Only two days left to apply for the Pennsylvania Library Association Mentorship Program
Are you an early- or mid-career library professional looking for tips about professional growth and career planning? Or are you an experienced librarian looking for an opportunity to reflect on your career, share insight, and give back? The Pennsylvania Library Association Mentorship Program can help.
“This is an amazing program, and participating is a membership benefit of the Pennsylvania Library Association,” said Adam Haigh, Technology Librarian of the Lower Merion Library System. Haigh co-created the pilot of the mentorship program as part of the Pennsylvania Library Association Academy of Leadership Studies (PALS) in 2016 and served as a mentor last year.
“One of the unique aspects of this program is that it is mentee-driven. We encourage mentees to consider what they are hoping to get out of the program and take the initiative based on their individual goals,” Haigh added. “Mentors can serve as sounding boards for those new to the profession or for mid-career librarians seeking to take the next step in their professional development.”
The program is still accepting applications from mentees and mentors. Please register here by December 1. Applicants must be members of the Pennsylvania Library Association. There is no fee for participating in the program.
Mentees will have the opportunity to select a mentor from a list of mentor profiles in December. The program will begin in January 2019 and continue through September 2019. Discussion topics might include a review of the mentee’s resume and cover letter, new trends in technology, tips for managing conflict in the workplace, involvement in Pennsylvania Library Association, and more.
“Our hope is that participants will develop relationships with library leaders across the state that will last longer than the 9 months,” said Haigh. “The mentorship program is just the start.”
The Pennsylvania Library Association Membership Committee and Mentorship Subcommittee coordinate the program. For more information, contact palamentorship@gmail.com.
Jessica Showalter is an Information Resources and Services Support Specialist at Penn State Altoona’s Eiche Library. Say hello on Twitter @libraryjms
New issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research and Practice available
The latest issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice is now available at palrap.org
Articles include:
- In the PaLRaP Spotlight: Ann L. Kemper
- It’s Not Just for Public Libraries: An Academic Library’s Journey to Become a PA Forward Star Library
- Rethinking Computational Thinking for Public Libraries’ Youth Programs: Challenges and Recommendations
- Campus Clue: Habituating Students to the Information Search Process via Gaming
- Leveraging Citation Management Software (CMS) for Broad Library Impact
- Overcoming Challenges to Critical Information Literacy: Primary Source Analysis as Consciousness-Raising
- News Briefs from PA Libraries
Tom Reinsfelder & Larissa Gordon, Co-Editors
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Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice (PaLRaP) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, sponsored by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. PaLRaP provides an opportunity for librarians in Pennsylvania to share their knowledge and experience with practicing librarians across Pennsylvania and beyond. The journal includes articles from all areas of librarianship, and from all types of libraries within Pennsylvania.
C&CS with Carmen Cole and Joslenne Peña, Code For Her: Reimagining Computing Education for Academic Library Outreach on Dec 5, 2018
Join the Connect and Communicate series on
December 5, 10 am EST
for
Code for Her: Reimagining Computing Education for Academic Library Outreach
Presented by Carmen Cole and Joslenne Peña
Register here for the Zoom link!
Currently, there are few opportunities for Penn State affiliates to learn computer programming skills in a non-credit bearing, cost-free learning environment purposefully targeted towards underrepresented populations in tech. In spring 2018, the Penn State University Libraries piloted Code for Her, a beginner coding workshop series targeted to female and gender-diverse individuals. Through hands-on learning, Code for Her workshop participants gain the confidence to pursue future self-education with a foundational knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a supportive, empowering environment.
Attendees will learn about the highly successful pedagogical method of “code dissection” utilized for Code for Her and the resulting learning gains achieved, as well as the additional active learning methodologies employed by the instructors. Presenters will also introduce qualitative research findings and reflections from workshop participants on the Code for Her learning environment and their attitudes towards programming.
Carmen Cole is the Sally W. Kalin Librarian for Learning Innovations and Information Sciences & Business Liaison Librarian for the Penn State University Libraries. She holds a MSLS from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Carmen has presented at PaLA, ALA Midwinter and Annual conferences, IFLA, and Women Advance I.T. She is the founder of Code for Her.
Joslenne Peña earned her MS in Information Sciences and Technology in 2015, and is a PhD candidate in Informatics at Penn State. She recently completed a one-year internship as a Research Associate in Human-Centered Systems at Honeywell Aerospace. Joslenne has presented at the iConference (2018 and 2016), ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and EDULEARN. She is the Coding Workshop Consultant for Code for Her, and has previously taught coding for iD Tech and the iTech Academy.
C&CS rescheduled for Nov 19 at 1pm
Our session, Deconstructing Environmental Bias will be next week, Monday at 1pm. We still have some space if you’d like to join us for the session. Information about it is in the previous blogpost located here: https://crdpala.org/2018/11/05/ccs-presents-deconstructing-environmental-conflict-bias-news-perspective-nov-15-at-1pm-est/
We look forward to seeing you then!
They Were Already Here
At this year’s PaLA Conference, I presented a poster entitled “We Built It and They Came: Launching a Library Workshop Series with Broad Appeal.” I enjoyed talking with the public and academic librarians who stopped by to discuss their own experiences with workshops. After an hour of continuous conversation, I realized that one question had opened nearly all of those interactions:
How did you get people to come?
To launch a popular workshop series, we naturally did more than merely “build it;” indeed, much of my poster detailed the reasons we have been successful. I explained how we named (‘Savvy Scholar’), marketed (posters on campus, website banner ad, social media), and otherwise promoted (emails to all students and faculty, in-class reminders) the initiative. Yet I left Harrisburg that day feeling as though there must have been more to it. I suspect many of the librarians I spoke with felt the same way.
Like those who stopped to speak with me, I too had felt little confidence that many students would initially attend our series when we launched it in the fall of 2017. I had heard the naysayers and read the literature. When we filled 89 seats during the intensive two-day schedule that September, however, I assumed all the steps I described in my poster had surprisingly done the trick. I suppose, likewise, that those same steps came as little surprise to those who stopped to read my poster. They are, most likely, what any library would do to get such a program off the ground. Nevertheless, conference attendees who read my poster and its ostensible reasons for our attendance numbers, were still asking:
How did you get people to come?
Though it would not make for much of a poster, I recently arrived at another “answer” for why our workshop series is successful. Namely, several strong, individual relationships between librarians and students, or between librarians and faculty, formed a nucleus with great attractive powers. Our success was not due nearly as much to the broad scope of our marketing, or our attempts to offer something for everyone, but was instead built upon a handful of people who trusted and believed in one another. As I reflect on those who attended our initial workshops, I realize that we already knew a significant number of them quite well. Those who attended multiple workshops were even more likely to have spoken with us at the reference desk—whether to say hello each morning or to ask for help with challenging research questions. Despite all the worry over attracting people, we already had a guaranteed audience.
As the ‘Savvy Scholar’ series continues, I will likely continue to hear:
How did you get people to come?
Among my many answers to that question I will now begin with the following:
Most of them came because they were already here.
