The library's gone to the dogs... or the other way around?

At the Yale Law Library circulation desk, students have been signing up this week to check out Monty, a 'certified library therapy dog,' for 30-minute sessions of unconditional, stress-busting puppy love.

Ok. I love libraries and all, and I love the idea of libraries trying out new things and exploring new roles but this seems to be pushing the boundaries a little bit.

We are about providing access to information, people! (And entertaining media when we include public and school libraries.) Therapy dogs are a great idea. I'm aware of the literature supporting their effectiveness. And academic environments certainly need stress reducers. But I'm afraid that providing resources like this will dilute our usefulness and our authority as research and academic activity support. "I'm sorry, Doctor Brown, I can't complete a literature search for you to support your grant-producing and possibly life-saving research: I've got to go take Marty, the library's golden retriever, out for walkies. Can you hand me that plastic bag?"

What do you think? Is it making libraries more irreplaceable? Is it an appropriate connection to our role in society?

[ Inspired by "Checking Out Monty: Yale Law Students Can Reduce Stress With Therapy Dog" from abc NEWS ]

Sick of being sick...

So I've been ill the past couple days... Made it back to work today but it's always difficult for me: both taking sick days and coming back. Not because I'm not sure whether I'm sick or that after being sick I don't want to go back to work. I like my job. I like going to work. (I don't know any librarian that doesn't, of course.) But when I start feeling under the weather, I'm never sure of the exact moment when I'm too ill to work. I could probably work through almost anything, and, I hate to admit it, I have. On this end of the problem, I have slowly come to the realization that I'm more valuable at home than at work if I'm at all contagious... duh.

On the other side, nearing the end of the period of unwellness, I'm again regularly unsure when it's appropriate to come back to work. I'm caught between wanting to get back to work for both work's sake (don't want to seem like I'm goofing off) and my own sake (again, I like getting things done at work), and not wanting to get back to work too soon again for work's sake (for fear of still being contagious and infecting those at work) and my own (not wanting to push myself too far and keep myself sick longer).

I almost wish there were nice simple guidelines. Basic rules to tell me when I'm sick and what I should do about it. Any suggestions or guidelines any of you use?

Librarians do it in stacks... Maintain collections, that is.

Just read "Topeka Library Board Restricts Access to Four Books on Sex" by Norman Oder from the Library Journal on February 20. The article talks about how the library board for Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library has decided to restrict access bye age to four books on the topic of sex, despite the director's recommendation and comments from other groups.

This is not uncommon. And not really surprising. A group of mayor or county appointed concerned citizens claiming that any exposure to sexual information to anyone under 18 (I'm assuming that's what passes for a minor in that area) is painfully traumatizing. Despite the seemingly obvious fact that this kind of reaction is probably the biggest cause of all our adult problems with sex, relationships, intimacy, gender issues and the like... Despite the fact that putting sex education material where you have to ask someone specifically for it will place an insurmountable barrier to the vast majority of the very adults the books are there to help... Despite the seemingly obvious contradiction of censoring these materials in the face of their own country's declarations of freedom and democracy... Despite all our own experience of not being scarred for life on discovering our Dad's Playboys and our continued ignorance even with such a valuable reference on a subject that's central to all our lives by definition... Despite all these issues with this story, I think my biggest problem is with the lack of similar action with materials "harmful to minors" (as well as the rest of us) due to a lack of truthfulness and reason.

We have a bizarre sense of priority. We shut down discussions and educational opportunities on an act and aspect of our society that ensures the continuation of our species (and at least half of us would say a very contented continuation... lol) because we think it's dangerous. And then we embrace and protect or simply ignore whole areas of irrationality, nonsense, bias and unjustified claims. Those who are religious literally place faith or belief without justification above reason. We raise our children on deliberate lies we call fairy tales and tradition. We get so much "information" from journalists, authors, and friends without requiring any amount of proof. Sure Oprah Winfrey gets upset when she finds out a book she's put her brand on turns out to be blatant lies, but then where were the measures taken to ensure that didn't happen in the first place?

