Professional Development

On Thursday, June 18th, Bobbie Collins, Carolyn McCallum, Leslie McCall, and Sarah Jeong attended the 4th Annual Information Literacy Conference in Charlotte. As usual, the organizers of this conference did an excellent job pulling together an impressive group of speakers who addressed a variety of issues and trends relating to information literacy. The 100 attendees were able to select from several breakout sessions that focused on the broad areas of pedagogy, assessment, and technology. And for the first time attendees were able to view several poster sessions. The poster sessions added a new dimension to the conference and provided an opportunity for poster session presenters to exchange information with other attendees in a relaxed setting.

Bobbie, Carolyn, Leslie and Sarah submitted a poster session proposal to Metrolina and were very pleased when the proposal was accepted. During our assigned time period, we discussed with other conference participants the challenges that we faced in developing and teaching the subject specific IL credit courses for the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. Sarah and Carolyn were able to capture some pictures of the posters.

This year’s keynote speaker was Jill Gremmels, Leland M. Park Director of the Davidson College Library. Prior to her position at Davidson, Jill was the College Librarian at Warburg College in Iowa. In 2002, Warburg College was one of 10 institutions invited to the Best Practices in Information Literacy Conference. As part of her presentation, Jill discussed the “Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy that Illustrate Best Practices: A Guideline.” Before the conference, attendees received a link in an email with a note to review this information before the conference: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/characteristics.cfm
This document which was approved by the ACRL Board in 2003 provides some excellent background information to help individuals develop, assess and improve IL programs. Moreover, the document notes that these characteristics may be useful for benchmarking purposes.

Jill mentioned that San Francisco State University undertook a self-study of its IL program and used the ACRL best practices characteristics as a benchmark to compare their data. For additional information about how they went about creating and implementing the survey instrument, Jill recommended reading the article by Kendra Van Cleave entitled “The Self-Study as an Information Literacy Program Assessment Tool” which appeared in the 2008 issue of College & Undergraduate Libraries Vol. 15(4), pp - 414-431. This article is available online if you are interested in reading it.

Mike Olson from UNC Charlotte asked the question: “How do we get students to discern?” During his presentation, he mentioned the ACRL standards and provided the ACRL defintion of IL. He noted that Donna Gunter (Coordinator, Information Literacy and Instructional Services at the J. Murrey Atkins Library) is busy preparing materials for a new online resource that will be up on the library’s website by August 24. Mike reported that 490 library instruction sessions were given during 2007-2008 and 690 sessions were provided during 2008-2009 reaching 14,794 students.

Joan Petit, who is the Instruction and Reference Librarian at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, led a session called Library Instruction 2.0. Many of the technologies she discussed, ZSR has been utilizing (i.e. Facebook, blogs, and wikis). According to Ms. Petit, students in Egypt are nuts about Facebook, so she created a FB page for her library. It took quite a while for her to get approval to create the page. AUC Main Library’s FB page has 966 fans. She uses WetPaint.com, a free website builder software program, to set up a wiki for her IL classes and wishes that her library would use Twitter. Ms. Petit authors a blog called The Chatty Librarian and can be followed on Twitter as well by the username chattylibrarian. One interesting thing she reported is that Duke has created an iPhone app. for individuals to browse Duke’s digital collections.

“I Never Wanted to be a Teacher” was the title of the session led by Nora Bird and Linda Gann, both of UNCG’s Department of Library and Information Studies. At the beginning, they asked attendees to write on a note card two job responsibilities one had when they were first hired and two responsibilities that one is currently doing in their job but wasn’t listed in the original job description. They feel there is a disconnect between library school curriculum and instruction/teaching and they are gathering information to determine how MLIS programs should respond. Using Powerpoint, they flashed job advertisements for public and academic libraries on a screen that dated back to the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and today. One could definitely see a trend in advertisements going from “seeking a person with people skills” to ones that required skills in teaching and instruction of technology and other library resources.

Diane Harvey from Duke University led a session on “Assessing for Improvement: Student Learning Outcomes Assessment for Information Literacy Instruction.” Student Learning Outcomes Assessment is a systematic look at what students are learning. Learning Outcomes Assessment is not an evaluation of teaching, but it moves instruction away from “What am I going to teach today?” to “What do I want students to learn today?” Some examples of assessment methods include knowledge tests, the One Minute Paper, bibliography analysis, concept inventory, and standardized tests. Student Learning Outcomes Assessment provides a practical student-centered approach to teaching as well as a means to improve teaching.

Amy Gustavson and Clark Nall from East Carolina University led a session on “Evidence-Based Librarianship in Assessment of Information Literacy Instruction.” Gustavson and Nall’s presentation focused on the theory and different research methodologies of Evidence-Based Librarianship research. Evidence-Based Librarianship provides a foundation for the practitioner and helps practitioners make effective evidence-based decisions. Gustavson and Nall are currently researching the comparison of students’ self-reported confidence in their research skills and testing their knowledge of research skills.

Overall, this conference was very informative. We highly recommend it to those interested in information literacy. If you would like to discuss any of the sessions that we attended, please let us know!

After the opening convocation and reception at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Art Librarians Association of North America Conference got into full swing on Saturday morning.

The first session was the opening plenary, with remarks by James Neal of Columbia University Libraries, entitled, Progressive Change: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st Century Art Library, with responses by four librarians representing different aspects of art librarianship: art and design schools, academic, visual resources, and museum. Neal listed 15 key contextual trends for libraries as we move into the future:

• ubiquitous computing
• customization and personalization
• web2.0, social networking and collective intelligence
• massively distributed collaboration
• constant partial attention
• permanent state of beta development
• radical restructuring
• authorship and writing revolutions
• self-service/ATM expectations
• openness and collaboration
• digital preservation, integrity and sustainablity
• repository movement and version control
• new majority learner
• accountability and assessment
• entrepreneurial imperative and resource attraction

He emphasized the importance of libraries and librarians being proactive and supporting open access and institutional repository initiatives, as well as being advocates for the “information policy agenda,” including issues of intellectual freedom and orphan works. He ended with the reminder to focus on “human” goals and outcomes of our work, what our faculty and students feel are successful outcomes.

The vendor exhibit opening was next, and I used most of that time to track down the easel for my poster presentation and find my table in the exhibits area. Before the poster session I attended the Academic Libraries Division Meeting. Besides discussing what programs the division would sponsor for next years conference in Boston, we discussed how different libraries deal with book covers. Depending on the type of library and their patron needs, there were different uses for the covers: some libraries sent their covers to the studio art departments, some kept if the image wasn’t in the book or if there was important series information on the cover, some threw them away, some used them for displays, and some considered them part of the book as an object and kept all covers.

The poster sessions were during the middle session of the afternoon, and were located amongst the vendor tables. The poster that Sharon, Leslie, Ellen and I prepared about our LIB250 course was one of four presented. I counted about 30 people who stopped by to look at the poster and most chatted for about 10 minutes, asking questions about our information literacy program in general and specifics about our course. Most were impressed by our program and one of the frequently asked questions was, “so how did you get this approved in the first place?” There was also a lot of interest in the mindmaps that Leslie created!

The last session for the day was entitled, If You Sit There, Will They Come?: The Changing Reference Landscape. Four panelists offered their experiences of how reference services are changing in different art library environments. The staffing of the reference desk seemed to be a hot topic no matter what type of library was involved. Using or not using professional, paraprofessional and student staff, in what ratio, and for what tasks were questions most of the panelists touched on, and was a topic of discussion among attendees as well. A few other points that were mentioned:

• tech savvy doesn’t mean information savvy
• marketing, marketing, marketing
• assume that everyone needs help (even if they don’t know what they need help with!)

Saturday night is my only night without an activity, so I took advantage of the location of the hotel and walked around downtown Indianapolis. There are lots of interesting historic buildings, restaurants, shops and sports arenas within walking distance and the weather was perfect for walking. It’s supposed to rain Sunday and Monday, so I’m glad I had the chance tonight.

Whew! Midwinter was busy, productive, and good this go around!

As you know I typically blog each event and pull the posts together into daily posts here. This time I quickly realized that I wouldn’t even have the time for that type of reporting, so I did daily posts over on my blog, and I’m pulling them together here into one conference post. If you want more details, here are the daily posts: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. If you want more details than that, let me know! I have lots of notes, but just didn’t have the time to process them into blog posts. Here’s the summary of what I’ve been up to (in alphabetical order and bulleted for easier reading):

Continuing Library Education Network and Exchange Round Table

Discussion Group on Staff Development

• CLENE is a group that focuses on staff development
• Some issues can be resolved with training and others can be resolved with strong supervision
• Discussed merits of online training
• Talked about the relationship of management and training
• Discussed our perception of ourselves vs. our patron’s perceptions, and a lot of vocabulary issues.

Reception (hosted by Pat Wagner)

• I just learned of and met Pat at this conference, but I am really impressed with her! She ran an exercise for the Emerging Leaders Town Hall, hosted this reception, and was an active participant of the CLENE discussion group.
• This reception was an excellent introduction to CLENE, and I met one of my local Twitter friends face-to-face, Lori Reed!
• I also ran into Peter Bromberg, so we followed up on some of the activities from earlier in the day, and I got some good advice on some of the areas I want to work on developing.

ACRL Women’s Studies Section

• I’m a member of the Instruction Committee and we’re doing interesting work!
• Rewriting the Information Literacy standards for Women’s Studies
• The committee hopes to present on this topic at the National Women’s Studies Association conference

Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship

• Every once in a while there is a question of the value of COSWL. We’ve done a good job over the last three years of keeping active and involved so those questions wouldn’t be asked. However, at this meeting there were only three members present (we were outnumbered by observers).
• Discussed the nature of committees formed by presidential appointment
• Considered possible partnerships
• We agreed that all the virtual work the committee had been doing was a good thing, and we would continue doing so (including using the listserv to find a time that would fit more people’s schedules)
• The second meeting is tomorrow, so I’m not posting the details here yet. I imagine it will be a continuation of the discussion we had earlier at the conference.

Emerging Leaders Town Hall

• I figured I’d see what this meeting was like since I’m just one year out, and I was really impressed.
• Leslie Burger, Maureen Sullivan, and Connie Paul ran the meeting as usual.
• A number of useful (and not too stressful!) networking exercises
• Feedback from participants on what ALA should look like in the future

LITA, general

Top Tech Trends

• Susan and I attended this together, but came from another session, so we got in about an hour into it
• Standing room only, but it was interesting enough to merit standing for the hour we were there
• While we were there, the discussed trends included: changing in publishing paradigm (for books and newspapers), the broadband divide, and changing displays. When asked how many in the audience have more than one monitor at their workspace, I was surprised that it seemed over half raised their hand. I wonder if it is the norm, or if a techy crowd would be more likely than a non-techy crowd.
• If you’re interested, you can watch it here!
  
• (Because what they did is so great, I’m cutting and pasting this bit straight from my blog): But the most important part of this year’s Top Tech Trends was the use of technology. It was amazing. Official tags allowed audience members (both in the room and across the country) to follow what was going on in various channels. Ustream surpassed 20 people. The FriendFeed room pulled everything together. This was exactly how it should be. LITA demonstrating how these tools can be applied to allow ALA to positively impact more people in the profession. It’s good for us as professionals looking to learn more, it’s good marketing (I knew we could still go to Top Tech Trends because of the Twitter messages I was getting in my breakfast session), and it’s good practice as information professionals. Kudos to Jason Griffey, BIGWIG, and TTT for showing how it can be done.

The LITA Town Hall Breakfast

• LITA Town Halls are planned by LITA’s Vice President and tend to focus on issues around what LITA is or should be and how to position the organization for the future.
• This one was lead by a consultant that had small groups consider different aspects of LITA (competing organizations, what areas of IT LITA should address, how we can collaborate better, etc) and then share out to the group.
• I got there a bit early and missed the formation of the Twittering/Google Docing/Live Blogging table, but felt like I was sitting there because of their awesome technology use. Though I was sitting with my group, I could follow along with a larger discussion (including with people across the country) in a number of ways. This is what was on my laptop:
  
  The panel on the left is a live blog, and the columns on the right were for friendfeed and twitter. This is an example of an awesome use of technology, and a great way to get more voices heard. I’m not sure what will come of the brainstorming in the meeting, but at a minimum, this demonstration of how these tools can be used effectively was worth it.

LITA Distance Learning Interest Group

LITA Committee and Interest Group Chairs Joint Meeting

• This meeting is for the chairs of all the LITA committees and interest groups.
• This meeting gets all the LITA leadership into one room: board, chairs, staff, etc
• Discussed transparency in scheduling and decided to use the LITA wiki for this purpose
• LITA Forum will have amazing keynoters (David Weinberger, Liz Lawley, and Joan Lippincott) and is still accepting program proposals. (Man, I’ve got to get on that! Thanks for being part of this, Susan!!)
• Walt Crawford started an interesting discussion on the similarities of “publications” and “communication” committees, and where are the lines of publishing for a group with print publications, electronic ones, a website, a blog, a wiki, a listserv, etc.

Distance Learning Interest Group Discussion

• (I’ll be posting real notes for this session on my blog, on the LITA blog, and on the DLIG blog.)
• I chair this group, so this was my top priority of the conference.
• I was a bit worried about the DLIG this conference. We don’thave a set membership and different people show up at the discussions at each conference, so it’s hard to know ahead of time how it will be. I thought with it being cold, in Denver, and with the budget issues so many people are facing we wouldn’t have hardly anyone. Instead we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20.
• We talked about text messaging, screencasting, and a little on embedded librarians and content management systems.
• We’re establishing a discussion list and will hopefully be doing some exciting things in the near future.

LITA Web Coordinating Committee

• This was my first meeting with the LITA Web Coordinating Committee.
• I am starting this term as part of mycommitmentto LITA for their sponsorship of me in the Emerging Leaders program.
• It takes a while to figure out the social dynamics of a committee, the charge, and what the committee is actually able to do. I’m still feeling it out.
• It does look like there might be some changes to the site in the next year or so, though, so I’ll probably be around for that.

