Networks of New York, by Ingrid Burrington

Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure is a short but fascinating look at the physical elements that make up internet infrastructure in New York City. The author talks about how she began investigating the physical artifacts that make up the network. She writes about walking around New York trying to identify and decode what she finds. Filing Freedom of Information Act requests to learn more about the network, she learns about how many cameras are recording our license plates, for example. The book is divided into below ground, ground level, and above ground. Below ground includes the markings that identify cable or other networks below ground. These are color coded, with orange indicating telecommunications infrastructure. This part of the book also includes a bit of history of the telecommunications industry in New York. At ground level you can find junction boxes, traffic signal controllers, mobile license plate readers, and carrier hotels. Above ground there are cell towers, microwave antennae, distributed antenna systems, wi-fi routers, E-Z Pass readers, microwave radars, shotspotters, and surveillance cameras. Illustrations of each of these devices are included so that the reader can learn to identify these devices themselves. Overall, this is a unique look at the infrastructure that we all take for granted.

Ingrid Burrington. Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2016. 102 pages. ISBN 9781612195421.

Reimagining the Academic Library, by David W. Lewis

Academic libraries have faced enormous disruption over the last 25 years. In this excellent overview of the current state of academic libraries, author David W. Lewis addresses the forces that academic libraries face, and the steps that need to be taken to address our changing circumstances. Mr. Lewis is Dean of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis University Library and Assistant Vice President of Digital Scholarly Communications, and has published extensively on this and related topics.

This book is divided into two sections; the first presents the forces facing libraries, and the second the steps needed to address those forces. According to Mr. Lewis, the forces facing academic libraries are disruption, digital documents, the changing nature of the book, the new scholarly record, the economics of information, and changing demographics of library staff. Steps that we need to take to address these forces are: defining the job, creating the library as place, retiring the legacy print collection, preserving digital content, making the money work, and working with the "smart machine."

Mr. Lewis concludes with a list of 10 things that we can do now (pp. 155-158):

• Retire the legacy print collection now
• Develop a space plan
• Have a materials budget strategy to manage the transition from traditional publishing models to open access
• Support the creation of, access to, and preservation of the scholarly content created on your campus
• Commit to the special collections your library will support and make the required investments
• Infuse the curriculum with the skills necessary to create and consume information productively
• Understand the demographics of your organization and have a plan to hire or develop the expertise the library will need
• Get the culture right
• Support the development and sustainability of network-level tools and services
• Sell the change

I found Mr. Lewis' arguments compelling, and his writing clear and cogent. There are many useful references at the end of each chapter, and the book includes a bibliography and index. I recommend this book to all academic library leaders and administrators.

David W. Lewis. Reimagining the Academic Library. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 170 pages. ISBN 978144223858.

The Productivity Project, by Chris Bailey

One of my great interests has always been productivity. I enjoy reading tips about how to be more productive, and putting them into practice in my own work. Chris Bailey, the author of The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy Better, clearly has the same bug. In fact, his ambition far exceeds my own, to the extent that he spent a year trying out different tools and methods in an effort to increase his productivity. Along the way, he documented everything in a blog: A Year of Productivity, now renamed A Life of Productivity. During the year that he worked on this project, he tried many different ways to increase his productivity, including getting up early (at 5:30 a.m.); eliminating alcohol, caffeine, and sugary drinks; meditating; working longer hours; working fewer hours; exercising; and many more. He chronicles these experiments in his blog, and pulls it all together for the book.

Chris' adventures in productivity are fun to read, but also enlightening. For those who are interested in productivity, they are inspiring and thought-provoking. Chris learned a lot about what works for him, much of which is applicable to any reader. Whether you're trying to write more, or get more done in less time, this book will give you a lot of ideas about methods that you can try to meet your goals. Even for those like me who read a lot about productivity, this book is an enjoyable exploration of the topic. It's well-written and hard to put down. It includes exercises throughout the book, as well as a notes and references section and an index.

I read The Productivity Project during a recent American Library Association conference in Orlando, Florida, keeping it in my tote bag and pulling it out during odd moments when I was waiting for a program to start or at the airport. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in increasing their productivity at work or at home. I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.

Chris Bailey. The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy. New York: Crown Business, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, 2016. 292 pages. ISBN 9781101904039.

Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries

Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries offers librarians a solid approach to begin conducting such assessment and to deliver valuable programming. In six short chapters the authors describe the five steps of the outcome-based planning and evaluation model. The steps include: gathering information, determining outcomes, designing and evaluating programs and services, and sharing the results. Particularly helpful are the appendices which include suggestions on how to conduct an environmental scan, assessing community needs, sample questions to ask during field research, and examples of questions that can be used in interviews and focus groups. Overall, this is a good introduction to outcome-based planning and evaluation. Although intended for public librarians, it would be useful for librarians in any type of library. 

Melissa Gross, Cindy Mediavilla, and Virginia A. Walter. Five Steps of Outcome-Based Planning & Evaluation for Public Libraries. ALA Editions, 2016, 102 pp., ISBN 9780838914045.

2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting; Day 2 Highlights

The second day of the 2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting included two meetings of great interest to me. The first was the LITA Publications Committee meeting. Only four committee members, including the chair, were able to attend Midwinter, so we had an abbreviated discussion of the agenda and made plans to hold a virtual meeting after we get back. The agenda included the idea that Publications Committee members could provide an additional level of review for the LITA Guides series of publication, currently published by Rowman & Littlefield. We also discussed the role of the LITA Guides Acquisitions Editor, how Information Technology and Libraries fits into the mix of LITA publications, and how the LITA blog works. Other agenda items that we were not able to address included revenue generation, executive director's reports, marketing, and new topics for LITA Guides.

