ACRL's Stealth Librarianship Webinar summary

UNCG Libraries hosted for NCLA, the ACRL webinar Stealth Librarianship:Creating Meaningful Connections Through User Experience,Outreach & Liaising on April 23, 2013. There were about 20 people in attendance mainly from UNCG libraries. The session was  divided into  three areas.   Part 1: UX for Stealth Librarian Outreach -  Learn to create a practical strategy in order to consciously shape and deliver positive user experience with the library staff in person and online by presenter Bohyun Kim [Digital Access Librarian Florida International University Medical Library   / @bohyunkim]  Bohyun offered a useful UX Environmental Scan worksheet to ponder unsuccessful touchpoints, pain points and how to deal with these problem areas; as well as successful touchpoints including inspirations and how to generate delight.  Part 2: Liaising - Analyze nontraditional opportunities for engagement in order to prioritize and maximize the impact of time allotted to nontraditional engagement by presenter Kiyomi Deards [Liaison Librarian,University of Nebraska-Lincoln / @kiyomiD]  Kiyomi discussed non traditional touchpoints, going where the users are for more informal relationship building such as Attend Guest Lectures,Help Recruit Students, Play a Sport, Participate in Campus Forums, Volunteer. She advised us to “Be genuine! Its all about building relationships, not selling things.” Part 3. Outreach - List specific outreach activities which will engage users in order to build positive relationships between the library and its users by presenter Erin Dorney [Outreach Librarian Millersville University McNairy Library @edorney] Erin probed us on how projects are created in the library - through what we librarians think users will want or user initiated. She covered outreach for Relationship Building and supporting student-initiated projects as well as inreach -  since everyone in your organization represents the library!

• View Tweets here
• View Slides here.
• Presenters encourage you to share ideas here.
• Presenters notes (on page 62)

ACRL 2013!

Here are my notes from my ACRL 2013 conference. Many program's handouts are available for anyone to view on this website.  I hope you will find something here useful and applicable:

Help them help themselves: Developing interactive tools to help faculty deal with copyright and fair use (presentation)   Presenter Mike Priehs, Coordinator for Scholarly Communications & Copyright at Wayne State University shared some awesome resources:

• DigitalCommons@WayneState 
• Copyright@WayneState – great resources with a copyright decision tree, fair use checklist and other great info! 

Keep It Streamlined for Students: Designing Library Instruction for the Online Learner Presenters are from U of MD, sharing ideas about scalable way to reach online learners:

• 10 libs and staff, 20-30 students per class, about 4-6 classes a semester.  
• Identify one key class in each dept to hone in on. Like a research methods or intro class. 
• Set a week long library online classroom instruction. Called it a library conference. All asynchronous - find evaluate cite... Integrate and reflect, formative assessment.
• Active learning, have them do exercises and tailor it to a particular class 
• Designed instruction through an article by  Neal Toporski, and Tim Foley, “Design Principles for Online Instruction: A New Kind of Classroom,” Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education 5, no. 1 (2004).

This Library Orientation is Fun!: Building a Successful Virtual Tour Experience for Students Presenters from App State libraries, download the game files:

• how to orient 500 students, w 3 librarians, 75 students, 4 hours! 
• created a 360 degree panorama of the library, videos w interaction of librarian and students showing tools and resources; built with JavaScript, jquery, and huggin (a free for 350 panorama stitcher)
• students view panoramic, view some videos, click on hot spots, little puzzle piece fills in, as all pieces fill in they then have to go there and retrieve something physical from the library, then they can take the quiz at the end ( totally online students can bypass this) 

Panel: Hacking the Learner Experience: techniques and strategies for connecting with your instructional ecosystem 

Brian Mathews: Hacking is pushing the envelope. Ex: Talked to adviser in mechanical engineer dept who didn't think they needed library support. They talked through the student’s process of "how would I get through this whole program" and found areas of need and support once they dove in the whole process. Curriculum mapping across disciplines (using mindomo) Goal: look at 360 degree view of the students experience through school and find new ways to support them, partner up, what skills do they need, and how can we tweak our instruction to meet these needs:  Build a learning network (it staff, tutors, librarians, etc...)

Lauren Pressley: Learner taxonomies - a standard categorization, took look at three:

• Blooms taxonomy (since 1950s) 
• Perry taxonomy (1968) - dualism, first year believe profs know all. Then contextual realism as they fight against and for what they want to know in second and third year. By fourth year, they accept others different opinions, and see commitment with contextual realism. Aka, design for freshman is much different that for seniors. 
• Kolb (1984) - more holistic and experiential learning. Concrete experiences, observe and reflect, form abstract concepts, test in new situations. (do-observe-plan-think) all learners come in and different places and can start at any stages and they are all in your room at once. 

Andy Burkhardt: inquiry based learning, Teaching attitudes and habits of mind, not just tools and tips (lift long learning). Learner centric - with content as secondary. Information self - who are they in info process- ask them "where do you like to get info". "how do you search" (filter bubbles, Ted talks) Question centric : though students are usually wanting answers we need to have them think of questions (MikeWesch!) create good questioners Teachers become co-learners: let's us inquire together!

SustainRT
The new group I helped get started is the Sustainabilty Round Table of ALA (will be official as of July!) We hosted a round table discussion and a walk event at ACRL.  Lovely discussion on what various libraries were doing and where the new SustainRT group should head. Some things to check out:

• Human Library  
• ASU’s aeroponics showcase in the library  
• Fellow SustainRT leader, M. Charney is teaching a Library Juice Press online course: The Sustainability Movement on Campus: Forming a Library Action Plan for Engagement 
• ACRL 2015 in Portland will be Sustainable Communities Theme! 

The walk was great despite the cold temps and wind with about a dozen librarians, walking the canal trail, viewing the art, and with a fabulous tour guide – a local Indy children’s librarian!  Check out some great photos by Susan Sharpless Smith including this one:

The Art of Problem Discovery - adaptive thinking for innovative growth and discovery. Presenter Brian Matthews.  Really good session and worth reading his paper here. My key takeaways:

• what is it that people really want, the outcomes? not the process.  EX: people do not want to buy a drill but drill a hole and need the drill to do so. 
• How do we become better listeners than sales? What are the struggles of all our users, including faculty? how can we apply evolutionary ecology, lean manufactury, emotional cartography to libraries?
• We are/can be problem solvers! Reach into other people's boxes not just "outside the box"
• Lateral thinking:  vertical ideas, intentionally disrupt something. EX: ref desk, not thinking about its' value, but eliminate it as a thought and then challenge yourself to learn how things would function if it never existed.
• Who to follow on twitter: Nextweb, fastcompany, wired

Panel:  “Love your library”: building goodwill from the inside out and the outside in
Definitely check out their awesome handout and ideas. Good for many in a library to consider. Key takeaways:

•  library workshops -  used images created by fine arts students, w/ contribution to students artists, with back of handout having workshop listing; about 1/4 size of sheet of paper; added fb and twitter links - lots of marketing and attention grabbing, beautiful!
• Anonymous white board for suggestions to library out of site of the desk; they take photos of questions and answers "conversation wall"
• Social media monitoring - hoot suite dashboard w many terms to refer to the library
• Teeny tiny orchestra, showed Silent films in the library & a Toy piano festival highlighted that discipline on campus (UNCG could do cello music festival)
• Created 2d large scale images of themselves around the library to remind people that real people are here (tattle tape on them to not get stolen) including tech staff and behind the screens people too. 
• Library hot dog outreach cart to be mobile around campus; create and use google map for location points. Also use this for other outreach!
• ExCiting food event- collaboration w writing center - recipes were the citation examples pulled from archives, a website, interviews, book - all found in the library. Also info on citing libguide, Plagiarism. another ediable book festival
• Re:book2013 - contest for students to take a book. Remake it. Win again! Helps them rethink what libraries are and how to reuse and not throw away stuff

OER (Open Educational Resources) Panel Session
CSU Stanislaus Library: 

• Workshop on Affordable Leaning Solutions: covering  OER, Copyright Ereserves, Creative Commons, Fair Use,  and Accessible Services. 
• Workshop/Libguide on future of the book.  
• Partner w faculty dev center. Web space for faculty showcase. 
• Create reading lists of materials on web pages instead of using textbooks.  
• Challenge students to find their own best materials rather than worry about an open resource going away!

CSU San Jose Library:

• Affordable solutions w partnerships campus book store- get list of all books faculty order, and match them up to ebooks in library.
• Partner w FTLC on summer workshop for faculty on using OER in courses 
• Ideas: Embed map into YouTube to do digital storytelling
•  Partner e vendors like NYT   - use them as textbook! -  for certain classes (16 week subscription of wall st journal instead of textbook for a class!) 
• Partners OER providers (Florida, California are using this): such as Merlot- require them to put content into Merlot, and encourage librarians to become a peer reviewer in Merlot
• Use  academic pub -  they will put copyright info on page to educate on high costs to users! 
• Moocs for flipped course model using "course site"  (free tool) in blackboard 
• Cataloging OER resources into libcatalog like Hathi Trust etc.

Poster Session: One Search to Rule Them All: Mapping the Literature on Discovery & User Experience By Courtney Greene & Kate Moore. Check out here:  http://Bit.ly/1search

MOOCs and Libraries

In mid March I attended (well, watched live stream) the  OCLC Research and University of Pennsylvania's  MOOCs and Libraries: Massive Opportunity or Overwhelming Challenge? conference. I wrote up a brief report on what I learned. Also check out the twitter hashtag: #mooclib.  Here is some basic information:

What are MOOCs: MOOC =  massive open online courses.  They are usually open and free, online courses not just videos or materials, taught by experts in their fields at universities partnered with and coordinated through one of these non-profit organization like  Coursera or  edX.  They are a disruptive technology.  With tuition costs rising, classes size growing, and online learning expanding, the public discourse pushing forward on MOOC concepts as they see a current broken education model (one speaker called it a “prestige arms race”). This disrupted technology will be growing, changing, shifting, and consolidating - think search engines in 1999 versus now.

Overview: MOOCs have been around for only about a year but have grown from 4 schools involved to 62 schools, and the growing audience of learners is phenomenal. MOOCs show incredible global reach – most MOOC students are not within the US – and demonstrate community engagement, with universities reaching out to their communities and through public library collaborations. Speakers and panelists discussed how MOOCs are seriously changing education, creating new ways to think about pedagogy of learning and how these ideas are being applied in non MOOC courses. These ideas include applying flipped classrooms, learning much smaller chunks of information at once, various class times, start times and lengths, giving students access to resources (videos, tutorials, quizzes, materials) to review over and over, and allowing students to learn at their own pace and their own timeframe. The two day conference included speakers – professors, scholarly communications librarians, library administrators, copyright experts - from various schools who have been working with MOOC providers including U Penn, Brown, Duke, Cornell, Berkeley, and LA County Public Library, as well as speakers from MOOC organizations and OCLC. They offered information on their various models, processes, procedures, growth, data on usage/audience and how librarians can and should be involved.

Why should librarians care? As one panelist said “it’s the perfect storm!”
•    disruptive to teaching and library models
•    externally driven - unlike past online learning growth
•    rapid uptake - seems contradictory to what we know and do
•    fast changing and always will be
•    happening in an environment of rising costs and questions about educational quality
•    potential revenue stream (many of now charging for credit)

Roles for libraries:

• Resources -  Licensing, open access, copyright/fair use, creative commons:  The most important and critical role and one we already know!
• Course Building - production, instructional design, integrating resources: a role some of us play in libraries and one that we might be able to assist with on our campuses.
• Preservation and/or Archiving, and Institutional Repositories:  another critical role, who better to  help preserve the materials for MOOCs on the campus.
• Materials Creations/Instructional Technologies: librarians as creators of information and assistance with tech tools for online course/MOOCs
• Tech Savvy Expertise: Many of the panelists mentioned that libraries tend to be more tech savvy than they are - nice comment to hear!
• Librarians create a MOOC & and take a MOOC or two: why not create on on information literacy or critical thinking ... but also we should take a MOOC to understand how it works.
• Interdisciplinary, broad vision, key collaborators: the library is an establish entity on a campus in this role, important for a campus wide initiate like MOOCs.

