June 12, 2008
Spanning the Straits of Business Information: Kresge Library’s Embedded Librarian Program for MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Program) - Presentation and Paper for SLA
Contributed Paper and Presentation at the SLA Annual Conference in Seattle.
Abstract:
Embedded librarian programs have successfully been used to bridge the divide between libraries and distance learners, teaching faculty and lab researchers. The Kresge Business Administration Library (Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan) has created a unique approach to the embedded librarian model by having librarians work directly with in-residence student teams charged with solving ‘real world’ problems through Michigan’s signature action-based learning program, MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Program). With MAP, corporate and nonprofit organizations work with teams of 4-6 students charged with solving a problem or providing recommendations on very specific aspects of the sponsor’s work. This paper will describe the Kresge Library’s support of MAP and other action-based learning programs at the Ross School of Business. Topics will include how we work and communicate with MAP teams, examples of research and reference requests from the students, an assessment of our services, and how this changes the librarian relationships with students in their second year of study. This unique program offers exciting challenge to Kresge librarians, building bridges between the Kresge Library and the students and faculty participating in MAP, as well as between the overwhelming amount of business data, statistics and research available and the world of business practice.
Posted by cseeman at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2008
On Airline Fees and the Like
Heard a great piece on NPR titled "How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag"
Here is the start of the story:
All Things Considered, May 9, 2008 · With more and more airlines charging extra to check a second piece of baggage, packing light has become a necessity.
Next week, AirTran Airways and American Airlines will join Northwest, Delta, US Airways, United and Continental in requiring passengers to pay a fee if they can't cram all their clothes, shoes, books, and hairdryers into one bag to check.
--snip--
So I felt that I had to respond...
Thanks for your story about packing more effectively when traveling by air. Certainly, these are trying times for the airlines. But the model for solvency does not seem to make a great deal of sense. The airline I fly almost exclusively, Northwest, which I love, seems to have figured out that $25 is the minimum that they can charge to make it cost effective. It is $25 if I want to change a flight. It is $25 if I want to check a second bag. And it is $25 if my bag is over 50 lbs. And that is where I was, with a bag that weighed 54 pounds after a conference on my return to Detroit from Washington, D. C.
As I pulled out my credit card to pay for the “weight” surcharge on my bag, all I could think of what that my bag was nearly so heavy when I flew back from the same conference last year. But I was not. Sine last summer, I have lost 20 pounds (yeah, yeah, I am pretty happy and telling everyone - even those who could care less). So in many ways, my total weight impact on the flight was less this year, than last year. And while I did not feel that I could convince the gate agent to cut me some slack, I am wondering when the airlines are going to start weighing the passengers. Sure, you might not get a break if you are tiny, but they will sure tap a fee on those who are adding to the burden of the flight.
I can envision that you would be entitled to one 50 pound bag, one carry-on bag (assuming it does not have a snow globe or anything that has water in it), one computer bag or purse (but some of those laptops weight a ton), and up to 225 of personal weight. I still have a ways to go to hit that number, but I am getting there. It maybe a bit sensitive, but they can get the weight from the driver’s license when we check in. If we have moved dramatically in one direction or another, then I suppose they could take us to a back room where they have a scale (I wonder if they would make us remove our shoes for that). And maybe, just maybe, when we are not checking a bag, we can get bonus points for the next trip.
I still love to fly and I still love my local airline in Michigan, Northwest. But it is harder and harder to be enthusiastic about flying these days. Maybe this will change when the price of oil gets back to $50 a barrel. Ah…forget it…
--end--
Here is another nice piece called "Ode to the Second Checked Bag."
This entry was posted in the following categories: Completely Off Topic! , Management PhilosophyPosted by cseeman at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2008
Rules and Rules...but PLEASE USE YOUR BRAINS!
Saw this article from Reuters.
Woman fired for giving 16-cent treat to toddler
Fri May 9, 2008 7:42am EDT
TORONTO (Reuters) - An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 cents, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention.
Nicole Lilliman, a single mother, said she was dismissed from a London, Ontario, outlet of the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut chain after video cameras captured the 27-year-old giving a Timbit to a toddler.