The meeting that is a highlight of every Midwinter Meeting for me was the Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (CCQ) Editorial Board business meeting and dinner. We discussed topics that might be appropriate for theme issues as well as the possibility of doing a general call for submissions. Such calls are generally more successful for theme issues than for general issues. CCQ editor Sandy Roe reported that Barbara Tillett has resigned from the Board. She asked for Board members to send her suggestions for potential future members of the Board. Taylor & Francis staff reported that CCQ is the most downloaded of all of its library and information science journals with approximately 62,000 downloads in the past year. We reviewed the CCQ publishers' report, including the top 10 downloaded articles.

In addition to these two meetings, I attended two publisher presentations of new books. The first was the HarperCollins presentation of new titles for the spring; I wrote about this meeting here. The second was the AAP LibraryReads Best in Debut Authors, which I discussed here. I collected a number of advance reading copies for review. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday at conference!

2016 ALA Midwinter Meeting: Day 1 Highlights

I generally travel to both the ALA Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference on Thursdays so that I can attend the Technical Services Directors of Large Research Libraries Interest Group, otherwise known as Big Heads. They meet on Friday mornings from 8:30-11:30, and they usually have a fairly full agenda. This meeting was no exception, although as both the friend with whom I was sitting and I both noted, their agenda was particularly and surprisingly in the weeds. Here's a quick summary of the agenda and discussion.

Big Heads

The future of physical processing and the disposition of materials in relation to shared print repositories. This was a surprisingly detailed discussion about what physical processing is still done by the members' respective libraries. Member representatives shared whether their libraries continued to label, stamp, security strip, and barcode library materials. Obviously an issue that continues to resonate, but not something I expected to be discussed at this meeting.

Off-site Technical Services. Many member libraries are establishing technical services units outside of their main libraries and sometimes off campus. Member representatives discussed the challenges involved, including the shipment of materials back and forth, staff participation in library events, managers needs to go back and forth for meetings, transportation, the loss of ease in consulting with each other, and parking.

How are we sharing data in a new, distributed, collaborative environment? This item related to the metadata we're creating and maintaining in silos, as in our institutional repositories. We have the tradition of maintaining tradition metadata as MARC records in OCLC WorldCat. How are we going to pull all of the other disparate metadata together? (My suggestion: Google).

What are the impacts on technical services of collaborative collection development? As we enter into collaborative collection development agreements, how do we ensure that we can meet the terms of the agreements, e.g., the cataloging of the items in a timely manner or retention agreements. Do libraries consistently use the 583 field to record retention decisions? Do library staff look at the 583 field before they withdraw materials?

Staff Morale and Structure of Technical Services Work. This was brought up by the Stanford member representative who found that many library staff left for other jobs when Stanford made staff salaries public and library staff learned that comparable jobs outside the libraries earned much higher pay. A discussion ensued about how to retain library staff: flex-time, more cross-training, etc.

A sustainable/consistent model for vendor records. Vendor records, again! We maintain high standards for some vendors, while with others we'll take anything (just to have something). Do we need to maintain consistency. General consensus: this ship has sailed.

BIBFRAME update and Linked Data for Production grant. Several of the libraries shared their work on a variety of BF projects. Better summarized elsewhere.

Update on the CIC Cooperative Cataloging Pilot. The University of Chicago has been a leader in a CIC project to share cataloging expertise across institutions. Their final report has been completed but not distributed pending a discussion by the CIC library directors group in May. 

ALCTS Executive Board I

As ALCTS News Editor I'm an ex-officio member of four ALCTS committees, including the Executive Board which meets for a total of 8 1/2 hours during each conference: four hours on Friday afternoon and 4 1/2 hours on Monday afternoon. This is where much of the business of the Division takes place. The Board votes on a consent agenda, meaning the they ratify in person all the votes taken electronically as well as documents that are submitted by key committee chairs. They include budget documents from Budget and Finance, the LRTS Editor report, the 2016 election slate, and more.

We had a visit from the ALA Treasurer candidate, Susan Hildreth, (the only candidate as the other one withdrew). The ALCTS past-president, president, president-elect, and ALA Councilor all give brief reports. This was followed by discussion items, which is generally the real meat of the agenda. This time the discussion items included the Program Coordinating Committee report and plans to maintain a database of ALCTS programming activity; a review of progress on the strategic plan; a suggestion to form an ALCTS mentoring program; and plans to conduct a membership survey. For the first time in my experience with the ALCTS Board, we ended a little early, getting out by 4:15 or so.

Exhibits Opening

The Midwinter Meeting exhibits opened at 5:30, with hordes of librarians surging down the aisles looking for freebies, advance reading copies, tote bags, snacks, and free drinks. I visited some of my favorite publishers, including HarperCollins, where I got a copy of Louise Erdrich's LaRose. This was especially exciting because I just read her Tracks in December and brought along The Antelope Wife for this trip. I also got Sunil Yapa's Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, which has been getting a lot of pre-pub attention. After about 15-20 minutes of the exhibits I had a bag full of books and I decided to leave before I started on another bag!