May NC-LITe Meeting Summary

NC-LITe (NC library instructional tech group) met on May 3 at NCSU to give campus updates and share ideas on the theme of assessment. Notes from the session are available if you want to check out the discussion or find out more about the group. Also a good summary of the event is on Wake Forest Library's professional development blog. We meet up twice a year and the next one will be in December at Wake Forest library. Anyone interested is welcome to attend!

computer issues

We'll be closed this weekend, so I don't expect a major impact, but FYI. If I get more specific info on how this will affect the libraries, I'll do an update, Mary

Starting Friday May 13th at 6:30 PM, UNCG Information Technology will take down most ITS campus services to perform upgrades on the back-end network storage system (see the list of included servers and departments at https://its.uncg.edu/News/2011/May/Service_Outage/Departments.pdf). These upgrades have been recommended by Dell to improve system performance. Services should be restored by 6 AM on May 14th.

Most campus services will be unavailable during this work. These services include: Novell application delivery, file, printing and authentication services; AD/GCN authentication, file, printing, application delivery services (including remote access via sslvpn.uncg.edu); Lotus Email Archives, SQL Services, Web services (including web.uncg.eduand www.uncg.edu), 6TECH Online, and various campus hosted applications. These campus applications include NOLIJWEB, Lectra, Compulink, Admissions Pro, Emergency Management AM Radio, Class Climate, FAMIS, and Medicat.

These servers and departments will be included in this downtime: https://its.uncg.edu/News/2011/May/Service_Outage/Departments.pdf

Free Webinar: Ten Tips for Improving Co-Worker Relations

Info/Register

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 2:00 PM -3:00 PM EDT

Free Webinar: Ten Tips for Improving Co-Worker Relations with Pat Wagner

Sometimes the hardest people to deal with are your co-workers, the people with whom you might spend more time than your own family. Unfortunately, familiarity does not always result in good relationships. Misunderstandings can take on lives of their own. Is it possible to repair old conflicts and regain trust and respect? Most of the power lies in the details of your behavior, regardless of who "started" it.

Learn what you can do to change the dynamics of workplace relations with time-tested tactics borrowed from behavioral and cognitive psychology. If you are trying to improve the culture of your workplace, want to get along with co-workers better, want to improve your supervisory methods, or need ideas for a staff meeting discussion on internal customer service, you might find some useful reminders. [Warning: Although this program is about workplace conflict, you might find the same techniques work with family, friends, and neighbors!]

Pat Wagner is a management consultant with over 30 years' experience dealing with workplace conflict issues. She is known for her good-humored and practical programs. She is also the author of "Improving Workplace Relations", a self-paced online course from the University of North Texas Lifelong Education @ Desktop (LE@D

ACRL 2011 Summary

Finally getting around to posting my notes from the great ACRL 2011 Confernce in Philadelphia in late March/early April. I was excited to present twice at ACRL this year - Fostering Library as Place for Distance Students: Best Practices from Two Universities by Beth Filar Williams & Heidi Steiner. (Presentation ppt | Summary of session) and Going the Distance: A Closer Look at Uniting with Remote Users by Beth Filar Williams, & Lizah Ismail of Marywood University Library & Angela Whitehurst of East Carolina University(Presentationppt). There was a virtual conference track as well where two of our awesome librarians presented On the Front Lines: New Opportunities for Embedded Librarianship by Jenny Dale & Lynda Kellam - but unfortunately going first, ACRL didn't have their act together for the recording and thus you cant hear their session! View other sessions materials. Here are the key sessions I attended worth sharing:

Value of academic libraries session
Presentation on The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report, released in September 2010. By Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, University of Illinois
Mary Ellen Davis, Association of College and Research Libraries
Megan Oakleaf, Syracuse University Meganoakleaf.info

If you cant read it all, just read these sections:

• Checklist in back of report
• Pages 94-10
• Page 20-57

Demo-ing Value:

• Value= use, commodity, competing alternatives, library impact, roi.
• How can we demo our value to others? Key - value of library to overarching institution. With tight budgets everywhere now, need to promote value even more impt otherwise, "why should we give you money?"
• Use is not enough! We need to show outcomes,impacts, benefits, etc.
• Think about the shift from collections to service. Access is important too, but more so how to help the users makes sense of it and use it better. What do libraries do to enable people to do? What do they use the info for?
• Little medical packets at a hotel that say things like: "help, I have a headache" or "help, I have a blister" ...can we apply this to libraries?
• Librarians are very concerned about privacy (which is great but …) and have trouble gathering needed data sometimes. But we have to know who is using our services/resources and for what purpose - if you don’t know what people do or use how can you determine impact? Find ways to gather info.
  

