Day 15, Hour 75

It has been really interesting and enjoyable to read the responses I've received from my survey. I have compiled all the responses I have gotten so far, and each one has been valuable to my research in some way. For instance, the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill has a Search Room that seems similar to what will be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library's Archives Reading Room; I took some time to look at their policies on using the room and got some good ideas. Also, I learned from Beth Farrell at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library that there is a Greater Access card provided to patrons by Clevnet that allows members to use all libraries that belong to the Clevnet consortium. This is definitely something to look into.

Something else that Beth shared with me is that the Innovative Millennium program (an integrated library system that the Rock Hall Library will be using, which is also used by the Kent State University Libraries) has a "Count Use" function in its system that could help the Rock Hall Library to track the usage of items in-house. It seems that the function keeps track of usage when a librarian scans into the system items that she/he sees have been used. This would be great, since there will be no information gathered by circulation records (since items here will not circulate).

I finished out my day by continuing with collection development. I found it interesting and reassuring that when I looked into starred reviews on Overbooked.com for Elvis books, the top two books selections were the two titles I recommended for addition to the collection. (On a quite unrelated yet interesting note, I just realized that the web address for Overbooked.com is www.overbooked.org. How curious...)

Coming up next: The survey responses have slowed, but I am hoping I will continue to receive at least 5 or so more in the next two weeks. I am also looking into other local institutions I can send the survey to, since I received such great information from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library. As always, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Day 14, Hour 70

Today was the day I finally sent out my policy survey...and I was nervous! I must have checked, double-checked, and triple-checked each email I sent out, making sure that I cc'd Andy, I attached the survey, and I spelled the person's name correctly. It is both nerve-wracking and exhilarating to know that your name is going to be out in front of experts in your field. The shocking and pleasant part of the whole experience is that within an hour and a half, I had already received four responses!

Since last week, I have also been doing a lot of work at home on the policy and procedure wiki that I created. I decided to scrap the mock website I was working on, since wikis are so much more accessible; I can work on a wiki from any computer with an internet connection, and I can send access permissions out to anyone I choose to. Since I also have a wiki for this practicum (through Wikispaces.com), which I have a paid subscription for, I am able to control the security of my pages. These are all reasons why I am so in favor of wikis! (You can check out a post I wrote for another blog on wikis here.)

I finished up my day by working on some collection development. I was happy to discover that the list of inductees for 1988 is much shorter than the previous years, so hopefully I will be able to get a lot more of the inductees list finished than I thought. I also was able to search more effectively thanks to a site I found called GoodReads.com that offers a wealth of user reviews.

Coming up next: I will be continuing with collection development, and hopefully--if more responses keep coming in--will start compiling the results of my survey. With each day I spend here, the time seems as though it is moving faster and faster...

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura