Reporting to the Director for Resource Management, the Metadata Librarian focuses on the creation and maintenance of metadata representing Lane’s digital, physical, and virtual collections of resources (ca. 350K records) in conjunction with other Resource Management staff.  This position provides metadata management expertise and procedural/workflow stability while monitoring external developments and changing needs to assess and anticipate needed changes and enhancements.  While cognizant of established practice and the necessity of maintaining data coherence, s/he investigates and applies new technologies and approaches to support novel applications in the broader context of Lane’s digital and programmatic initiatives.

With an emphasis on integration and relationships, Lane’s metadata dept. endeavors to go beyond traditional cataloging.  Examples include: driving web interfaces with derived data subsets updated at frequent intervals; integration of cataloging and indexing data; building records from extracted data sets; linking serials to impact factor graphs, creating relationship authorities and using authorities as the basis for a biomedical infobase of local, important, and historical people, places, organizations, events, etc.; expanding MeSH to include more popular terminology, acronyms/initialisms, eponyms, etc. with automated annual overlays.

We are seeking dynamic candidates with potential to enhance our efforts to provide creative solutions while maintaining a tradition of excellence.  The position works closely with other staff to influence and achieve our collective goals in support of the School’s research, clinical and educational mission.

This is an 80% FTE position. Please see link for full details and to apply for this position.

Requires

• MLS/MLIS from an ALA Accredited institution or equivalent
• Five plus years of progressively responsible librarian administrative experience in an academic library
• Vision and capability to refine and develop the library of the future
• Proven library management, budgetary and strategic planning and analytical skills
• Reference experience using databases and other print and online sources
• Teaching or training experience
• Supervisory/management skills for 5 FTE positions
• Clear understanding of the evolving role of the academic library in a time of complex transition in the technologies of scholarly knowledge
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Ability to exhibit strong customer service orientation for all levels of college constituencies and members of the public

For more information, visit the Mills College website job description at: http://tinyurl.com/yb5vu78

AIM Representative, Deb Hunt, is handling the recruitment and all inquiries. For more information, contact Deb at dhunt@aimusa.com or call 510-347-5505.

How did you become a high school librarian?
My early career was in a public library as a children’s librarian and then as young adult librarian. I moved on to become a Branch Librarian but knew working with teens was what I really enjoyed.When I heard about the position at Moreau Catholic High School I was attracted to the idea of having a captive audience of teens. What I soon learned was that I would have three categories of patrons – students, teachers, and administration each with different needs. Also the idea of a school schedule with a long summer break was very attractive to me as the mother of a two year old.

Librarian Susan Geiger

How has technology impacted your role as a school librarian?
The library team’s role has changed as the school embraced technology. We are first-line tech support for over 900 students and their laptops. As the only information professional in the school, it’s my job to keep teachers and administrators aware of current research, curriculum trends, and useful web tools.  My Twitter stream, blog reader, and social networks are composed almost entirely of library, education, and educational technology sources.

My staff and I do a lot of instructional and technical support for teachers. They come to us with an idea or a lesson plan, and we try to find the best technology and resources to support their learning objectives. In the process we provide information literacy instruction to their students. We create digital pathfinders using LibGuides software that allows us to embed RSS feeds, video and other media.  We do presentations on Digital parenting to help our parents understand and work with their digital native children.

One of the biggest changes I have seen since becoming a laptop school is the transformation of the library into a production space.  Students use our conference room to record voice-overs and to edit video, and it’s common to find kids filming all over the library. We have 3 flat screen TVs in the library that screen MCTV, our student run, digital TV station. We also use the TVs to run new book promotions that we create in powerpoint, save as jpgs and play as slide shows.  We have two drop down LCD screens in the main seating area that students use to give presentations. Recently the library hosted a Skype conference for an AP Government class with an alumna, Rosie Rios, the US Treasurer.

The library is a very popular place on our campus.  Students come to check out books, flash drives, headphones, and video cameras. They use our tables to work in groups, and our power outlets to charge their laptops . They ask for help in person, by chat, and even by email. They become fans on our Facebook page. The students see the library as a learning commons.