Recommendations-

• Define outcomes. What are your needs of institution and of library and where do they intersect? All librarians feel they contribute to students learning and outcomes but Can you explain why?
• Use existing data. Data audit - what do we have? Gather from campus.
• Develop systems to collect data on behavior but keep privacy.
• Assessment management systems. Do libraries have this in place? Ex: Weave
• Determine how the library contributes to the research agenda on campus.
• Key- share results and needs w/ stakeholders!
• What if you find out it's not valuable? Don’t just dump it... Determine why it's not, tweak it, maybe replace it, rejuvenate it, usability test it, or is it a marketing problem?
  

Also Read this report too “Futures thinking for Academic Librarians: Higher Education in 2025” and check out the Toolkit on using the value of academic libs report

---

To the Cloud! Exploring Tools to Enhance Teaching and Learning
Diane Schrecker, Curriculum Librarian, Ashland University Library
Sara Klink, Assistant Director, Stark State College

• Animoto - to create videos, use free video styles, preloaded your pictures, add text, add music.
• QR code generator
  
• Voki.com - Create personalized talking avatars free. Can upload your own backgrounds. Type text and it's generates voice or record your own voice.
• Twitter uses - Use in place of discussion, assess/learn key concepts or questions, use w students to follow current events

---

Bibliobouts session
http://bibliobouts.si.umich.edu/ (demo version: demo@bibliobouts.org and password demo)
Karen Markey, Professor, University of Michigan School of Information
Chris Leeder, School of Information University of Michigan

A web-based game that enables game players to gain valuable practice using online library
research tools and library collections while they work on their assignments. Uses zotero. Various rounds by various players. topics chosen by the instructor. First do searches on your own...then see others searches. People donate their searches and players review, rate, tags the given sources.Used in classes or in a class w instructor involved. Librarians can come into the class too.

---

Connecting through Course Guides Session
By Jacqui Grallo, Cal State Monterey Bay

• Learner centered teaching
• Teach less, they will learn more
• Instruction vs learning
• Use Course Guides during person sessions.
• Instead of doing it on a whiteboard, use their course guide, and students comment in there, they can see it immediately, and you can review it later.
• Use polls through their course guides too they see immediate feedback and poll results
• Check out: http://todaysmeet.com/ for open source idea instead

---

Building Relationships through Embedded Librarianship session
By three librarians from McMaster University

Poll: Which works best for which - Building campus relationships and improving student learning? (conclusion: they all do, various methods combined to reach various students!)

• Embedding into a program- librarian co-creating and co-teaching the curriculum, deeper the embedding the greater the improvement in learning. Participate in organizational actives for both program and library. located in the program facilities, but also they have space in the lib. Discipline specific example: Science literacy - co-teach w science prof 2 hours a week. Students blog formal science writing, others comment. Pros: deep embedding but doesn't have to be full-time. Con: not a large reach.
• Embedding virtually - embed in your LMS using quizzes, discussion forums, pathfinders, learning objects, chat. Course by course level rather than larger community. Pros: reach multiple learning styles, asynchronous reviews, point of need help, anonymity. Cons: not accessible to all (some of their course arent in BB); not as deeply connected w/ students.
• Embedding into Teaching and Learning Support Center - salary paid by the t&l center! Librarian created a digital media literacy course. Outcome based learning. Curricula level mapping of program level learning outcomes. Teaching Metaliteracy - 21st c skills/fluencies. Con: will you T&L pay for a librarian to be w/ them?

---

The Unconference (10 min sessions)
Kim Leeder, Boise State U - connecting w teaching faculty

• Be confident. Be bold
• Make the Connection. Get out there. Ask them about themselves
• Reinforce the Connection. Follow up w people. Be multidimensional
• Build the relationship
• Go Collaborate
  
• Be - make - reinforce - build - go

Read more about this session on her recent Blog Post :Collaborating W/ faculty: A 5-Step Program

---

Also view the recording or view the slides from the Technology in University Libraries Lightening Round Up session on ACRL conference.

A scholar from Spain finds the UNCG Ayn Rand Collections useful

By Sha Li Zhang, April 26, 2010

I met Dr. José Rodolfo Hernández Carrión in late March 2010 at a chili party at the Casa Chu hosted by Dr. Clara Chu, Professor and Chair of the LIS Department at UNCG. As a librarian, I naturally asked Dr. Hernández what he thought about the UNCG Libraries’ collections in helping his research needs at UNCG. Without hesitation, Dr. Hernández told me that he was very happy with the Ayn Rand Collections at the Libraries. It was one of reasons for him to visit UNCG in 2010.

Dr. Hernández is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Valencia in Spain. As a visiting scholar, he came to UNCG on a three-month research journey in spring 2010. According to the announcement from the LIS Department which hosts the scholar at UNCG, Dr. Hernández conducts research on Economics Education for Change: Internet 2.0 and New Pedagogies in Teaching Economics. He studies social media, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and learns management systems and new pedagogies, with the purpose of acquiring excellence in new strategies to more effectively teach and enhance economics’ curriculum in the Schools of Law and Economics at his home university.

