The Bookcharmer and her library approach weeding with the utmost care.

Greetings! This post is one that has been bubbling in the back of the Bookcharmer's mind, but I've put the writing feature of my brain on fast forward since the topic came up in a meeting yesterday. The topic: weeding, as in book collections.

Weeding is the librarian term for deselecting books that are no longer relevant or needed in the collection. If you are a library at a Research One institution, weeding likely isn't something you do. But if you are in a library that is a working collection, one that is primarily focused on the current curriculum of your institution, then weeding is something you must do. Fortunately, in the collection of my library, our particular weeding task was focused on a specific type of weed: the duplicate.

Back In The Day, before photocopiers, scanners, and cell phones with cameras, academic libraries would buy multiple copies of frequently used books. And based on the condition of those books now, they were heavily used in their day. Examples to come. Since my library had an abundance of these, this is the type of weed we put into our librarian sights. How you ask? The marvels of technology, the dedication of our Access Services and Technical Services staff in maintaining our Integrated Library System, and a skilled project manager resulted in the creation of a list of titles that fit a specific set of criteria: a title that had duplicate copies that had not circulated in 10 years. Subject librarians were given these lists and off to the stacks we went to evaluate these items, as we had the final say if a title's duplicates should be removed.

I'll confess, this project thrilled me. Many times I had walked by titles that had fit just such criteria and cringed that they were taking up so much shelf space. (Hidden agenda: more room for art books!) But any task that gives me the opportunity to spend more time in the stacks, I'll take it! Some of my colleagues have been less happy about this entire project, and I respect them and their concerns. But my fears about a last copy of something significant are assuaged by the presence of the mighty Link+ as well as the UC system. And WorldCAT. And abebooks.

But whither the duplicates you are likely thinking? What of their fate? SJSU faculty, you are welcome to view these titles and if you find one(s) you want for your personal collection, you may take it. You need simply visit the Lower Level, where we will ask to see your faculty id, then lead you back to the compact shelving area where the duplicates are being stored.

Don't get too excited. We really are picking the low hanging fruit. For example, some years back, say, 1993, a young bookcharmer would have done cartwheels to have her very own copy of Sheehy's Guide to Reference Books. However, now that Sheehy's has become Balay's (library humor here, indulge me) and even Balay's is dated...the more mature bookcharmer did not bring one of the six copies of Sheehy's GtRB up to her lair. Here's the example I promised you of what has been designed a duplicate for weeding:

But wait, there's more!



See where I'm going with this? Now, if your book fever has been touched off by these examples, let me reassure that if you are in haste to see the contents of Audiovisual methods in teaching, published the very same year your Bookcharmer's feet began to rove the earth, you may hasten to the 7th floor of our library and find that one copy remains: remember, this is a duplicates weeding project. Same thing with Gaitskill's 2nd edition of Children and Their Art.

To belabor my point, it is necessary for a working collection (which ours is) to manage the stacks so that people can leverage browsing to locate relevant items. If your hand had rested on Gaitskill's Children and Their Art in the N350 range, you probably would have been in perusing distance of Developing artistic and perceptual awareness : art practice in the elementary classroom from 1985 and maybe also The art teacher's survival guide for elementary and middle schools from 2008. However, the stacks in the N ranges are particularly in need of some breathing space, so much so that when books are shelved tightly together from lack of space they a. get damaged (torn pages, broken bindings) and or b. get misshelved for lack of a place to put them.

Feeling better? Good. But before you go, it is time to talk about subject headings! Remember, we also must prepare ourselves for the Virtual Browse so that we are aware of what is not on the shelf because it is a. checked out or b. our library didn't puchase it. Our tools for the Virtual Browse: Library of Congress Subject Headings and Link+.

Let's start with the title Children and Their Art, click here to follow along: http://catalog.sjlibrary.org/record=b1403330~S1 Right away you notice the subject heading:


Art -- Study and teaching (Elementary)

The beauty of clicking on this subject heading is that it retrieves a list of sub-divided headings, and you know how I love those! Let's look:



The long red arrow highlights there are 82 titles under this broad heading. We're going to look at those in a second. The short arrow indicates a delightful subdivided heading: Art -- Study and teaching (Elementary) -- California -- Audio-visual aids -- Catalogs. This is just type of LCSH that delights the Bookcharmer, but I'll entertain myself with it later. Back to the matter at hand.

If I've lost you, the search we're on is:

subject=Art -- Study and teaching (Elementary)which contains 82 titles. Now, whe you are looking at this list, it can be sorted to be displayed by the most recent (reverse chronological). Let's do that by choosing Reverse Chronological from the System Sorted option box.