Lunch hour in the Moreau Catholic High School Library

What school projects you’ve done that you’re the most proud of?
When my school was three years into our roll out as a 1:1 laptop school, it became obvious to me that our faculty needed to become more comfortable using their laptops.  My staff and I led a “23 Things” web 2.0 staff development program using the CSLA 23 Things Classroom Learning program as a model. The program was pretty successful because we did a lot of marketing and had great support from our administration. The incentive to sign up for the 9-week program was that the participants were allowed to wear jeans every Friday. We designed a black t-shirt with the school logo and the legend, “23 Things for 21st century Learners.” Our school has a dress code and wearing jeans is a big deal.

We made a promotional video featuring teachers and administrators to introduce 23 Things and an Animoto video of the first people to sign up and create blogs.  Seventy-seven administrators, teachers and staff signed up. Every Friday was Tech Friday when my staff and I provided personal assistance and treats.  By going into the offices and classrooms of people setting up blogs and using various web tools we provided, “Roadside Assistance”.  In the process we forged a lot of personal relationships, taught a lot of people how to use their toolbar menu, and established the library as a “go to” place for technical assistance.

What was the most memorable experience you had as a librarian?
Three years , prepare for a library remodel and expansion, I moved my entire library into four storage rooms and two classrooms.  I planned the move on graph paper and had the book collection measured down to the inch on spreadsheets. We broke down shelves and then moved and reassembled all of the shelving and most of the book collection during a three-week period. I have memories of standing on study carrels, socket wrench in hand, dismantling our lovely old wood wall shelving. I still can’t believe we got everything done in time.

Moreau Catholic High School Library

What do you love and hate about your job?
I love just about everything about my job, especially helping students find recreational reading and working with teachers on making curriculum relevant and exciting. As a school librarian in an independent school I get to do a bit of everything: acquisitions, reference, cataloging, marketing, web design, staff development, and teaching. It’s very satisfying to come up with the perfect piece of research for an administrator taking a graduate course, the perfect book to hook a 10th grade reluctant reader, and the perfect resource or web tool to fit a teacher’s curriculum need all in the same period.

There has been a lot of press lately about whether schools still need libraries because of a perception that students don’t use books anymore.  I think this is a ridiculous argument because students and faculty need books, electronic resources, and librarians. What has changed is that I buy much less reference and non-fiction in print. One of our challenges is to teach students how to use databases and eBooks, which they sometimes find complex after their search experiences with Google.

The food police role is probably the least favorite part of my job. I wish we could have a library café area, but our new library is carpeted.

Are you impacted by the California economic downturn?
As an independent school we are dependent on our families being able to afford tuition.  While the school is committed to providing as much tuition assistance as possible, it’s still a struggle for many of our families. Compared to the catastrophic budget cuts affecting librarian positions in public schools, the independent school sector has been pretty fortunate.  Still, many of my colleagues and I are trying to do more with fewer resources these days.

Any advice for SLIS students thinking about becoming a high school librarian?
It’s great job because you get to do a bit of everything, but it would help to be into multi-tasking and screaming teens.

Latest Events

• Tour of the Bernard E. Witkin Alameda County Law Library with Mark Estes, March 10
• BayNet 2010 Annual Meeting with Author Siva Vaidhyanathan, May 21

Latest Q & A

• Librarian Susan Geiger and Moreau Catholic High School
• Lauren John of the Town and Country Club in San Francisco
• Heidi Goldstein and Ex’pression College for Digital Arts
• Deborah Hunt and Information Edge
• Sharon Miller and the Mechanics’ Institute
• See more Q & A.

UCSF Patient Health Library
UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion
1600 Divisadero Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Job Summary:

The librarian is responsible for the daily operation of the Patient Health Library. These responsibilities include providing health/medical reference support to all patients, their friends, family members, and partners, and to Mount Zion neighbors who visit the library; marketing, developing, promoting, and disseminating information about the Patient Health Library throughout the UCSF community; maintaining the Patient Health Library Collection, including recommending materials for acquisition and cataloging new items; and maintaining a local policies & procedures manual/handbook.

