Robert's Reads Summer 2014

So, I am a little behind on my blog, but here is the Summer 2014 edition of Robert's Reads.

    Although, I do not always agree on the theology of MacArthur nor did I agree with everything he wrote in this book. However, this book is a must read for evangelical Christians. MacArthur presents several years worth of research on the charismatic movement. This book is a shocking and terrifying read on the prominent people and theologies of the charismatic movement. I have been emotionally and spiritually hurt by charismatics who told me that I was not following the will of God if I did not speak in tongues or see visions. I personally do not believe that. I see no scriptural evidence where God only speaks to people in one particular way. In fact  in the Bible you see God speak through a burning bush, a donkey, dreams, a blinding light, and moved people to compassion by working on their heart. 
     MacArthur shows how dangerous the views charismatics have such as their false prophecy (which they admit is often in error) are affecting the cause of Christ. The message of Christ has been perverted by people like Oral Roberts, Joel Olsteen, and Benny Hinn. I highly recommend this to people who are interested in theology or want to see how these charismatics are committing counterfeit worship. 

Those who know anything about know that I do love the works of Tolkien. I enjoy reading fantasy stories. So, when I heard that Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R.'s son) was coming out with a translation of Beowulf that his father had done along with a commentary based on his father's lectures, I immediately put my copy on hold. Tolkein was much more than just a fantasy writer. He was genius linguist that not only created his own language (Elvish) for the LOTR, but was a leading scholar in the study of Old English. He spent several years translating his own version of the epic poem, Beowulf; however he never published it. Many of the language related commentary went over my head. However, I enjoyed Tolkien's ideas on the poem as well as being provided with historical context. I would not be surprised if this book became a textbook for high school or college. This book is a must read for fanatics of Tolkien. It is also essential for scholars of Old English to read. 

   I am also a huge fan of Star Wars. George Lucas' original trilogy captured my imagination as a small child. In fact I know more about the Expanded Universe (which Disney has now killed. Thanks, Mickey) than the average joe. I was excited to hear that George Lucas' original script for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope would be made into a into a graphic novel. I had heard that their were differences but was unclear on all the specifics. The original script was pretty much not filmable. It is full of secondary characters. The battles Lucas imagined would have not come to fruition with the technology in the 1970s. It is a good thing that this was story was significantly altered. Everything fans love was not in the original script. Anakkin Starkiller is the main character. He is trained in the way of the force by his father (who was a cyborg) and General Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader is not a cyborg Sith Lord, he is just a lackey for the emperor. The stormtroopers had lazerswords (you know them as lightsabers), which I suppose couldn't hurt their aim. R2D2 talks. The Sith Lord in the script is secretly a good guy. And Han Solo is a lizard. Although, it is not the best script, fans will see parts of this story that were later adapted for all six films. Any Star Wars will enjoy seeing these classic characters take on a significantly different role.

More than books

     Recently, I started a new job as the Digital Resources Librarian at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more on that read this post. Many people have asked me what does a Digital Resources Librarian do?  Many people think I take print books and digitize them. Well, that would be a nice thing to do but I doubt Rick Warren and John Piper would appreciate me making illegal copies of their books. Although, strangely enough we do have a department that is scanning books in the public domain for Logos.
    
     Well, in the three weeks that I have been at SWBTS I have added 170,000 ebooks. These are mostly new scholarly ebooks published within the past five-10 years. Although 30,000 of them are books from the 14th-early 20th centuries that are in the public domain. However, most of those are hard to find. There are more ebooks to come within the next few weeks. When I told someone here about all the ebooks that I was adding he said, "Sounds like you will work yourself out of your job." And of course I am thinking, "Have you met my boss?" Dr. K will always have something for me to do. He is a great visionary.

    I will also be supervising the digitization of our dissertations and chapel tapes in order to place them into an institutional repository. It will be great to have SWBTS publications and history saved for future generations. I will also be adding lots of reference, theological, and music databases to SWBTS. My coworkers and I will also be giving a much needed update to our library's website within the next few weeks.

