Upcoming meeting and photography opening at NaUKMA

The English Speaking Librarians Club of Kyiv will meet March 3rd at the American Library of National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA) at 4:30pm to discuss electronic resources such as eJournals, eBooks, eVideo, and Federated Searching.

Following the meeting will be an opening for my photograph exhibit to take place also at the American Library. The exhibit will feature a selection of my photographs taken while in Ukraine as a Fulbrighter. The title of the exhibit is Ukraine through the eyes of an American Fulbrighter. "Україна очима американської фулбрайтерки". The photograph to the left is a close-up of the Babi Yar monument.

3 березня о 16.30 в Американській бібліотеці НаУКМА відбудеться чергове засідання Англомовного бібліотечного клубу, що вже понад 10 років збирає на фахові англомовні зустрічі бібліотекарів, інформаційних працівників М.Києва та України. Тема засідання: «Цифрові бібліотеки». Стипендіат Програми академічних обмінів ім.Фулбрайта п.Сьюзен Бенц, що перебуває в 2007-2008 н.р. в НаУКМА представить цифрову колекцію Бруклінської публічної бібліотеки. По закінченні засідання – орієнтовно о 18-00 запрошуємо на урочисте відкриття виставки фоторобіт Сьюзен Бенц. Представлені світлини, зроблені п. Сьюзен з її поїздок Україною.

Планування та управління проектами з оцифровки

Today and yesterday I gave presentations on Planning and Managing Digitzation Projects (part 1 and part 2) as part of a 3 day digitization workshop held at the Ivan Fedorov Book Chamber of Ukraine, State Research Institution. Thank you to Galyna Gutsol for arranging the workshop and to Валерий Гостинщиков (Val) for translating simultaneously from English to Ukrainian. We had an interesting discussion and to my pleasure the audience of mainly librarians asked some very thoughtful and interesting questions including:

• What is the best resolution at which to scan?


• Is it okay to represent sponsors on your web site?


• How does an instution who has digitized collections deal with every changing technology?


• What is Dublin Core and how is it different from MARC?


• Why produce TIFF files instead of just JPEGs or other compressed files?


• How difficult is it to get Greenstone up and running (of special interest since it offers Russian and Ukrainian interfaces and help instructions)?

After the workshop at Book Chamber I came to the American Library to facilitate an English conversation group. This was a group of about 10 students, professors and local professionals who enjoy practicing their language skills. We started with the topic of gender roles but then went off on tagents about food and American culture in general. There were some amusing comments and questions. For example one man was convinced that we have very few soups in America (soup is a vital part of a typical Ukrainian meal). When I gave the example of clam chowder he thought it sounded like a strange concoction and was suspicious as to whether or not it is tasty. When talking about gender roles and feminism, one man spoke about the role of the woman in soviet society. The situation here during the 1970s was very different from America. It was also interesting to hear from the undergraduate women in the group. They said that they find their university peers to be a mix of tradionalists and non-traditionalists in relation to sex roles.

Оцифровування історичних газет

Today I gave a presentation on Historic Newspaper Digitization (Оцифровування історичних газет) to an audience of about 25 librarians. This was part of a 3 day workshop held at the Ivan Fedorov Book Chamber of Ukraine, State Research Institution. Thank you to Валерий Гостинщиков (Val) for translating simultaneously from English to Ukrainian.

The presentation was broken down into the following topics:
-- Imaging -- Створення зображення
-- Scanning from microfilm vs. paper -- Сканування з мікрофільмів та/або з паперу- за і проти
-- Scanners -- Сканери
-- Image files formats -- Формати файлів
-- OCR Optical Character Recognition and Re-keying -- OCR(оптичне розпізнавання тексту) та набір (друкування)
-- Zoning and Segmentation -- Поділ на зони та сегментування
-- Metadata and Search-ability -- Метадані та пошукова зручність
-- Web presentation -- Веб презентація
-- Examples -- Приклади

Librarian is one of the best careers of 2008!

U.S. News & World Report says: “Librarians these days must be high-tech information sleuths, helping researchers plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records. It’s an underrated career...On top of it all, librarians' work hours are reasonable.”

The Importance of Mentoring Library and Information Science Students

I've been thinking about the importance of mentoring Library and Information Science students so I've written an article for Ukrainian audiences which I hope to have published in one of the library journals here. Below is a small taste of what I have on my mind.

Mentoring is an important part of American librarianship. Librarians with years of experience are sharing knowledge with Library and Information Science (LIS) students and thereby enriching their education. Students by working closely with these mentors are in turn gaining real world experience which makes them more valuable and employable upon graduation. In order to match protégés with their mentors a close collaboration between library educators and librarians is necessary. This collaboration can help ensure that LIS education meets the needs of the profession.

It is no secret that the field of Library and Information Science has been significantly impacted by ever changing technologies and service trends. With this in mind a major question is how do students keep up with these new developments? Students need to be exposed to real life applications of what is being discussed in their classrooms. And conversely how can library educators stay in touch with new developments in the field? Faculty can gain from practitioner experiences since faculty members need to refresh their curricula in order to remain relevant.

In fact, learning through experience is a top priority set forward by current American Library Association (ALA) president Dr. Loriene Roy. Dr. Roy is an accomplished educator and is currently a professor of Library & Information Science at The University of Texas at Austin. She has set up a number of ALA task forces including the Supporting Library &Information Science Education through Practice Task Force.

Librarians must be proactive and seek such opportunities if they do not present themselves naturally. It might be necessary to contact library educators and ask to be involved. LIS educators and administrators should be proactive by forging close relations with leaders in the professional community and seeking guest lecturers and internship placements for students. All parties involved stand to benefit.

Upcoming workshop!

Next week I will be teaching a 3 day workshop to be held at the Ivan Fedorov Book Chamber of Ukraine, State Research Institution.

Translation services will be provided.

The schedule is:
February 20th from 10am-1pm digitizing historic newspaper
February 21st from 10am-1pm planning and managing digitization projects
February 22nd from 10am –1pm planning and managing digitization projects continued

The workshop is open to librarians and archivists interested in digitization.

On the mend...

I've been quiet the last couple of days because I’ve been sick with bronchitis. Here’s what my doctor has prescribed for me. Have you ever seen such a pile of meds? I should be back working in the American Library soon.

English Speaking Librarians Club

I want to say thank you to everyone that came out tonight to the English Speaking Librarians Club. It was also a pleasure to have a few non-librarians join us as well since their perspective is important. We had a very interesting discussion about challenges facing libraries in Ukraine today. Among the chief concerns discussed this evening were the following:

• The ever increasing price of materials and especially foreign language materials
• Lack of budget/funding (for materials, for training, etc.)
• Poor facilities (buildings and surrounding areas)
• Copyright – unclear and restrictive in the area of what can be placed online, for example rare illustrated children’s books from the 1920s
• Training for librarians especially in the area of technology
• Library education and the lack of students entering this discipline
• Limited patron access to the Internet
• Lack of government support

We also talked about the American Library Association’s Advocacy website and printed articles that suggested hints for arguing for larger budgets.

It was a constructive conversation and opened up further discussion among colleagues about how their own situations were similar or differed from each other.