Library Gazette

I figure since we’re about halfway through Teaching Teaching, it might be time for a Gaz update! This semester we’ve taken a different approach. Instead of Roz or me organizing the topics, lectures for each class, and activities, we’re acting as a community of learners. As a group we came up with topics that we wanted to address on the first day of the “class.” Each week several people share on the week’s topic based on their experiences and we have related group discussions based on what we hear.

So far we’ve heard about:

• Facebook, Twitter, and LibGuides as course pages
• Active Learning in One-Shot Sessions
• Incorporating Current Information Issues into Library instruction
• Sakai and POGIL
• A Pedagogical Approach to Teaching information Literacy Skills

(Attendees will be glad to see I’ve finally updated the blog!)

The topic for next Tuesday is “writing objective quiz questions and creating assignments.” So far I’m the only one who has volunteered. Does anyone else have anything they’d like to share on this day? There’s a lot of interest in creating quick and easy to grade assignments, and this is the period set aside to discuss that topic!

Since this semester has been a little bit crazy and folks haven’t always remembered the sessions they wanted to attend, I’ve added each session to the PDC. You can sign up for each “teaching strategy workshop” on our Staff Development page. This way you’ll get a reminder for the session in advance. Of course, if there’s something you’re interested in and you don’t sign up, don’t worry about it! Come on along anyway!

See you next Tuesday at 9am!

Sorry all! I was demoing embedded videos for a podcasting class and accidentally used this blog instead of my normal demonstration site. Too many blogs, I guess! Heather emailed me about the 404 error and reminded me that we had a Wednesday with TED lunch yesterday, and hadn’t posted about it, so I’ll do that to make up for the blank post earlier today.

We started this informally last week, and it was so much fun, we did it again! In case you didn’t see it (from the post): TED Talks are great. The Technology Education and Design conference occurs every year. This invite-only conference brings in world leaders in various areas, and gives them 18 minutes to present. 18 minutes is about perfect. It’s long enough that they can cover content with depth and content, but short enough that they don’t drag on and you can make time to watch them. Most speakers, as world leaders, tend to be very effective presenters as well. You can see talks on the TED website. Kevin and I like them, and we both have learned a lot from them. However, as you know, it’s hard to find 18 minutes most of the time….

Yesterday Kaeley, Mary Beth, Heather, Craig, Kevin, and I watched two. Here’s the (now more formal) idea:

1. Reliably have a TED Talk video play each Wednesday lunchtime starting at noon and ending by 1:00.
2. Let people know that they’re welcome to come by. (Please come by!)
3. Watch TED Talk (we picked the first one, and folks voted on yesterday’s).
4. Chat about possible applications for the library.

Good stuff! Here’s what it was like yesterday:

We watched 2 shorter ones. The first was Pattie Maes on the sixth sense:

And the second was Tim Berners-Lee on Linked Data

Good future-of-libraries/information stuff! And now we know that as library professionals we need to know more about linked data (look for something on this in the near future)! And it was a very fun time… I’m looking forward to next week’s. If you’re interested, put it on your calendar and just come up to the room outside Kevin’s and my office at noon on Wednesday. We’ll be voting on the next one to watch then!

Today was the first Teaching Teaching class. (For those who are curious, Roz and I had a Google Doc that was punnily named “teaching teaching” since that’s what we were planning… the name stuck.)

Over the course of the spring semester Roz and I are planning to give a one hour “course” on teaching. I’m really excited about this for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is open to all WFU librarians. Today we had two guests, which was really nice. The course is made to be modular, so you can miss some or attend based on topic. There are no readings, assignments, homework, or quizzing. We’re hoping that the “course” is long enough to allow us to present with some depth, without requiring too much time commitment from attendees.

Here is the presentation from today:

& you can find more in the blog. If you’re interested in the individual class sessions, you can see the calendar here. If you’re interested in the topic or the class, feel free to talk with Roz or me, or just sign up for the class!

It’s arts and crafts time!! Following the boisterous and jolly Holiday Luncheon at Graylyn, staff members gathered in Wilson 476 to make holiday wreaths using book jackets collected throughout the year. Following in true “Kindergarten arts and crafts style” we had pre-cut leaves, bows, ribbons, and holly berries. If feeling particularly gifted, we also supplied templates and fresh jackets for staff to cut out there own unique pieces.

The Staff Development Committee would like to extend a huge Thank You to Charles Bombeld for saving book jackets this past year and all those who attended! If you’d like to see photos of this event, check out the Flickr photo set.

Happy Holidays!

Heather

You might have heard recently that there’s a new research guide format that the reference folks have been learning to use. It’s called LibGuides, and allows for users to create research guides that take advantage of a number of web 2.0 tools. We’re still learning, but you can see some of the examples here. Not only do these guides make it easy to include the standard information that we’ve included in the past, but you can also include delicious bookmarks, videos and images, and embed chat boxes within the guides themselves.  We’re working on setting up some training options for anyone who might want to make a guide for their subject area, but in the meantime, if you want to see what is possible and the ease of use, you can watch this video:

I’ll send something to lib-l once we have a time/date/place for training. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch if you have questions or comments!

On Tuesday, May 6th, the new ZSR Journal Reading Group met in the ITC Screening room not only to discuss the article “Participatory Networks: The Library as a Conversation”, but also to organize the structure of the group. After some discussion, it was decided to meet on the first Thursday of each month at 11am to avoid as many scheduling conflicts as possible. The location was set for the screening room, which had a nice casual atmosphere and flexible seating.

