Displaying Per-Circ Costs

You know how stores display the "unit price" along with the retail price for items? I like this mandate, and often use that unit price to decide whether or not to buy something (or at least, which size to buy).

I was talking with some colleagues recently about bringing this practice into the library world. We decided the data we'd like to display is the cost of the book, with the "unit price" being the cost of the book spread out over the number of times the book has circulated.

Since it would constantly be changing, it'd be hard to show this on shelf (or spine) labels. But, it should be a pretty easy thing to add to the catalog's item display.

Item cost is generally not something shown in the record, but I thought if you made it somewhat interactive and interesting, people might be curious about "cost per circ." But what we couldn't decide was this:

• would patrons be more likely to check out a item with a low unit price, because it's a better "value" to the community, or
• would patrons be more likely to check out item with a high unit price, because it's a better "value" to them (as the item hasn't been used very much and is therefore of higher perceived quality)

I couldn't decide, or really even decide if it would influence my check out decision one way or another. But I do know that I would definitely be curious to look at this number every time I checked an item out.

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Reference Question of the Week – 5/8/11

I'm using this question because, well, it's not funny, but I did find it remarkable.

One afternoon, a high school girl walked up to the desk and said she has to do a report on the girl that started the Amber Alert.

She wasn't sure what that Amber's full name was, and I didn't know either, but a quick internet search for just amber alert led to the Wikipedia article that gave the little girl's full name: Amber Hagerman.

I searched our catalog for her name, but got no results. Before I took the girl to our biography encyclopedias to just start flipping through the indexes, I wanted to check our Gale biography database. I logged in from our website, searched for her name, and saw this:

Occupation: Victim? Really? I'm sure that's just the name of the field, and they had to put something in there, and for 99% of the biographies, the person's occupation is why they are famous. But my gosh, how sad.

It didn't phase my patron one bit, but the articles from the database didn't actually help much. We checked a couple other databases, and between that and resources and references on the Wikipedia articles, she felt we found enough. She left happy, but that "Victim" listing really bothered me.

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Last Call for 2011 Salem Press Library Blog Awards Nominations

You only have a few more days to submit your nomination for the 2011 Salem Press Library Blog Awards - nominations close May 13th.

Last year's inaugural awards went to some very deserving blogs, so be sure to support your favorite - new and old - again this year.

Read about the judges and full details on Salem Press' website, but here's a bit about awards, nominations, and judging process:

2011 Nominations
Please share your favorite blogs with us. Doing so will enter your beloved online reading in our 2011 Awards process. We'll be accepting suggestions through May 13, 2011. To send us nominations (including a working link to the blog), email [email protected].

Bigger & Better
This year, Library Blog Awards returns with the same goal—to recognize blogging excellence across the library spectrum—but with a new structure. We have increased the number of volunteer judges (from four to 15) and blog categories (from five to eight) and added a new dimension to the process: the public vote.

After our judges complete the first round of eliminations and finalists are announced on May 18th, we will ask readers and interested parties to cast their votes online. The list of winners (one per category) will follow in mid-June.

Last year I was awarded gold star recognition, which is great. But what I like most about these awards is how they work as a discovery tool in finding new bloggers and resources.

If you are so inclined, send in your nomination before May 13th.

Update 5/17/11: Public voting is now open until June 1st - cast your vote for your favorite blogs (and thanks everyone for nominating me for Public Library blog!)

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Reference Question of the Week – 5/1/11

This week's question has a bonus happy epilogue.

A mom and daughter walk up to the desk. The mom starts to explain how the daughter has a homework project on ancient Greece, but the topic she originally was given was too hard so the teacher gave her a new one. The mom then blanked on the new topic, and so told the daughter to tell me what it was - the daughter said,

The Trojan Emperor.

I had never heard of an Emperor of Troy, or any Greek Emperors for that matter. But since there are lots of things that fall into that category, I took them down to the 938's and started looking through the indexes of books on Ancient Greece with them.

After just a minute or two of not finding anything at all, the whole thing just didn't feel right, so I told them to keep looking while I went back to the desk to try something else. In this case, the "something else" was to search the internet for "trojan emperor," thinking I would find a name or some other information to help with the search.