Qualifications:

Required, Masters degree in library science from an accredited institution. Minimum of 2 years of experience in providing health & medical reference/research support, including expert use of PubMed and thorough knowledge of & competency in using lay health/medical resources. Substantive understanding of basic biomedicine. Excellent working knowledge of lay and professional health & medical resources, including both on-line and hard-copy resources; must be able to conduct intelligent reference interviews with clients, asses their information needs and select &/or guide them to the most appropriate source(s). Excellent oral and written communication skills and the ability to work independently. Ability to assess/plan/implement program and marketing requirements for the Patient Health Library.

Familiarity with NLM, OCLC, and Melvyl; knowledge of Inmagic a plus.

The UCSF Patient Health Library is a part of the H.M. Fishbon Memorial Library at UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion.

Salary and Classification:

UCSF Medical Center Classification:  Analyst III, Job Code 7236
This is a part-time (50%) position with benefits. (FTE $53,600 – $88,400)

Application:

Apply only through UCSF Human Resources; refer to Requisition # 32115BR

This is an unusual opportunity to join a team of education professionals working with a variety of students and staff at the School of Allied Health Sciences at 938 Marina Way S., Richmond, CA.    The candidate should enjoy working with students who are entering allied health science training and be an energetic promoter of the library and the school to the general community.   Good personal, communication and teaching/training skills essential, in helping students achieve basic and advanced information literacy and succeed in the educational environment.

Basic Qualifications:

BA or BS.  ALA accredited Masters Degree in Library Science. Computer literacy. Must be able to work in a Labor/Management Partnership environment.   This is a salaried full time 40 hour per week position, with some evening and weekend hours.

In addition to usual professional librarian duties, other duties include but are not limited to:

• Train students computer literacy, research and study skills
• Oversee and coordinate the daily operation and services of tutoring center or lab
• Consult and partner with faculty on course content, instructional technology,  and expectations for student success
• Compile statistics and report on library effectiveness
• Work with faculty to measure the contribution of tutoring services to student success and satisfaction
• Participate in on and off campus outreach, recruitment, and retention programs and services to attract, retain, and support students
• Assist in the design and preparation of written information on local college and community educational services available to students and staff

For immediate consideration, please e-mail your resume to John.C.Marquez@kp.org, referencing job number 011707. Please visit http://kaiserpermanentejobs.org/ for job submission details. Principals only. EOE/AA Employer.   This position supports Kaiser Permanente’s code of conduct and compliance by adhering to all laws and regulations, accreditation and licensure requirements, and internal policies and procedures.  Closing date March 5, 2010.

How did you decide to become a librarian?
I originally thought that I would be a journalist and I took lot of writing and media classes in college at the State University of New York at Binghamton, which I attended from 1974-1978.

In my media and society class in my senior year, I wrote a paper about the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast that Orson Welles did on Halloween night. In the broadcast he announced that Martians had invaded New Jersey. Preposterous as that sounds today, people believed him and there was widespread national panic.

The paper that I wrote was about how and why people believed the broadcast. I went to the university library looking for answers, and the reference librarian there (wish I could remember her name) told me that I could go back to the newspapers for 1938 and read the news accounts of the broadcast and the reactions to it in the editorials. I spent hours and hours in the library looking at primary source documents on microfilm – fascinated by the letters to the editors and also sidetracked by the fashion ads. I soon realized that I was hooked on the research as much as the writing. (The paper got an A).

When I graduated from college, still unsure of what I was going to choose as a career – I took a summer class at St. John’s University School of Library Science in Jamaica, Queens. The class was about the publishing industry and the teacher was Patricia Glass Schuman – who later founded Neal-Schuman publishers. I loved the class and enrolled in the MLS program in the Fall. Note – Neal-Schuman published my book Running Book Discussion Groups in 2006.