Since 2007, the UNCG Libraries established the Ayn Rand Collections located on the second floor of the main building at Jackson Library. The collections were purchased through a BB&T fund donated to the Libraries. Dr. Hernández commented, “I found the area, where the collections were placed, very familiar and enjoyable. In fact I am using some books for my teaching right now in Valencia and I think that your library very well provided the materials for Critical Thinking Literacy in the Economic field.”

Dr. Hernández spent a lot of time at the Jackson Library. As a matter of fact, he has a small study on the seventh floor in the Tower. Dr. Hernández notes that “about my favorite place in the library is the seventh floor where you can find similar books for Critical Thinking in Economics. I think that the titles are very good. I didn't check missing things so I am finding items here, what there is, more than looking for specific titles here.”

With more and more scholarly publications on digital formats and on open access modes, Dr. Hernández also expects the library materials related his fields are available online. During his visit at UNCG, when Dr. Hernández started checking out more print books, he sent questions to me and asked why the Libraries do not provide pdf files or digital format for this kind of material. He assumed that these materials “should be free access right now and perhaps it could be attractive and at low cost to digitalize the old ones.” From the aspect of preservation, Dr. Hernandez notes that “we have to contribute to preserve these old books that are getting valuable by themselves as rare and ancient.” I explained to Dr. Hernandez that we have increased acquisitions funds in purchasing materials in digital formats, especially for electronic databases, datasets, and electronic journals. For monographic publications, we also increased spending on electronic books in past two years. While some of the digital monographs (published prior to 1923) are freely available on internet via Google and other vendors’ mass digitization projects, access to electronic monographs published after 1923 still need to be purchased (vs. freely available via internet) by the Libraries. According to the current copyright laws, we may follow the same pattern for some years to come. This may be different from European countries. Nonetheless, we made several rush orders on the requests from Dr. Hernandez. The titles that he suggested will be added to the Libraries’ collections soon.

More photos on Dr. Hernandez's visit at UNCG are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/iminerva/sets/72157624463434057/

LAUNC-CH 2011: networked individuals & networked libraries

On March 7 2011 I attended LAUNC-CH Annual Conference (Librarians' Association at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) at the Friday Center (yum, good food!) in Chapel Hill with this year's theme "Staying Vital in a Time of Change." My favorite part was the Keynote "Networked Individuals, Networked Libraries" by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. His presentation slides are available online and worth checking out to see the latest data and details on social networking and technology adoption, the way people have changed the way they access, share and create info, and the way that libraries can adapt to this new information ecology to “stay vital” to their users. here are some of my notes from the session:

2/3 of Americans have broadband at home but digital divides are still really prevalent. Age still matters - after age 71 broadband drops off. Spanish speakers are less likely to be on broadband.

40% of people are now associated w/ religious groups that they did not grow up w. People are moving away from the family, small community,places where they grew up. They are developing their own beliefs and growing their own networked groups.

Wireless. Mobile. Fastest growing tech. 40-45% cell users surf internet on it. 55% own laptops up from 30% in 2006. Adults 57% use mobile Internet. But Hispanics and Blacks are higher users of cell than Whites. Prob more for money if they can't afford both. Rural is always lagging from urban regardless.

Apps world will rise and web will slowly die. Better for commercial world - you can sell them an app and learn more about the customer.

7%of adults own iPad type devices-up from 4% last year - and ebook readers growing too.

Info Ecosystem creates a sense of place and sense of presence. "Alone together" concept. Anywhere and any device. Contact people how we want, when we want, but on a social researcher perspective this is changing everything in how we related and communicate.
For libraries this changes not just collations but space - the world is becoming placeless! Be where your people are not hosting or expecting them to be in your place.

Social networking is growing to older adults too. Online videos growing, top area is comedy video. But second is news and educational. Older adults and women are top video creators. Online social networks and ubiquitous mobility. Libraries can be nodes in peoples network, to help them solve problems as well as learn from them too on what they want and need. Embedded librarians.
Expertise and influence in social networking has created amateur experts.

How networked information users are connecting:

• Attention zones-hard to stay focused on one thing to get done . "Continuous partial attention." But also deep dives into info is possible, we all can become experts in any area. Info snacking (I love this term!) - quick 2-3 mins info snack, when you are waiting for something.
• Media zones- social streams, toss a line in there every so often. Or try immersion like gaming. Creative participatory zone, libraries are adding to this creation. Study or work zones.

How networked information users reply on networks:

• As sentries - word of mouth - from friends, login to facebook to see what friends are reading or doing, to share or ask opinions of them - what use to be city newspaper is now Facebook
• Also as info evaluates- people go to their online "friends" - and ask friends is this true? and how much attention should I pay attention to it? what do you all think?
• As forum for action- everybody's a publisher!
  

Time Management Workshop

Here are the slides from the Time Management/Project Planning workshop. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Staff Dev Workshop: Time Management

View more presentations from Lynda Kellam