Elizabeth Sabin Goodwin (1902-1980), Washington, D.C., artist and illustrator.

Libraries are changing. This change is driven by new technologies that are changing the materials and resources libraries offer, the methods of access by which we offer them, and all in relation to how these technologies are becoming more affordable and prevalent in mainstream society. In the academic world, adaptation in the libraries has been more experimental as they try to stay in the forefront of the latest resources offering their faculty and students the best possible advantages in the research world. These changes have included the digitization of parts of collections, such as thesis, archival materials, and special collections. Others have been creating digital depositories, checking out e-readers, and offering online reference sessions.

The public sector is also affected, through offering e-book lending, e-reader classes, technology classes, and more. In both aspects, keeping up with technology and not being afraid of new methods of doing things is necessary for the success of modern libraries. This is where having a background in art comes in handy.

Artists are attracted to “shiny new things” all the time. This curiosity is a large factor in how we create. By keeping an open mind and exploring what others are doing outside our own circle, we are inspired, motivated, and challenged in our ways of thinking. Trying new technologies and techniques helps us get out of ruts, pushes the way we create, and actively reinforces the method we have been doing all along.

Act I - 05, gum print

I enjoy exploring both new and old technologies in my craft by creating images using plastic cameras, like the Lubitel twin-reflex camera, and Holga camera. I scan the images in, and mix them up digitally, then output a digital negative to create a print using an early photographic technique called gum printing.

This natural tendency to explore helps me in finding new methods or technology that can also be used in the library. Exploring technologies just to see how it works can benefit not just myself, but also the place where I work, especially if the technology ends up being useful for a project or program.

As I am always interested in digital libraries, I have been exploring the use of OMEKA in creating my own digital archive of my photography. I get to work on my skills of customizing the program and checking out benefits and problems associated with the program. This openness to new ideas is a benefit, not just personally, but in the changing world of libraries as well.

I have set myself a Reading Challenge for 2012 in GoodReads for 100 books. I know I can accomplish this since I read 105 books last year and I do read a lot of variety including young adult, graphic novels, fiction of all genres, some non-fiction, and listen to fair amount of audiobooks. Yes, I include audiobooks, though I have gone back many a time and read the book after listening to them in order to take a bit more time in enjoying the words. A few that I have done this with have been Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey and I already want to read Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy. Both of these series use the page and text formatting and play on words in their stories, which are lost in the audio version.

The bigger challenge is that I am trying to write reviews for the books that I read and not just rate them. At this time I am sorely behind on my review writing. I do not write truly in-depth reviews, but I do try to give at least a bit more than just saying “I liked the book” or “This was a fun read.” I have found that utilizing a waiting period after finishing the book to muse over the experience does help in solidifying my overall reaction to the book and I try to not be too hasty in my opinions.

Thinking about writing my own reviews helps me understand the difficulty many of our teen have in submitting their reviews for the Summer Reading programs. I have read through many of last years one to two sentence reviews that exclaim, “I like the story because the characters seem real,”or “I laughed a lot reading this book.”

This year I am in charge of designing the program and handouts and I have decided to create a review form for the teens to fill out. The questions that I will ask are the following:

• Summarize what the book is about in one to two sentences.
• Pick the genres that best describe the type of story this was:
• Mystery, Historical Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Science Fiction; Fantasy; Adventure; Thriller/Spy; Horror; High School Drama; Romance;
• Describe at least one thing you liked about the book and why.
• Describe at least one thing you thought could have been written differently or you didn’t understand about the book and why.
• Overall, what did you think about the book?
• Who would you recommend this book to? (Example: readers who like Hunger Games, Anime lovers, people who like happy endings, readers who like Libba Bray books.)

I hope this will help and encourage our teens to express their feelings about the books they read better. I do want to make it an easy process and not be too reminiscent of homework. Hopefully this format will encourage more expression and help them in writing reviews. Let me know if you have any suggestions for this form, I am still in the process of creating it. I will publish the form here once I have it completed.

