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| April 2007 |
HAVERFORD COLLEGE |
No. 5 |
Table of Contents
From the Director
by Bob Kieft
In my long-gone younger days as a library assistant,
a librarian who was fond of playing the roles of Chief Skeptic
of the Administration and Scourge of Management, roles familiar
to all cast members of the comedy of academic life, posted a quotation
on our department bulletin board. Ascribed generally but, it seems,
erroneously to Petronius <http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/petronius.html>,
I still have it: "We'd trained hard, but it seemed that every
time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized.
I was to learn later in life we tend to meet any new situation
by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating
the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency,
and demoralization."
Now that I am later in life, and especially now
that, as Administration and Management, I am charged with thinking
about matters of (re)organization and deployment of resources,
“Petronius’” statement sounds not only a cautionary
note in my ear but also an invitation to treat this view skeptically.
Yes, people and their ambitions, talents, and hard work matter
more than the organization chart, but we also know that people
are hierarchical and territorial creatures and develop or insist
upon certain understandings of their place among other such creatures.
Having assumed administrative responsibility for
the departments of Academic Computing and Networking and Systems
in the summer of 2004 with the new title Director of College Information
Resources (CIR), I was asked this last summer to assume responsibility
for Administrative Computing as well. The President's request
that I do so was accompanied by a mandate to develop an information
organization that would present a single service face to the campus
community, that is, one that did not distinguish users by their
place in the organization chart as, if nothing else, the names
Academic and Administrative Computing suggest we had done.
This request that we review our operations and staffing
patterns and build a different service organization makes sense
on several grounds. Every organization needs periods of self-evaluation
and change in order to stay healthy, but the foremost reason for
CIR to engage in this change process is the convergence of many
College activities and interests on information technologies.
Our network infrastructure affects everyone, our administrative
data serve the Business Office and faculty alike, and our staff
provide desktop support for all campus users. Library work is
becoming increasingly technologically oriented in terms both of
the materials we purchase or subscribe to and the means by which
our users search for, discover, and access them. Our increasingly
electronic library involves more movement of data among systems
and requires storage space and delivery means for digital materials;
collecting the digitized records and other electronic output of
the College poses the same challenges for library staff as the
storage and ongoing access to College business records and course
materials.
Processes of substantial reorganization are time
consuming and must be done carefully both to prevent service interruptions
and to create a stronger new structure. Unlike the corporate world
in which such changes are decreed and in keeping with Haverford
traditions of respect for the individual, we are taking a deliberate
approach to developing our unified department. In addition to
regular meetings of departments heads, in October we held a meeting
of all CIR staff to sketch the parameters of our program review
process. In February, we held a retreat to deepen discussion and
to begin to define the areas in which we would launch our process
of integration. Facilitated by Haverford HR staff and a colleague
from Bryn Mawr, this planning retreat was especially useful to
us because we invited colleagues Joel Cooper, Director of Information
Technology Services at Carleton College, Justin Sipher, Chief
Technology Officer at Skidmore College, and Gene Spencer, CIO
at Bucknell, to talk about how their information organizations
work, about their departments' goals, and about how their experience
might inform our own planning.
In addition to internal discussion and the work groups that emerged
from the retreat, we will be looking for clues to our future in
a consultant's report Tom Tritton commissioned to assess our administrative
data systems and in an opinion survey about satisfaction with
library and computing services. We will use the results of the
opinion survey to identify areas we need to strengthen, and, with
the help of a consultant, we will study how best to organize staff
to deliver information services to the campus. The current project
to redesign and upgrade the College's website is also placing
CIR staff in new relationships to staff from other departments
of the College and to each other; the work groups developing around
this project will also help us to rethink our basic services and
working relationships.
The forms in which information is being created
and published and the technologies for its delivery and storage,
together with new legal, social, pedagogical, and cultural issues
around its use, confront CIR with a manifold of changes and challenges
to work with. Over the coming months and years, our staff will
develop an efficient and orderly, integrated service program to
meet those challenges and, with the support of others in the College,
will help the campus adjust to and take advantage of these changes.
-Bob Kieft is Director of College
Information Resources & Librarian of the College
Research Boot Camp
by Margaret Schaus and Dora Wong
During this academic year, librarians at Haverford
have had the chance to work with high school students, introducing
them to the more complex work that they will encounter in college.
In Fall 2006, Haverford College’s Gilbert
Fowler White Science Library staff worked with students and faculty
from Friends’ Central School on an interdisciplinary research
project. This project emphasized “real-world” learning
by engaging students in a topic with environmental and nutritional
implications, not only in the developing world, but also in industrialized
countries.
The research topic was an aquatic plant named “duckweed.”
Owing to its ability to grow in water heavily polluted by fertilizers
and high protein content, duckweed forms an important link in
the agricultural nutritional chain as feed for animals in traditional
farming in Asia. Dr. Phyllis Gallagher, the teacher of the Chemistry
II Advanced class, and Dora Wong, science librarian, met more
than a week prior to the scheduled visit to discuss the research
and information literacy questions that the students had posed.
This meeting allowed time for preparation of a customized course
guide <http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/guides/Chemistry/306/>
and to have supporting materials on hand. Upon arrival of the
class of eight students, the teacher and the school librarian,
we had a review session on the usage of online databases, how
to evaluate the types of information sources students would most
likely encounter and where to find government and NGO-type information
that tend to be obscure and diffuse. A packet of handouts (web
evaluation form, PubMed search guides, general chart of search
engine comparison, tripod search guide, info flow diagram) was
also provided for their convenience. Students had the opportunity
to do hands-on searches on chemistry and full-text journal databases
on laptops set up especially for this occasion. After some searching,
they had lunch at the newly renovated Coop and concluded their
visit at 2:00pm.
During winter break Magill Library played host to
senior English classes from Malvern Preparatory School along with
their teachers and high school librarian. They came to learn about
the work expected of Haverford students and to spend an afternoon
doing research in a college library for their English term papers.
Each class had a research web page, an introduction to library
facilities, and an opportunity to talk to a reference librarian
individually.
In February reference librarian Margaret Schaus participated in
“What College Freshmen Need to Know,” a panel discussion
sponsored by the Chester County Librarian Forum. Other panel members
came from Delaware County Community College, Saint Joseph’s
University, Ursinus College, Villanova University, and West Chester
University. Panelists discussed questions submitted to them earlier
and then took additional questions from the audience of mostly
high school librarians. The group was interested in what entering
freshman should know about research and writing term papers. They
also wanted to know what professors expected from freshman during
the first year and how actively they guided first year student
research. Panelists also discussed issues involving Wikipedia,
copyright, plagiarism, online indexes, and scholarly journals.
Haverford Library staff welcomes the opportunity
to work with high school students and get to know their interests
and concerns. High school teachers and librarians also give us
an important insight into the issues and pressures affecting many
schools from which our Haverford students come.
-Margaret Schaus is Reference
Librarian & Bibliographer
-Dora Wong is Science Librarian
Teaching Effectively With Technology
by E. Jeffrey White
What response would students have to slide number
397 of a PowerPoint presentation? They would probably react the
same way as a viewer in Dilbert (Scott Adams’ famous office
cartoon) reacted: By collapsing as a result of PowerPoint Poisoning.
Whether it’s too many slides, too much eye candy in the
form of flashy transitions and animations, or endless one-liners
that have dumbed-down the content, the thought of watching yet
another PowerPoint presentation by a professor is not appealing
to most students. Nevertheless, presentation software, especially
PowerPoint, is one of the first items on any list intended to
enrich teaching with technology. Unfortunately, this form of technology
is often used as no more than a modern slide projector.
But not in Wendy Sternberg’s classes. Sternberg,
Associate Professor of Psychology and Department Chair, has taken
the medium of PowerPoint (that is, a projected visual) and combined
it with a tablet computer to transform her class into an engaging
learning environment. Professor Sternberg begins her lectures
with a blank PowerPoint (PP) slideshow on her tablet computer,
projected onto the screen at the front of the classroom. Using
the built-in tablet software and a stylus, she draws and writes
her notes on the slides. Because the computer is connected to
a projector, the students see all of the professor’s notes
as they appear on the screen. While this is not much different
than writing on a chalkboard, Professor Sternberg takes it a step
further. She saves the slides as a PDF and posts it to her Blackboard
course for the students to access outside of class. Furthermore,
as part of many classes, she prepares a number of PowerPoint slides
that she can annotate during class. These are also included with
the notes file and posted to Blackboard. Professor Sternberg says
that the graphic capabilities of the tablet computer allow her
to interact with her diagrams and charts and flesh them out while
the students participate in a way that could not be done with
PowerPoint on a traditional computer. Moreover, there is the added
bonus of capturing everything she writes so that there is a record
of the class discussion. Students seem to enjoy the break from
the traditional linear approach of PowerPoint-based lectures.
Associate Professor Wendy Sternberg
For one of her assignments, Professor Sternberg
takes an idea from the “Biography of an Experiment”
project <http://www.haverford.edu/KINSC/Biography>, originally
funded by the Beckman Foundation, and puts her own spin on it.
She posts a paper or article in PDF format on Blackboard for students
to download and provide a reaction. Rather than requiring the
students to produce a written, linear response, the students are
asked to create a rich critique to the readings by adding text
and hyperlinks to external documents and websites using Adobe
Acrobat Professional. This allows students to draw upon creative
and artistic talents, and helps them to unleash their thinking
in a way not constrained by linear assignments, such as written
papers. But more than that, Professor Sternberg feels that “the
true value of the assignment lies in the contextualization that
is encouraged by the medium. That is, students can highlight specific
issues of interest to them in the paper, and delve deeper, in
layers, through text and hyperlinks.” Response to the assignments
has been enthusiastic, and students appreciate the opportunities
this approach gives them in their learning.
Neither of these approaches to teaching with technology
is radical, nor do they require an elite set of skills to implement.
However, with a little imagination and careful planning, Professor
Sternberg has been able to take everyday technology and use it
to accomplish extraordinary learning.
-E. Jeffrey White is Academic
Computing Desktop and Instructional Support Specialist
Art Song at the Union Music Library
by Michelle Oswell
Haverford’s Music Library contains over 30,000
scores and 3,700 CDs and among these is a significant collection
of art song scores and recordings. From the classics of the repertoire,
there are editions of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Edvard
Grieg, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf Lieder in high
and low voice. Recent acquisitions include scores such as Benjamin
Britten’s Complete Folksong Arrangements, the Kurt
Weill Centennial Anthology, collections of Jean Sibelius’
art songs for voice and piano, and works from lesser-known composers
like Ture Rangström, John Duke, Erich Korngold, and Richard
Hundley.
For the patron looking for recordings, Haverford’s collection
includes CDs from performers like Jessye Norman and Christa Ludwig.
In addition, there are large collections of art song recordings
such as Hyperion Records’ 40-disc The Complete Songs
of Franz Schubert with Graham Johnson on piano, and the Fischer-Dieskau
Edition, produced by Deutsche Grammophon. The Fischer-Dieskau
set, 21 discs in all, encompasses a wide range of song styles
including Lieder, folk song, cantatas, and operatic arias,
and features not only the talents of a leader in art song performance,
but also such instrumentalists as Daniel Barenboim and Sviatoslav
Richter.
To help the student of song understand the texts she is singing,
the Music Library’s reference collection includes The
Book of Lieder: The Original Text of Over 1000 Songs, compiled
and translated by Richard Stokes, and the complete texts to Franz
Schubert’s Lieder, a supplement to the Complete
Songs set produced by Hyperion Records. Song: A Guide
to Art Song Style and Literature (Hal Leonard, 2006) by Carol
Kimball, provides the researcher with excellent background and
bibliographical information on style arranged by country.
Stop by Union and check out these and other sources for art song
in the Music Library.
-Michelle Oswell is Humanities
Librarian for Music and Literature
New Training Classes Offered
by Jennifer Grant
Administrative Computing is continuing to expand
its user support via new training classes and a growing list of
online help pages.
Jennifer Grant, Applications Support Specialist for Administrative
Computing, has been offering computer training classes since October,
and the online training schedule <http://www.haverford.edu/admcomp/trainingschedule>
is currently posted through April 2007. Sessions are around two
hours long, and classes are being offered on the following software
packages:
See the online training schedule to sign up or obtain more information.
Additionally, the Administrative Computing website now includes
a continually increasing number of help pages available at <http://www.haverford.edu/admcomp/helppages/>.
These pages provide tips and how-to’s for using common software
applications, such as creating flowcharts in Microsoft Office,
coloring alternate rows of data in Excel, setting favorite proxies
in MeetingMaker, and more.
If you’d like to receive an email announcement each time
new classes are posted or you have a suggestion for a new help
page, please send an email to <jgrant@haverford.edu>.
