Author: Stephen Francoeur

For several years now, we’ve relied on a free addon (an extension program) to the Firefox browser that helps us when we need to print out guest logins. That addon program, IE Tab, doesn’t work with the latest version of Firefox (3.6 or higher). Until the developer of IE Tab is able to update the program so we can all download the latest version, you’ll need to use Internet Explorer to generate and print out guest logins.

If anyone has some clues as to why the guest login system is unable to print natively from Firefox, it would be great to solve that problem directly instead of  having to rely on third-party programs like IE Tab.

This CNET article has a nice roundup of free and for-fee web services where people can upload large files that they may want to share with others. Although a lot of students just email files to themselves, saving them to one of these web services offers very valuable additional functionality:

• larger files can be stored than may be permissible in an email service
• you’re not clogging up your email account with large files you’re trying to store there
• instead of sifting through your email looking for the one with that file attachment,  the web services give you clear navigation of your hosted files
• some services give you a unique URL for each file you upload, which makes it easy to share the file with your classmates, friends, teachers, etc. (you just email those folks the unique URL so they can download your file)

In the interest of current awareness and possible reference interactions, I thought I would share this interesting list from Library Journal of the best business books of 2009. I haven’t checked yet to see which ones we’ve already got in our collection (wouldn’t it be cool if Library Journal hyperlinked each book title in the article to its record in WorldCat or Open Library?)

Recently, Mike Waldman and I found a way in EBSCOhost to make our digital reference services much more visible and accessible. This short video I just made highlights our experiments. Please share here any comments you have about this pilot project.

I should give a big note of thanks to Paul Pival, whose post on his Distant Librarian blog a few weeks ago first alerted us to EBSCO’s ability to host embedded chat widgets.

As you may know, the local administrator at each institution subscribing to QuestionPoint’s cooperative chat service are encouraged to review closely all chat transcripts in which their patrons were helped by librarians at other institutions. If the admin sees something notable (good or bad), the admin can describe in an email to the QuestionPoint quality control team what went well or went wrong in the chat session. That QuestionPoint team then reviews the comments from the admin, considers the relevant policies and procedures, and then composes a message that is sent to the admin at the other institution.

Each year, the quality control team at QuestionPoint compiles a list of the things that are most often at the heart of quality control complaints. Here is this year’s list that was published today on the QuestionPoint: 24/7 Reference Services blog:

Policy Page: Librarian did not use policy page to answer the question or use local library’s resources; information was on the policy page which would have answered the patron’s question

Resolution Codes: Librarian did not use a resolution code or did not use the correct resolution code.

Reference Conversation: Librarian did not conduct an adequate reference interview.

*********  Compliments!! *********

Incorrect Information: Librarian sent the patron incorrect information

Tone/Phrasing: The chatting tone of the librarian affected the quality of the session, or, the librarian used negative phrasing.

Ended Abruptly: Librarian ended session abruptly without a natural closure to the conversation or when the patron still seemed to need help.

Sources: The librarian could have sent the patron better sources. For example, perhaps the librarian only sent Wikipedia and then ended the call.

No Searching: Librarian did no searching.

Search Strategies: Librarian could have used different search strategies that would have made the session more effective, or could have suggested search strategies to the patron when recommending that the patron search a database.

Contact Library/Followup Option: Librarian told the patron to contact his library (by phone or visit), without offering the option for email followup.

Last week, Paul Pival at the Distant Librarian blog mentioned that EBSCO announced at the ALA Midwinter meeting that it had secured a deal with some magazine publishers that would give EBSCO exclusive full text access to a handful of publications. Among the publications that Pival learned will be solely found in EBSCO products are:

• Time
• History Today
• People
• Sports Illustrated
• US News and World Report
• Entrepreneur
• Forbes
• Fortune
• Harvard Business Review
• Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
• Money
• Science
• New Scientist

I just got a  mass email from Gale that is also freely available on the web in which Gale decries EBSCO’s actions. A number of other librarians have written about this issue in the past few days as well: Dorothea Salo, Colleen Harris, and Joyce Valenza.

It is worth remembering here the exclusive deal that Harvard Business Review had struck with EBSCO that prevents EBSCO customers from creating stable URLs to records for HBR articles. For details on that, read Paul Pival’s posts on his Distant Library blog and Peter Murray’s post on his Distributed Library Technology Jester blog.

Jerry asked me to pass along word that Buildings and Grounds is looking into the recent occurrence of rattling and rumbling noises in the reading room. The cabinets that hold the atlases seem to be vibrating from some sort of circulation fan nearby. Jerry suggested that if any students come to the reference desk to complain about the noise, we go out of our way to thank them for reporting the problem, acknowledge the problem, mention that we are working on a solution, and recommend other quiet locations for study.

Phil Bradley’s weblog alerted me today to an interesting web site, Yabigo, that allows you to search Yahoo, Bing, and Google simultaneously and see results presented in three columns. For example, see how the service presents the results of a search for “newman library” (and note the difference in rankings of results). Might be useful for instruction especially.