It's Academic

Does the title of this blog post strike fear in your heart? It worried me a little (OK maybe a lot) as I looked down the project timeline for a much-needed library renovation that is happening at W&J. The size of our library is not changing in this renovation but we are adding more open/collaborative study space. Therefore, we have been working on an extensive collection assessment project focused on reducing the size of our collection. Speaking with one of our senior faculty members she believes it may have been 20 years or more since a project like this was undertaken.

Going into this project all the librarians felt that the only way for this to be successful was for the library to be very transparent and inclusive in our decision-making. Throughout the fall semester, each liaison librarian reached out to their departments and asked for a chance to attend a department meeting. These meetings yielded really good conversations with the faculty about what resources they’re asking their students to use, what criteria might suggest a resource is no longer relevant to their field, and how the library, in its new space, can work with them to better serve our students. While not everyone is enthusiastic about reducing the size of the collection, I think that through this open dialog they at least feel that their concerns have been heard and that we are willing to work with them to make sure we aren’t removing anything that is a core resource.

Based on the criteria determined by each department we used purple dots to mark the spines of books that met those criteria. Now we are in the phase where faculty members are coming to the library to review the dotted items. They have the option to save dotted items and dot other items for removal. Feedback from the faculty who have come in so far has been really positive. They said they were dreading reviewing the books on the shelf, however, they found value in really taking time to look at their collection as a whole, rather than just locating the one book they needed and grabbing it from the shelf. Some faculty have indicated finding gems that they didn’t know we had in our collection. One faculty member is meeting with students from his class, in the library stacks, to look on the shelves for book resources that pertain to their research topics.

So while this aspect of the renovation was something I was initially fearful about, I think it has been a huge opportunity for us to forge better relationships with the faculty, particularly in departments that haven’t traditionally been big library users. We look forward to working with faculty to acquire resources that fill identified gaps in our collection and we plan to implement a schedule for collection assessment where we will invite departments to come in every 3 or 4 years for a happy hour in the stacks.

If you’re interested you can follow along with our renovation project here, http://libguides.washjeff.edu/renovation.

Has anyone else had experience with this type of large-scale collection assessment? I’d love to hear your experience.

The first rule of reference? Be visible and approachable (see RUSA Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers).

On a reference desk, this is somewhat easy to do. Desks are typically located in a visible, (hopefully) high-traffic area. The staff member at the desk then tries his or her best to be “approachable” – your mileage may vary; bright yellow PLEASE INTERRUPT ME buttons are still common conference giveaways. But the desk is there, in sight for anyone who would come to your library to visit it.

So the desk is visible, but is it always approachable? You may say, yes, as long as a student is on campus, they can approach us. But what if their campus isn’t physical? At Penn State, we serve more than 18,000 online students through World Campus. They deserve equitable access to library resources that their on-campus counterparts receive (see ACRL Standards for Distance Learning Library Services). In my experience, World Campus students make up a large component of those I assist through chat reference, though I do also assist students from all of our campuses.

Chat reference is stressful. You don’t always know the answer, and it may be hard to quickly find someone who has the right answer or expertise to help with a highly specific research question. You may be bombarded with question after question. And yet, I volunteer for shift after shift, along with a large number of my colleagues. I often think of the students, especially those at a distance, who may be equally frustrated that they cannot physically walk into their campus library and request help. It is crucial that they have the opportunity to seek and receive research help, making chat reference a vital library service.

Think pieces and social media comments often bemoan the anonymity of the internet. People can be more awful to each other because it is easy to forget that there is a real person behind a screen name. Though sometimes I will receive spam chats, they are not very common. I think that the anonymity of chat reference can be freeing for students, who may be afraid they are asking a “stupid” question, or may feel overwhelmed by their assignment.

Consider a very visible reference desk. It may be approachable in terms of location – but if a student can easily see you, then it means that everyone else can easily see them when they ask for help. That visibility may be a struggle for some. Perhaps speaking is difficult for them.

But in a chat reference situation, there is no one behind a big desk to intimidate. There’s a chat box for you take your time and type out your question. If you’re nowhere near a campus, help is still available. If you’re on campus, but can’t (for whatever reason) visit a desk, help is a click away.

More than half of my reference transactions take place via chat reference – though I spend about equal amounts of time per week on chat reference and a traditional reference desk. I am always working to improve my chat references interactions, and encourage my fellow librarians to become more involved with our chat reference services. It can be a lot of work sometimes, but there are immediate outcomes, especially for students who have pressing information needs. And if you like being in the hot seat, there are always plenty of questions for you!