Once a regular day, date and time had been set, the issue of how to pick the articles was discussed by the group. It was decided to ask for a volunteer at each meeting. This volunteer would then select the article for the next meeting and send out a link to the article two weeks prior to the meeting.
The next meeting will be Thursday, June 5th at 11am in the ITC Screening Room. Megan Mulder has volunteered to select the article and facilitate the discussion. Our final order of business before discussing the article was a discussion of the goals of the ZSR Journal Reading Group. The group agreed that “sharing, learning, and keeping abreast in the field of Library and Information Studies” was a suitable goal for this group.

Below is the article we discussed at the meeting and a link: Lankes, R. D., Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S., & Marshall, T. (2007). “Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation” Information Research, 12(4) paper colis05. [Available here].

Thanks to Erik Mitchell for getting this group started again. (Bobbie Collins reminded us a similar group had existed some years ago.) The ZSR Staff Development Committee is happy to be sponsoring these events. Check out the ZSR Staff Development site to register for the meetings.

As a Staff Development activity, on Thursday, January 24th, Chris Burris, Joe Harrington, Mary Horton, Mary Beth Lock, Lauren Pressley, Lynn Sutton, and I went on a tour of 88.5 WFDD. Greg Keener, Membership Operations Coordinator for the station, was kind enough to volunteer to show us all around.

The station is located inside a renovated house so the interior is rather crowded in some areas, but everything was well laid out and professional looking. WFDD is staffed by 12 members and has three studios. The station also has three bandwidths on HD Radio: WFDD 1 which plays the regular WFDD format, WFDD 2 plays classical and opera music, and WFDD 3 (which is scheduled to launch in February) plays an eclectic blend of music ranging from bluegrass to ambient.

We sat in one of the conference rooms and Greg shared some interesting facts about the station:

1946: WFDD was “born” as a 5 watt station on the campus of Wake Forest College

1948: Officially accepted by the FCC. Thus, this is the year they consider to be their radio debut. The goal for the first pledge drive of that year was $200!

1967: Became the first non-commercial FM station in Winston-Salem

1971: Charter member of NPR (yes, even before WUNC!)

1989: Hurricane Hugo caused the radio tower to collapse

1991: Moved into current location. Prior to that they were located in Reynolda Hall

After Greg fielded some questions from all of us, we went into a studio with one of the Producers and Hosts of WFDD programming, Bradley George. We were able to watch him push some buttons and announce on-air traffic and weather. He also took a few questions from us. It was very brief, but very interesting.

Our time at WFDD was very pleasant and informative. Greg was also kind enough to send us all off with an 88.5 WFDD flower pot coffee mug. WFDD will be having their Winter fundraiser during the week of February 8th-13th. Tune in and give if you can!

On Tuesday, Dan Johnson, graduate student and new father, took time from his busy schedule to teach a Zotero workshop for the ZSR staff. Dan is such a fan of this product that he volunteered for this assignment! Having ditched EndNote, Dan uses Zotero exclusively to manage his thesis citations.

A Firefox extension, Zotero is available for download from www.zotero.org. Dan began the class by having the participant download and install this useful plug-in to our web browser. Next, we learned the core features of this product, using it to create entries for a variety of source types from library catalogs to databases. We even learned how to attach PDF files and screen shots of the articles into Zotero.

Dan did an amazing job covering this extensive amount of material in a 60 minute session. For those who missed the class, the Zotero website has excellent tutorials and other support resources for new users! I encourage anyone who uses EndNote to give Zotero a try, who knows, you may decide this web based product meets your citation needs!

On Friday, September 28^th, seven members of the ZSR staff, Giz Womack, Mary Horton, Lauren Pressley, Chris Burris, Kaeley McMahan, Leslie McCall, and Mary Scanlon, visited the NCSU Learning Commons in the D. H. Hill Library. The website contains detailed information about the services offered by the Commons as well as the blog for the Commons, which is an interesting read.

This Commons includes 2 group study rooms and a presentation practice room all with either projectors or flat panels and white boards. There are over 100 workstations and numerous “soft seating” areas. In addition to the workstations, there are 100 laptops available for checkout, along with mp3 players, digital camera and camcorders and handheld GPS units.

Joe Williams, the Director of the Learning Commons, gave our group a tour of this facility and other parts of the Library. We were all interested in how the Library had placed all the reference materials on shelves around the perimeter of the Learning Commons, making them far more visible than when in stacks.

As with any new space, they are experiencing “growing pains.” Noise levels are occasionally high and some users are not happy with the placement of video game stations in the Commons. Some problems are taking care of themselves. For example, noise levels in the adjoining Special Collections reading room dropped when lamps were added to the large tables that helped with studying, but hindered cross table discussion, an unplanned benefit of the stately brass lamps.

Check out our photos of the NCSU Learning Commons. Also, here’s a brief (and very low resolution) movie of the NCSU Learning Commons.

(Note the abundance of flat panel displays at the entrance, exit and over the service desk that point out available computers, locations of shuttle busses, and more!)

On Tuesday, September 17th, Mike Causey, an organic farmer with Lodge Dodge Farm, spoke to several staff members of the library about organic farming as sustainable agriculture. The talk was hosted by the Staff Development Committee.

Mr. Causey discussed how he came to be an organic farmer and about the products that he grows and sells at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market. He also discussed the requirements for food to be qualified as “organic.” As some of you might already know, it is food that is grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, growth hormones, or genetic modification.

At the end of his talk, Mr. Causey showed us some of the organic products that he sells at the Curb Market such as yams, figs, and pepper jelly. He even brought several purple potatoes for us all to take home!