I'm not saying that we should all live our lives through pure logic (although Mr. Spock's ears are a conversation starter!) and that no amount of fiction or childhood innocence is allowed or even appropriate or that religion provides nothing helpful or positive. Imagination of what's not possible or falling into a make-believe world is wonderful and valuable and we must all put bounds on the level of certainty we require from all the various sources in our lives. What I'm dismayed at is the relative lack of awareness of THESE issues and the disproportionate preoccupation with what seems to me to be mere insecurities and phobias. These latter are supposed to be managed and surmounted in the name of the former. Not embraced and maintained.

I do think we're getting better though. Fewer cases of censorship seem to bubble to the surface and they are often accompanied by reports of opposition. Sex education IS more available in schools overall and hopefully (because I have no numbers to support anything more than hope) parents are helping their children learn more. And, although so many see it as the downfall of civilization, sex and other untouchable subjects are coming into the mainstream more, which is good if only to allow us to talk about such things and discover what IS harmful and what is not.

So go out and talk. Or just stay where you are and comment here...

Article about health info searching behaviour...

Just finished reading:

Harris R & Wathen N. 2007. "If my mother was alive I'd probably have called her.": women's search for health information in rural Canada. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(1):67-79.

which concluded with the following suggestions (some of which are pretty obvious but are important to spell out specifically nonetheless).

1. "...an important, overarching consideration for those designing and delivering health reference services should be the promotion of communitywide awareness of such services."


2. "...women want and need not only health information per se, but to have it presented, and ideally discussed, in the context of a caring, interactive relationship - one that respects the woman as the expert when it comes to her own needs, concerns, and context."


3. "For many, 'health' is incorporated in the concept of 'well-being' or 'quality of life,'" and "Any health reference service, therefore, should be interlinked with other subject areas that patrons may view as part of health and well-being, or, as one of the women in [the] study put it, 'the emotional side of health.'"


4. Health information programs and services should be designed not only to help patrons find high-quality information, but also teach them basic skills for searching, identifying high-quality sources, and knowing what types of information require follow-up action, such as consultation with a healthcare provider."

The basic message was that "It seems naive, if not cynical, to assume that the healthcare needs of women who live in rural communities will be met by simply deepening the supply of Internet-based health information..."

Far from hardly working...

OMG. I am a mass of aching flesh and fatigue. Not only have I been riding my bike back and forth to work everyday, but today I also rode over to RMC today to check out their library and test my proxy access for the conference I'm presenting at soon: EOSET 2007. Woot!

And to top it all off, I insanely cut the lawn yesterday after work (it needed it... neighbourhood children were missing) and I transplanted, about a billion day lilies. Ok, it wasn't a billion and it was only a few feet away but they grow in one solid mass of bulbs (I first spelled it "blubs" and really considered leaving it that way) and go pretty deep, though not as deep as I feared, so thank you Day Lily God (or Goddess, probably). I put them all under this evergreen we have in the back yard, as they're the only things insane enough to grow under there. And it gives me more room to plant some REAL plants: tomatoes, carrots, onions maybe... Which will be even more work outside... What do I have, a death wish?!? LOL I don't even like the outdoors all that much. Gawd.

Hey, I can't remember whether I mentioned that I submitted an article to the Queen's Gazette a while ago. I'm trying to publish as much as I can, and it also fulfilled my final requirement for my Focus on Foundations teaching certificate. Sweet. Two-fer.

Back to biking...

Rode my bike to work yesterday AND today. Whew! It's been a while, obviously, since I've done that and although yesterday wasn't too bad, it was pretty gruesome today. The second day was much worse than the first. But everyone's telling me, "Oh, it's so good for you, " "Oh, you'll be in such good shape," and "Oh, you'll have muscles comin' out your eyeballs!"... Ok, maybe not the last one... LOL And that's all true, it is good for me and cheaper and better for the environment. But it'll all be for nothing if it kills me!

