News

Published Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Research on Research

In our planning year, we reviewed studies of how people do research in the library or using resources and technology provided by the library. We did this because we want to understand how people make use of a variety of current tools and resources and how well these tools and resources support their work. Our aim is that XC will provide better tools than the ones people are currently using. Beyond this, we want to build XC specifically to meet identified work practices and preferences, so that it will be both intuitive and innovative in ways that meet current and emerging needs.

Published Friday, July 20, 2007

XC Survey Results

To inform the development of a plan for XC, we conducted a survey of prospective library users of XC to gauge interest in the XC system and readiness to implement it. A summary of the findings from this survey is attached. We look forward to hearing your comments on our findings, and on the XC project in general.

Look for additional Outcomes from Phase 1 of the XC Project to be posted to this blog over the next couple of months.

Published Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Size Matters

We all know that the easiest way to find a book is to search by title, author, or perhaps some well-chosen keywords. And that may be the way that most people find books most of the time.

But when we study our faculty members’ actual behavior in their offices and labs, we sometimes find out that they search for books and articles in surprising ways. Size, for example.

The title and author may slip a researcher’s mind, but she remembers that the book she wants is about three inches thick. Now, all she has to do is hunt around for a big, thick book.

Published Monday, October 23, 2006

When Do You Do Qualitative Research?

Most libraries do some quantitative research. They count such things as the size and growth of their collections, the quantity of material that circulates, numbers of reference queries, presentations given by librarians, service hours, staff size, expenditures in various categories, and so on.

There are a lot of questions that this information answers, especially if it is collected year after year. There are other questions that demand other methods.

Published Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Check Out Our New Lit Review

Something new: we have a literature review, entitled "Literature List" on the blog - you can see the list and its subtopics on the sidebar to the right. Take a look and then give us your comments

Published Monday, August 28, 2006

XC in Library Journal, and Visions for Future Catalogs

Check out the September 1st issue of Library Journal (p. 30-32) for a discussion of XC in the article, “Baker’s Smudges” by Stanley Wilder, Associate Dean at the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries!

Our vision and plan for XC continues to evolve. What started as a vision for getting around the limitations of our local ILS now looks like a way to bring the potential of “Library 2.0″ to any library through open source applications - and makes the vision very exciting - and might I say “extensible?”.

Published Monday, August 28, 2006

John Blyberg, Social Networking, and Library Catalogs

While on vacation in Ann Arbor earlier this month, I stopped in at Ann Arbor District Library to chat with John Blyberg about the exciting work that he’s been doing for the AADL website and catalog http://www.aadl.org/cat/seek/search using Drupal. John has a sidebar to an article in the September 1st issue of Library Journal (p. 32) about some software that he is developing to bring social networking into the library catalog (and the article itself talks about XC! What a great fit! More on that article)

Published Thursday, August 17, 2006

Looking for Studies in the Bay Area

Anyone interested in conducting ethnographic studies in libraries may be interested in what I learned on the recent San Francisco trip. Among other activities, I had arranged to visit IDEO for a tour with Scott Underwood, long at IDEO and an excellent guide. I had told Scott that the reason for my visit was to see what IDEO might be doing that I could grab and apply to our studies of faculty member and student work practices and technology and space needs here at the University of Rochester.

Published Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Workarounds and a Better Catalog

If a student is sitting on the floor and using a chair as a desk, you think about changing the furniture in your library. If your faculty members are mailing back-ups on CDs to their mother in Arizona, you think about providing them with an easier and safer alternative. These are two examples of how seeing and understanding a “workaround” provokes changes and new ideas in libraries.

Published Friday, May 26, 2006

Is There a Need for XC?

One of the questions that we need to answer during phase 1 of the XC project is whether or not there is a need for XC within the library community, and particularly within the academic library community. If there IS a need for an open source system such as XC, then we need to begin to build a community of interest around the project to ensure its success.

We need to hear from you - how do you see XC fitting in with the future of library systems? Is this a workable model? Would your institution consider using it? What would you like it to be able to do?

Please let us know!