The full report is available if anyone wants to learn more!  Check out the new MOOCs and Libraries Google Group too.

Follow up 5/1/13:

• watch the sessions on youtube
•  more content from sessions here
•  

North Carolina Libraries Day

On Wednesday, March 6th, 2013 Cheryl Cross, Nataly Blas, Jose Merlo Vega, a visiting professor and myself traveled to NCSU for the open house of the new Hunt library. The library opened to students and the public this January but it still considered to be in a soft-opening as not all of the technology is in place.

If you have the chance you really should make the trip out to the library. Here are some highlights:

The BookBot:

 

Rather then open stacks Hunt library has installed a bookbot, which can house over two million books (its about half-full right now). The books are bar-coded and arranged by size rather than subject. Patrons order them from the computer and within 5 minutes can pick them up for browsing or checkout. Professors and Students expressed concern about losing the serendipitous book find from browsing so they are currently working on a virtual browse still in beta. This huge touch screen (like seriously the size of a person) lets you search for a specific book or by a subject and see visual representation of the books that would be near it on the shelf.

Technology Sandbox:

There is a room called the Apple Technology showcase (named after donors not the Apple brand) that is a glassed in room within the second floor reading room. It has all the different technologies available for check-out so students can see and use them before checking them out. For our visit they also featured one of the 3-D printers. They actually have three of them and they are generally housed in the 3-D printing room. Students can design their own patterns and programs and pay a nominal fee by the ounce used. The printers take a good amount of time-the squirrel in the picture took about two hours-but are so cool! One medical student created a 3-D model of a trachea to study, so there is actual real-world value!

Study Space:

 

One of the main reasons they built this library was to increase study space for the students. Before it was built they have enough seating for 5% of the campus population in the main Hill library. Now they have two main libraries and enough seating for 10% of the population. They also created a graduate student commons that requires students to swipe their id cards so only graduate students can use the space. They even created a faculty study space for when faculty want to get out of their office.

There were so many neat touches to this library. The group study rooms have whiteboard walls and  touchscreen controllers that also allow students to contact a librarian instantly. There are student workers who wear "Ask Us" t-shirts, they walk around the building and fix technology issues (printing, computers, ect). There are several multimedia rooms that include theater lighting and sound, 3-D cameras and 270 degree screens. You can read more about the library's spaces and see student pictures at the Hunt Library Website: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary

Webinar: virtual internship and international libraries

On Wednesday November 28, 2012,  I hosted a webinar  about a recent virtual internship project and international libraries. As the UNCG Distance Education Librarian,  I am hosting my second international virtual intern through the DILL (Digital Libraries Learning, an international elite masters program of Erasmus Mundus)  My student last year was in Uzbekistan (view webinar/read about experience) but this year I am hosting a student in Germany. We met when I visited as a guest lecturer in Parma, Italy in September 2012 for the DILL program.  For the webinar, Annabelle Koester presented information on her DILL program experience and her virtual internship with me, as well as a brief overview of university and libraries in Germany.

Listen to the webinar presentation!   and view her slides:

DILL Virtual Internship at UNCG from UNCG University Libraries

Assessment Conferences

Posted for Kathy Crowe...

Kathy Bradshaw and I attended the ARL Libraries Assessment Conference October 29-31, 2012 in beautiful Charlottesville, VA.  We and several other UNCG librarians (Jenny Dale, Amy Harris Houk, Christine Fischer, Terry Brandsma) also attended the NCLA Mini-workshop on assessment, jointly sponsored by the College and Universities Section and the Community and Junior College Section, at Davidson Community College November 2, 2012.  It was the week of assessment!

Some takeaways from these conferences:

•    Provide evidence to show their value and communicate it to stakeholders

•    “Own the change” (John Lombardi, President of the LSU system)

•    Publicize our mission

•    Federal government is dominating accountability in higher education rather than higher ed itself

•    Many faculty retirements and hiring of new faculty.  Libraries need to support these new faculty.

•    We should continue to work on copyright

•    Library assessment had become more external; we didn’t use to have to justify our existence

•    Traditional measures of “goodness” (e.g. counting things) don’t provide an adequate picture

•    Online education will have a huge impact  on higher education

•    Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate!