I like riding to work from where we are. I don't really ride on the main/busy streets very much, and I even get to ride by the river that runs through the middle of Kingston which is very calming and beautiful. I wish I could find our digital camera... I want to be taking more pictures of these kinds of things!

Save us from ourselves...

Frites sans gras
Originally uploaded by /mathieu.

Just finished watching an episode of The Agenda about the issue of banning trans fat, whether it is the best way to fight against unhealthy behaviour, but the debate seemed a little one-sided, and not in a particularly reasonable way either.

It started off well, with details about what trans fats are, where they're found and what has been or will be done about the problem. However, when it got into the real issue: whether banning (as is done in NYC, Denmark, and possibly soon in Toronto) is the best way to help people, the discussion seemed to go down a rather narrow and frustrating path.

Nadiim Esmail from The Fraser Institute, brought up the comparison of banning versus education as the means of reducing trans fat in the public diet. And he spoke of the issue on a seemingly much higher level than the rest of the panel. The other four immediately disagreed with him, so much so that they eventually returned to simply stating, as William Smith said, "I just disagree." No attempt to take on the issue that Nadiim brought up, that banning trans fat, deals ONLY with trans fat, that why were we choosing that particular issue when there are other closely related issues such as saturated fats as well, and that it brings us down the road of government protecting citizens from their own actions.

Several guests said that banning trans fats was a "no brainer". Certainly in the short term it is: it will certainly, as they all acclaimed, reduce trans fat usage, and improve out health. But where do you stop? If you ban trans fat because of the undeniable and immediate health benefits, then why don't we ban smoking? That would undoubtedly make everyone's health improve. It wouldn't happen because there would be a public outrage. The real answer to Nadiim's point is not that banning is simply better than education, but that education doesn't work because people don't want to think. Banning is a "no brainer" because it allows us not to have to think about what we are shoving into our mouths.

One possible better way to explain Nadiim's point is that banning trans fat would be like banning benzene in cigarettes, assuming that there is something that could replace the "great taste" of benzene in your cigs. LOL Benzene is bad for you. Removing it from cigarettes would certainly improve the health of smokers. But aren't there all sorts of other things in cigarettes that are bad? What you want is for people to stop smoking. In the trans fat example, what you want is for people to stop eating so many french fries. Taking out the trans fat in foods doesn't miraculously make fries health food! But that's what a ban on trans fat says. By pointing out one particular bad thing, you are raising it's importance, resulting in the neglect of any other bad things.

There's only two ways to effectively ban things like trans fat: all or none. Maybe a third: to somehow draw a line where you think banning should stop/start, that there must be x amount of risk to ban something. If you don't, then all government will ban are those things that the industry doesn't mind banning. Lynn Silver from New York said specifically that the restaurants had no problem with the idea of the ban. That's because it's a free advertising concept, an opportunity to reduce on of their biggest barriers to increased profit: the idea that pleasure eating is unhealthy. Well, despite the improved message that's it's ok, it's still not ok. We still all need to be better prepared to judge what we eat. We may not want to be nutritionists, but no one is responsible for what I eat (or what my children eat) except for me, regardless of any helpful ban that exists.

Read more on TVO's blog entry on the topic.

And we're sick again...

What is it that's going around? My whole family is sick again, as well as several people at work and everywhere else. I seem to be doing the best at keeping it at bay, at least for the time being but I am feeling the effects of the contagions all around me. I really should stay home tomorrow but I just have a few important things to take care of. Maybe Wednesday... I'll have to check my schedule.

I did fix my bike over the weekend, so perhaps riding my bike, getting some exercise and some fresh air, will help me fight this thing. I'm gonna start riding my bike to work again, now that the weather is good again. I didn't today, thanks to some stupid weather forecast I saw that said it could possibly have rained. It did not rain.

Systematic reviews, Lord of the Rings, headaches and The Agenda...

