Day 18, Hour 90

Today I did most of my work in collection development. Since most of my policy research has been collected and compiled, and can start to focus on a great monograph and video collection for the library. I am going to continue working diligently on this until my final hours here!

My policy wiki has been graded, and though the content was thorough (for the most part) I seem to have missed the mark on the tone of the entire document. Many of the writing choices I made were not particularly what my professor was looking for, and I understand that. I wish I had thought more about this before I completed it. However, Andy is still interested in the wiki, so I will make some changes to give the document more of a professional tone. In general, however, it is mostly finished.

I think I will soon email my off-site practicum adviser, Dr. Roland, about my final project. I want to inform him of all of the research and collection development I have been doing, and to ask him how exactly it would be best to submit the work. As of now, documents of my work are included in the wiki I created for this practicum. Hopefully this will be a sufficient record of all of my work here.

Coming up next: I would like to continue with collection development (I have moved on to 1989, when there were only 9 inductees), to revise my policy wiki, and to begin work on the "Assessment of Learning Experience" paper, which is a reflection of my practicum that is due as part of the final project. Time is winding down...

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Day 17, Hour 85

Thanks for hanging tight while I had another at-home work day on Tuesday. I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately and decided it might be best to work on collection development and my final practicum project at home.

With only 25 on-site hours left here, I have begun to look at my practicum folder and what will be involved. I have also been compiling all of the documents, reports, and research I have worked on so that I will be able to submit it in my final report. I have broken my practicum project into two parts: Collection development and policy/procedure. This will be the final project combination that I will submit at the end of the semester. It is amazing to look back at all the work I have done in what seems like only a short period of time.

I received one more survey response this week, and added important information into my survey response report. I also submitted a new report to Andy on the research I have been conducting since we last met. The new report focuses on survey responses, membership/registration options, in-house use tracking options, and collection development. Hopefully we will be able to meet and discuss the report; I am especially interested to hear Andy's thoughts on Clevnet and whether joining the consortium would be a good option for the Rock Hall Library.

I finished out my day with some collection development. I have been using more tools for comparison of resources (like reading reviews from critics and other readers), and I feel like this is helping with the quality of materials I have chosen. I am also including more titles for each inductee as Andy expressed that he would like to have as many options as possible. In order to differentiate stand-out materials from materials with less-remarkable reviews, I am including much more bibliographic information for the sources I really recommend. This way, the library will have more options and will be able to make its own decisions.

Coming up next: Now that I have a pretty solid idea of what my final projects will look like, I would like to be able to complete a lot more in the way of collection development. I am really interested in trying to create great go-to title lists for the inductees and videos. I am imagining the lists as a sort of "thank you" to the Rock Hall Library and Andy for allowing me to complete such an interesting practicum here!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

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

Day 13, Hour 65

Sorry if you've missed me; I worked from home on the collection development policy on Tuesday. It is going quite well, and I hope it will be helpful for both my Selection and Acquisitions class and the Rock Hall Library.

I have a pretty good policy and procedure survey drafted, and Andy agrees that it will be quite helpful. He provided me with an amazing list of contacts to present the survey to, and hopefully they will be generous enough with their time to participate. I have drafted an email to send out along with the survey and have submitted it to Andy for comments and suggestions. I'm not entirely sure why, but it makes me a little nervous to be sending out a survey to such important professionals!

I have also been continuing with collection development, and have gathered books and videos representing all of the inductees from 1986 and 1987. I am anxious to keep working on this, and would like to hopefully finish another 3-5 years of inductions before my time is up here. Thankfully, the inductees list grows shorter as the years progress; I may be able to finish more than I think I can.

Coming up next: I will hopefully be sending out the survey within the next couple of days or so. I do not want to wait until next week as I want to be sure to compile and review the results very soon. On a side note, if you or someone you know has any comments or suggestions on library policy or would like to participate in the survey, please contact me through this blog. I would graciously accept any input you can offer!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura