Catch up on Practicum Postings

It was suggested to me by my advisor that it would be advantageous for me to connect my blog that I am working on for my practicum to my capstone website. However the blog I am writing for that class is on a password protected drupal site. In order to share my experiences with the rest of the online world I will be reposting my blog posts here, in my personal blog.
This semester I am completing a practicum class (like an internship) at the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. Essentially what I am doing is setting up a resource library for them. I will post all of the entries made prior to today in this post. Future entries will be posted on the day they are written.

published by Michelle Bridges on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 21:17


Hello all!
I am Michelle Bridges and I (like some others) will be finishing my degree in May of this year. I am very excited to be starting my final semester. I am originally from the Washington D.C. area but I moved to NC to go to college. I went to Davidson College and earned a degree in Biology. After that I taught middle school and high school science for a couple of years before I decided to go back to school to get my MLIS. Now, I am an educator at the Discovery Place (still teaching science) in downtown Charlotte.

When I graduate in May I would love to just have a job in a library. Period. I am not that picky, but if I did have a choice I would love to combine biology and librarianship either in a college or university library, a medical library, or a special library.
My practicum this semester is with the Family Support Network of Mecklenburg County. They are a small nonprofit who helps to provide information to families who children have been diagnosed with a medical condition or illness. Essentially I will be setting up a resource center for them. I forsee my main goals of this semester being choosing a good open-source ILS for them to use, learning how to use the ILS myself, and then cataloging all of their resources and putting them into the ILS.

My first main goal is to choose an ILS that meets the needs of the Family Support Network. I essentially have no budget for this ILS, therefore we (Dr. Bird and myself) were thinking along the lines of an open-source ILS to manage their collection. Dr. Bird suggested emailing Dr. Oguz, which I have done to ask for his advice about open-source ILS systems. Next I forsee myself doing some research and reading reviews to try to determine what ILS would be best to use.

That is about all I have for right now. I will be writing down more about my first week there later!

published by Michelle Bridges on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 20:24


I really wanted to complete a blog post, because I have been at my site twice now (I am going onsite about once a week and then doing more work from home as well). The first time I went was technically before the semester started, on January 6. I am going to combine those two trips into this one blog post.
D. On January 6, I have my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra from the Family Support Network. Essentially our meeting was an interview of me and my chance to understand the project that they wanted accomplished. Our meeting was about an hour long and we discussed what they wanted in their resource center, what had already been done and what resources they had available. Also they gave me some backgroun on what FSN is. To fill you all in, Family Support Network (FSN) is a tiny (4 part time staff) nonprofit that serves families of children with medical diagnoses or illnesses. They serve these families essentially by providing them with information - information about what services they can receive, information about the disease or disorder their child has, information about support groups, camps, other agencies that can help them, and also information about other families whose children have the same disease or diagnosis so those families can talk and help support each other. This resource library they imagine will be a way to keep better track of their information and how they lend out their resources to families.

The following week I had a second meeting at FSN, this meeting was included Kelly from FSN, Dr. Bird and Dawn from UNCG, and Tami from the Children's Developmental Services (who owns the building FSN is in and will also be a part of this resource center). During this second meeting we further clarified roles and objectives of what this resource center would be. Also on this day I worked out my schedule with Kelly that I will be coming in to FSN every Thursday morning and I got a pass card to enter the building myself (so I don't have to be buzzed in every time).
E. Essentially my first meeting with Kelly and Sandra was scary, not because they are scary people, but because they were looking at me like I was the expert, like I knew what I was doing. However I feel that I presented myself well and Kelly is especially personal and friendly so I felt as if she was really excited to have me on board. I left this first meeting though still confused about my exact role, because Dr. Bird is spliting up part of this project with another student, Dawn, and therefore I was not sure exactly what portion I was to be doing.