Programs

Alexander Street Press Breakfast

• Susan and I attended the Alexander Street Press breakfast. It’s always a great event.
• First, I really think Alexander Street Press understands where information is moving, and they’re leading edge thinkers about how to provide content for users now and in the future.
• Perhaps even more exciting, they are figuring out ways to allow users to search through video content quickly and locate specific spots in the video the user needs. It’s amazing stuff.
• Second, they always have a great speaker (and provide a great looking breakfast). So, for leading edge issues: they now have a database of graphic novel/comic materials.
• As for their speaker, this year, because of the new database, they invited Art Spiegelman. He was an engaging speaker and gave me a lot to think about (in terms of conveying information in text and space, using images to cause people to think critically about culture, displacing norms)…. it was a great talk. He also helped me justify my recent interest in graphic novels

SPARC-ACRL Forum on Open Educational Resources

• Panelist: Richard Baraniuk, an architect of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration and founder of Connexions
• Panelist: David Wiley, also a leader of the Cape Town Declaration and Chief Openness Officer (cool, no?) for Flat World Knowledge
• Panelist: Nicole Allen, leader of the Student PIRGs Make Textbooks Affordable campaign
• Panelist: Mark Nelson,Digital Content Strategist for the National Association of College Stores, the trade association representing the higher education retail industry
• This panel gave a great presentation and discussed interesting topics. Some practical issues were addressed (like getting started on your own campus) as well as more theoretical ones (do textbooks even make sense in a constructivist environment?)
• The most striking point, to me, was if the government requires open access topubliclyfunded research, why don’t we require open access topubliclyfunded educational materials?

Other ALA Notes

• Sarah and I roomed (which was really nice!) at the Curtis Hotel (which was the funnest hotel I’ve ever stayed at!) Our room was on the 13th floor, which was horror themed. When the elevator stopped it said, “heeeere’s Johnny!” and there was a picture from The Shining right outside the door. It was great rooming with Sarah, we were able to eat a few meals together which was really nice.
• I saw a bunch of ZSR folks! Sarah and I, obviously saw each other quite a bit. One evening we got dinner with Steve. I ran into Wanda in the convention center (though I was so in-my-own-head that I almost missed her!) Susan and I spent Sunday morning together and saw each other at the LITA happy hour. Steve, Sarah, and I ran into Debbie Nolan. She seemed to be doing well. I never saw Lauren, but I know Susan and Sarah did. It’s amazing how at such a large conference you can see so many people you know.
• It was COLD. I mean WAY colder than the weather channel said it would be when I left Winston-Salem. I mean the type of weather where I don’t even own appropriate shoes.
  
• That being said, this was a fabulously walkable conference. Our hotel was three blocks from the convention center, and there was a great free bus that ran through downtown.
• Everyone was talking about Tough Economic Times. Attendance was way down. Every meeting I was in talked about the economy in terms of how it’s impacting the organization, libraries, and/or communities.
• Blogs seemed to play less of a role at this conference, and Twitter/Liveblogging/streaming video played way more. It dawned on me at one point that I used to keep my RSS reader open throughout the conference to see what was going on. I barely cracked it on this trip, insteadincessantlyupdating and watching Twitter. I actually think this might be a move towards the positive. There were several meetings where people all over the country participated because of the real-time nature of Twitter.
• I am gearing up to focus my energy on LITA. At this point I think LITA has the best chance at impacting ALA and making it a better organization. I also know that I need to focus my committee energy a bit more to be more effective. My WSS and COSWL terms are coming to an end at Annual, and I’m not going to seek out any replacements in areas non-LITA sections of ALA. WSS was incredibly welcoming to me as a new professional. COSWL gave me incredible insights into how ALA works and what we need to do to be effective, but spreading my time across ACRL, LITA, and the council committee meant that I couldn’t make a real impact in any one. It’s time to see what changes I can really make happen.

On Oct. 9, I drove down to East Carolina University in Greenville for the annual meeting of the Southeast Music Library Association. It was a very interesting and varied program this year:

Library “Infomercials”

Nathalie Hristov, Music Librarian at UT Knoxville, gave a presentation titled “The Music Library Informercial: a Practical Guide for Creating the Most Powerful Marketing Tool You Will Ever Use.” Nathalie had noticed that certain materials in the Music Library — audio-streaming databases, directories, vocational literature (job ads, etc.) — seemed to be under-utilized. She contacted Alan Wallace, UT’s Education Librarian, who had made videos for the main library, about producing an infomercial on the Music Library’s resources and services, with a special focus on the under-used resources, to be shown at the music school’s fall convocation, which all students were required to attend.

The infomercial fulfilled all expectations: surveys conducted before and after showed increased student awareness of the Music Library’s services in general; an increase in the number of students who knew about the under-used materials and who had used or planned to use them; and a large majority who reported that they found the infomercial to be both entertaining and helpful.

Nathalie’s and Alan’s advice on the nuts-and-bolts of producing an infomercial:

Script:

• Don’t overload your infomercial. Decide what you want to focus on (e.g. under-used resources), and cut your script to make it as concise as possible.
• Keep narration to a minimum, or you’ll lose viewers’ attention.
• Speak the students’ language (not librarianese).
• Play on students’ strengths, wants, and needs (papers due, rehearsals to prepare for, finding a job after graduation).

Scheduling:

• Create a timeline. Divide the project into sections, and set a deadline for each section’s completion.
• Stay on schedule to avoid losing currency of information.

Cast:

• Use local talent. (One option: drama students.)

