Ask a Question, Get an Answer

I'm not sure who put this sticky note on a picture in the basement of our library sometime between 11am and 2pm on Monday, March 11th, but they'd be better served by asking someone, maybe a librarian, about it. We handle a lot of questions that one might consider embarrassing on a daily basis, and we're happy to answer them.

"WHY?" is an interesting question. Why did someone donate these? Better yet, why display them? I tried to answer both those questions in a manner just as passive-aggressive as the question.

On Sunday, March 17th, someone took down my sign, but added this.

YOLO, indeed.



Here's a closer look at the plaque that explains the existence of this artwork.

Hey, ask a question, get an answer. But next time, please ask in person, or on the phone, or via email, and not in a way that puts sticky notes on items in the library. Items can be damaged by such notes, and we don't want that. Thank you.

Dear Aspiring Librarians (On MLIS Program Rankings)

Every so often, someone comes across this space because they are interested in learning more about graduate programs in library and information science. Recent searches that led to this blog include "mlis jobs," "job market mlis," "mlis entrance essay," and "mlis graduate admissions essay," and that's just in the last week.

With that in mind, US News and World Report has released their 2013 rankings of the best programs for graduate study in library and information science. Here are the top fifteen programs:

Screenshot from here.

I'm number ten!

How did US News and World Report get these rankings? Did they toss a bunch of papers in the air and then pick them up in this order? Did they conduct a rigorous, scientific study taking into account curricula, graduation rates, job placement (wouldn't it be nice if the American Library Association made MLIS programs release those rates?), and reputation? Sadly, it appears to be the former.

The library and information studies specialty ratings are based solely on the nominations of program deans, program directors, and a senior faculty member at each program. They were asked to choose up to 10 programs noted for excellence in each specialty area. Those with the most votes are listed. (Source)

Um, yeah. That is poor social science. What we have here is a lazy, crude metric that attempts to get at something like "reputation," but the magazine's staff doesn't know how and doesn't care to know how to really do it. Those numbers on the right-hand side of the table above are based on a "peer assessment score," with 5.0 being the highest; the numerical result of asking the aforementioned small, incestuous sample. Just one more reason why there's a Wikipedia section devoted to this magazine's rankings.
Sportsball analogy alert: these rankings are to library and information science what the USA Today Coaches Poll is to college football.

You don't know about this series?  Bad librarian! Bad!

Through analyzing a Coach’s Difference Score (CDS), we found that coaches had a positive bias towards their own team. That is, they vote their own team higher than their peers. We also discovered that coaches tend to vote schools from their own conference higher than do coaches from outside that conference. Finally, we concluded that coaches from the six Automatically Qualifying (AQ) conferences were biased against schools from the smaller N-AQ conferences. (Source)

If you're going to choose an MLIS program based on these rankings, please reconsider. Don't do it. Look at course catalogs. Talk to faculty in the program. Talk to deans and administrators. Ask them about job placement rates and opportunities for real world experience in a variety of settings. Are there opportunities to publish and present at conferences? To learn marketable skills? Talk to librarians. We're a friendly bunch. Talk to students in these programs. They're training to be a friendly bunch. Find programs that feel right, that have a "fit." And take a course or two in research methodology, so you don't graduate and then publish misleading, faux-authoritative rankings like this one.

Scotch Whiskey Barrel Aging and Beer

That picture on the left is of Schlafly Beer's Single Malt Scottish Style Ale. From the brewery's description:

"brewed with a single variety of barley, Optic, from the Cook family farm in Scotland (owned by our co-founder’s in-laws). The flavor of the Optic is balanced by British hops for bitterness and a UK yeast strain for a fresh, bready flavor. We age the beer in freshly-emptied Highland Scotch Whisky barrels from the Glen Garioch Distillery only 10 miles from the farm where the barley was grown."

It is also one of a few beers I know of that's been aged in Scotch whisk(e)y barrels. Why so few? Two reasons, as I see it.

The first is that barrel-aging is a "crime of opportunity." Scotch barrels are harder to come by than bourbon or rye barrels, at least for US brewers. There are distilling operations in Virginia (Wasmund's Whiskey, from Copper Fox Distillery) and Oregon (McCarthy's Oregon Single Malt Whiskey from Clear Creek Distillery), among others, making something like Scotch-style whiskey, but it is much easier to get a bourbon or rye barrel in the US, because those two types of whiskey are more prevalent.