    Since, I manage digital content some people might think that I do not value print books. The opposite is true. I believe that their is great value in print books. However, in order for libraries to stay relevant, useful, and provide good service to their patrons, they must go beyond the print book. Librarians should be excited by thought of adding e-books to their collection. How could they not want to help out online and distance students? SWBTS has students all over the world. It is apart of my responsibility to make them into great researchers. However, they can not do research if there is nothing for them.

   In actuality, I am just like a "real librarian".  A librarian means that you do more than shelve books. Librarians market through social media, help students with writing(so fortunate for a writing center), assist with computer skills, and the list goes on. Librarians are advocates for our patrons. We fight for the users (just like Tron). Our job is to make them into better researchers and citizens. I want to help do this through the adding of digital content.

    We plan on adding a lot of programs for our patrons. I got a couple things I would like to try. I know one thing we are for sure is having professors come to the library to give talks on their books and research interests. We hope that by doing this we can start to make the library a place where ideas are exchanged and form a sense of community.

    One thing that I look forward to is attending student events and letting the students know that I am here to help them, even if it is not regarding a digital issue. I want our students to be comfortable coming into the library and asking me questions. I want our library to become a major hub on campus for students.

Here are some pictures of SWBTS librarians at student events this semester.

Dodgeball Tournament Left to Right Top Row: Dr. K, Jeff,  and me Left to Right Bottom Row:Annetta, Tiffany, Sarah, and Maria (Picture by Donna Kubic)

Tiffany Norris, our public service librarian, talking with a student at New Student Orientation (Picture by Craig Kubic)

 

Me in the Face in Hole of Martin Luther at the Dodgeball Tournament (Picture by Tiffany Norris)

  

Rephotography

     When I was at the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) a couple months ago, I learned about a photo technique that Luther College Library has used to engage with students and alumni. This technique is called Rephotography. It is where you take an old picture and you restage it in present day. They are multiple different ways you can do it. You can combine both pictures into one picture. You can also have a major or traumatic event of the past and mix it with the new. I saw a few do this for D-Day.  What we choose to do was recreate old institution pictures of the MBTS community and restage it in the same place with modern members of the community.

Here are some examples of rephotography that I have done over the past few months.

This was my first attempt so it was a little rough. At the top you have a picture taken of Dr. Leavel Seats teaching the last day of a missions class from 1989. The bottom is Dr. Hadaway teaching the last day of missions class from 2014. You can notice how much has changed. We went from desks to tables. Black boards to white boards. The newer classroom has fewer maps. These pictures also give an idea about how fashion has changed. Because of the spacing of desks and tables, this was the hardest one to recreate.

 

 I was much more satisfied how this picture came out. This is a picture of someone talking to the librarian, while another student waits at the desk. There are a lot of differences that can be seen here. The top is from 1987 and the bottom picture is from 2014. The librarian is older picture is a young white woman. In the newer picture, we have a young African woman at the desk. The student walking in the Library is Korean instead of white. The person waiting at the desk is a young woman instead of an older man. Each picture accurately represents the demographics of students at each time.  We have a much more ethnically diverse student population then we did in 1987. Also we have younger students because of our Fusion and Undergraduate programs.

Both of these pictures were taken in the periodical section of the Library. The top picture is from 1989 and the bottom picture 2014. This one had the best staging of the ones that I have done so far. Notice that we have similar stacking of books and notebooks. Also, the satchel and computer bag are in the same place. This also shows how more racially diverse and younger are students have become over the years.

These picture got a lot attention on Facebook. We got several hundred views along with dozens of likes and comments. This resonated with a lot of current students and alumni. Overall, I was really satisfied how the rephotograpy turned out and hope to do more in the future.

Social Media

    

    Since coming to MBTS, I have become the social media manager for the Library. And in case you think, "That gotta be easy." That is far from the truth. Although, social media is fun, it is not easy. If you want to do it right, you have to put a lot of work into your strategy. There is not point in doing social media if you don't engage your with your audience.
     Librarians can especially find social media difficult. This is both true for small and large libraries. Small libraries can run into problems such as having to defend their need for a library account to a library board or administration. Large libraries can run into other problems such as frustration over the fact that they do not have a lot of followers even though they are a large institution.
     The point of social media is to be "social". You need to find some way to interact with your users in order to create a relationship with them. If you are just putting out posts that are not generating traffic and responses, then you are not reaching them. Do not mistake me for saying that you need a lot of followers or likes to be "successful". Ultimately, it is about the quality and interactions then the actual final count of how many people are seeing your post.