I currently have a teen that is a voracious reader and comes to the desk asking for book recommendations. They are fairly open to reading new authors and genres, but have an affinity for vampires and paranormal stories. So the challenge for me is keeping her favorite type of genre in mind is recommending new authors outside the genre while keeping her up to date with the latest young adult vampire series. Keeping this in mind, I began to ask which “classic” literature she has read and found what I suspected, large holes needing to be filled.

The preferred genre is paranormal/vampire/magic the selection is very large, I began by branching her reading out of the young adult section to find the same authors in the regular fiction and also series in the graphic novels and manga. Lately I have been slowly moving her into more classic literature building on the romance part of the paranormal with Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

I try to introduce to the patron how I find new books, such as searching for recommendations on GoodReads or Librarything.  I also show her how I find new books for her to read by doing a wikiwalk through the library catalog by selecting subject headings in favorite books to get more books with that same subject. And how making lists in her account to remember which books to get next time by showing her the list I created in Worldcat (the list for this patron is private, so this is an example of a public list) which I keep adding books as I think of to show her.

I enjoy the challenge of helping her find new books, but I also want to her to be able to continue her exploration of books on her own. My next step will be to introduce her to the other aspects of GoodReads and suggest she create an account to keep track of her reading and to get recommendations on new books.  I will entice her by showing her the giveaways offered by publishers; we all know how much teens love prizes

My experiences of collection development have been varied, starting at a Slide Library now called a Visual Resources Center, then at an academic library and now a public library. My first experience in collection development started in selecting visual materials to develop areas of high use while working at an art college, first adding to well developed slide library, then in building our digital collections. At this school, I learned how to anticipate the needs of our patrons by looking at statistics of the highly used areas, talking with professors when they came in to select their items, and checking the course’s offered, especially new courses.

For new courses, the library would do a cursory assessment of what items were available that fit the scope of the course, then we would try and arrange a meeting with the professor to talk about their needs and the time allotment and resources necessary in order to have items ready. Our department would usually start with finding out how many of the items we could purchase through image vendors and doing an evaluation of books available in the library. In a visual library we are always trying to be conscientious about keeping to fair use law of shooting only 20 percent of the images in printed materials. This is why us try to find several resources to create the images, rather than one specific resource, which is what we try to remind professors when setting up their courses. The time it takes to do this type of assessment is why it’s important to constantly develop the collections beyond the required needs at any time.

The libraries development program became more refined when the school suddenly phased out the slide projectors and professors needed to switch to using digital images quickly. It was during this time of creating a new collection that these development strategies became more important. Other means of developing have been viewing the statistics of the digital collection of highest users, whether students or faculty and which areas are being used. Also, keeping track of new exhibitions and upcoming artist helps to anticipate trends that students and faculty will be using for inspiration or projects. Establishing a yearly schedule of development of visual materials in support of several art departments, especially in a department like architecture that has its own accrediting process.

Each of the means described have been ways of finding out the needs of our patrons, while continuing to develop the collection in a way to support the overall mission of the college. One of the advantages of working at the art college, was that I worked there for over ten years and had a very good sense of how the collection had developed over the years, how the professor’s used our collection, and trends of studying at the time. I would soon learn new challenges when working with an unfamiliar collection when I left Savannah.

While working in the profession in this recession where jobs are scarce,  I have been on many interviews for positions where one is constantly asked what makes you different from all the other perfectly qualified people in this profession. And I have slowly discovered that my art background is a pretty good fit for the library world. I will explore some of the ways I feel being an artist has made me a better librarian over a few posts.

1. Artist are good at getting people’s attention.

Libraries are constantly in the process of promoting themselves, their programs, and trying to get support. My background in desktop publishing, photography, and finding digital images makes this process one of my favorite duties. All the time spent thinking how fonts make a sign different, layering objects, and coming up with nice color schemes is showcased in my designs for display signage, promotional posters, and collection signs.