Taping:

• Survey your venue for aesthetics. Ugly objects like trash receptacles, signs taped up on walls, etc., are “forgiven” by the eye in real life, but jump out on the video screen.
• Use cue cards, since your cast are likely not to be trained actors.
• Use uniform clothing (a school T-shirt is good) for your cast. Otherwise, if you’re filming the same people in separate sessions, subsequent editing can create a comical impression of sudden costume changes (say, for warm and cold weather).
• Go for interesting angles (from above, below, etc.). In cramped stacks spaces, the UT team shot through openings between shelves.

Editing:

• The UT team used iMovie, a Mac-based software. They also used Final Cut Pro, but warned that this product was expensive and involved a steep learning curve.
• Screencasting tools like Snagit and Camtasia can be used.
• The final step is exporting and burning to disk, which depending on the application can take anywhere from a couple of hours to fifteen.

Evaluation:

• Solicit viewer feedback, as the UT folks did with before-and-after surveys.
• Also important is cost/benefit analysis. Document everything: the UT team made daily records of time spent, tools used, etc.

Embedded Info-Lit

Sarah Manus, Music Librarian for Public Services at Vanderbilt, gave a presentation titled “Librarian in the Classroom: an Embedded Approach to Music Information Literacy for First-Year Students.” Vanderbilt’s music curriculum includes a “core” of four courses on music history and literature which all incoming music majors are required to take. Sarah took advantage of this opportunity to embed herself in all four courses, giving progressive instruction from the basics (the library’s catalog) in the introductory course to advanced research tools (composers’ thematic catalogs) in the fourth. Her original plan was to give two info-lit sessions per course, but faculty subsequently asked her to “front-load” her syllabus with more sessions in the first course.

Sarah’s participation included:

• Attending all class sessions.
• Participating in class discussion, when asked to by the instructor.
• Answering students’ questions about their research.
• Holding office hours twice a week.

Sarah warned that this degree of embedment required a huge time committment, especially after the music school added a second section to the core, and she consequently found herself attending class five days a week. Sarah said she also had difficulty remembering which material she had given when to each section!

(It’s also worth noting that Vanderbilt has three music librarians — one for public services, one for cataloging, and a director of the music library — which enabled Sarah to make the necessary time committment to an embedded project of this scale. As Sarah noted, where you have one person performing all three roles (like at Wake), or you have a large program with several hundred students enrolled, it would not be the most feasible option.)

There were some other unanticipated difficulties with the embedded approach. Sarah’s familiar presence in the classroom led some students to draw the wrong conclusion. The inevitable procrastinators expected her to do their research for them, and others prevailed on her to pull strings on their behalf, such as having library fines forgiven. The instructor had to give the class a stern lecture to the affect that “Sarah is not your slave, and will not do your work for you!” Still, Sarah found that the opportunity to get to know the students and their needs, and to be more closely involved in the overall educational process, was well worth it.

Improvements Sarah plans:

• Devote more time to the research process. Sarah found that many of the students were used to doing short critical essays, and had never done an extended research project before.
• Use active learning techniques, such as small-group work.

Ethnological fieldwork

Holling Smith-Borne, also from Vanderbilt, gave a presentation on “Recording the Traditional Music of Uganda.” This was an update on the development of the Global Music Archive project, a website hosted by Vanderbilt that offers audio streaming of traditional music, so far from Africa. Holling became acquainted with a prominent Ugandan musician who served as an adjudicator for Uganda’s annual national music festival. This man consequently knew all the best traditional musicians in the country, and had an extensive network of contacts with universities, govenment agencies, and other institutions interested in preserving Ugandan culture. Vanderbilt provided him with a salary, recording equipment, and training, and engaged him to travel the country supplying material for the Global Music Archive. Holling and his team hope to identify similar contacts in other African countries, to expand on this work.

They next plan to add to the Archive:

• Appalachian dulcimer music
• Indigenous Mexican music
• An existing Vanderbilt archive of tango music

http://www.globalmusicarchive.org/

Greenville being so near the coast, our guest speaker was retired ethnomusicologist Otto Henry, who shared wonderful reminiscences of his fieldwork on the Outer Banks, recording old-timers singing and playing folk music of the area. Many of his recordings were issued on the Folkways label.

Business meeting

We missed the company of a number of colleagues this year due to cutbacks in travel funding (Georgia’s state library system in fact announced the total elimination of travel funding just a day before the SEMLA meeting). We dovoted some time in our business meeting discussing how the general downturn in the economy was likely to make professional travel increasingly difficult for many for some time to come, and explored ways of compensating for this unfortunate trend, including screencasting future SEMLA meetings.

Also in the business meeting, a student member proposed creating a Facebookaccount for SEMLA, with the object of outreach to library-school students, and of increasing awareness of music librarianship as a career. The idea was well received, and an exploratory committee was set up.

All in all, a very enjoyable and informative meeting this year — I’ve come back with lots of ideas for our LIB250 course and other endeavors!

