90% undergrads on campus, more than 50% of Grad students Almost all Full-time students Very little distance learning
Innovation Leaders in digital library develoment (Google + in-house)
My role is public services Humanities and social sciences, and public services writ large What are public services?
Changing role for libraries and librarians – out role as gatekeeper to well-guarded and hard to find resources is diminishing – and that’ s a good thing Also a challenge – as more & more info avail and discoverable by our patrons, they still need help making sense of it; and librarians have the skills & know ledge to meet that need
Our philosophy of public service is the librarian as coach or guide – perhaps even a river rafting guide. Our job is to make give our scholars the tools, equipment and training they need to navigate an often overwhelming river of info. We partner with them on the journey, but with the goal of teaching them and letting them experience the joys of the journey.
Big part of river guide role is make sure everyone has the right equip. That is true of our role as libraries and librarians too – our tools must evolve with the info environment.
One to the innovations we are most proud of at Stanford is our new discovery environment – called SearchWorks Actual fortune cookies at our annual open house and during workshops with search tips instead of fortunes Brag abt this both bcuz I think it is an exceptionally clever campaign theme and beautifully done, but also bcuz I love the way we accomplished this Instead of outsourcing (light on resources) or appointing a team of usual suspects, I sent out a call for volunteers to work on a marketing campaign – got 5 people who had hidden artistic, creative talents who were excited to use them. SW 101 workshops for staff and patons – full house for both staff sessions, less than 10 patrons across 2 patron sessions
First thing to brag abt is our New discovery environment = SW – truly collaborative effort to develop a nxt gen discovery environment. DLSS folks have done tremendous work in building a tool that is responsive to evolving needs of scholars. Based on Blacklight engine (open source, out of UVA). Been avail for 2 years now, but this fall became 1 st choice – replace links on homepage and elsewhere to old catalog, redirected vanity URLs Well rec ’d—actual student quotes.
why so well-liked? Relevancy, filtering. Clean look, intuitive interface Book covers (from Google) Facets for narrowing search and for discovery Jimi Hendrix ex.
Also plenty of info on detailed page as well options for sending records Cite this
Also provide way to browse across books Major concern among scholars as more books move off-campus, more e-books Haven ’t quite cracked the e-book browsing completely yet, cuz many come w/o call #’s; but we’re working on it.
Full browse – across all libraries on campus
Also plenty of info on detailed page as well options for sending records Cite this
Google preview – search w/in book : “browsing within”
Mobile version – part of official iStanford App – set of Apps, of which the library tile is considered the Killer App. Mobile version of SW Also separate Libraries section on the maps tile
Cornerstone of our instruction efforts is our support for the mandatory 1 st & 2 nd year writing program – known as PWR Assigned librarian Online guide Tailored workshop Coursework role
What is impt to me is not just how much teaching we do, but what we teach What I promised factulty at new Fac Orientation this fall was: If your image of lib ws as someone trying to convince your students of the thrils of boolean searching, I promise you that is not what you get from us We are spt you in getting kids excited about research process and abt the resources avail to them; and give them skills and confidence to do so
What we do outside the 1hr 50 min ws is equally impt. Online research guides – this will show up in the “bad times” section of the talk later Not crazy about format—but I love that every freshman and sophomore PWR class gets a librarian and an online guide And many of the guides have photos of the librarian.
Here is an ex of moving from reactive support to proactive Coursework role esp ’ly important – puts librarian into the fabric of the course. Follow conversations about class topics and insert our expertise.
Do they work? Oh yes! 99% of students who get ws use lib catalog, 93% d ’base No before data, but others do – OCLC study found that 0-1% of students start with library catalogs for their research