InsideOCULA

Focus, Flow & Forget About It: OCULA Mini Conference 2006
By Laurie Morrison

The slate of speakers at this year’s OCULA Mini Conference on November 9th, 2006 asked us to question, to reflect and push our assumptions and abilities. Throughout the day we traveled along a road, stopping to consider the quality of our engagement with professional associations, with our work and scholarly endeavors and, not to be left out, with the social web of blogs, RSS etc. There was a message here for everyone regardless of where each of us is on our professional journey.

Our keynote speaker, award-winning columnist Judith Timson, coined the phrase ‘focus, flow and forget about it’. Judith turned the whole work/life balance question on its head. This balance she explained is the central myth of the modern work life. Citing a multitude of examples she demonstrated how work has become ‘our default setting’. That we work hard is evidenced by 3 AM emails and our 60 hour work weeks. Rather than seeking balance, she asked us to consider using our ability to focus to find a comfortable pace. Flow, which she defined as an attitude toward work involving concentration and clarity, is our ally. When we are in the flow we are more likely to be happy and find enjoyment in our work. Finally, each day is filled with compromises, to which Judith advised that once the decision is made, a limit is set, and boundary defined, forget about it.

The afternoon’s panel speakers exemplified Judith’s ‘focus, flow, and forget about it!’ Mary Anne Reinhard from Algonquin College discussed her focused career trajectory through the library world as a technician. Jennifer Peters-Lise’s (Seneca College) move from technician to librarian no doubt took much focus as she discussed with us. RSS, among the many social software options discussed by Amanda Etches-Johnson (McMaster University), is the best 2.0 tool for ‘forget about it’. No longer do we need to remember to check all our news and information sources, RSS is a one stop shopper location for everything that informs both our work and life interests.

There is so very much that demands our attention and asks to be made a focused priority but in spite of that Shelagh Paterson (CNIB Library) made a good case for putting association participation up front and centre. The benefits range from the personal to the professional and lead to exciting cross pollination of ideas and innovation between institutions — one must wonder why there aren’t more involved. Oh, but I forgot: time, focus of energy and compromise! Speaking of what I believe to be the highest degree of focus and requiring a critical sense of flow is research. For those of us who are novices, (like myself) Daniel Phelan’s (Ryerson University) talk about presentations, publishing and research was inspiring. Daniel took what feels like a mountain and pointed out a scalable path through the field of scholarly works. He provided simple and achievable tasks to start this journey NOW such as writing for a newsletter (yes, I took his advice), or a book review. Talk to experts to find a gap in our knowledge then pursue these areas for research.

It was a whirlwind day of reflection and inspiration such that by the day’s end I for one was eager to get back onto the playing field with new ideas to pursue. Thanks OCULA for making another mini conference a great success.

By Pamela Jacobs

One of the things I love about my job is that I’m never bored – overwhelmed, yes; confused, occasionally – but bored, never. In this article I will briefly touch on what I see as the key issues in collection development for today’s Ontario university libraries.

 
Through the combined purchasing power generated by programs such as the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), its award-winning predecessor the Canadian National Site Licensing Program (CNSLP), and the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) it has become possible for small to mid-size university libraries to provide access to a depth of scholarly digital information previously unthinkable.  The ongoing development of Scholars Portal (another award winning initiative) takes this concept a step further by locally loading and thus securing permanent access to a significant core of journal literature. The degree of cooperation shown by university libraries nationwide and more particularly within Ontario is a model to all library sectors and universities. Libraries are no strangers to the concept of partnership (think interlibrary loan) and it is more than fitting that we take a leading role in demonstrating how these partnerships can be used to benefit research and learning nationwide. Being part of OCUL, it is easy to become complacent about the relative abundance of resources and level of cooperation we enjoy here in Ontario. I think it is important to remember just how truly unique we are – particularly as we stand perched on the cusp of the brave new world of Knowledge Ontario[1] – a provincial partnership that spans library sectors. And at this point I’ll step off my soap box.

 
In the current climate of consortial purchasing, budgeting becomes at once both simplified and complex (say again?). Packages of content based on publisher or aggregator no longer allow for the title-by-title selection that dominated the print world. A single one line invoice from the consortial office replaces multi-line invoices from our vendors. An electronic package including titles in more than one subject makes budgeting by discipline an increasingly complex, some may say impossible, task. As our methods of access and acquisition become more innovative, our budgets need to become more flexible in order to capitalize on the opportunities that such innovations present.

 
No discussion of library collections can be complete without mentioning the issue of space. No matter where you are in the province, what the size of your library collection is, or whether or not you have storage facilities (either on- or off-site), you can count on one universal lament from collections librarians: there is never enough space (okay there’s never enough money either, consortial purchasing notwithstanding, but I digress). This is despite the tremendous shift from print to electronic format, at least for journal and database content.  The printed word still arrives in weekly shipments on our doorsteps as the universe of scholarly information continues to grow at an exponential rate.

 
The shifting demographic of library staff also bears consequences for university library collections. According to the 8R’s study, The Future of Human Resources in Canadian Libraries (which should be required reading for all Canadian librarians), two in five librarians and three in ten library support staff are predicted to retire by 2014[2].  As staff at all library levels retire, we are rethinking our priorities and workflows. Of particular concern to collection development is the loss of subject expertise carefully garnered through years of practical experience. Our retiring subject experts have witnessed nothing less than a revolution in collection development over the past 30 years: the dire journal cancellations of the 80’s and 90’s, the sudden and chaotic birth and near-immediate popularity of online journals, the complexity of aggregator databases with their adds, drops and embargoes, and the confusing pricing and access schemes of eBooks.  But I think it is fair to say that the heart of collection development has not changed - understanding the information needs of a subject discipline at an institutional level – knowing the courses that are taught, the research needs of the faculty, the breadth and depth of the field as related to other disciplines and so forth. Our experienced subject specialists have this information and we would be foolish not to mine this institutional memory and expertise. We can do this by keeping our collection development policies current (treating them as living documents), by sharing information on the use of specialized resources and developing cross-training programs so that such expertise can be shared.

 
Oh, and did I mention the internet? Have you noticed how much information is out there? I mean useful legitimate information. What are we doing about that? It is all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking of collection development solely in terms of licensing and purchasing. What about all the freely available resources like Project Gutenberg, Google Books, the Open Access Initiative and the seemingly infinite world of online government documents? How are we providing access to these resources? What role does the library catalogue play in providing access to this rapidly expanding web of content? The fact that that the venerable Library of Congress has commissioned a report on The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools[3] speaks volumes to the challenges we face in this regard. If a collection is only as good as its access points, then it’s pretty clear we all have some work to do.

 
The digital world presents us with wonderful new possibilities for collections such as the addition of digital images and streaming audio and video content. It also allows for the possibility of digitizing our own unique collections to open them up to the scholarly universe – assuming of course that we can make our way through the fog that is digital copyright legislation. What is clear is that developing a university library collection has grown increasingly complex and we aren’t likely to be bored anytime soon.

 
Pamela Jacobs is Associate University Librarian, Collection Resources at Brock University