The second meeting I felt much more comfortable, because after that meeting I came away with a very clear expectation of my goals. I am still somewhat nervous about the project because ILS systems and cataloging are two things that I know very little about. (I haven't even taken cataloging yet, I am taking it concurrently this semester). I am looking forward to learning as I go.
AL. Because my contacts at FSN look to me as the expert, I am not sure what I learned in those first two meetings. The learning that I think I took away was not necessarily LIS related. I learned a lot about how services are given to children and families with diseases or disorders in Mecklenburg County and a lot about FSN. I think I also learned some about meeting etique and professionalism in terms of how things are done in the public/non-profit sector.
Overall I am looking to going in tomorrow to start my research about open-source ILS systems.

published by Michelle Bridges on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 14:22


Today was my third visit to the Family support Network (FSN). I stayed for about 3 hours or so.
D. When I arrived I showed Kelly and Sandra the goals and timeline that I had originally worked on. They both looked it over and had no additional critiques or comments on it. Then they showed me the two options I had for a place to work. We chose the second option as my workspace. So now I have a cubical with a computer and a phone where I will be working at when I am at FSN. It is a very open cubical and I only plan to be in the building once a week so most of my documents will probably be either on a thumb drive or on Google Docs and I plan to save my important websites via www.delicious.com. After I got settled in, Kelly logged me into the computer and I set to work. Essentially I spent the next few hours investigating a couple of different concepts: how to set up a small library, what is open source software and what are its advantages and disadvantages, and which open source ILS systems would be good for FSN. I started with the ALA fact sheet - How to set up a library and then jumped off on links that originated from there. A couple of different websites that described open source initiatives in libraries kept showing up, including webjunction.org. I thought the "Open Source Application Primer" by Eric lease Morgan from that website was especially useful for backgroun information.

From my research I today I took note about what features an ILS needs to have, how to evaluate an ILS and some top open source ILS systems and their pros, cons, and requirements. At the end of the morning I emailed supervisors to tell them about what I had found and warn them about possible issues with installing open source software on the Mecklenburg County server.

E. (I am still kind of confused about what exactly examine is supposed to mean, but here I go anyway.) To be completely honest I walked into this morning very confident and excited and walked out of this first research experience nervous and apprehensive. My research this morning, was yes somewhat unfocused and haphazard however I still felt what I discovered to be very useful. Since this was my first time really looking into open-source products I now have a much better idea of what is involved and I am nervous about it. I am not sure if I have the technical expertise to be able to set one of these up! I found an article (http://www.pakban.net/koha/tut/newbie.html) and it talked about how to set up KOHA, one of the most popular open source ILS products. Most of it sounds fine I am just really nervous about the initial installation onto the server. The server where we will be installing this is a Mecklenburg County government server, so I guess I am worried about all of the red tape involved. I am personally hoping that Dr. Bird will read this post and tell me that she knows how to do this, or that she can offer some great advise about how to install these types of things. :)

I still feel almost caught between a rock and a hard place, because Kelly and Sandra look to me as if I know exactly what I am doing, but I feel caught because I don't know what I am doing and I am not sure who exactly will be helping me. I feel a little like I am floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Perhaps I am overexagerating there, but I guess I feel a little bit alone at the moment. I know when I am done I will be immensly proud of myself though.
AL. Today, simply put, I learned a lot. Especially about open source software and ILS systems. I learned that while open source is free, that price tag comes with other costs, such as learning how to use and set it up. I will be trying to supply all of those things myself without going out and above and trying to find another contractor or consultant. I learned a lot of different open source software applications and programs, and especially learned the names of a good number of open source ILS systems (koha, evergreen, Openbiblio, PhpMyLibrary, Enilda, newGenLib, Learning Access ILS). I learned what modules to look for in an ILS (acquisition, cataloging, circulation, OPAC, serials). Finally the Public Library Association's website had a great article on criteria to evaluate an ILs on, which was another source of useful information that I hope to use to recommend on ILS above the others. (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/pla/plapublications/platechnotes/opens...)
So far my research is leading me towards the KOHA ILS software, and that is what Dr. Oguz also suggested, however I am still worried about the technological aspects of installing it. I plan to continue my research at home this week and then next week begin a presentation to present the best option or options to Kelly and Sandra.