Yes. We had an earthquake. We felt it — a bit scary but when the locals didn’t run for the hills we figured we were ok. We are meeting in a brand new building so it has all the requisite earthquake resistance built in, but still a bit unnerving.

Day two was a good one. Just a few impressions. We started by discussing in small groups some research studies we found and brought with us that focused on pedagogy, library instruction, classroom experience, any thing in that area. What I came out of it with is a realization that we often need to go outside the library literature to find really good research on teaching and learning, but that if we do - it can be very informative. We all expressed a desire to have more time for keeping up with the literature that is out there on good teaching and are crafting some ways to help us do that.

We spent another part of the day discussing our students. Who they are, what they need, what they would ask us if they could. Very enlightening exercises but the most interesting one was one we did about assumptions. We all had to list three assumptions we make about the students when we enter the classroom - we then listed them all (75) and found some real insights. We discussed how our assumptions affect how and what we teach in good and bad ways. We also talked about how reluctant we often are to give up our assumptions even when faced with ample evidence that they are no longer valid. Food for thought.

We finished up the day developing the perfect job description for the perfect librarian as seen from the student’s perspective. Not as easy a task as it sounds — hard to keep putting yourself in the shoes of the student. But as I have been thinking a lot about job descriptions lately - it was a good exercise.

Now to dinner and then some lighter viewing fare tonight — Parker Posey in “Party Girl!”

This was my second ALA, and I am so glad I went. I attended several sessions on cataloging and the future of the catalog, as well as a session on information literacy standards for anthropology and sociology students.

Below are insights gained from attending sessions by and for sociology and anthropology librarians and information literacy standards for these disciplines.

Before heading out to California, Roz informed me about an ALA session in which ANSS (Anthropology and Sociology Section of ACRL) librarians were meeting to discuss the new “Information Literacy Standards for Anthropology and Sociology” that had recently been published in the June 2008 issue of College & Research Libraries News. Roz, Bobbie and I are currently planning and developing the LIB210 class Social Science Research Sources and Strategies.

Key insights from this session include:
1. The standards document is a library document, not something you would pass out to faculty. Possibly start with one faculty member and together pick out key things in the document that resonates with him or her and start with incorporating those items into the department’s curriculum.
2. The learning of information literacy skills should be integrated into discipline specific classes, not separate. A comment was made that this is an easier sell to faculty if it’s integrated rather than as an add-on. Having a basic information literacy course may make some faculty feel they don’t need information literacy in other courses; there is a difference in basic skills vs. specific disciplinary skills.
3. Special guest Edward L. Kain, Professor of Sociology at Southwestern University, suggested that faculty and librarians think about strategic places in sociology assignments where information literacy goals can be incorporated.
4. Departments are looking for ways to assess what they do. Librarians will gain points with faculty by providing guidance on assessment to faculty.

After the session, I spoke with Patti Caravello, Librarian for Anthropology, Archaeology, and Sociology and Director of the Information Literacy Program at UCLA as well as one of the authors of the document, and she told me of her experiences teaching information literacy in a Sociology class alongside the professor. She commented that the professor was convinced that student papers were better written. She has published an article about her experience and feels strongly that information literacy should be integrated into discipline specific classes rather than being taught as a separate class altogether. She also invited me to come to the Anthropology Librarians Discussion Group the next day, which I did, and I learned much there as well.

At the Anthropology Librarians Discussion Group, a goal of the group is to create a repository of teaching materials (e.g. syllabi, homework assignments, instructional materials) to post on the ACRL ANSS section’s website. Included material in the repository must tie into the newly created information literacy standards. Best practices for graduate students’ instruction programs were also discussed. Even though WFU no longer has a graduate program in anthropology, I believe some of the “best practices” could be applicable or tweaked to fit undergraduate classes. Some of the “best practices” include:
1. Subject specialist or liaison has office hours in department. Usage varied among librarians, but all agreed one-on-one consultation is popular.
2. Have a wine and cheese social in the library’s graduate student lounge. Make this a no-sit-down function so that people will have to mingle. Acquire a list of student names at the social.
3. Conduct workshops throughout the year in Endnote, RefWorks, and how to submit one’s dissertation.
4. There is a need for data literacy skills (i.e. How does one make sense of these data charts/graphs?).
5. Conduct a graduate student workshop at orientation. Have an introduction to the library as well as a citation workshop on academic integrity (i.e. Do students really understand plagiarism?). The citation workshop can be adapted to any discipline and can be an active learning experience; provide short 2-3 sentences scenarios of plagiarism examples.
6. Ask professors to send librarians their graduate students’ subject specialties/research topics. This will aid in collection development and predicting future topics in emerging areas of the discipline.
7. In bibliographic instruction classes, demonstrate citation management program and use students’ topics when demonstrating databases.
8. Audit or take classes in discipline; become an embedded librarian.
9. Offer scanning as a way to see what students are working on.
10. In course management software, ask professor to add your name into specific class. That way one is able to jump into discussions, offer tips on anthropology sources, but unable to view assignments submitted.