Ta Da! The first result I get is great: Deepening literacy learning : art and literature engagements in K-8 classrooms / by Mary Ann Reilly, Jane M. Gangi and Rob Cohen from 2010. Important to note: it shares the subject heading of Art--Study and Teaching (Elementary) but it is not shelved in the N ranges, it is shelved in the L ranges. Thus, even the value of the virtual browse once you know your LCSH for your local collection.

Ok, I'll try to calm down. I haven't even written about how you can use your known title in Link+ and search that consortia catalog the same way by clicking on the subject headings to see what is held regionally...I'll try to write that later. It's just that I've been thinking maybe it would be nice to have a copy of Sheehy's Guide to Reference Books, just for fun.

See you in the Lower Level! The Bookcharmer.

Upvote for Bibliography, Downvote for JSTOR, yes you JSTOR.

Forgive me, reader. It is the end of the semester, and my 8 story library is packed with The Stressed. Who needs zombies when you have over caffeinated, sleep deprived students wandering about in a haze of finals week fog? So if the 'charmer is quick to point a finger at the J-Store, well, understand my typical librarian calm has been influenced by my environment.

To begin: this post was conceived of as a tribute to the search strategy of using a bibliography to find additional relevant sources. I chant this search strategy frequently at students, loved ones, and the occasional passerby, but today, its truth rang true. While I have been upholding the fort of liaison to Art and Design for some years, I'm just into my second year of being the library liaison to Philosophy. So when a student comes to me for research advice, I pull out my best searching skills to make sure I'm searching comprehensively.

Today's student, who impressed me with the foot high stack of journal articles he had printed, read, and annotated on his topic, came in search of more information on the interpretations of two concepts in The Analects, Dao and Ren. Fortunately, my student speaks English and Chinese, so when issues of romanization came up while searching, (Tao for Dao for example, Ren vs. Jen) he was able to steer that part of the search. In one article he had in hand, we went to the bibliography and mined for sources. If you subscribe to the journal Philosophy East and West, look up the following citation and feel free to play along:

Alexus McLeod. "Ren as a Communal Property in the Analects." Philosophy East and West 62.4 (2012): 505-528. Project MUSE. Web. 8 May. 2013. .

McLeod has a useful bibliography on how this concept of Ren has been interpreted, which was my student's topic, so we started looking up cited items. My comment today is how McLeod's bibliography saved me and my student a lot of time, since this book, cited in note 4, appeared in the local catalog:

Kim-chong Chong, Early Confucian Ethics: Concepts and Arguments. Chicago: Open Court, 2007 has the following subject heading assigned:

Confucian ethics.

Yup, just one! Now, if I was more familiar with the literature around The Analects, maybe, just maybe, I would know to use this subject heading. But I didn't. But McLeod's bibliography got us to the book. Happily, the catalog indicated the book was available, so we move on to note 6.

Bone picking time: JSTOR, you are up, but Project Muse, we also need to talk.

Here's the note:

"See Wing-tsit Chan, "The Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jên," Philosophy East and West 4 (4) (January 1955)".

So, we do. If you've been paying attention, you are wondering why I'm bringing up JSTOR, since the journal Philosophy East and West is in Project Muse, "Vol. 50, no. 4 (2000) through current issue". So, we're not going to find the full-text of an article from 1955 in Project Muse.

Library search skills to the rescue, if the back issues aren't in Project Muse, where are they? A quick search of the catalog shows...mayhem.

Sure, database vendors have figured out how to get libraries to buy the same content multiple times. That's a blog post for another time. My point today is that my student, in navigating a bibliography, has none of those automated options for finding which database is going to have the article he needs, just close reading of the dates of coverage for each database. But that isn't even what has me muttering incoherently under my breath, my complaint today is this:



Really, JSTOR? I need to fill out a Captcha to e-mail a citation to a student?

Captchas are inherently annoying to my near-sighted (although otherwise lovely) eyes, the slight astigmatism of which is not perfectly corrected by my contact lenses. So when I have to put my squinting (although otherwise lovely) face to the screen to type a stupid Captcha, I get mad. And seriously JSTOR, if your database is being so seriously datascraped AFTER a subscribing patron has logged in with authentication that you need me to do a dumb Captcha just to e-mail a citation, not even the whole article, then I think there are bigger problems afoot. I also question the need to hold a citation to a journal from 1995 hostage to a stupid Captcha.

I.Don't.Like.It. And I dislike it even more that this type of nonsense shows up at the end of the semester, when patience, campus-wide, is a scarce commodity.

So to sum up:

Bibliographies are essential, especially when conducting searches in an area in which you are not an expert.

JSTOR, please explain this presence of Captcha and how soon it will be going away.

Good luck on finals week, everybody!

Booklamp, Goodreads, Amazon, and of course, subject headings and bibliographies.

I have a dear friend who remains grieved with me for not warning her about the sad content of a book I gave her. It is a very good book, well written, artistic, genuine...apparently so very well written that my friend still decries my lack of sensitivity to her reading sensibilities when the book or author is mentioned.