--see link for the rest of the article--
I am very glad that they have seen the error of their ways and reinstated her. I know the old adage that says 'take care of the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves.' But this sets up a relationship between the customer, the staff and the product that distances reason with reality.
I know that employee theft can be a big issue, but for any operation that provides a service (be it a restaurant or a library), the need to know when the rules should be applied and when the rules could be suspended. And we do not need to extrapolate to everyone in the store...did everyone need a free timbit that day?
I would like to think that we can do something different or special for someone, based on the conditions that they are under. How many times to we do something over and above what is 'normal' in the library, only to have people frown about needing to do that for everyone. I think we need to trust in ourselves to know when we can bend the rules. When do we need to give people a report instead of pointing them in the direction. When do we need to walk people to the stacks rather than pointing. When do we need to send people some articles rather than a search string. And when do we need to give someone a timbit...well, just because.
Service will be a defining element of librarianship from here on out. These are, indeed, exciting times.
Posted by cseeman at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2008
Report to the ProQuest Academic Advisory Board
Meeting with the ProQuest Academic Advisory Board today. As part of the meeting, each of the board members are supposed to come up with a 5-10 minute presentation on the state of affairs in the library world. I am hoping to expand on many of these themes, but here are the slides.
I will talk about this more later (once I am done with my performance evaluations...ugh). But I think it is critical that we do things that are amazing! I know budgets are tight, but this is a goal and a mission that is so critical for libraries to be a school's "competitive advantage."
I will write more later.
This entry was posted in the following categories: Business Librarianship , Conference Presentations , Management Philosophy , The World of Libraries , University of Michigan TopicsPosted by cseeman at 06:40 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
IUG Presentations on Milstats (Milstats 101 & 102)
Milstats Presentations given at IUG 2008 in Washington, D.C.
Program Title: Milstats 101: Introduction to Milstats
Program Coordinator: Corey Seeman
Coordinator Institution: Kresge Business Admin Library, University of Michigan
Millennium Statistics is a very powerful tool that enables libraries to create statistical reports with ease. MilStats is available in each Millennium program and offers the ability to save queries, save results, search by different types of records, re-run searches, and export reports easily into Excel or other programs. This session will give an introduction to Milstats and how libraries can utilize this powerful tool. This session will serve as a introduction to the program and showcase many basic features (with examples) to help people get started.
Program Title: Milstats: 102: Beyond the Basics with Milstats
Millennium Statistics is a very powerful tool that enables libraries to create statistical reports with ease. But it can do more than just count up records. In this presentation, we will look at Milstats beyond the basics and focus on some of the advanced functions that libraries can undertake, including: scheduling reports, working with periodic reports, running collection development queries, projecting budget increases, and fun with SCAT tables. This session will serve as a complement to "Milstats 101" and showcase some more powerful tools available to users.
Posted by cseeman at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2008
How Everyone Contributes
If you ever wonder about the way that an organization works, you need to look at the way that people behind the scenes operate. At the Kresge Library, we have twenty positions. It is easy, in a library, to focus on the number of "professional positions" that you have, or how many librarians you have one staff. We have 8 (myself included).
But the way that I look at the library is that we all have a role to play and we all contribute to the general success of the operation. While it is sometimes hard to articulate this, one example came over the radio this morning.
Morning Edition's Susan Stamberg did a piece on the Script Supervisor this morning. When a movie is made and acknowledged during the awards shows, like the Oscars, we have awards for actors, directors, pictures, cinematographers, art directors, etc. But there are critical roles in the making of a movie that rarely shine in the light.
For a library to be productive, you need great people doing professional work. You need to convey to everyone that their work is critical to the operation of the unit. This is true if we are working with faculty on a research project, with students on a MAP team, and with staff as well compile course packs. It is also true when we collect the mail, when we check in periodicals, when we update web-pages. I hope I convey that. I guess it is something that we always need to work on.
This entry was posted in the following categories: Business Librarianship , Management Philosophy , Movies & Popular Culture , Other Library Work , The World of LibrariesPosted by cseeman at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
Need to go on vacation
So when you are thinking that we in the United States really do not get away for vacation, we now have proof that it is the case. Having access to email on vacation and cell phones can make things easier to get back to, when you are back from the break, but it can also kinda defeat the purpose of the break!