The question how does one teach students how to find scholarly articles and which databases to utilize was posed? One person’s comment was to limit to the top three best starting places for the discipline, and if this proves unsuccessful, one can drill down even further.

Both sessions were immensely informative and helpful and because of them, I plan on joining ACRL’s ANSS section. With proposed changes to WFU’s liaison program, I realize I have much to learn about the field of anthropology. I made some great contacts with Anthropology Librarians, especially Patti Caravello of UCLA who was willing to answer my questions and share her knowledge and experience of working as an Anthropology Librarian. After expressing concern to Patti about not having a degree in anthropology, she recommended some titles for further reading and stated that having a desire to further my knowledge and understanding of the discipline and its lingo will go a long way in becoming a better liaison to the Anthropology department at WFU.

Later this week, I will post reflections on the cataloging sessions I attended.

My presentation was scheduled for that most hated time….last slot, last day. I was sure it would be me and the two people who couldn’t get flights out until Sunday, but in actuality I had between 60 and 70 people attend and they were an enthusiastic and appreciative group. My topic was two-fold. First I was discussing rethinking the pure annotated bibliography as a final project for library instruction (or any lower level course, for that matter). Second, I was discussing using wikis and Google Docs in our LIB100 classes. There was some familiarity with Google Docs in the crowd but MUCH enthusiasm for my demo and my ability to answer questions. There was also a lively discussion of the annotated bibliography and new ways to approach similar skills with more relevant assignments. So it was a success and I was so pleased to be able to give others some new ideas, as I had been offered so many in the presentations I had attended.

It was a really useful conference to me — it is nice to be in a place where everyone does the same thing. You don’t have to introduce the concept of Information Literacy, and when people say ‘one-shot’ everyone knows what you are talking about. And the sessions gave me a lot to chew on over the summer as I prepare for my ACRL Intentional Teacher Immersion and work on improving our LIB100 and LIB200 curriculum. But for now….that’s all on LOEX….I have bigger fish to fry in the next few days….

This excellent presentation was done by two librarians at NCSU: Scott Warren, the Assoc. Director of the Textiles Library and Engineering Sciences and Kim Duckett, Digital Technologies and Learning Librarian.

What they have done is to expand on our discussion of the economics of information and scholarly publishing for an upper-level english class on communication in the sciences. Here’s what they do:

• Want to convey to students that their tuition $$ goes to things that the general public cannot afford. They are privileged by their association with an institution and a library and that can give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
• Focus on Discovery (what Google Scholar is for) and Access (what the library pays for)
• Find that students who run into a fee from a Google Scholar link move on to something else until they find something for free.
• They focus on discussing with the students WHY articles, journals and databases cost money — the library is a business — we purchase these things on their behalf (and with their money)
• They provide a larger context to peer review discussion including rejection rates, page rates, ‘not all journals are created equal,’ royalties, ownership, etc. to give them a sense of the culture of scholarly publishing, not just the process
• Ask Why can publishers charge so much? and Why do we pay it?
• Ask If we pay so much, do you think the publishers are giving it away for free on the web??
• Kim uses a great deep web metaphor to explain how Google scholar works vs. online databases

While we already do some of what they are doing in our LIB100 classes — this encouraged me to give it more context — business models make sense to students (they pay, for example, for iTunes songs) so work with that. Especially for our LIB200 classes, this discussion becomes even more important to have.

Good metaphor: the journal is the CD, the journal article is the MP3 of one of the songs….

Robin L. Ewing and Melissa Prescott from St. Cloud State

Web 2.0 Definition (won’t regurgitate this - the basics - Social networking, bookmarking, tagging, communicating, RSS, etc.)

Web 2.0 Surveys 2007

Teens and Social Media from Pew Internet and American Life

Creating and Connecting from National School Board survey

• 64% online teens have created Web 2.0 content
• Approx. 30% of online students have their own blogs
• 22% have uploaded videos they have created

Their own Web 2.0 Awareness Survey

74 students

Awarness of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Podcasts, Social tagging, Wikipedia, Other Wikis, RSS

• RSS had not heard of 92%, 0% had ever used
• Social Bookmarking 68% had not heard of
• Other Wikis 45% had not heard of
• Podcasts 51% had heard of but had not used
• 5% had blogs
• 8% had uploaded videos

Audience discussed how their students compare - similar experiences — students are not seeing new technologies as ‘exciting’ the way librarians do….for them it’s like a new feature on a car — or a refrigerator…..

Librarians respond to Web 2.0 — we see it as a way to connect, market, facilitate — but do students want us there?

