Moving to a new town in the middle of the school year is very traumatic when you are in 3rd grade. I was so scared to start at that new school. I remember walking into the office with my mom, older sister and younger brother. While my mom talked to the principal, the secretary invited us to go across the hall and visit the library. Library? You mean there is a library inside the school? The elementary school we had just moved from in San Diego did not have a library. The community center across the street did, and I remember going there with my class to find old, simple books. But this new school had its own library. When we entered, I remember seeing this TV-like thing on couple of desks. I asked the librarian if students could watch TV at the desks, and she explained that the TV-like thing was a computer. It was a fabled Apple IIe. She showed us how to use the keyboard, how to type things and how to access games. My family was so thrilled to have such wonderful resources of a library and computers to use. From that day on, I have always associated libraries with technology.

Libraries are staunch advocates and users of technology. People see the library as a technology center, and as we move toward becoming a paperless society, this perception will only entrench itself further. The identity and role of academic libraries are changing in the eyes of students with the rise of information commons and computer labs located inside the building. With the role of the library changing, librarians must now not only be skilled reference and instruction providers, but near-expert computer users as well. Librarians must be proficient in publishing media to the Internet. Librarians need to understand network architecture and administration. Librarians should constantly be learning and trained on emerging technologies, so that they will be prepared to lead their service communities. A librarian proficient in information and communication technology is able to lead their colleagues in research that will benefit the entire profession.

The Internet has become a common means of communication. Anyone with Internet access has the ability to create web pages on any subject they wish. As information professionals, librarians should be able to publish media to the Internet with great skill and ease. I submit this web site as evidence that I possess the skill to publish media to the Internet. This site shows the abilities I have honed in LIBR 240, Information and Technology Tools and Applications with Debbie Faires, and LIBR 246, Advanced Information and Technology Tools and Applications with Robert Sutton. Every page found within this web site contains a mixture of HTML, XHTML, JavaScript and CSS, all of which are standard languages in web development. I have tried to incorporate the industry standards of properly formed and written web pages. I have conducted usability surveys of the site by having it reviewed by friends and colleagues, and applied their suggestions where I felt appropriate. Along with the graphics created for this site, the culmination of the aforementioned attributes provides a professional look to this site. With the skills I have developed, I feel that I would be able to sit down with any client to discuss their needs and develop a web site that would convey their information effectively and professionally.

Aside from creating this site, I maintain the web server that hosts it. It is important that library staff, separate from the IT department, have a working knowledge of the information technology used by the library. The librarian should be able to set up their own computer networks that will serve the users and provide data storage for the institution. Librarians and archivists who maintain private or small libraries would benefit from knowing network technology and administration. It would save their institutions financial resources and service time by eliminating the need to have an on-staff IT professional. A well-trained librarian or archivist, operating independently, should be able to present the same high-quality web applications and sites as large institutional and research libraries provide through their IT and web development departments. IT departments can be a blessing and a curse to an information organization if they are the only ones who possess the knowledge to provide these technical services. When IT departments are overwhelmed with upgrades and maintenance, they are unable to address the emergencies that we all know creep into the systems. Those librarians that are blessed with an IT staff that has a dedicated service department are the envy of all those who do not.

Before I began my preparation to be a librarian I provided technical support and network administration for hotel and business Internet Service Providers. I helped customers to resolve their issues by relating solutions through emails and phone calls in terms and language they would understand with a 90% success rate. With that knowledge of network technology and its administration, I am able to serve my patrons better when they face technical difficulties at computers. This knowledge also allows me to provide more options for access to patrons and staff.

While working at The California Maritime Academy Library, I have put all of my IT related skills to use to develop an institutional digital repository. Together with the Library Technologist, Mark Stackpole, I have successfully setup the host server, installed and configured DSpace and propagated the repository with documents of conference proceedings held at The California Maritime Academy. Faculty and departments at The California Maritime Academy will be able to use the institutional digital repository in Fall 2007 to support their curriculum and provide for their students.

