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| The Newsletter of the Virginia Chapter of SLA | Fall 2007, Volume 38, Number 2 |
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President's Message I have been given the amazing opportunity to sail around the world as the librarian for the Semester at Sea voyage this fall. Some of you may recall that we had a previous Semester at Sea librarian, Barbie Selby, talk to us about the experience. It has been a wake-up call regarding the delivery of services and resources that we offer on-line. At the University of Virginia library, we have the money, technology and personnel to be creative and innovative with our resources (except when we are in the middle of budget cuts). As a result, much of what we offer to the university community is on-line in response to demand from faculty and students. On the ship, we don’t have that luxury. The internet service is costly to the students, very slow and unreliable. As a result, we are forced to be creative in how we deliver the resources and services to the 750 students that we serve. It means a return to a library that is 75% dependent on books. In the ten years that I have been a librarian, I have never had to depend so heavily on this particular resource. As I write this, it strikes me as being very odd. I am a librarian who has not had to be dependent upon books in order to serve my patrons. In the month that I have been the librarian at sea, I think that being the librarian for this voyage is the best thing that could have happened to me as a professional. Not because I am seeing so many countries and having amazing experiences but because I am learning skills that force me to think outside of the box – the computer box. I have to confess though that I can not keep myself from trying to find new ways to present information to the students on-line. We created a blog in the library that is free to them and provides information on databases, books in the library and travel tips. Check it out at www.infospaistheplacetobe.blogspot.com. Note: our library student employees have renamed the library on the ship to the “Information Spa” because it is located in the former bar hence the name in the blog address. I have also been writing a blog about my experiences although it focuses more on my personal experiences and not my professional ones. You are welcomed to read it at www.soulesearching.blogspot.com. VASLA Program on Information Sharing, December 17, 2008, presented by Cyril Oberlander, Director of Interlibrary Services at the University of Virginia Library. Interlibrary Services consists of five units; ILL borrowing, Instructional Scanning Services, Ivy shelving facility, Lending/Retrieval, and LEO (faculty departmental document delivery services). Prior to moving to Charlottesville, Cyril was the Head of Interlibrary Loan at Portland State University from 1996-2005. His background includes extensive experience in Access Services. Cyril is also an independent consultant to libraries through OCLC Western. His research interests include: resource sharing, workflow design, mobile technology, information visualization, knowledge systems, and organizational development. Cyril has presented at numerous conferences and is recognized internationally as a thought leader in the area of resource sharing. The VASLA annual meeting with be held in conjunction with the program. Questions: Contact Karen King at 434-924-7271 or kingk@darden.virginia.eduSARC4@2008, February 28 – 29, 2008 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Surreal Landscape: Information Professionals Mastering the Challenges of Time & Space. Co-chairs for this event are Cynthia Barrancotto (cbarrancotto@accesssciences.com) and Sharon Schwerzel (sschwerz@mailer.fsu.edu). Visit site: http://units.sla.org/regconf/sarc4/ Fall Program Summary Web 2.0 – anywhere and everywhere you go in Library Land, you hear about it. Some people are already talking about Web 3.0! But what is Web 2.0, and how can we, as special librarians, adapt it to our own uses? Jill Stover and Susan Teague Rector, both librarians and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Cabell Library, shared their views of Web 2.0, and how they are implementing it in the professional lives. In just over 2 hours, they showed us the basics of Blogs, RSS, Wikis, and several social networking sites. If you missed the event, or would like to check out some of the links demoed during the presentation, the slides are available at http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jsstover/vasla0907.ppt After the presentation, Jill and Susan created a wiki for VASLA. You can view the wiki at http://vasla.pbwiki.com. The password for editing the wiki was sent to you via email if you attended the event; if you did not attend the event, please contact Megan Nunemaker for the password. Jill reminds us, “Don't be shy about adding your own thoughts and materials! You can't ‘break’ the wiki. It's pretty much like editing a Word document, so this is a risk-free way to experiment with wikis and their