s Room. My pace automatically quickened as I headed along Macquarie Street with the anticipation of receiving free samples of my personal drug of choice – French Fries. Alas, I was disappointed to find that the McDonald’s Room had not been named after the much loved (yet creepy) clown, but instead some other fellow of note who had yet to discover the natural affinity which exists between freshly peeled potatoes and hot oil. Once recovered, I immersed myself into what was to be an interesting, informative and well-structured day.

The drug info @ your library forum attracts library workers from diverse locations around the state and is as much a day of providing us with information as a fact-finding mission for those responsible for the collection (State Library’s Kate O’Grady). What I personally enjoy most about the forum is that it’s a highly interactive event – each library’s opinion on the various issues regarding the collection is taken into account and if possible integrated keeping the ‘drug info’ collection fresh, practical and of value to the community. We discuss issues such as our target audience and why some resources are more appealing to the public than others, which items should be culled from the collection and whether certain titles are best housed in Reference collections vs lending. There are many opinions to be heard in this major brainstorming session, but it’s great that NSL’s approach very much a hands-on.

Our guest speakers for the day included representatives from the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC), NSW Health, and the very inspiring Carolyn Stafford whose consultancy work involves the marketing and promotion small businesses. Carolyn feels that a specialised collection such as drug info @ your library can almost be treated as a small business in regards to its promotion. We covered the concepts of branding, building alliances in the community, hosting memorable events and maximising in-library promotion by training staff about the collection.

Another highlight of the day was the news that the State Library has entered into a partnership with the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) to write a comprehensive plain language resource on a whole range of illicit drugs and alchohol. One of the great features of the book is that it covers polydrug use (eg the effects of mixing alcohol and cannabis). The book is currently in draft stage but is planned to be ready for Drug Action Week.

If I had to list the main ideas that I took home with me at the end of this interesting day, ones I’m still playing with, would be the following:

1. Displaying the drug info @ your library collection more prominently in the library.
   Stop press! Sutherland Library now has a column on the ground floor (between the Information Desk and legal info column) dedicated to free drug info handouts. Slat wall panelling has been secured around the column and various freebies are on offer to our customers who can conveniently (and discreetly) grab pamphlets without having to ask staff.
   
2. Promoting the collection
   a. I’m planning to write a blog post (with accompanying photo) about the merits of the collection including a plug for all the great free material available.
   
   b. Drug Action Week in June will feature some type of display including Ref items from the drug info collection.
   
   c. Contacting local community health centres to check whether they are interested in having free pamphlets available for their clients. Perhaps even checking with the medical centre across from Sutherland Library in Stapleton Ave.
   
3. Stocking free pamphlets alongside the relevant community language eg the Family Matters free pamphlet is also printed in Arabic and Chinese (though not Greek). Any branches interested in also stocking some of these freebies in our community languages, please let me know and I’ll order extra.

Twittering about the Library

I've been thinking about Twitter for a little while now. I really think I should sign up and have a play with it. I feel like it could be a low cost way for the Library to communicate with our users, especially since users on twitter can elect to receive updates to their mobile phone. the popularity of our SMS hold notifications suggests that this may be the communication channel of choice for many of our customers.

Then I came across this article about the use of Twitter in Local Government in Australia, Using Twitter as a benchmark for Australian local government use of social media.

I think we could set it up so that our Library News blog feed could be automatically sent to Twitter. This really would be low (no) cost and might be the best way to stick a toe in the water.

Are any staff already on Twitter? I'd like to pick your brains if you are.

Privacy vs User Service

In thinking about what I'd like in any new library system my mind turned to some of the social features that I think would improve the user experience of library catalogues - borrower history, tagging, commenting, etc. But to do these things you need to start collecting data about who borrows what, which inevitably leads to discussions about user privacy and the security of that data (leaving aside for a moment the issue of storage space).

This reminded me of an excellent blog post I recently read on Library Garden, What Libraries Can Learn from Facebook. The discussion in the comments on this post is lively with people on both sides of the fence putting forward their viewpoint.

Here's a bit:

We all know that people (myself, and probably you included) will share personal information in exchange for a quality experience. We share personal renting and buying habits in exchange for Netflix and Amazon recommendations. We share personal reading habits on GoodReads and LibraryThing to connect with others who share our interests and tastes...

and then:

We know all this, and we personally experience the benefits, but librarians still seem generally loathe to let our customers share their personal information in exchange for anything. We don't just protect customer privacy, we paternalistically protect it from the customers themselves, rendering them childlike. Our privacy philosophy often reduces down to, "We know better", or
"You can't be trusted with that--you'll hurt yourself."

I'm definitately on the side of letting users choose to opt in to share their data in order to improve their experience of the Library. I've just heard people ask me on the enquiry desk whether we keep a record of what they have borrowed too many times for me to think the bulk of users would be worried about sharing this type of data.