Do we have requests from faculty or students for equipment? 

How is professional development going for myself and my staff?

How much paper did we use?

What about salaries?

Well, you get the idea.  Currently most of my library’s budget goes to electronic resources; databases, journals, etc.  I think that is probably pretty common in any academic library but especially in a career college.  If you have any online students that is just increased again.  Right now I’m looking at adding some electronic resources.  Specifically I’m playing around with the idea of a sort of embedded librarian option in conjunction with LibGuides.  I really like the platform and was hoping to move on it this year but it didn’t end up working out.  I will put it back in the budget for next year.  With our ILS migration I will also be able to eliminate the subscription price for what we currently use. 

I actually don’t like purchasing books for our library.  I think the money could be better spent in other ways.  I know a lot of librarians that don’t agree with that but our circulation is low and really, why would someone read a book when all they really need is some information to develop a reference paper?  Our course work doesn’t necessitate a lot of research in the tradition sense and most assignments end up being reference work really.  I quick paper (3 maybe 5 pages) on the what, how, when or something.  Synthesising anything original in that is not part of the assignment – that would be the benefit of books.  That isn’t to say that we don’t have books or that I don’t purchase them.  Our reference section is quite dense and our circulating collection has been very well-developed.  Students are often surprised at what we have for them.  And I do want full shelves (check out the video for an idea of what I’m talking about).  If I had a chose though between a great database and a physical encyclopedia set I would choose the database. 

After electronic resources I think the second most important expense is professional development and program offerings.  We conduct a lot of workshops both for students and faculty.  It’s important to me that I continue to support those services.  In addition I think that the more training and collaboration our library team can do (and the team is myself and one assistant librarian) the better.  With such a small staff, being able to stay “connected” to the profession is critical so we don’t get stale. 

So, what about you?  Where do you spend most of your library budget?  What is important to your patrons?  If you could get anything for your library, what would it be??

Our year runs from June to July.  This will be my 4th budget process and for those who are new to it have faith, it does get easier.    At the time I was nervous about talking about numbers.  In a typical library those numbers are out in the open for the public to see.  It is expected that the cost will be shared.  That is not always the vibe you get in a career college.  Some managers and supervisors feel the need to ”hide” what those numbers are.  I will admit I will never understand the rationale behind it, you just can’t expect to hire someone to make purchasing decisions and then not tell them how much they can spend.  But that was the situation I found myself in.  At the time I was told the reason they didn’t have solid numbers to give me was because we were a new school and didn’t have a previous year to compare to.  I soon realized however, that this is often the case for many for-profit college libraries.  They aren’t told that they even have a budget.  This makes me batty and we don’t get a lot of help. 

Depending on the type of school you work in (the degrees you offer) your accreditation standards might not say anything about it.  Even the standards for doctoral degree programs with ACICS doesn’t say the library MUST know the budget numbers.  I will add here that they generally ask me about the budget when they come for a visit but it is not a big discussion.  If your school happens to be regionally accredited rather than national that might be (and hopefully is) different.  Perhaps your state approval board says something about it?  The standards in NC are very clear.  If you find yourself in a situation where talking about money is difficulty when planning the future of your library fear not!  The next several posts are going to talk about some of those issues and I’m also hoping we can get a dialog going in the comments section where ideas can be shared.

So share away!  How is budgeting handled in your library?  Do you know what your budget numbers are?  Do you have a good working relationship with your campus president or dean that makes talking about it easier?  I’m eager to hear your thoughts and learn about your situations.

We have a faculty member that was actually a student at one time.  This fabulous women has been working in the allied health field for many years when she decided she wanted to get addition certification in her field.  Now she teaches phlebotomy courses and helps secure externships for our current students.  She came into the library yesterday looking for some pictures to show a couple she is working with.  This couple needs to make a decision about a particular surgery option.  In the interest of privacy I won’t disclose any more info but we really needed to spend some time thinking about this because the couple was a little older and not much into technology.  We scoured through encyclopedias, illustrated dictionaries, and regular old books looking for something that would really show the differences between these two procedures.  It was FABULOUS!!  I remember saying to her (as I pulled another volume off the shelf) this is what research use to be like.  :)

So what about you?  Have you been asked a challenging reference question at your college?  What was it, how did you answer?  Tell us how much fun you had answering it.

