The biggest things going on in the library this week were as follows: our space use methodology was discussed, updated, and tested; our CRM project began user testing; and the first two of three Turkish interns arrived to begin their three months at the NTK. The week ended with a trip to Konopiste, the residence of Franz Ferdinand (which I’ll discuss in a different blog). This entire week also wore me out like no other prior to this. With the World Cup in full swing, I had hoped to spend most of my evenings watching matches, but I actually didn’t get to watch a single one of the 10 matches that occurred at times that I wasn’t at work.
The Space Use project started with a small group trying to determine the best methodology for the space we
have. One of our services manager, a sociology student on the services team, and I began working last week on the project, and testing of our original idea started on Wednesday. This meant that we had approximately 6 observations (morning and afternoon runs) when we sat down on Monday. Comments were made by the manager, edits were made by us, and a new round of testing began. The problem is, we are working with extremely raw numbers (visual observations) and adding this information to spreadsheets (trust me, I hate excel) with the collections of approximately 150 data points. So, as I tried to make modifications, my mentor suggested the creation of a database, which is beginning for later iterations of the project. We are currently just focusing on one of the six floors in the library, so expansion to include the entire library would be even more unwieldy than our current collection (almost 1000 data points).
The CRM project has progressed much more smoothly (for my brain anyway) than the Space Use issues we faced. With final updates on the mockups from colleagues’ comments and a script, we began our first round of user testing. Our weekly meeting revealed the comments of 6 users (which are all staff members that will be utilizing this system for student consultations). After a lengthy discussion about how to make some initial changes, updates will be made early next week and updates to the actual prototypes will be initiated. This will lead to a new round of user testing that will be much closer to the interface they will actually be dealing with. While this is not a project I thought I would fully understand because of my previous experience with user testing, it has been very rewarding to stretch my skills, work with this team, and understand more fully how these types of situations can help in the library setting. Seriously, with my previous experience in user testing, I was very unclear about how it would be useful in real-world library settings, but this has definitely changed my mind on that view.
On Wednesday, we got two new interns from a village just outside of Istanbul. I look forward to working with them on occasion, and we have discussed having a small conversation class with just the group of Turkish interns. Due to some miscommunications upon their arrival, I spent most of Wednesday afternoon helping them get their housing squared away (as they were not told they needed to report to finalize their accommodations that morning). We got all things taken care of and made it back to our 1400 “Ice Cream Meeting,” which allowed them to get introduced to most of the team and let us relax and laugh for a bit as a group. They joined Marine (my cultural attaché) and I for our trip to Konopiste on Thursday as well, which was a lovely trip (most of the time, but that is for later).
I had the opportunity to network with an American visitor this week as well. Visiting from UMass-Lowell, she was here making connections for a internship program attached to their engineering program. She ended up having a meeting with me and one of the postdocs before a dinner in the city center with me. We talked mostly about our experiences, but it was nice to see how other institutions network for their internships. Of course, these are mostly for undergraduate students, but it’s still a worthwhile experience.
I may have ended up dropping a project this week as well. Also, my long-term reference project seems to be petering out. I am going to create some possible framework from what I was thinking, but with little response from the student, it’s difficult to actually get much out of it. This is a university setting, the student is in a PhD program, and the library cannot force anything. If the student comes to me later on, I’ll do my best to help, but the information must be sought first.
I took some steps to learn some more Czech. My hopes is to be able to show some progress in language skills, in 
the most crucial of interactions (like eating and shopping), and I think I am getting there. Beyond the basics (“yes,” “no,” “hello,” “thank you”), I have now started some simple phrases and am learning to count. While I wish I had started a bit sooner with this (I’m now halfway through), I hope that my contacts here may actually allow me to stay up on this type of language learning, as I hope to visit this country more once I can again.
Raven K 