-Jennifer Grant is Applications
Support Specialist
Bioinformatics: New Tools for Learning
by Dora Wong
In June 2006, I attended a three-day workshop on
bioinformatics to learn about Entrez, a vast integrated gateway
to biomedical information maintained by NCBI (National Center
for Biotechnology Information). NCBI was established in 1988 by
the National Institutes of Health to create transparent access
to public biomedical databases. Bioinformatics is the convergence
of molecular biology, computational methods and communication
science.
At the most basic level, a Haverford College non-science major
taking a college writing course with an emphasis on inheritance
of genetic diseases can search Entrez PubMed to understand congenital
metabolic disorders. A student conducting research on molecular
biology based on first principles will also gain an appreciation
for the treatment.
Entrez can be traversed from any number of starting points such
as BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool). BLAST is a tool
for the identification of local similarity between nucleotide
or amino acid sequences. In Biology 300, students worked with
transposons (jumping genes) to disrupt the gene that codes for
patterns of adhesion to infected cells. After isolating individual
strains that exhibit signs of disruption to the adhesion genes
by transposons, the DNA sequence around the site of transposon
insertion was sequenced. “BLAST analyses permitted our students
to understand the potential significance of the sequence their
transposon had disrupted, opening a window into the molecular
basis of infection,” explained Professor Karl Johnson.
To find out more about the many tools accessible through Entrez,
follow the course outline at <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/MLACourse/>.
--Dora Wong is Science Librarian
The author wishes to thank Professor
Karl Johnson, Professor Phil Meneely, Professor Iruka Okeke and
Liz Meeks ‘08 for their helpful feedback on BLAST.
Staff News and Notes
Compiled by Mike Persick
John Anderies, Coordinator for
Special & Digital Collections, attended the Mid-Atlantic Innovative
Users Group (MAIUG) meeting in Philadelphia and the Atlantic Chapter
meeting of the Music Library Association (ATMLA) at the University
of Pennsylvania, both in October. In February/March he attended
the joint Music Library Association- Society for American Music
meeting in Pittsburgh.
Douglas Davis, Programmer/Analyst,
and Betsy Griffith-Smith, Acquisitions Specialist,
are currently sitting on a committee known as the “Quaker
Vision Task Force,” which has been asked by outgoing President
Tom Tritton to “consider how to enhance, extend, and re-imagine
Haverford’s Quaker heritage and impact” and to consider
“what it means to be a Quaker College in the 21st Century.”
The committee is comprised of three current students, three faculty
members, three staff members, and members of The Corporation of
Haverford College. The committee intends to make recommendations
to incoming College President Stephen G. Emerson, the Board, and
the Corporation on what role Quakerism can play in the future
of Haverford College.
Douglas is also on the information architecture
(IA) working group of the College Website Redesign Committee.
The IA group is working with White Whale, the company redesigning
the College’s website, and Jennifer Patton (Marketing and
Communications) to develop a plan for the content, navigation
and organization of the new website. The working group is convened
by Mary Lynn Morris Kennedy (Library) and includes
Barbara Mindell (Academic Computing), David
Moore (Provost's Office), Sarah Gray and
Joe Cammisa (both from Networking).
In recent months, Emma Lapsansky-Werner,
Curator of the Quaker Collection, has given several workshops
for Philadelphia and Los Angeles public school teachers on using
primary sources in the classroom. Emma has also recently done
a workshop/lecture on Quaker family life in early Pennsylvania
for the Rural History Conference. Lastly, on February 21, she
became the grandmother of her first grandchild, Minerva June Aldous.
Norm Medeiros, Associate Librarian
of the College & Coordinator for Bibliographic and Digital
Services, was an invited speaker at the 26th Annual Charleston
Conference held November 2006 in Charleston, SC. Norm's talk,
“Tracking Elusive Prey: Managing Electronic Resources with
ERMS,” described challenges to commercial electronic resource
management system implementation. At the American Library Association’s
Midwinter Meeting held January 2007 in Seattle, Norm presented
work he has been leading as a member of the Digital Library Federation’s
Electronic Resource Management Initiative. Norm’s subcommittee
is studying the feasibility of data exchange between integrated
library system acquisitions modules and electronic resource management
systems.
In March, Michelle Oswell, Humanities
Librarian for Music and Literature, attended the Music Library
Association conference in Pittsburgh, PA, where she was awarded
the Walter Gerboth award. The award will help fund the development
of an online database for scholars of English lute songs.
-Mike Persick is Acquisitions Librarian
& Assistant Catalog Librarian