The European Trade Union Institute for Research, Education and Health and Safety issued a report entitled Employment "Policy Brief: No vacation nation USA – a comparison of leave and holiday in OECD countries." There are some staggering numbers, including that we have (in the United States) NO mandatory paid leave. This makes us different from all the other 21 European countries profiled in the report (see page 3).
Kinda makes you want to leave the laptop behind from time to time.
This entry was posted in the following categories: Completely Off Topic! , Management PhilosophyPosted by cseeman at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2007
My Philosophy, Part I
This is my stab at a philosophy.
I thought I would add some information about my library philosophy. I’ve had a fairly wide diversity of positions in the library field and think that each one has added something unique to the mix. I think that my current philosophy can be summed up by these four simple statements (I will try to do better next time):
• Hear it
• Balance it
• Try it
• Learn From it
With “Hear it”, I am saying that we need to listen to the people who we serve. There are many schools of thought to see if we, as academic librarians, have an academic or service mission. We have both. But were it not for the students, I do not think that many of us would have a job. So, especially in my current job, I want to listen very careful to what my patrons (dare I even suggest customers) are asking for. The simplest thing they teach you in Business School is to know your customer. You get to know them by listening and taking into consideration the things they ask for. We have recently, expanded our instruction program and our library hours because students asked and made compelling cases for both. We are now better poised to serve the library and the Ross School.
With “Balance it,” I am saying that we need to balance between the needs of the people who we serve and the resources that we have at hand. So in many regards this is the biggest challenge of management. In the library environment, much of this comes in the form of resources and what we have. We have long questioned many of the requests that we have received for new books, periodicals, and electronic resources. We have balanced these with the ones that we are identifying. And none of us, even Michigan, has a budget that goes on forever. Additionally, we have to consider our ability to meet the needs of our customers/patrons from the people who work in the library. If we encourage people to contact us and submit questions, will we have the capacity to answer them? From a philosophical point of view, I am very adamant that we do not place filters on our customer’s ability to submit requests based on an expected ability for our staff or resources budget to meet the needs. We can never grow an operation if we do not have a period where our demand exceeds our ability to supply.
With “Try it”, I am saying that we need to put things out there. This is where my time as a trainer with Innovative really comes into play. I have never been a proponent of the thought that everything needs to be perfect upon launch. If we attempt for perfection, we will destroy productivity. And while I feel strongly about this, there is a clear balancing act that can be done by the library. We naturally will not launch a product that is known to be crappy or one that only works 20% of the time. But if we are 95% sure it will work, that is really enough to launch. The trick is what we do once the service or resource is launched. I have had few experiences where something is launched and no one offers suggestions or new directions. So the pursuit of perfection on a new service or resource only delays the timetable. I have used the term “reasonable readiness” in my own deliberations.
Another important element about “Try it” is the notion that it might not be good. We had been asked for years about being open to 2am in the library. For years, the library said no. By shifting the staffing schedule a little bit, we were able to get a 1am close for the library starting in March and we are poised to get to a 2am close for next academic year. But this is all launched as a pilot. If it does not work…we change it. We do not need to be right all the time, but we certainly need to check the conditions on the ground. Our president foolishly criticizes those who would move to meet the whims of the people or put their finger in the wind. Doesn’t it make sense that we would want to continually assess what the conditions are and move accordingly? Also, some ideas are good and some are not so good. We will never really know until we put them in play.
This leads to “Learn from it.” With this, I am saying that each new activity, each change in a program, and each assessment of an ongoing activity is a learning exercise. Every new program, resource or service can provide us with valuable information that can apply to the next situation or request. We recently expanded our course pack offerings to allow for a no-cost course pack. This would be for faculty who are using their own produced items so there are no copyright costs. Faculty were loading these on CTools (our course management system) and students were downloading them and printing them off. Or, they were handing them out in class. We used the excellent system we had for distribution and expanded it to this service. We hope to expand this further in the fall. We surveyed the students and learned a great deal about what they wanted and it allowed us to further fine tune our program. And certainly we learn from our mistakes as well.
These are some of the things that I am thinking about in my role as director. Just thought I would jot it all down!
Corey
Posted by cseeman at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)