Here is a list of things that I have found useful in social media. These ideas and suggestions come from Laura Soloman's The Librarian's Nitty Gritty Guide to Social Media, Mark Shaffer's The Tao of Twitter: Changing Your Life and Business 140 Characters at a Time, and some of my own experience.
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• Find out what social media services your audience is using. The MBTS Spurgeon Twitter account currently has over 2,300 followers. However, our Spurgeon Facebook account has not made it to 200, yet. I don't see that as a failure. With Facebook, you have to pay for pages to be promoted. It is hard to get the attention of pastors, professors, and theologians throughout the world. However, it is not that way with Twitter. All it needed was a few follows, follow backs, and retweets. After we started gaining alot of attention it, we grew exponentially. Our audience for Spurgeon is on Twitter. Don't start an account on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or whatever the next new thing is and expect people to find you. Use your library training. Find your users and bring your services to them like you would with any other library service.
• Get a strategy. Think about what kinds of contents you will and will not post. Our Library social media does #MotivationMondays where we put in a qoute from a famous theologian, #TitleTuesdays in which we showcase an ebook title, #WorldWednesdays where we showcase pictures from our Missionary archive, #ThrowbackThursday where we post a picture from our institution's history, and #FasthelpFriday which we use to showcase a database or LibGuide. With the Spurgeon social media, I have chosen to do more seasonal themes such as Puritan books for Thanksgiving, Dickens books for Christmas, and works by Shakespeare and Lord Byron. Other times I will post books that center around an event in his life. There will be times when you will think forever about what to post and it will be a complete dud. Other times you will think about five seconds about it, and surprisingly it gain lots of attention. Social media is dynamic. If at first you are not getting the results you are looking for, then keep trying. If you keep hitting a wall then you may want to change what you are doing. But it is good to at least have an idea what kinds of things you will post.
• Seek out followers and follow back. This is especially relevant with Twitter. As I said, social media is social. Conan O'Brien can get away with having millions of followers and following one person. You can not. Use Twitter to build up a support group. Follow other libraries, archives, professors, and organizations that are like minded. Many of them will follow you back and later retweet you. It is considered bad etiquette not to follow someone back on Twitter. Also, it will allow you to see what others are talking about.
•  When you do a post, always think "so what"? You may think something is important, but your patrons and audience may not understand why they should care. You bought a new database! Great but why should your patrons care? Explain concisely what your database, service, or event means to them. Make your posts about them and not just about you. Is this post suppose to entertain, encourage, or inform them of  something new?
• If you want to be successful in social media, you need to learn the gift of brevity. When you are doing a social media post, you are competing against literally thousands of posts. If every single one of your posts ends with "... Click here to read more", then you will not be successful. If you have long posts then you will be largely ignored. People want as much information possible in the shortest and quickest way as possible. Never make a social media post more then three to four sentences. Not many people want to read something on social media that will take them more then ten seconds.
• Use pictures. I like pictures. You like pictures. Chances are really good that your patrons like pictures too.  Pictures are a great way to engage your patrons. Looking at long lines of text in social media can bore your audience. Pictures are a wonderful method of getting attention.    

Well, that is all I have for now. My next post will be on what I learned about social media from the Midwest Archives Conference.    