New technologies are developed on a daily basis. Some of these technologies catch the attention of the public and spread like wildfire across the Internet. Many of these technologies are consumer driven and proprietary. Other technologies take more time to develop and sit below the radar. These technologies generally fall under the domain of open source. Open source projects rely on communities of computer programmers and users to develop technologies specifically meeting a certain need. Libraries have special needs when it comes to technology. Over the pass decade open source software (OSS) developers have been working to meet those needs. The institutional digital repository software DSpace is a product of the OSS movement. Libraries and institutions all over the globe are using DSpace to provide enhanced, digital collections for their patrons. Integrated library systems are essential to modern libraries and are substantial investments. OSS integrated library systems, such as KOHA, are being developed and successfully used to provide libraries with sufficient technical knowledge, a powerful and free ILS.

In a research paper I wrote in LIBR 246, I examined the potential of OSS for libraries. Through this paper, I argue that OSS is a financial and resource-based risk that most libraries cannot afford. The history of OSS in general and that which is unique to libraries is explored. In my paper, I concluded that libraries do not have sufficient funds to experiment and deploy the software or possess the expertise or a feasible willingness among library staff to learn the software and its source code. When I wrote this research paper, no OSS designed for libraries had reached a level of maturity that allowed it to compete and replace the proprietary software developed in commercial companies. This does not mean that in the next few years or sooner OSS may reach the level that libraries need to operate. OSS has the potential to relieve a large portion of the financial burden of technology that libraries must endure to serve their communities.

Libraries with skilled staff can develop solutions to their own problems. Currently libraries are facing pending dooms on the horizon. The “Periodical Shortage” is reaching its breaking point. Large institutional and academic libraries are increasing their periodical collections, but are running out of available classification schemes. Librarians in technical services are unsatisfied with the limitations of industry standard MARC records. Archivists faced a similar problem as technical service librarians did with MARC records until a few years ago. In 1995 Jackie Dooley, Steve Hensen, Daniel Pitti and Steven DeRose founded the Berkeley Finding Aid Project at UC Berkeley. The goal of this project was to develop a new standard that would meet the needs of archivists to write and publish digital finding aids more effectively on the Internet. The standard they created is EAD, Encoded Archival Description. EAD is a standard based on SGML and its DTD (Document Type Definition) is an international standard. Just over a decade since they began their work developing EAD, it is now the standard for creating and publishing digital archival finding aids.

In LIBR 284, Seminar in Archives and Records Management with a Focus in EAD with Lori Lindberg, I have learned how to write finding aids in EAD. In the EAD finding aid I created for this class, I demonstrate my ability to learn new technologies and again publish to the Internet. I am able to “crosswalk” or link information in the finding aid to library cataloging standard MARC records. By doing so, it allows the finding aid to be searchable through the ILS, adding to the collection and resources available to patrons.

My skills with technology give me advantages over other librarians. I am in no way an IT guru, capable of miraculous technological feats, but my technology skills are an asset to any organization for which I may work. My knowledge of web languages and database structures allow me to strategically place surveys and polls into the integrated library system and online catalog that gather useful information from patrons. The information gathered by these applets will allow library staff to know what their patrons want and actively improve patron services. I would like to develop EAD finding aids for The California Maritime Academy. Their specialized collections would be invaluable to researchers focusing on maritime related industry and history. With these finding aids, The California Maritime Academy can contribute to the Online Archive of California, bringing prestige to the academy. I have aspirations to follow the example of the group at UC Berkeley that took their knowledge of library systems and technology to meet a need that would benefit the entire profession. Having spent a year working in technical services in a library, I am beginning to understand the limitations libraries are facing. MARC records are no longer sufficiently meeting the needs of librarians, and a new standard needs to be developed. At this point in my career, I can easily see myself tackling this problem as a part of my doctoral research. With a group of other skilled librarians and software developers, I believe we can divine a viable replacement to MARC records that will meet and surpass the needs of the profession.