Deciding what to read next...there is a raft of bibliographic tools that I suspect will continue to be underutilized in this new era of Digital/Social. I myself was a rabid user of Goodreads for quite some time, but had to wean myself away from it when I realized just how much time I was simply reading descriptions of books instead of reading books. And when Goodreads would "remind" me I had been "reading" a certain book for a large number of days. There are books that I will never finish, either because to truly read them would take more days than I have in my life, or I can't bear to finish them and face the end, or because I got distracted by other books. Then this spring when the mega giant overload of commerce, Amazon, bought Goodreads, I thought about simply taking down the account. Fortunately, wise author Kate Messner came to my rescue and provides this valuable advice: http://www.katemessner.com/a-suggested-response-to-amazons-acquisition-of-goodreads/

But knowing that my comments about books are going directly into the Amazone market research machine...um, no thanks. Besides, that "endless literary quiz" on Goodreads is a procrastinator's dream from which I need to stay far, far away.

But back to my topic about choosing what to read when you are on the hunt for a Good Book to Read. There are living authors that are good enough to grace us with new novels, and we loll about on Sunday mornings reading our favorite periodicals and note when we should be haunting the bookshop or the library for the latest Amy Tan, Margaret Atwood, or Bailey White. (personal message to Ms. White: won't you please put together another collection of stories for your readers? Thank you.) If you've set aside goodreads, what do you do?

The Social Medias, in the form of ThatBook, brought to my attention something called BookLamp. It describes itself thusly, "Book Genome Project was created to identify, track, measure, and study the multitude of features that make up a book using computational tools."

I decided to test it out using a recent read of mine, Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic. If you have read it, you know it is a deeply lyrical and clear eyed stare down of one of the darkest aspects of 20th Century American history, the internment of Japanese and Japanese American men, women, and children during World War II. No dry history book, Otsuka relates the group and individual experience of internees in lines and sections that alternate between a chorus type "we" and the rare "I" or named individual. This is a book you cannot put down once you start it, and feel as if you have traveled through centuries not just decades of history when you finish it. Like The Circuit and Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez, this is a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand the immense diversity of experience that populates American history. If you haven't read it, go to the publisher's description of Otsuka's book at http://www.julieotsuka.com/the-buddha-in-the-attic/ to compare the description to how BookLamp "codes" it.

Now Booklamp, please don't be mad. You yourselves explain in detail the flaws of your methodology so I won't do that here. But I don't even get your codes for this:



When it comes to describing books, even my beloved LCSH is somewhat constrained by its own nature and the scope of its original intent: go to your library catalog and see what the subject headings are for Buddha in the Attic. Here's what my catalog gives:



These are correct, but someone searching for a fictionalized account of the experience of internment...would this get them to it?

So, let's think about the other ways books come into our lives. Browsing, be it library or bookstore. Reviews in newspapers and magazines. In classes or book groups. Passed from hand to hand by friends. But lest you think I'm concluding this minor screed without giving you a reference tool, you may pause and prepare yourself for...

LCSHeadings for annotated bibliographies of fiction!

For your searching pleasure, in the library catalog database of your choice:

Fiction -- Bibliography
Sequels (Literature) -- Bibliography.
Fiction genres -- Bibliography.

I should write a post for you about the delicious database called Novelist, but it is 4:30 on Friday and the members only pre-sale at the Los Altos library starts at 6:30, so there's just time enough for a quick dinner before it is time to go stand in line...

Happy Reading! The Bookcharmer

The Bookcharmer smiles on Oxford again!

For verryly, the Bookcharmer is pleased! Not only has Oxford responded swiftly to my plaint about directing students to use something called a "Google Wallet" and removed the offending option, my less clearly voiced desire to implement what we in libraryspeak call a "Link Resolver" has also been implemented!

A Link Resolver you ask? Where and why? Well, as I mentioned in my previous grouchy post, one of the reasons I frequently go to Oxford Reference's stable of sources is to find bibliographies. If you bring up an entry, say the entry Narrative Art in The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture for example, you find a useful bibliography at the end of the entry. Naturally, you wish to consult these sources. When you use your mouse to click the Find This Resource option, you are now presented with the familiar (to this campus) Get Text link which will link you into our Library Catalog. So, with two simple clicks, I can see that M. Stansbury-O’Donnell's Pictorial Narrative in Ancient Greek Art (Cambridge, 1999) is indeed available on the 7th floor of King Library!

Oxford, thank you. A grateful and happy Bookcharmer.

A bone to pick with Oxford Reference

Dear Oxford University Press,

I am a long time consumer of your sources. As a humanities librarian with generalist responsibilities at a large academic/public library reference desk, I rely on your high quality reference sources to help students and patrons quickly identify facets of a topic and find reliable bibliographies. I have been an avid user of print reference sources and have enjoyed using the previous version of the product called Oxford Reference Online Premium. I have some thoughts on how the current Oxford Reference might recapture some of the usability of its previous incarnation, but the very first thing that needs to go is your advice under the Availability section of the Search Results: Buy with Google Wallet. Please see the picture below.

