It's Academic

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

When it comes to creating engaging programming in any library, the most difficult challenge seems to be striking a balance between what your patrons want to do and what kind of programs your library can afford to plan and staff. But not all programs need to involve equipment rentals, room scheduling, guest speakers, or even just having librarians in attendance! This (not so new) movement is called passive programming. Passive programs are easy to plan, require little to no expense in terms of materials or staff time, and are designed to run almost completely on their own. They also allow us to get creative with little risk of wasting time or money, and allow patrons interact with the program however they like.

Passive programming is, generally, more common among public libraries than academic, and especially common to youth services areas. Do a quick search of Pinterest for “passive programming ideas” and you’ll see what I mean – there are a lot of resources out there for grade-school crafts, themed obstacle courses, and scavenger hunts designed specifically to appeal to kids. But that doesn’t meant passive programming has no place among college students! In fact, passive programs provide the perfect way to create small “study breaks” for your students that will help them see the library as an interactive space where they can be comfortable, not just an awkward building they have to plod through to find a study room where they can suffer in peace.

If all this is starting to sound like something you’d like to try in your library, I’d suggest starting with some of the following common (and easy) passive programs!

• Adult coloring pages! This trend could not be bigger, and there are tons of free printable pages to be found on Pinterest – putting them and a tub of crayons or colored pencils out is easy, but it makes a big impact! If you can, look for coloring pages that have something to do with your school, mascot, or area. Want to step up your game a little? Cover the table in blank paper and ask students to draw, write on, or “tag” it however they’d like!

• Before midterms or finals, try a special “study break” table with coloring pages, word searches, sudoku pages, crosswords, etc. Add in board games, puzzles, or playing cards if you can! Let students take the items throughout the building if possible, but be sure to ask they return everything to the table when they’re done. Want something a little more challenging? Include a contest, like designing a library mascot, captioning a picture, or illustrating a quote, and leave out worksheets for students to submit their designs.

• If you want something a little more DIY, figure out a date, event, or mascot that’s important to your campus, and make up a simple craft around it. Bookmarks made from paint-chips and yarn in your school’s colors are easy and nearly free to supply – provide students with a hole punch, scissors, and pens to add designs! If your library has never done something like this before, include some information at the table about how creative study breaks can improve memorization and mental function, and definitely drop in an ad for your research help or reference services while you’re at it!

Want to learn more about passive programming? Check out the following links for more information and ideas.

Reaching Teens Subversively through Passive Programming (Programming Librarian)

The Who, What, Where, Why, When, and Hows of Passive Programing (OLC Small Libraries)

Does Programming Have a Place in Academic Libraries? (Mississippi Libraries)

Passive Programming Ideas (GoogleDoc)

Passive Library Programs (Pinterest)

Date: Friday, May 20th

Theme: Critical Pedagogy and Information Literacy Instruction

Location: Marywood University, Scranton, Pa

Description: With the introduction of the new ACRL framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, librarians are now looking for ways to explore “interconnecting core concepts” in instruction rather than only focusing on developing a skill set. As we investigate these opportunities, one of the paths that has been identified to achieve this goal is critical pedagogy for information literacy instruction.

The 2016 CRD workshop will showcase keynote speaker Andrea Baer from University of West Georgia and Emily Drabinski from Long Island University and breakout sessions from PA libraries who have worked with this concept in developing information literacy instruction. Please look for a Call for Proposals next week.

The CRD Board is proud to announce that our current Chair, Christina Steffy, has just released her first book, Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What? which introduces a critical perspective on the history, current knowledge, and impact of stereotypes in librarianship.

Official press release:

Christina displays Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What?

CRD Chair Releases Book
Christina J. Steffy releases Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What?

Leesport, PA – Christina J. Steffy, chair of PaLA’s College & Research Division (CRD) released her first book, Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What?

While other books have been written on the topic of librarians and stereotypes, most stop at explaining what stereotypes exist; most also examine stereotypes solely through the lens of librarianship. Steffy’s book uses that prior body of a knowledge as a starting point to answer the question, “So, now what do we do with this information?”

Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What? examines librarianship through communication, gender, psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies theories to begin to get to the root of why certain librarian stereotypes exist today and whether or not it’s possible to change some of these stereotypes. It also looks at what stereotypes librarians think exist about the field today, how librarians present themselves and whether or not this is changing (and consequently helping or hurting, the profession), and what public perceptions exist about librarianship as opposed to just what the media tells us about librarianship. An overview of stereotypes presented in the literature is provided, however the point of this book is to go beyond simply rehashing what stereotypes are there and to look at how we can use knowledge of the current stereotypes and knowledge from other disciplines to change some of these stereotypes. The book also looks at the possible impossibility of changing certain stereotypes, and possible repercussions our actions, or lack thereof, with regard to stereotypes may have on the future of the profession. Finally, tips are offered to help librarians begin to combat stereotypes.

The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s websites.

In addition to writing this book, Steffy is the current CRD chair. She has been a CRD member since 2012 and has held various board positions. She was also a member of the editorial team for CRD’s peer reviewed, open access journal Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice (PaLRaP).
Steffy is the manager of library support services at Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences, Lancaster, PA. She is also a freelance writer. Steffy graduated from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, with a Master of Library and Information Science in 2011. She also earned a B.A. English/Professional Writing in 2009 and a B.A. Speech Communications in 2006 from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.
For more information about Steffy and her book, you can contact her directly at cjsteffy@gmail.com or email david@cravepress.com.

Inspiration:

Christina’s inspiration for the book stems from her academic interests as well as her own experiences in librarianship. “Once I became a librarian, I was really confronted with how stereotypes damage our image,” says Steffy. “Stereotypes make people think libraries don’t need funding because they are a dying business that only works with print. The idea that stereotypes could be that damaging was shocking,” she adds. Christina’s curiosity about stereotypes eventually led to more intensive research; however, she knew that she had to go beyond the simple concept of librarian stereotypes. That had already been done. “There wasn’t much out there that did anything with the information about stereotypes,” she says. Instead, Christina used her interests in communication, women’s history, and language to take the conversation one step further, exploring issues such as why stereotypes exist, whether or not we can (or should) change them, and their impact on librarians and the profession. “I started researching and thinking about this [topic], and I realized this would pull together everything in my academic and professional background,” she explains.

Librarians & Stereotypes: So, Now What? can be found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s website.

ISBN: 978-0-9852599-6-9
Price: $19.95