Long simple day at work today. I received an email requesting advice/help with a search yesterday that was described as being for a systematic review. Now, in medicine, systematic reviews are the cream of the crop in terms of documentation/publication. They take a lot of research (in the literature), a lot of care, a great deal of analysis, are incredibly practical and focused, and are meant to be regularly and eternally updated. I thought, "Yes! I'm going to really do a good job on this and be part of something really useful!" I worked all day preparing the search, checking definitions, finding subject headings and synonyms to ensure that the search would be comprehensive, and I wrote back to the requester mid-stride to make sure they were aware of what I was doing and what they could expect. Also, for stats purposes I wanted to know whether they were faculty or professional health care staff... Near the end of the day I get a response saying that they are a student actually working on an assignment that they will be handing in (the first part of, anyway) to US!!! All that work for someone I can't do the work for! Gaaahhhh!!! Well, hopefully their supervisor (this person is on a work assignment outside of the school doing this research) is the one doing the systematic review so that I can at least give the work to someone. Maybe. Who knows. At least it was a good experience and the next time a request like that comes in I have learned a few tricks and tips to help me do an even better job!

It's funny though. This really came at an appropriate time. I have been thinking lately about how I (and other librarians) really should do "more work" helping our users. Not that librarians don't already do a lot of work, or that we have loads of extra time on our hands. I just feel as though we could (and should) be doing more impressive work for our users. For example, not many libraries do literature searches for their patrons. Many, if they do, charge for the service. Bracken Library here at Queen's University does this for staff and faculty and health care professionals for free (at least on an individual level). But even though these are time consuming, difficult, and usually much better than the user could have done alone, sometimes I feel as though we're still not doing enough. I discussed this with a colleague of mine and I'm not as confident in this opinion as I was... I'm not quite sure what exactly we could do more, given our time and education restraints, but I feel as though we are not quite as impressive as I know we could be. Or perhaps I'm just feeling as though I could do more and wish I had the opportunity. I don't know.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been playing the free beta version of Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) for the past week or so. It's not bad. World of Warcraft (WoW) is still my favourite but I can definitely see how someone could like LOTRO more. The graphics (of the environment) are much more impressive (flowing grass, more realistic animal behavior, etc), the quests and activities, etc. are much more involved, serious and have many more layers than WoW. But there're still some things that are keeping me in WoW: the interface graphics are much nicer and clearer, the world seems much bigger and full of more possibilities, and there are vastly more people using it making the experience a little more varied in terms of interactions and socialization. They both have jerks and morons who cheat, swear, hate, disturb others, or don't play "fair" although I'm surprised at the numbers of these players who have swarmed into LOTRO already. I'll play it until I have to pay, and then move on to another free demo/trial edition: Final Fantasy, Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Trek Online (whenever that comes out), etc.

My daughter is suffering from a bad headache right now. Well, actually she's probably asleep now but she was feeling pretty bad before she went to bed a while ago. Aren't headaches about the worst kind of pain you can imagine? It hurts sometimes just to think, and try not thinking for a while! Go on, try it. LOL Unfortunately, migraines seem to be common on both my side of the family and my wife's.

And I just finished watching my current favourite show on TV now: TVO's "The Agenda with Steve Paikin". Not for the faint of heart, or rather, mind. A political show, but one that deals with issues calmly, rationally, and intelligently. Today's show discussed France's upcoming presidential election, and the recent provincial vote in Quebec. One of the leading candidates in France (in second place no less) is a woman, who, if elected, would be the first female president in France's history. It always dismays and confuses me why, in this day and age why (US, Canadian, European, etc.) political leaders are still always white and male. Are voters the last to be able to see past our prejudices? And an interesting last note in the French election portion of the show was some comments about the animosity France has for the States, talking about how France sees itself as having once what America has now, and that it represents for France both their worst fears and their best dreams for their future. At the end of the discussion about Quebec politics, one of the "panelists" spoke of how Quebecers tend to vote for and respect intellectual candidates more than Ontarians (gawd, what a mouthful). I think this is a trend throughout Western society (and probably the whole world), that we seem to be getting smarter on average and yet we still despise or at least avoid intelligence. Quebec may be able to fend this bad habit off a bit more, thanks to a language barrier between them and us english-speaking troglodytes but we'll bring them over to the dark side yet! LOL Finally, at the end of the show, Steve spoke with one of the producers of the show, which totally cracked me up. Following on the heals of the anti-intellectualism comment, it was brought up that the producer had (and has) spoken to guests on the show about words they cannot use: "narcissism" and "ontological" being two examples of words that "don't travel well". Writing this down now makes me wonder why I totally cracked up at this at the time! LOL

Easter snow and change...