potential applications.” Are you ready to implement some Web 2.0 technologies in your library? Have you already done so? We’d love to hear from you, and include your ideas in a future newsletter. Soule Searching: an Excerpt from Kathy Soule's Travel Blog THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2007 We pulled into the Thai port of Laem Chabang at 8:00 this morning. I looked out the window long enough to decide that the scenery was less important than my cozy bed and tried to go back to sleep. We had been warned that clearing customs would take forever and not to rush to get ready so I heeded their advice. I discovered that going back to sleep was futile so I decided to take advantage of faster internet service and check my e-mails. I'm finding that the umbilical cord between me and my computer is a strong one that is difficult to cut. I'm glad I'm not like this with the phone too. Around 11:30 customs had still not cleared us so I wandered into the dining hall to get some lunch. Finally at 1:00 my tour to the elephant village was called even though customs was still doing their paperwork. I later heard that the customs officials had taken a lunch break and then wanted to do some shopping in the ship's store before resuming their paperwork. If the students had known about this there would have been a riot. So many of them had plane reservations out of Bangkok which is a three hour drive from the port. Many of them were in danger of missing their plane.
But as I was saying, my tour to the elephant village was called at 1:00. We loaded onto the buses and made a 1/2 hour journey to the city of Pattaya where the village was located. We pulled into the area and made our way to the picnic area. We could see glimpses of the elephants and we started to get excited. The manager of the elephant village greeted us and then drummers emerged from a pavilion to guide us to the elephant area. A long line of elephants were there to greet us with their masters on their backs. They are such impressive animals.
I finally got situated on the elephant and clutched at her head After that bit of fun, we sat back down in the grandstand and saw a show about how elephants used to be used in Thailand when they were clearing the forests. It was a fascinating show but everyone wanted another ride. After the MC was done with his show, we went back over to the docking station and paired up for a ride on the elephants with a bench seat this time. It was wild! There was so much rocking that we grabbed for the railing that was placed in front of us and held on for dear life. That was the conclusion of our time in the elephant village. We were given the opportunity to buy our official photos for $10 complete with a frame which I did. We got back onto the bus for a very quick ride back to the port. This has been an amazing day that I will remember for a long time. I got to ride an elephant! |
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The MC for the afternoon greeted us and gave us some time to feed the elephants bunches of bananas. After that, he asked who would like to go for a bath with the elephants. About seven brave souls (not soules) volunteered and climbed onto the elephants' backs and lumbered off to the swimming hole. The masters commanded the elephants to submerge themselves in the water at which point the students got totally wet. They were clinging to the elephants head for dear life and shrieking quite loudly. I'm was so happy that I had declined this opportunity when I saw the elephant dung floating on the water as they dunked themselves. Ick to the nth degree.
After everybody returned to the main elephant area, we had the opportunity to ride the elephants "bare back" without the seats that we would use later. I decided that this was the time to participate and when an elephant was available approached her with great determination. Two men were standing by her side ready to help me on to the great beast. She was kneeling for me and I stepped on her leg as instructed and slung my leg way up over her back. I just barely got my leg over when she started to get up. Jumping Jehoshaphat! The men started pushing me up the rest of the way and the master sitting on the elephant grabbed the back of my shorts and started pulling. I got the wedgie to end all wedgies but I was on that animal! My friends got pictures of this debacle and you can see that the men were finding this very amusing. So I was for that matter.
- as if you can actually clutch something as big as an elephant's head. I managed to pull myself together in time for the official photograph and actually looked like I knew what I was doing which was such a farce. We made a circle around the grandstand and returned to the docking station which is level with an elephant when they are standing. I dismounted with much more grace and dignity than when I mounted.
We took a walk around a pasture with all the other riders and then, after 10 minutes or so, went back to the docking station to disembark. We all had huge smiles on our faces as we got off. It was so much fun.