The end is near

I have looked upon this blog almost dreading creating and posting my thoughts and yet truth be told, I am a journaler. I journal every morning at least for 10 to 15 minutes. It's my release, my "talking to God" time and yet, to blog comes as a dreaded, "I must do this for school" thing.
At one time I was pretty diligent about posting a blog devotion but time ran away from me and I stopped. Now, here I am the end of the semester and instead of 15 weeks of blog I have 9, not very discplined. One thing I dread is having to check my spelling, being grammatically correct because someone else might read it...in my little written journal it's just me and the pen!
Oh well, I have learned a few things this semester.
1. It does help to stay focused and a blog it good for that, my research paper was never far from my mind
2. Blogs make it real, what I am interested in, someone else might be and I have been very interested to see how many others have checked out what I have written.
3. Blogs are not for the feint of heart, if you plan to blog, stay consistent and know what you are doing, I'm not so sure I do, but I am learning.
So, the semester is winding down and my research paper proposal will be submitted tomorrow for peer review. Not sure if I will get much response but it's been fun to see the interest so far, who knew others would be interested in ebooks and the furture of the librarian.
I would say there is more to come, maybe one more week...we'll see.

Wraping it all up

I have been very lax in posting on this blog, I think I have come to the conclusion that I am more so a paper and pencil girl. Oh, well, if I am graded on how well and often I post I would only get a mediocre grade but my thoughts are always on my research and I am really looking forward to my interview with Jean Ross, our head of the eBook program at the library.

I have written up my interview notes and had them reviewed by Prof. Solomon, he felt they were in good shape and liked the questions. I also scheduled some time with the catalogers and look forward to seeing how they make the selections they do.

I am working now on my digital library and will post on that blog in a moment. After hearing in class that people often track the number of hits it is interesting to me how many hits I may have had on these blogs. I plan to check that out.

More to come as I put this all together!

I am behind here but moving forward in other respects

I submitted a survey to our discussion board about a week ago. Dr Solomon's response was "It is what it is". That has me worried. I did not realize how difficult it was to write a survey/questionaire. So, I guess it is back to the drawing board because even though I got the infomation I wanted for my digital library is was obviously not a very well written questionaire.
I had a hard time coming up with questions that were easy to answer, would require just a quick response and would get those who would be using the library thinking but not thinking too hard. After reading much of the Robson text my impression of questionaires is that they are good to get a general idea of the need but then they need to get more in depth and be used in conjuction with other types of research tools.
So, I am going to attempt to write another one. I also made appointments today to interview the 2 people in charge of our ebook program in our public library. I want to get a better sense of what they had to go through to launch the program, what they see as the future for the ebook and many other questions which I will try to formulate for a interview. So, I have more questionaire types writing to do!

Survey's Rule

I really like the idea of doing a survey to gain insight into the patrons use of e-readers in our public libraries and if they are aware that we have the download and go program.
I also think it is important to ask their opinion on whether owning an ereader will increase or decrease their use of the public library and our services.
The other thing I would like to do now that I have listened to our lecture on interviewing is to interview the person responsible for implementing the ereader programs within our public library system. i am interested in finding out the inner workings and thoughts behind the program and what they see the role of the librarians to be, not only within the ereader/download and go program but overall as people start to use the program more.
Have they considered the furture of the librarian with respect to the influx of the ereader and the current generations use of the library?

My excitment knows no bounds!

I am so excited I finally found some articles that speak to the issues I see with e-readers and the future of the librarian. What I did not expect is that most of them talk about technology as a whole so I am going to change my topic and broaden it a little to include more of the technology side of information with an emphasis on e-readers and how they will affect the roll of the librarian. It is still exciting to see this coming together and know I am onto a solid track of research that others have a strong interest in.
Another issue for me has been that we are in the process of launching the e-reader website part of our public library program so I am seeing this affect first hand and learning how to use the technology. So far the resources are very limited for those of us who have Kindles but it is interesting to see what has been made available and how this will affect the patrons I talk with on a regular basis.
I am looking forward with encouragment now. I also think the whole area of research is fascinating and love the resources available on the ALA website!

Why Can't I find information

I am having the toughest time finding anything written on the subject of ereaders and the furture of the librarian. I thought I hit paydirt on a few journal articles tonight and could not find them in tdNet so I am going to search our local ILL. I also searched the ALA website, now I am going to reach out to some of my library groups via the web.
I am frustrated at best and feel like I am at a stale mate since the outside resources are not there maybe I am researching the wrong thing!

Articles on ereaders and the future of librarians

Okay, so I have been searching for articles on ereaders and the future of librarians. What suprises me is that for the most part the articles I am finding see this as a positive trend with no impact on the librarian and his/her job. I found numerous blogs, too many to list and they talk about how we, as librarians can capitalize on this fabulous technology.
No one mentioned, and I still have more to go, how this might adversly affect the job of the librarian, self-check-out not withstanding. So, I already have preconceived notions about how I think ereaders will impact our jobs. With all the talk we have this week about factors that influence our research I better get over these preconceived notions and understand the outcomes might be completly different.
That is what research and flexible/fixed designed studies are all about, right?