LIS520 Janes

Autumn 2007

 

What to do this week (as of 12/7/07)

 

Week

Do

10 12/12

Relax, enjoy the holiday, re-acquaint yourselves with your families.  Bye!

8 11/28

For classes on the 28th and probably the 30th, explore the resources and readings on the Web site around the History and Structure of the Web, and Web searching and prepare the questions there for class discussion.

7 11/21

Happy Thanksgiving! 

6 11/14

For class on the 14th, read readings on finding out what people want and prepare the questions listed there for discussion.  In addition, look through the training modules on the reference interview, and examine some examples of Web-based interview forms, and prepare the questions listed regarding those.

 

5 11/7

For class on the 7th, read the readings on Evaluation and prepare the questions there for class discussion.

 

UPDATED 11/7 for class on the 9th, read the ACRL report on scholarly communication and be prepared for class discussion on the issues raised there.  In particular, choose which of those issues you think would most challenge or trouble you if you were the head of a major academic library by voting here.

 

4 10/31

For class on the 2nd and Searching Assignment 2, read readings on finding serial resources, explore the searching options (note those links go to generic corporate web sites) and data structures and other searching goodies.

 

An update on class meetings; class will meet on the 14th (Matt Saxton will guest star, discussing Finding Out What People Really Want).

 

3 10/24

For class on the 24th  (and likely beyond), explore the various resources on the Web site around the history and structure of the scholarly journal; also read the articles listed there, and be prepared to discuss the history of scholarly communication as described there.

 

In looking at those readings, and other scholarly journal articles (you might want to browse through some at the library in our field:  Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Information Processing & Management, Reference & User Services Quarterly, etc.), identify the components and structure of a journal article (as we did for monographs and electronic books) and decide whether they are structural, metadata or content.  (NB more may be coming here before class on the 24th).

 

 

In lieu of class on the 26th , read the pieces on Information Services and Mediation, view the presentation there (you may need to use Explorer rather than Firefox for this), and engage in the discussion on the Catalyst board.  I’d ask you to check that discussion regularly, not just once or twice; you should think of spending as much time on the presentation and the discussion as we would in class that day.  I’ll keep an eye on the discussion but will try to stay out of it as much as I can.  There will not be a class meeting on the 26th.

 

2 10/17

For class on the 19th read the readings on monographic searching and prepare the questions there for class discussion.  Also, look at and familiarize yourself with the other materials there (searching options, data structures, records, etc).  We’ll work through those in class.

 

Also, find bibliographic records for Georgiana in Amazon, the UW catalog, a public library catalog of your choice, OCLC WorldCat, Books in Print.  Also get a copy of the record for the netLibrary ebook you examined.  Look at these records, compare them; we’ll discuss their features and differences in class.

 

Download and begin to fill in this grid on information formats and important aspects of each.

 

1 10/10

For class on the 10th, read Samuel Green’s article “Personal Relations Between Librarians and Readers”, Library Journal 1, 74-81, 1876.  (This is a Webified version.)   As you read, think about these questions:

 

  • How would you characterize his approach in working with readers?
  • What technologies does he discuss?
  • Why does he believe “personal relations” are necessary?
  • What other benefits of working with readers does he describe?
  • Who does he say would be good at this sort of work?
  • What does he suggest avoiding in this work?

 

and read Fox, Christopher, “Future Generation Information Systems”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 37 (4), 215-219, 1986.  (link is to guide page)  As you read, think about these questions:

 

  • What is the information environment like when he wrote this article?
  • What did he miss or get wrong in his predictions?
  • What things did he get right that most intrigued you?

 

For class on the 12th, read the readings on the page on the monograph and prepare the questions there for class discussion.

 

Go into the UW catalog, and select an electronic book that interests you.  UW’s ebooks use the NetLibrary format, so you can find what ebooks are there by searching the UW catalog using netlibrary as a keyword.  There are many hundreds of books, so you may need to do a bit more searching to find something you like (keyword search on netlibrary and england, for example). 

 

You’ll have to register and download the reader (which can take some time on a slow connection; be warned) the first time you use a NetLibrary book.  Play with the reader, see how you feel about the experience.  What do you like?  What do you not like?  How might it be improved?  What advantages or features are there in reading an ebook this way (and there are other ways) over a traditional book, and vice versa?

 

Also have a look at this book:

Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman (Random House 2000)

A copy will be on reserve at Odegaard Library; any other copy will do in either hardback or paperback, so you might try another library, bookstore, etc.  In particular, look at its structure and components.  Imagine you were seeing a book for the first time—what do you see?  Also, is there anything you would expect to see that is missing in this book? 

 

We’ll discuss all of this in the first couple of classes.  See you then!

 

 

 

You should know that I will be out of town on October 25, November 14 and 16 when this course is scheduled to meet, and arrangements are in process.  In addition, we won’t have class on November 21 (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving).

 

I’d like to hold December 12 for the possibility of a final class (this is during the final exam week); just in case we don’t get through everything I want to do before then.  I’ll let you know if we’ll need that time as we get closer to that date.