It's Academic

In my previous post, I offered a book review of a graphic novel text, Information Now: A Graphic Guide to Student’s Research, that I am using in a two credit online library course. In addition the visual explanations offered in this text about information literacy concepts, I also search for videos and online tutorials. Most of the videos collected were found on YouTube. I share the links to these videos via social media and other online environments. Some of the key and universal concepts that I find helpful to have videos include: picking a topic or developing a research question, Boolean searching, choosing keywords, Google scholar, Library of Congress call numbers, open access, phrase searching and truncation, deep web explained, basic searching, evaluating sources, and more. It is my opinion that in our digitally enriched society, videos seem to be a very convenient way to convey ideas or concepts to a broad audience. I also feel that most students that I have interacted with either prefer to engage in an activity to learn a concept by watching a video. However, I wonder about the impact of information literacy videos. Are these videos to boring and/or could they be made to be more exciting? I plan to begin collecting feedback from students on these videos and how helpful they found them to providing relevant information. In the meantime, over the past several months, I have begun to archive (such the librarian) these links in my Stumble Upon account. I plan to continue to update this listing with videos as I discover them. Here is the link to my public Stumble Upon list of these links– Found Information Literacy Concept YouTube Videos

Please consider helping with the feedback process by sharing these videos. If you share them, I will presume that you found them useful. Further, share any links to videos you have found helpful in the comments section below.

Back in 2013 I was doing my ALA due-diligence and keeping tabs on trends and broad conversations and was struck by a call, in one of the Strategic Objectives of their updated Missions, Priority Areas & Goals, for an “increase public awareness of the value and impact of all types of libraries and the important role of librarians and other library staff.” This shift to a more finely tuned consideration of the public/user perspective, much like the one transpiring in Human Information Seeking Behavior studies over the past 2o years, is critical to evolving with your user base and is increasingly driven by habits and info-seeking behaviors shaped by the better funded and ubiquitous commercial service areas. For most users (call them patrons, students, consumers, etc.), the expectation of what happens after they click on your resource or walk through your front door is inevitably shaped, initially at least, by expectations built from the service areas encountered in previous experiences. It stands to reason, then, that looking to the private or commercial sector for benchmarks and best practices in reaching and best-serving the shared user base makes sense.

Enter Sheryl Kaye’s work developing the ACE—Adaptable Cycle of Engagement. Shaped by her years as a Journalist and Business Consultant in various for-profit industries and the resulting observations on how varied approaches positively or adversely affected public engagement, this six-stage model proposes active steps to achieve tangible, measurable increases in the effectiveness of your public engagement strategies. Further, these six steps are cyclical…meaning that, if wielded effectively, positive action and public engagement only serves to reinforce and feed the next initiative in your agenda.

Figure 1: ACE Model from http://www.libraryinnovation.org/article/view/411/679

I encourage you to read Sheryl’s work, and brush up on how your projects and priorities line up with those driving the ALA. Following her sense-making, yet effective steps will not only help you better design your outreach strategies, but the more engaged your user base, the more demonstrated value exists behind you and your library. In an era with melting budgets and an evolve-or-evaporate/ROI driven organizational review, fewer aids are more powerful than an engaged and well-served user base there to demonstrate and reinforce your real-world value.

KAYE, Sheryl. The Adaptable Cycle of Engagement: A Win/Win Model for the Library.Journal of Library Innovation, [S.l.], v. 6, n. 2, p. 66-72, dec. 2015. ISSN 1947-525X. Available at: <http://www.libraryinnovation.org/article/view/411/679>. Date accessed: 14 feb. 2016.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION—from the Juniata-Conemaugh Chapter of PaLA

Inspire your colleagues with presentations and posters at the annual workshop on May 13, 2016. This year, we will meet at the beautiful American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, PA. The focus of this year’s workshop is:

Connect & Reconnect: Transforming Our Profession.

Changes and trends can influence how we plan, promote, and support our patrons, collections, and libraries. Tell us how you and your colleagues are transforming your employees, spaces, collections and instruction. We invite presentations and posters that reflect one of the elements of the workshop:

• Employees- How do you empower, support and educate your staff and librarians?
  Social Media & Technology – What is “hot” in libraries that you are using?
• Collection Development – How do you share and weed your collections?
• Outreach & Marketing – What programs do you offer to children, adults, students, and faculty?
• Assessment -What and how you assess, and what do you do with your data and statistics?

Presentation Guidelines: 30 minutes plus 10 minutes for Q&A. You will have access to a computer, projector and wireless.

Poster Guidelines: Dimensions: 3 feet X 4 feet
The best poster will receive a prize! Posters will be judged on information and visual impact.

Please send a working title of your presentation/poster, a 300-word maximum synopsis of the presentation/poster, and a 150-word maximum biography.
Send your submission to: Alessia Zanin-Yost, arz10@psu.edu

Deadline for submission: March 4, 2016, at 5:00pm

Questions? Please contact Alessia Zanin-Yost, arz10@psu.edu.

Workshop registration for PaLA members is $30.00, for non-members is $45.00. Registration includes a light breakfast and lunch. The workshop will be held at 9:00am-3:00pm. A social event in conjunction with the workshop will be announced at a later time.

Date: Friday, May 20th, 2016

Location: Marywood University, Scranton, Pennsylvania

CRD invites proposals for breakout sessions for the 2016 CRD Spring Workshop “Critical Pedagogy and Information Literacy Instruction. Critical pedagogy encourages students to question social norms and explore the relationship between power and knowledge in order to develop a critical consciousness and implement social change. Librarians are beginning to look at the environment that surrounds information and challenge students to explore beyond search but rather discover and address the ecosystem that interacts with information.We invite speakers to talk about their practical or creative approaches to this topic.  How did you address this topic at your institution? What was the process? What were you trying to achieve? Who was involved? What was the result? How can the ideas be adapted beyond your library situation? Breakout sessions will be one hour in length. To be considered for a session, you must be from a Pennsylvania library. Please submit the following form http://goo.gl/forms/T8kDqIEe1I by April 1, 2016.

For more information, contact:

Leslie Worrell Christianson, MLIS
Vice Chair, PaLA College and Research Division
User Services Librarian, Assistant Professor
Marywood University
lchristianson@maryu.marywood.edu
570-348-6264