Friday, November 30, 2012

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:


Monday, November 19, 2012

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!