So, hello and goodbye to Easter. My family and I spent the weekend at my parents, which is ok (unlike many people I know, I like my parents) but I always prefer staying home. Yes, yes, what a bore I am. But I just like being with all my stuff: I like sleeping in my own bed, I like being able to do the things I need to do (whether I actually do them or not), and besides, my parents only have satellite TV and dial-up internet access! Gawd! LOL

The weather has been horrible lately. It's supposed to be spring now! I mean I like the cold more than anyone else around apparently but even I'm getting a little tired of it. It actually snowed for several days recently. It's all gone now but it's still cold. I've "put away" my winter coat but I might have to get it right back out again... Fortunately it's still hanging on the hook by the door so I won't have to go very far to get it. LOL

I was away (from work) sick back on the 3rd. I don't usually take sick days and I wasn't anywhere as near sick as I usually am when I convince myself to do it but I think it was the best thing I could have done. It usually takes be several days of dragging myself into work sick as a dog before I stay home and then I'm sick for many more days after that. This time I felt 100% better the very next day. I think I may make this "listening to my body" thing more of a habit!

I attended a web/teleconference on the changes in the catalog by K. Calhoun back on the 4th. She wasn't the most engaging speaker but with my growing interest in the perceptions people have about librarianship (see my new blog, Buns & Shushings) (Update 20110628:  New blog now defunct.) and therefore the usability of our resources, I was rather opinionated about it. I was furiously scribbling down notes throughout the presentation and at the end, when she asked for comments/questions, I let her have it! LOL Well, actually, I hung back, not wanting to be the first to talk (nobody else was saying anything, at my location or otherwise), but then I leapt. Of course, when I leapt, several other people leapt too and my "hand up" wasn't recognized until the very end and I had to cut my "tirade" short. I was pretty tame actually, trying to convince the audience of the seemingly obvious point that we need to give people what they want, listen to why they "hate" us so much, and just offer more possibilities. The catalog (and really all information tools) needs to change but it should be in the direction of offering more, rather than replacing what it already does well with different functions. For example, don't replace subject headings with social tagging, use both!

Work and not work...

This image from flickr is an excellent graphic to go along with today's post. (Update 20110628: Had to relink to the image since it disappeared. This one is by Paul Stamatiou.  The original was by Rsibaja. Backup is here.) I've spent several days over the past week or so rethinking and redesigning my blog. I'm still not perfectly happy with it (can you ever be) but I think I've got it to a point where I can let it be for a while. I've still got to create a forwarding page from the old url to here but that shouldn't take much time.

In other news... I've been going for family walks a little bit more recently. I was helping my 6yo daughter ride her bike and after a few trips up and down the sidewalk I felt like I was going to die... I think that's a hint from my body telling me that I should get a little more exercise. LOL

Work's good. It's getting closer and closer to the end of my temporary contract at Bracken so I'm getting a little anxious, looking and preparing for any job openings at Queen's U or in Kingston (or near enough anyway). Now that my colleague across the hall has officially announced that she's going on maternity leave in October, I feel a little less panicked, but I certainly don't want to just assume that that will be enough: I will still be looking and preparing in any case.

I've been using the "Remember the Milk" site to record my to do list and I've put several presentations I'd like to give at some upcoming conferences and events. Hopefully I'll be able to submit them, get accepted and complete them all... Speaking of which, I'd better get doing some of them and stop procrastinating. I've got to make dinner for the family first.

(Oh yeah, I've also taken some nice screenshots of some things in World of Warcraft. I'll put them in flickr and then maybe post one of two of them here. Along with a screenshot of my "completed" new design. For historical purposes.)