Library Gazette

If the folks in Research and Instruction have looked a bit like deer caught in headlights this semester there is good reason. Our statistics are through the roof for both library instruction ‘one shot’ classes as well as one-on-one personal research sessions. So far this semester we have taught 124 one-shot library instruction sessions to 1928 students. That is 81% of sessions (75% of students) of the TOTAL number we did in the entire 2008-2009 year!! And the same is true of Personal Research Sessions. So far this year we have done 305 Personal Research Sessions which is 73% of the total number from all of last year. (Last year we nearly doubled the number of personal research sessions from the year before). And we still have two weeks to go and many sessions scheduled in those weeks. And it has not just been the Research and Instruction folks who have been participating. Carolyn McCallum, Leslie McCall, Cristina Yu and Erik Mitchell have all taught classes.

We’ve had lots of discussions (around the pots of very strong coffee we brew each morning) about why this is the case, and we feel that it in some way goes back to the new kind of students and faculty Wake Forest is attracting and developing who are not only willing to seek out help, but who are eager to take advantage of help when it is offered. That, coupled with the fact that we are good at our jobs, means faculty keep asking us to teach sessions, and students come back time and time again and tell their friends about us. The long hours, late night emails with students to schedule meetings, hours of prep for instruction sessions and the time spent on creating LibGuides are all worth it when we see the light go on in the eyes of students when they find the exact sources that will help them write their papers or when we have faculty thank us for the help we give their students. We feel this is one of the critical ways we help our students and faculty succeed and it is the heart and soul of our jobs, but we’ll all need a break come the holidays to gear up for it all again in the Spring!

As the Toolkit continues to grow and have more applications, Kevin and I are taking a day to focus some energy on getting it in tip-top shape for the new school year.

For new folks to ZSR: the Toolkit is a service we provide to allow users to find help they need through our website. They can access it when we’re not here, or when they’re just looking to find the answer on their own. The Toolkit is comprised of a number of tools, which are very short narrated videos walking patrons through specific tasks. These videos can be accessed from the Toolkit, but also embedded in Blackboard, Libguides, and other websites.

Today is Toolkit day, and we invite you to stop on by to make a tool for the collection. Starting at 11:00am, at least one of us will be in our offices, with some Starbucks pastries, in case anyone wants to stop by and make one. We have two stations set up and ready to go, so you don’t even need to bring your ThinkPad.If you’d rather just phone us, we’ll make office-calls, too. If you’re new to the process, but want to see how it’s done, we have a page about it in the library wiki.

If you want to participate, but don’t have a tool in mind, we have a wish list of tools we’d like:

The “wanted” tools are requests that haven’t been created yet, and the “update” are tools referring specifically to our classic catalog interface, that should be duplicated in the new Vufind interface. We’ll be updating the list all day, so stop by to see the current wanted/update list!

By recording a tool, you’ll also be contributing to a PRIMO recognized project! Earlier this year, Susan recommended we nominate the Toolkit for PRIMO recognition, and we just found out that it was added to the list. PRIMO is a committee of the ACRL Instruction Section that was created to promote and share peer-reviewed instructional materials created by librarians. From their website: “The PRIMO Committee hopes that publicizing selective, high quality resources will help librarians to respond to the educational challenges posed by still emerging digital technologies.”

So, if you want to make a tool, have questions about the technical side, or have questions about the instructional design side, stop by and have a Starbucks pastry! We’re happy to help in any way we can! Here’s hoping that by the start of fall we have many new tools!