BTW – We actually ended up deciding on a video for her to show the couple.

Midterm when I was in college was nuts.  I remember having a few classes that had 2 exams; one at the end and one at midterm.  Some sort of major project would be do or a paper needed to get written and then there was a test to study for.  Ugh… It doesn’t seem to be quite so busy here, but maybe that is just because I’m not the one in class.  hehehe

The library does get a little busier though for about a week and most students come in looking for a magic answer to their research question.  It’s almost like they think they can Google what they subject is and the paper will write itself.  I love every single time a student asks me a question about where to go to get answers after they have spent three days on Google.  I know, I’m twisted but it really does make me giggle.  Mostly because the library orientation (that every student in the school has to sit through) very clearly states that when they go to do class assignments they won’t find the answer on Google.  Ahhh, makes me laugh.

At any rate I thought I would talk real quick about the electronic resources that our library subscribes to.  This seems to be a regular question on the Librarianship in For-Profit Educational Institutions (LFPEI) listserv (discussion group) with the ACRL.

LIRN – this is our meat and potatoes database.  This is where 85% of our questions get answered.  If you have never heard about LIRN you MUST go check them out.  Wonderful databases with this subscription including; Gale, ProQuest, CREDO reference and lots more.   This membership was also discussed in a recent article about for-profit colleges in CR&L

eBrary – the electronic book database that we subscribe to is the career college one.  It is very extensive.  What I really love about this database, you can link out to the web to conduct even more reference options.

Those two do the heavy lifting for our library, at least 90% of our research/reference questions go through there.  But we also have some others that students can use for studying or just learning something cool – which can happen.

Mango – foreign language database.  I’ll be honest, this is so cheap I don’t know why everyone library doesn’t have it.  Great database and it does get good use.

Primal Pictures and Anatomy TV – these two interactive databases discuss anatomy and phys for our medical and dental programs. It’s a bit expensive and hasn’t been getting a ton of use so I have been on the look out for a less expensive option (let me know if you have one).  It is a cool subscription though.

Dia – similar to primal pictures this is for our vet tech students.  This is actually even more expensive then the human counterpart but our faculty LOVE it and use it tons in the classroom.  Webster owns it.

Westlaw – ah yes, our paralegal program.  I haven’t figured out if I like West or not yet.  Something I do, somethings I don’t.  If you don’t have to purchase primary legal material consider yourself very lucky.  It is SO expensive.  Our contract is also a bit complicated but I’m very happy with our sales rep and again, our faculty love the database.

Whew… that’s it.  Maybe in a future post I will actually go through each in a little more detail but there is an overview.  What about you?  What resources do you have available for your students to use?  If anyone knows of a good A&P one let me know, I’ve got a list started.  :)

Such is the case for our little library in North Carolina.  Now I am a very lucky library because I’m full-time and I also have a fabulously wonderful MLIS assistant librarian that is also full-time.  The major bane in our existence are the networking or computer problems we have EVERY SINGLE DAY!

This week might have been the worst week in computer problems history.  Ugh!!!  I write this post to query you all on what tech challenges you face?  I think this is a challenge for every library everywhere because let’s face it, most info needed for day-to-day work is on the Internet.  That means you need some piece of technology to get it.  What does the librarian do when there is a problem with the equipment?

In our case we have an offsite IT help desk.  Now this group of individuals works very hard to solve our problems in a timely manner and overall I am happy with them and I think they are happy with me.  It is difficult however to convey the level of chaos and insanity that can ensue when the printer isn’t working for two days.  Or if students can’t access their private files via the network for a 8 hours or so.  Well, to keep this from turning into a rant I will stop but I’m sure you are hearing me. 