My background working the design software from Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkExpress, and the older Freehand has made the transition to using the available Publisher and online photo programs like Pixlr to ready images a breeze. I like to challenge myself by using public domain images found on Flickr Commons, archival sources, and digital libraries to create a quirky commentary between the images and the display theme. Along with using different fonts, other than Comic Sans, to promote the themes and use of bright bold colors to go with them, the library has received compliments on our displays.

In order not to be without ideas for each month, I created a library display calendar, which contains national awareness campaigns in and out of the library world, local and regional awareness campaigns, holidays, events, and just seasonal ideas. After each listing I pasted the web pages linking the campaigns or further information on the event. I have found that you can get information for the list through the American Library Association, Library of Congress and other librarian blogs, such as the Programming Librarian .

I do think it’s important to vary the displays from year to year, even if it means a different approach to the same subject matter. Example of Valentine display posters: Love Me Love Me Not and Be Mine.Variety is the spice of life and by changing up the routine you can promote different books each year. I try to create a display with a broad subject that I can incorporate books from all the various collections. This may mean instead of offering a display on National Women’s History Month, the display will be Women in History, which allows me to incorporate fictional books on women in different historical time periods, along with selecting biographies, and non-fiction history books. By taking this approach, I offer something for everyone in the library and I get to explore the books in the library.

The library display can be a great way of getting to know your library patron’s interest by simply keeping track of the books that get checked out. I usually create a basic lists of about 100 books divided in the various collections such as Teen, Non-fiction, Spanish collection, Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Fiction, Large Print, and Children. I then mark which books have been selected for the display and which ones are checked out. After the display is replaced, I like to make notes on which collections were checked out the most and which sub-genres our patrons are most interested in. I am also able to tell which displays are more popular by the number of books that needed to be replaced. I use these notes to help in the selecting of the next display and as a means of assisting in collection development.

Due to the limited physical space for the display, one three tired display case, I find that using an online medium to promote is useful. The online forum can be used to promote the current display by posting the display poster and creating a Worldcat list (Black Women In American Culture and History) and placing it on Facebook, the library web page, or Twitter. By utilizing an online format, the library can also expand the monthly displays by posting links to national awareness campaigns online, if unable to create a physical display.

The best part of creating displays is seeing books that have been hidden in the main collection being checked out. Not only do I feel that I am a part of the success of the library, but that I have been able to meet the needs of our patrons. The icing on the cake is hearing compliments given about the displays and of course the use of them. After doing the library displays for a year now, I feel that I have a better understanding of the libraries collections, our patrons needs, and I am part of introducing our patrons to new books.

I am helping create programs for the Summer Reading Program for the teens this summer. A suggestion that has been making the rounds is to create a program related to the Hunger Games series. With the movie to be released this March and the books on the New York Bestseller list for weeks now and with high hold lists for these books at the library,  this seems like a good choice.

So to verify this, I surveyed a group of our teens with possible theme ideas. The results were pretty astounding. The Hunger Games came last on the list of themes with Vampire Party at the top. I wasn’t too surprised about this since most of our holds are being placed by adults, not teens. Also, this book has been out since 2008, many teens probably read it in the early days and are now onto something new. And like I said, they will always surprise you at what they are interested in, so ask them what they are into, don’t ever assume.

The solution for the patron was to try taking HTML classes to learn how to make a webpage from scratch on their spare time. Little did they know that webpages can be made easier now using open source software like WordPress and the page can be made to look like a webpage. I had to explain that for small organizations, the needs for their online webpage is information, not flash. And the ability to be updated easily and the responsiblity divided by multiple people, rather than the responsibility of one.

After assessing their needs and the technology available at their organization, I offered another solution by creating a webpage using WordPress. I used examples from the showcase to show how other organizations of their size have utilized the software and sculpted it do what they needed. After walking her through some of the examples and using my own webpage to show how the page is administered they began to see the possibilities. I enjoyed being able to dissolve the mystery of the web and provide a simpler solution to their complex problem.