What is it like working at the Town and Country Club and what do you love about it?
The Town and Country Club is a women’s social club that was founded in 1893 by the society ladies of San Francisco. It was founded for purely social reasons – to give women a place to lunch together, rest up between shopping and social engagements and dry off from the rain in winter. But the ladies were educated as well as social and the library was there from the start. Each new member was asked to contribute a book to the library.

I get to use all of my reference and acquisition library skills as a solo librarian, but I am introduced to new members not as the librarian but as “our Lauren” as in “this is “our Lauren.”

A big part of the job is hospitality – greeting members by name, getting to know them and their reading tastes, and making people feel comfortable and welcome in the library. Another part is anticipating what they will want to read – and knowing who wants to read about the Bush family and who wants to read about the Obamas.

My favorite activity is the once a month book selection committee. Our library, which takes up three rooms on the second floor of the club, holds 10,000 volumes of fiction, mysteries, biographies, travel, and history books and has a strong California collection dating back to pioneer days. We buy fifteen new books in all categories each month  – and weed out the collection once a year. The book selection committee consists of about fifteen very intelligent, well read women. They present mini-book reports in different categories and then we vote on all of them with the top fifteen then purchased from Book Passage, an independent bookstore in Corte Madera.

I love hearing their book reports and learning about their interests which range from world travel to California history to political biographies to the latest fiction and thrillers. There was a huge debate over whether we should buy Sarah Palin’s biography–Going Rogue. (We did). Some members mail books we can’t get yet in the United States, like the Stieg Larsson (Swedish) The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.  With some sixty books presented each time, I feel caught up on the publishing world! After book selection, many people stay and have lunch together – and I get to join them.

What made you start running book groups?
Long story short – In 2002, Susan Holmer, the then new director of the Menlo Park Public Library, asked me to fill in for a long time leader who had left. I was working as a on-call reference librarian at the time and enjoyed talking with patrons about what they were reading – and I lived within walking distance of the library, so I spent a lot of time there as a patron as well as an employee. I was also friends with the community services manager Roberta Roth, and attended and enjoyed lots of her programs. So I think I was asked because I was a chatty librarian with a good sense of the community. I didn’t know if I would be a good book group leader or not – but it was worth a try. I have been doing it ever since both at the library, in private living rooms and in community centers – all with great joy!

How has the Web impacted the way that book groups are formed?
Well for one thing, I don’t send out meeting postcards anymore! The Web and e-mail have been great for publicizing the group. Book group programs are posted right on the library Web site, and members can sigh up for e-mail updates. I also have The All Seasons Book Group blog aimed at all kinds of readers and book groups. The site is hosted on a free writer’s site called Redroom: http://www.redroom.com/author/lauren-john.

Just this year, more and more book group members are bringing their IPhones and Blackberries to book group – and are factchecking or using their devices to answer factual questions that come up. Eg. Was Doris Kearns Goodwin fined for plaigerism? Was Swedish author Stieg Larsson murdered? (he was not).

And members are not shy about dashing off notes to each other in between meetings via e-mail and the blogs.

What was the most memorable experience you had as a librarian or a book group leader?
Well the worst thing that I ever did, happened about 25 years ago when I was a reference librarian at the Price Waterhouse accounting firm in NYC. At the end of a very long day, a patron telephoned for me to look up a bond price (this was way before desktops, laptops, or online pricing services and we had to do it by hand via looseleaf services). I put the patron on hold, got distracted, forgot about him and went home. My supervisor picked up the phone when she saw the flashing light. She had a sense of humor and did not fire me.

But note that I am no longer a corporate librarian. I did, however, marry a Price Waterhouse guy who came into the library to train us on how to use Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets. (Anyone remember those?) If you want to know what our courtship was like, Netflix the move Desk Set!

Lauren John at "leisure" in a vintage store in Half Moon Bay

The best thing that has happened has been the opportunity to lead panels and discussions with authors and readers at book festivals including Book Group Expo, The Carmel Festival of Arts and Ideas, and Litquake.