Library Life as of now

     I have been meaning to write this post for a while. I just keep getting distracted with other things. Life has been very busy for me so don't judge me too hard for slacking on my blog. I have wanted to write a post about working at Midwestern. I really do like working here. There are a lot of unique opportunities that I have at MBTS that I would not have at other institutions. For instance, I have so many different jobs that I do during the day. I order print and electronic books, manage social media accounts for the Library and the Spurgeon Collection, downloading items to CDM, converting cassette tapes to MP3 format,teach instruction classes, and answer reference questions. I have gained diverse experience that I may have not gotten at a larger institution. Also, living on campus gives me a unique experience since I  live among the Library patrons. I am sure there are many librarians who would welcome the opportunity of living among those they serve in order to gauge the needs of their users. My boss and coworkers in the Library are also excellent. I feel very fortunate to get to work with them.
    This past year has given me opportunities to publish in an academic journal. Last December, I published two book reviews in The Christian Librarian,the journal for the Association of Christian Librarians (ACL). Hopefully, I will get a few more book reviews published with them along with an article based on a presentation that my boss and I will give at the ACL conference based on our Personal Librarian and Research Coach programs. I may even get published in an other academic evangelical journal.
     Also, I have started serving with some professional organizations. I am currently the treasurer for the Kansas City Area Archivists. There are also several ways to get through ACL. Since starting employment at MBTS, I have been indexing for the Christian Periodical Index (CPI). CPI is an indexing resource for academic Christian periodicals provided by ACL. The past year I was elected to serve on the Association of Christian Librarians Book Award 2014-2016 for Non Fiction. I will be apart of a team that nominates and votes on the best academic Christian book published between 2014-2016. This will be a great way to serve the academic Christian community.
      Also, I have started volunteering at the WWI Museum. This has been an incredible experience. If you live anywhere near a history, art, or presidential museum, than I highly suggest you consider volunteering at that institution. This has given me a chance to not only serve my community but to learn more about a very significant point in history.
     All in all things are going very good here in KC. I am enjoying all the different ways that I get to develop professionally. This summer, I will get the chance to present at a few conferences which will take me out of my two year hiatus of conference presentations. Well, that is all for now. Hopefully, it won't be too long until my next post.
    

Books Read in 2013

1) History of Christianity in Korea by In Soo Kim
2) A Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
3) Follow Me by David Platt
4) Journey Through the Afterlife : Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead by John Taylor
5) A History of Korea by William Henthorn
6) Letters of John NIV Application Commentary by Gary M. Burge
7) The Death Cure by James Dashner
8) Sever by Lauren DeStafano
9) History of the Church in Korea by Allen Clark
10) Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
11) Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
12) Son of Sobek by Rick Riordian (Short story)
13) The Historian by  Elizabeth Kostova
14) The Dead Sea Scrolls Today by James Vanderkam
15) Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible by James Vanderkam 
16) Jerusalem Testament : Palestinian Christians Speak 1988-2008 by Melanie May
17) Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon O'Brien 
28) Star Trek:Countdown
29) Old Testament Documents? Are they Reliable and Relevant by Walter Kaiser, Jr.
30) Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card 
31)  I am a Church Member by Thom Rainer
32) The House of Hades by Rick Riordian   

Journey into the Afterlife

   As I was selecting books for the Midwestern Library, I came across a title called Journey to the Afterlife: The Egyptian Book of the Dead.  This is something I wanted to purchase for the Library since the Egyptians played a huge role in Biblical history. I also thought it would be useful for the archaeology department. Recently, I have had an interest in Egyptians because of the Egypt exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art(which is an amazing place to visit if you are ever in Kansas City). The Egyptian Book of the Dead is not a book as we would think of it today. It is a collection of spells listed on scrolls, tombs, statues, and other tools for the dead that were suppose to help them in the after life.This book was published by The British Museum. I suppose the best way I could describe this book is an adult picture book/ coffee table book. It is not too text heavy since it is mostly pictures. This book includes beautiful pictures of many Egyptian idols, funeral tools, scrolls, statues, and pottery. It showed how the Egyptians used their sarcophagi to call upon the powers of certain gods. These sarcophagi were especially significant for the pharaohs and other royalty since they believed they inhabited the gods. The spells listed in the Book of the Dead were suppose to help them get through the different phases of the afterlife and help them when they reach Osiris in the judgement hall.  One thing that I thought was interesting is how they used different spells to ensure their hearts did not confess their wrong doing during their life. It also explained the different beliefs that the Egyptians had about the afterlife through the different dynasties. If you are looking for more information on the Egyptians or enjoy archaeology, then you should definitely read this book.

Also, in case you missed it, here is a story about a sarcophagus that moved on its own at the Manchester Museum....Kinda creepy! http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/world/europe/uk-spinning-statue-mystery/index.html