Wanted to use credit courses to introduce Web 2.0 concepts and applications, identify tools to discuss with them but not have them create the content or evaluate

Devoted the last 5 minutes of each class to Web 2.0 technology - overview and example — used PPT presentations, or Social Bookmarking YouTube videos (In Plain English series)….. sometimes also did in-class exercises

Virtual Library Tour

• Had students take the pictures (check out the cameras from Circ) …..upload to Flickr….. tag….
• Set up a Flicker account for the class
• Assigned them to groups
• Gave each a camera
• Instructor uploaded them to Flickr
• Tagging happened later in the semester
• Now they do a short tour - students upload the pcitures - students add tags and notes — http://www.flickr.com/photos/13167481@N03
• Practice tagging with Google Image Labeler

Social Bookmarking

PPT - definition, video — in class they signed up for account and tagged some sites

Podcasting

Online article — Online May/June 31-31 — Bennington, Adam. 2007. Stick it in your ear: Keeping current with Podcases

Had them listen to a podcast and then evaluated it in class….

Next Steps

Connect Web 2.0 Resources to student research

• Blogs as research logs
• Wikipedia article creation
• 23 Things idea….
• Short readings ‘7ThingsYour Should Know about…..” from EDUCAUSE outside of class and come into class ready to discuss

Implications for IL Instruction

Evaluation of Information from Web 2.0 Sources needs to be considered - not easy to get a checklist format for this.

This was a great session because it confirmed my hunch that students don’t use Web 2.0 the  way librarians use it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not relevant to their research in certain circumstances. I really love the idea of having the students take pictures of the library and then use the concept of tagging to introduce the concept of controlled vocabularies.  I also got some other good ideas about how to approach the topics with students by starting with things we know they do (read their updates in Facebook) and applying that to other Web 2.0 technologies (RSS Feeds).

This presentation, from Elmhurst College, called Laying an Ethical Foundation: Information Ethics as a Good Beginning –

IL in a first-year seminar (new program to Elmhurst) –

• Dean brought it into the curriculum
• Went to First Year Experience conference (in Hawaii!!!)
• Partnered with Student Affairs personnel
• Wanted FYS to be very academic in nature (rather than an extended orientation class)
• 4 pilot classes (Business, Geology, Education, Rhetoric/Composition)
• Rhetoric/Comp Professor was an honors section “Exploring Chicago” — place as text — history/politics/economics/culture/immigrants
• All 4 sections taught at the same time — they would get them together for larger discussions
• For all 4 classes - 5 specific goals
  • Articulate an understanding of the value of a liberal arts education and its synergy with professional preparation.
    • Liberal Arts Articles
    • The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World– common text
    • Class Reflections
    • Final Synthesis Paper
  • React ethically to varied perspectives and experiences to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to expand cultural awareness
    • Attendance at campus events and reaction papers
    • off-campus trips that required critical & reflective thinking about the experience
  • Respond critically to varied texts from different disciplinary speheres of knowledge and perspectives
    • critical examination of readings from many different perspectives
  • Contribute to the campus and/or society through varied means including civic engagement
  • Articulate and demonstrate ways to ethically gather, synthesize and present information in school, work and life
• Last goal was Information Literacy — library partnership
• Focus on access and evaluation in first year programs results in lack of time for consideration of communication and ethics
• College’s mission to teach ethics and values
• Millennial students as creators and users of information
• Goals of the Information Literacy Module
  • Engage students where they are
  • Prompt them to think about information ethics
• 3 blog assignments
  • Academic dishonesty — group discussion, followed by reflective writing
  • Sources of information — critical thinking exercise on web-based resources — analyze Wikipedia and Britannica entries
  • Ownership of information - blog ‘reports’ on events with multimedia component

Results (Librarian Perspective):

• Most students completed blog assignments
• Used information ethically
• Did not comment on each others posts -
• Did not use this blog for other assignments or recreationally
• Resistance to blogging
• Engaged students in learning with librarians
• Embedded librarian in a course
• Introduced information ethics as part of information literacy
• established information literacy as essential skill in gen ed revision
• Importance of integrating information literacy instruction with ocourse content
• collaborative course design
• understanding faculty styles

Results (faculty perspective)

• Very positive
• Supportive expertise
  • In-depth knowledge of most current reference materials
  • Understand best practices regarding ethical use of resources, source evaluation, citation, etc.
  • experience with the latest technology
• Enhanced academic experience
  • Integrated instruction
  • content focused
• Class blog
  • resources materials
  • student postings

Results (student perspective)

• Initially anxious about research and the technology
• Glad (and surprised) to know the librarian knew more about blogs than students
• Learned a lot from in-depth exploration of mis-use of information….. ‘don’t cheat’ does not make students understand the use and misuse of information
• Librarian contact and instruction took away the excuse ‘I didn’t know how to find the research’ –
• Students connected with each other…..through exploring Chicago, etc.
• Time in class might have made students read each others postings
• If more assignments had used them, students may have been more comfortable….
• Blogs did help students synthesize the information…..

Next Year

• expanding to 8 sections then to 28 sections for all students
• assignments will be more integrated with course content
• spread workload out over librarians
• follow up with students over the summer

Q & A

1 librarian assigned to all 4 sections

went to most of the common sessions

did grade blog assignments

workshop for faculty beforehand on blogs

Interesting discussion about whether the blogs should be public……