As one of my former interns would say, "This is NOT okay."

Librarians involved with instruction often include engage students in discussing criteria for evaluating the credibility of a source. One of those frequently being, "beware any source that is trying to sell you something."

Well then, how to explain the appearance of Google Wallet on the front page of a source to which my University subscribes? While I always include in my library instruction sessions the necessity of consulting our Library Catalog to see if a source is available in print, I now find that I have to give that additional emphasis so that students aren't lead to assume they are going to need to make a personal payment to you to find scholarly content. Google Wallet indeed.

As a publisher, you have a reputation of authority. Why you feel the need to direct people searching your database to purchase content with Google Wallet when accessing your site via subscription already is baffling. If you are truly supporting researchers, please investigate a link resolver solution that directs searchers back to their Library Catalog.

I hope I can look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you.

Rebecca.Feind@sjsu.edu

Navigating the bibliographic landscape, tourist vs. local.

Greetings! I am working on resolutions today, one of them being actually reading the cache of books I hoard instead of adding to the pile, another being to write more about what I am reading. Today's book:

Architourism: authentic, escapist, exotic, spectacular / edited by Joan Ockman and Salomon Frausto. Published in 2005 by the estimable house of Prestel.

Here's the Link+ catalog record if you would like more information: http://csul.iii.com/record=b21758159~S0


Go ahead and click, review the record, and think about what it is possible to know based on this catalog record.

Perhaps you are now wondering how I found this book and fell sway to its colorful pages and multiple contributors. You should know the answer to that by now, wandering the stacks, of course! Without a good wander in the stacks, when you go in search of a title and in the process of finding/not finding it, you do a bit of shelf-reading, spend a moment picking up titles that catch your eye, and end up, as usual, returning to your office somewhat disheveled from carrying a lot of books, you miss out an a lot.

Wandering the stacks is confidence building in the way that being a local brings its own sense of authority. You have walked these alleys or stacks so many times, that you can detach from awareness and let your mind wander. In library stacks, if you experience them enough, you can achieve what I will call biblioawareness, (bookvision?), that state when you become open to the connections possible between the books you are currently seeing, the books you have seen in the past, and the books you are aware of but have not seen.

More sensible people might call this cataloging. I'll try to explain more what I mean here. Go back and have a look at the catalog record. It follows all the rules (and there are many) for a MARC record. It does what was impossible just a few decades ago, letting me know in real-time that availability of copies in multiple locations. However, it does not let me know that D. Medina Lasansky's chapter, "Blurred Boundaries between Tourism and History: the case of Tuscany" is in this book. This chapter makes me aware of Lasansky's theories on authentic vs. accurate and has me ready to seek out her longer work, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Penn UP 2004).

Perhaps over the course of this semester I'll come up with better terms for my process of internalizing a book's contents and establishing its relationships to other texts vis-a-vis subject headings and other access points. But for now, I return to Architourism and its vivid discussion of places and people ranging from Gehry's Bilbao to Le Corbusier and then shall return it to the stacks via that construction known as the Book Drop.

Too Much To Know, a brief homage to Blair.

Happy New Year from the Bookcharmer! I am happy to share with you the great solace I am finding in Ann Blair's Too Much To Know, or as I like to call it, TM2K. While I am still in the front quarter of this book, I am eager to recommend it. I hope you find in it, as I have, a sense of relief for knowing that centuries earlier, as pages of information spilled forth from copyists and printers' hands, the reading public already felt overwhelmed not only by the information they could see, but also by knowing that some texts were already forever lost. I don't know what form of psychological comfort it is to know that we are all lost together, but it is sort like that sense of relief when you feel are possibly the only person in the world to experience a certain problem, then find out the person next to you has the same struggle. And together, you go on.

Blair's clear and concise explanation of the "read the best few" vs. "read as much as you possibly can" tension across the centuries is also illustrated by the examples of printing and publishing conventions that emerged to cope with information overload, such as (new favorite word) florilegia and reference sources. I can't do justice to her explanation of florilegia, except that I had an immediate vision of "the flowers of literature" which goes a long way to explaining my love of books of quotations and but also led to immediate chagrin to find lots of other clever people on the internet are already using Flora Legia as nom de plumes and possibly stage names.

I have much more to read, I have simply paused on page 55 of TM2K to let the arguments of Erasmus roll around in my head and to demonstrate my good faith in the value of writing about good books!

If you've tired of my scribblings, do get yourself to Professor Blair's page where a great deal of her erudition is available for the cost of Internet access:

http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/blair.php

Happy New Year, and happy reading!