The second is flavor profile. Scotch, like beer, starts with malted barley. But many Scotches are peat-malted, meaning that the malted barley is smoked over peat moss, imparting a (drum roll!) smokey flavor. Anything aged in a Scotch barrel that held peat-malted barley thus becomes smokey. There is a family of beers called "rauchbier," based in and around Bamberg, Germany, and indeed, Schalfly makes an excellent one of these, but smoke beers are not very popular, so it may be harder to market and sell these kinds of beer, or at least harder to match up with what one normally expects from beer. Bourbon, on the other hand, might add vanilla, caramel, and/or toffee flavors that complement a wider array of beer styles. Those flavors are present in many Scotches, too, but are often less noticeable.

UPDATE: Bartender extraordinaire and homebrewer of some note Erich Streckfuss points out a third reason: Bourbon barrels can only be used once in the production of bourbon, after which they are "retired." Scotch barrels can used over and over again, further limiting the supply.

Still, if the result is going to taste anything like this, more brewers need to do it. A smokey, meaty flavor is present, but so are notes of figs, golden raisins, and maybe even coffee, mixing sweet and savory. It's a sublime beer. Last night I paired it with lamb sliders and grilled vegetables marinated in Greek yogurt and onions. Cheers!

Open Access: A World Without Database Vendors?

As a thought experiment, let's say we "win." Professional and academic associations go open access, as much of physics has. The Directory of Open Access Journals is able to capture the far majority of these newly free works, and in turn these are snapped up by library catalogs thanks to link resolvers and discovery services. The same happens with the Directory of Open Access Books with regards to chapters in edited volumes.

But there's a catch: DOAJ's search function is not, to put it politely, robust. And there's a larger problem behind search functionality thanks to incomplete metadata. Link resolvers and discovery services that pull from that search, culling that metadata, will lead to frustrated end users who cannot access and discover what they're looking for.

In addition, the DOAJ is overrun with new items to catalog in this scenario, creating a backlog of epic proportions.

This is not my desk, but it feels like it sometimes. 

There are roles for vendors in this universe: generating better metadata for these newly open access items; designing stronger, more relevant search functionalities; and creating attractive and user-friendly platforms; among others.

There's a less maximalist, more realistic, "winning" option here, too: more journals, and more publishers, allow for pre-prints to be housed in institutional repositories, which are cataloged by member institutions, and perhaps shared via consortia, and with a wider audience via interlibrary loan.

However, these repositories do not solve access problems, in fact, they exacerbate them by creating not only a patchwork network of databases, but also at least two discrete classes of items: pre-prints and final products, each with a different symbolic value attached to them despite containing the same information. Vendors can solve the first of these, a coordination game, by designing, creating, and implementing databases that allow access to the pre-prints among and between libraries, including negotiating licenses and usage rights with publishers. Only vendors have, as of now, been able to create inter-library databases with robust network effects and positive externalities. That is, the more libraries, the more repositories, that join an inter-library database containing items that might otherwise only be found in a repository, the stronger, the more useful said database is. Some of those vendors in our current information ecosystem were founded by libraries, such as OhioLink, JSTOR, and OCLC, as well as The Digital Public Library of America (perhaps), though they have now taken on lives of their own.

As for the latter, pre-prints versus final products, I have no solutions other than to hope that academics "get over it" by incentivizing open access. Giving preferences to OA publications as part of tenure and promotion, for example, would be an important and powerful signal.

Thus, academics hold their chains in their hands, but there are no worlds, no futures, without database vendors. I write this not only to reassure vendors, but also to argue that we librarians are inexorably tied to vendors, even knowing that vendors do not always behave as we wish them to.

An Open Letter to Male Librarians

Sorrynotsorry for the profanity.**

Dear fellow men who work in libraries,

Cut that shit out. You know what I'm talking about*. Stop making women feel less human, less valued, than their male counterparts in the profession. In any profession. In any interaction. It's bad enough there's a hegemonic discourse out there that tells women to "be nice" or to apologize in situations in which they shouldn't. It's bad enough that women make up over eighty percent of librarians, but a lower percentage of directors (note: data is woefully out of date and disputed); just like how mom makes everything better when you're sick, but more doctors are men. Or how women cook more at home, but  there are more male chefs.

Lest you think this is just some blog post designed to capitalize on an issue that's in the news in librarianship, here's an email I sent to a male librarian in June of 2012. I will call you out on this. Trust.

You send out things like this  

[redacted tweet] 

And then you wonder why you're blocked. As I'm typing this [redacted twitter user] is sending out a few more examples. I can't speak to a conversation you did or did not butt in on between two women, but I assume your audience, like mine, is made up of many librarians. More librarians are women than men. And so here we are. Tweets like the examples given above, and I'm sure others, come off as creepy, and I'm using this word in particular because it's the one that, based on your blog post, bothers you the most. The tweets that are or contain sexual overtures, even if you think those are just witty banter: please don't send them, don't retweet them. Or, go ahead, but don't be surprised if you get blocked and/or labeled a creep.  