I did - Google's search result page prompted:

Did you mean: trajan emperor

Ha - I totally did. I knew "Trojan Emperor" sounded kind of right, but not completely. "Emperor Trajan" makes much more sense.

I walked back down to the mom and daughter to tell them what I found. As soon as I said it the girl recognized it as what her teacher had told* her. I switched them to looking at the books on ancient Rome (937's), and instantly the daughter had more than enough information for her project.

So that's great - the patrons were happy they got what they needed, and reference transaction over.

Epilogue
As I walked back to the desk, I kind of grumbled to myself...

So typically library - Google is smart enough to correct a mistake like that and suggest the right answer. Our catalog should be able to do the same thing.

By the time I got back to the desk, it occurred to me that I hadn't actually ever checked the catalog - I just knew where those books are on the shelves, and took the patron right to them. But I also know that our current catalog doesn't have any kind of suggestion feature.

However, my consortium will be switching to Evergreen over Memorial Day weekend. Our Reference Desk has gotten into the habit of repeating each patron search in the Evergreen demo catalog to see how it works (thanks for the idea, Katie), so I ran this search on our test server to see how it handled it. And guess what? It worked!

Few hits were returned for your search.
Maybe you meant: Trajan emperor

One problem with it is that it's just way too subtle at the bottom of the page, but the nice thing about open source is that I can lobby to have that changed. But just that fact that it's there at all is a huge step into the modern internet world. Yay for progress.

*This is why it's important for assignments to be written down. And why it's helpful to bring the assignment sheet to the library.

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NHLA11 Talk on Building a Mobile Website

I'm doing a few talks this year about how to build a mobile website for libraries - based, mainly, on my posts about the one I made for my library. This Friday is the first of those talks, for the New Hampshire Library Association's Spring Conference.

For a sneak preview, I put my slides and a few more "going mobile" type resources up at SwissArmyLibrarian.net/mobile.

I also posted there my first attempt at a downloadable template version of the site I made, that other libraries can use to build a mobile site for themselves. It takes a lot of customization (obviously, it all has to be customized with your information), but I tried to provide instructions. If anyone tries it, please let me know how it can be improved.

I've never been to NHLA before, but I have heard nothing but good things, so I'm looking forward to it. Besides, any time spent in New Hampshire is time well spent.

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Delicious Has A New Home

Big news - Delicious has been sold, and the new owners sound great.

This announcement came last week (along with an email to every Delicious user), but it hasn't made much of a splash. I've seen a few posts in the library world, but I am surprised* it hasn't been bigger news.

Press releases about the transition were released by both Delicious and the new owners, AVOS (the guys who founded of YouTube), and the future does sound promising: AVOS is apparently hiring staff, plans to work with the Delicious community, and intends to develop new features. Pretty significant for a product that hasn't changed in years.

Delicious users have until July 2011 to opt-in to transitioning to the new platform. I did it this weekend, and it's quick and easy - just log in, verify your details (and at least skim the new terms of service and privacy policy), and you're set.

Here's the message that displays when you begin the transition:

Delicious is moving to a new home

Yahoo! is excited to announce that Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the largest online video platform, they have firsthand experience enabling millions of users to share their experiences with the world. Delicious will become part of their new Internet company, AVOS.

To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks to AVOS.

Reasons to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks

As soon as you let Yahoo! move your Delicious account, you will:

• Enjoy uninterrupted use of Delicious.
• Keep your Delicious account and all your bookmarks.
• Keep the same look and feel of Delicious as you have today, and enjoy future innovations for the product.

It's easy to have Yahoo! move your account to AVOS. When you do, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.

What happens if you do not move your bookmarks?

• Delicious in its current form will be available until approximately July 2011.
• After that, you will no longer be able to use your existing Delicious account and will not have access to your existing bookmarks or account information.

Learn more >>

I, for one, am happy about this announcement - yay for not having to rework the library's subject guides.

*This surprises me because, of all the online tools out there, Delicious seems tailor-made for librarians. Even discounting the social part, bookmarking sites like this are exactly what librarians have been striving to do since the internet was invented - catalog it. Delicious (and similar sites) not only lets us catalog websites how we see fit, but also allows the power of critical mass to categorize every website. It seems like library schools across the land should have an entire course dedicated to Delicious (and social bookmarking).

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