These were gleaned from the keynotes at both conferences.  There were many great papers with good practical advice.  The ARL conference will post the presentations soon.

Several of us also presented at these conferences.  At the NCLA workshop, Jenny presented on libraries and retention and Amy on library and the QEP.  Kathy and I presented on the mystery shopper project at both conference.  Assessment at the UNCG Libraries rock!

DILL Program in Parma, Italy!

The last two weeks of September 2012, I had the honor to visit Parma, Italy as a guest lecturer for the Digital Libraries Learning Program (DILL) of Erasmus Mundus of the European Commission. DILL is a two-year, English speaking, international masters for information professionals to provide them with the skills in the area of digital libraries. It is offered in cooperation between Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Norway), Tallinn University (Estonia), and the University of Parma (Italy) and students spend at approximately one semester at each institution, and then complete an internship and thesis.   

View of Italian Alps from Parma

Quaint pedestrian friendly town  

February of 2012, I first learned of the DILL program as I volunteered to host a virtual student, who lived in Uzbekistan as had completed the study Parma the previous fall. [See webinar video: http://library.uncg.edu/info/distance_education/flvfiles/virtualinternship.html]   The success of our collaboration  led DILL Parma coordinator not only ask me to host another virtual student this fall, but also inviting me to travel to Parma to meet and lecture to the DILL students face to face.  I was also asked to meet and lecture to local are library professionals while in Parma.

Visiting Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, Italy

In Parma, I lectured to the students on Creating the Digital User Experience at UNCG Libraries, showcasing   we do collaboratively as a library to virtually support our students such as reference virtual help, our digital library collections, our hosting services, apps, and tool creations, our online teaching, etc. The DILL students asked many questions about our technologies and services, and by the end of my half day talk, I had many DILL students asking if they could work at our library!  My other lecture day covered Designing eLearningDigital Objects where I discussed basic e-learning concepts, instructional design process, and technologies used to create tutorials and online learning at UNCG Libraries.  

While in Parma, I also connected with UNCG Library and Information Studies Department, primarily the Digital Libraries course and professor. Together we formed a secret Facebook group connecting students at both UNCG and DILL to discuss digital libraries. We pulled off a synchronous virtual session using Blackboard Collaborate to join both groups virtually, with video and audio. DILL students introduced themselves, shared their country (they came from 17 different countries across the world!) of origin, and what they were doing in libraries. Though the session was short and mainly involved introductions and sharing – not discussion - the goal was to show the possibility for synchronous, global connecting of librarians and students and its potential for collaboration.

An added benefit was meeting other visiting professors for the DILL program from all over the global including Australia, France, UK, USA and Sri Lanka.  We had some amazing discussions about digital libraries with truly international perspectives.  Visiting the area professional librarians for a morning was also positive experience. I showed them the Digital User Experience slides, answered many questions about how we do things, and  we all discussed libraries and our practices.  They were also impressed by what UNCG Libraries does for their students and said we had the “ideal academic library.” 

"Irma"  and I visiting Parma professional librarians

   

I have remained connected with the students and professional librarians I met while in Parma and hope to build more collaborative endeavors. I am currently hosting a DILL student from Germany as a virtual intern for the rest of the fall semester, planning a synchronous webinar with her in early December as I did with my student last February. I am currently wrapping up a collaborate article on the experience last year with my first virtual intern and the last years’ student intern supervisor in Parma. The Parma DILL coordinator asked me to write on my recent experiences in Parma with the program and she will translate for the Italian audience. She also requested I return next year thrilled with my contributions to the Parma DILL program.   The DILL program coordinator and our library Dean supported this international endeavor with hopes of building a more dynamic partnership with DILL and UNCG,  to create better global perspectives for both parties.   This collaboration has benefited all parties and promoted UNCG, especially the Libraries, on an international scale.
 
Special  thanks the UNCG University Libraries and Koehler Fund for their travel grant to help make this travel experience possible!


PS I had also enjoyed visiting Bologna and Venice for the weekend ... and eating lots of great foods and good wines!

Visited Sala Borsa in Bologna ... 

... in library, ancient roman ruins can be seen below! 

Streets of Venice... 

...and all the canals!