The blog post overall features an apology, but the tone of the post also sounds like you feel victimized. No doubt you are frustrated by getting unfollowed without some sort of tweeted explanation, but twitter isn't real life where we're owed that. People come and go, some of them come back, and I've accepted that. I urge you to as well. The "lol" and whatnot responses to some of the tweets may not really be people laughing out loud, they could just be humoring you, trying to deflect/redirect/absorb the awkwardness. There's a tendency to not confront people when offended, whether it's face to face or online.   

You say that you're "here to joke," but your joke becomes harassment to someone as soon as that someone feels harassed. It's not about your intent. You seem to understand this towards the end of your blog post, which I think is a good thing.   

So, that's my two cents on the issue. If there's something I could make clearer, please let me know.  

Best,  

Jake (@jacobsberg)

Here are (other?) interesting, non-troglodyte, takes on this from men.

* It shouldn't have to take me three minutes of googling to get all those links.
** I know why people are treating other people this way. Power imbalances, the hegemony of sexism, people being assholes...

January - February Beer Roundup

There's been much 'brarian-ing in this space, but not much beer-ing. In large part, this is because much of the latter is taking place over at DCBeer.com. Here's what I've been up to.

The most exciting news is that DC is getting yet another brewery. Hellbender Brewing Company has a location, and, like other DC breweries, they're taking advantage of DC's surfeit of industrial-zoned space on the east side of the city, not too far from where I live. In fact, this may be the closest brewery to my house, no small feat given the locations of the other three. You can read more about Hellbender here, and stay tuned for more updates on this brewery.


View Washington, DC Breweries in a larger map

The second bit of news is that we all got together to make a Kolsch-style ale. It's lagering as I type this.

Temperature control! Pic via DCBeer.

In addition, it's Girl Scout cookie season. They're delicious, beer is delicious, so why not pair them? Here's a sample:

Trefoils: Deus. Bubbles cut the buttery fat of the cookies basically treating this like sparkling wine and brie. Saisons tend to have higher carbonation than most kinds of beer, and would also work here Sierra Nevada's Ovilia saison and Ommegang Hennepin. Another option is to go with a more mild, flavor-wise, beer, like kolsch (Reissdorf, Gaffel, Schlafly or a pilsner on the lower end of the bitterness units scale for that style, like Eggenberg.

It's also hoppy beer season. Hopslam has come and gone, but the next round of Stone's "Enjoy By" IPA will hit shelves soon (April, 1st, 2013 edition) in Maryland, and Troeg's Nugget Nectar is plentiful. I wrote about these beers here.

Next month the Craft Brewers Conference comes to DC, which I'll be covering for DCBeer. Watch this space as well. Cheers.

Vine and Web-based Library Instruction

Imagine webpages that contain brief recursive videos, each one serving a different purpose for library instruction. Interested?

The versatility of Vines is perhaps its most important feature. Vines, by virtue of being six seconds long and looped, may be a middle ground between more effective image capture (Mestre, 2012) and more popular video-based instruction that too often taxes short-term memory (Oud, 2009). A series of Vines allows more advanced users to skip over the redundant, and enable non-linear instruction as each Vine can be a piece of a whole.

Quick, simple, elegant, Vine offers something more than a snapshot, but less than a three-minute tutorial in which one's eyes glaze over, or constantly pause and rewind to keep up. However, what Vine doesn't have is a a way to capture a website, instead relying on using a mobile device's camera pointed at a screen. Observe: http://vine.co/v/b6nzQxU1vjI.

Crude. Not entirely effective, but perhaps it shows promise, keeping in mind I held a smart phone in one hand with a laptop on my lap. Consider this a plea to Vine: please allow for six second, web-based screen captures. Please. Also, making Vines easier to embed would be nice, as the current way has you go through Twitter.

Testing testing RT @jacobsberg: vine.co/v/b6nzQxU1vjI
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) February 20, 2013

Over on Matt Anderson's blog there's a post about using Vine to promote library services and build a brand. Are you using Vine in your library, and if so, how? Let me know.

UPDATE, 2/25/13: Shelf Check also has a Vine post on tutorials.

Mestre, L. S. (2012). Student preference for tutorial design: A usability study. Reference Services Review, 40(2), 258-276. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907321211228318

Oud, J. (2009). Guidelines for effective online instruction using multimedia screencasts. Reference Services Review, 37(2), 164-177. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00907320910957206