So how do you handle your IT problems??  Please share your experiences, what has worked?  What hasn’t?

Yesterday I read the Annoyed Librarian‘s blog on Internet porn in Seattle’s Public Library.  I don’t follow Annoyed’s blog really but a colleague posted on it via Facebook so I took a quick read.  I try really hard to not have volatile emotional responses to these types of things because I recognize that every situation is way more complicated then it seems on the surface – but I’ll admit it, I was angry at Seattle’s library because of this.  And not because of the porn, but because it seemed they had completely disregarded the wants and more importantly the needs of their patrons.  BTW – if anyone knows more about this and can show that Seattle is listening to their patrons I really really want to know.  I would feel so much better, so please don’t hesitate to share.

Ok, here it is, my opinion very simply.  Libraries are places (virtually or physically) that help to provide answers to an individual’s questions.  We are here in essence to ensure that everyone in our community (patron, customer, student, whatever) has their information need filled.  I will add that I don’t believe it is the librarians role to make judgement calls on what an individual defines as “information of value”.  And I mean that both ways, in the porn example, we should respect the for and the against, regardless of our own personal feelings on the matter.  That is our ethical responsibility.

I can hear the flip of this too.  We also have an ethical responsibility to encourage exploration of ideas, that however does not translate into TELLING the community you serve what they need and/or want.

Where is the dialog between the Seattle Public Library and the community it has an ethical responsibility to serve??

What if 65% of the patron base doesn’t WANT porn in the library??  Did that discussion happen?

Ehhhh….I guess that was a little longer than I thought it would be.  I just find that so frustrating.  Does anyone else get what I’m saying here?  Am I missing some critical piece of information?  Please share!!

Now however, we have a much more formal IT department and with a national migration to an ILS, adding patrons will be a snap.  When a student moves from prospective to enrollment our IT department will simply send along a script file which will add those new students to our database.  Oh… Happy Day!!  The only patrons this will not happen for (at least initially) is our faculty and staff.  But hey, beggars can’t be choosers, I’m happy with what we got here.

What about you, how do you get patrons loaded into your ILS system?  Or if you are using Excel how do you keep track of which students/faculty/staff have circulated material?  Do you have contact info for those individuals, what is it, where do you store it??

Reblogged from careercollegelibrary:

Ok, with a show of hands, how many out there are solo librarians?  Yep, that’s what I thought.  Most career college librarians are running a solo gig.   Our library does have a small staff (another professional and three student workers) but for a while I was doing a solo gig.  But, even those of us that are lucky enough to have a small staff are still not large enough to begin thinking about things like departments.  If you are in an environment like many other for-profit college libraries you might …

That said I was a little surprised at one of the trends and it had to do with fairness.  Now before I go much further into this I will state that my eval went very well.  I was strong in each area of the feedback form and I was dare I say, proud of the wonderful ways in which my colleagues valued my contributions to our school.  The one area that was consistently lower though was fairness and I was really confused to say the least.  I will admit, my first thought was, “really, how can I be more fair?”.  I’m always accommodating and reasonable.  In fact sometimes I thought I was too accommodating.  I went away from that evaluation pleased and slightly perplexed.  My supervisor encouraged me to think about the fairness score and maybe write a brief essay on my thoughts on it.  She suggested that I take an issue and write for the opposing side but I have trouble with that because I can always see both sides which to me indicated that I didn’t have a problem with fairness.  But for some reason it was being indicated as an area of growth for me.  So, I pondered and pondered and thought and well, you get the idea.

Then one day I had a thought and went back to basics.  I looked up the word fair in the dictionary, I mean I figured I knew what it meant but I wasn’t making any progress so decided it was worth checking out.  This is what I read,

free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge.

legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair fight.

moderately large; ample: a fair income.

neither excellent nor poor; moderately or tolerably good: fair health.

marked by favoring conditions; likely; promising: in a fair way to succeed. – Dictionary.com