Any advice for a shy but voracious book reader to join a book group?
You could start with a book group that meets in a public place, like a library, bookstore or community center. That way, if you are not comfortable, you are not as obligated to stay through the entire meeting – as you might be if you were meeting in someone’s living room. Get in touch with the book group leader before you come to the first meeting to get a sense of the group – the demographics and their reading taste. And if you just want to sit back and listen the first meeting, let the leader know that. On the other hand, it would be great if you felt brave enough to share one our two thoughts – or as an opener – ask the group a question. If you are a good cook or baker, you can always make new friends by bringing brownies!

What do you hope to accomplish as the BayNet’s special library representative?
Well, personally, it has already been an eye-opener to see the wide breadth of librarians that are represented. I hope to visit some more of their libraries and invite members to see my library at Town and Country Club on Union Square in San Francisco. With my writing skills, I hope to be working on publicity and marketing. Also, if we could agree on a book, would love to lead a one time BayNet Book discussion!

What: A tour of the Bernard E Witkin Alameda County Law Library with Mark E. Estes, Law Library Director, followed by a no host social dinner/cocktail hour at Pacific Coast Brewing Company.

When: 3:30 pm Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Where: The Bernard E. Witkin Alameda County Law Library is located at 125 12th Street (on 12 St. between Oak St. and Madison St.),Oakland, CA. 94607. The Pacific Coast Brewing Company is located at 906 Washington Street Oakland, CA 94607

The Alameda County Law Library serves the Alameda County Legal community and its citizens. Founded in 1891, the Alameda County Law Library is one of 58 county law libraries that serve the people of the state of California. Each county law library functions as a separate governmental entity within its county and derives the bulk of its income from civil filing fees.

The law library provides free access to the judiciary, state and county officials, members of the bar and residents of the county. It offers access to subscription legal research databases in the library, provides MCLE classes and rents conference rooms.

www.acgov.org/law

Agenda

3:30-5:00 pm – Mark Estes will give a brief talk about the library and give a tour of the facility.
5:00-5:30 pm – Attendees are free to explore the library on their own.
5:30-6:00 pm – Walk to The Pacific Coast Brewing Company (approximately 10 blocks). There is also public transit on 12th Street.
6:00 pm – Dinner and social hour with other BayNet members.

Menu

Please see the Pacific Coast Brewing Company’s website:
http://www.pacificcoastbrewing.com/index.htm

Transportation

From I-880 San Jose, Fremont, Hayward, Oakland International Airport Northbound
Continue on I-880 North to the Oak Street exit. At the light turn right and drive up Oak five blocks to 12th Street. The Library is at 125 12th St (on 12 St between Oak St and Madison St).

From I-580
Follow I-580 to the I-980 connector and continue on to I-880. Exit on Jackson Street, t urn left at the first light and drive up Jackson to 13th Street and make a right turn. The Library is at 125 12th St (on 12 St between Oak St and Madison St).

From I-80 San Francisco, San Mateo
From the Bay Bridge/Berkeley-Emeryville area, follow directions to I-580 to the I-980 connector to I-880. Exit on Jackson Street, turn left at the first light and drive up Jackson to 13th Street and make a right turn. The Library is at 125 12th St (on 12 St between Oak St and Madison St).

BART-Fremont Line
Exit at the Lake Merritt station on 9th and Oak Street. The Library is three blocks east of the BART station at 12th and Oak Streets.

Parking
The County parking garage, Alcopark, is located on Jackson Street between 12th Street and 13th Street. The rate is $6.00 per day.

From I-580 and I-80, follow instructions above. From I-880 South, follow directions to 12th and Jackson Streets. Parking garage is on Jackson Street between 12th and 13th Streets.

RSVP

Please RSVP to dsampson@academyart.edu by Friday March 5th, 2010.

“This building was a real gem to begin with,” said Andy Maloney, the Department of Public Works architect who oversaw the project. “Now it also meets today’s needs.”

Link: S.F. Bernal library reopens after renovation