"Action has Magic, Grace, and Power in It"

 

"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it.
Action has magic, grace, and power in it." 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Reference Interview This week I had a patron come into the library looking for our collection of Linux Journals. I asked them if they were looking for a particular article and they told me that they just wanted to browse the magazines. When we found the journals, I again asked them if there was something specific they were looking for. They then told me that they were going to be in charge of troubleshooting Linux computers. They were trying to get some basic knowledge on Linux and wanted to so some research prior. I told them about our O’Reilly eBooks & Learning Platform that sounded perfect for the type of research they were looking for. Our O’Reilly account gives staff access to ebooks on UX, computer languages, and more and has online video tutorials as well. Before they left the library, I told them that I had created an O’Reilly account for them so that they could see the books and videos available. I also told them that if they did find a book on Linux that they were interested in but that we didn’t have, we could also request material through interlibrary loan. This was one of my first chances to really dig into what a patron was really looking for. It also helped solidify the fact that many people think they know what they want, but aren’t aware of the many offerings available to them that might be better suited for their needs. This interaction also made me feel more confident in the fact that even though I don’t know what a lot of staff members are doing here (I can’t add without a calculator), I do know ways in which to help them achieve their goals. 

Rare Book Database This week I worked on adding subjects to the Rare Book database. I looked up each book’s call number in the Library of Congress and used the main subject to divide them easily. Those that had more specific subjects were added as well. And of course, photographing the books has continued. 

Book Club Once a month the library has a Book Club meetup. Because of the pandemic, we have been doing them virtually. This month was an open book month where attendees were able to discuss any and all books that they have been reading in their free time. And boy do some of these people read and have a lot of free time. I have a hard time reading two books at once. I don’t like doing it because then I’ll get my plots and characters mixed up. But there were people in Book Club who are reading like 10 books, it felt like. Going round-robin took up a little over the hour allotted, but it was really interesting to hear what people are reading and what they are learning as a result of their reading. 

Video Tutorial This week I finished, and submitted, a video transcript for editing. The tutorial, Using the My Tools Features in ASTM Compass will show staff the tools available on the ASTM Compass platform that might make their research and collaboration easier. Bookmarking, adding annotations, and tracking standards changes are all discussed in the tutorial. 

Primo As I mentioned before, one of my tasks was cataloging IHS Engineering Workbench standards into Koha so that they would show up in Primo. About halfway of inputting all the records, we realized that they were not showing up in Primo because I wasn’t inputting an 001 field. Once we figured that out we asked ByWater to create a way to automatically fill the 001 field with the biblio number that is produced after the record is saved. ByWater was able to do that so when I went to search an IHS standard this week, I was expecting to see it in the search results. But surprise! The standards still were not showing up. I reached out to my boss and we had a quick meeting about it. After some digging, My boss found that I hadn’t put an indicator in the 856 field. She manually added a 4 to a record and now we wait until our records get harvested and uploaded to Primo. We should know by next week if this is indeed the issue. If it is, then I assume we can ask ByWater to once again run a batch operation to add the “4” indicator to the 856 field. I would then go into my IHS EW framework and add the “4” as a default entry so that next time it will already be filled in and ready for input. 

IEEE Xplore Webinar: Search Strategies to Optimize Your Research Time This week I watched a webinar on the IEEE Xplore platform. I haven’t used the platform before but I know that this platform will be one that I should create a video tutorial for so I wanted to be ahead of the game and learn tips, tricks, and the basics in preparation. This webinar was so good. The presenter knew what she was talking about, was a great speaker, and the whole presentation was just done so well. There were a few things that seemed really cool about the platform like being able to download equations and it is easy to see what kind of content is trending. 

OpenAthens Odysseys: Implementation Challenges & Lessons Learned at Texas Medical Center Library & University of Toledo This webinar was originally presented at the ER&L 2020 Conference earlier this year but I recently signed up for free access to their videos. I decided to watch this one because we will be moving to OpenAthens later in the year and I wanted to hear what some other organizations had to say about the process. The biggest takeaway for me was to expect it to take longer. The two organizations' timelines for implementation seemed doable. But then you see just how long the process actually took and you go...Oh. Though in fairness the two organizations are much larger than SwRI is and have many more accounts so I’m sure that had a big part in how smoothly the implementation went.