It's Academic

**First off, let me preference this post with reminding the reader that my opinions are not representative of the entire “It’s Academic” CRD Bloggers and the bulleted take away statements are only from a selected few academic focused presentations that I felt were interesting to share.**

Cream of the Crop: PA Forward & Academic Libraries

• Basic Literacy – Penn Highlands Community College hosts a very large PA One Book event utilizing their entire campus and reaching out into the community at the middle school level. The entire campus supports the event financially and provides their time and talents to host events related to the theme of the PA One Book for the year.
• Information Literacy – Muhlenberg College is promoting the idea of using active learning more in one-shot sessions and beyond. The presenter’s handout was very helpful and offered ‘real-world’ examples of active learning activities connected to the new Information Literacy threshold concepts. (More on the Information Literacy Framework check out conference handouts session “Putting the Framework To Work For You” by Carrie Bishop)
• Social Literacy – A preview of a later conference session, Penn State York, introduced their highly interactive first- year experience program titled, ConnectED that in this blogger’s opinion, many universities should consider undertaking. More information to follow.
• Financial Literacy – If you are not familiar with Penn State Main Library Student Financial Education Center, you may want to send this idea up the administrative chain. While many libraries have brought traditional tutoring opportunities to their libraries, Penn State boasts financial student peer educators trained to assist with budgeting, student loans, and credit.
• Information Literacy – Herding Cats and assessing information literacy is the tune at St. Joseph’s University and while the idea may not be unique to some readers, it was to me. The presenter described how they are working with some faculty members to evaluate completed research papers based on the library skills delivered during one-shot sessions. For example, upon completion of the papers, the librarians are gaining access to un-graded copies via the Blackboard platform and evaluating the resources, in-text citations, etc. based on a library specific rubric they created. Since an IRB was not sought and they are using this for internal review, the results were not shared.

Connecting & Collaborating: Using PA Forward in an Academic Library by Barbara Eshbach, Head Librarian, Penn State York

• Brilliant idea to connect events to PA Forward Literacies
• Held 23 events over the course of an academic year targeting First Year Experience students
• Offered scholarship (provided by librarian’s family) to entice participants
• First –year experience only students could win scholarship money
• Created elaborate and colorful tracking score card  (presenter suggested if completed again, she would probably use digital badges instead of score card)
• Most events had nearly a dozen participants
• A lot of events were based on unique journal article ideas & were fun
• Offered speak easies or informal conversation opportunities such as superstition
• All events took place over the common hour
• Utilized TED talks in a unique and constructive way
• To learn more (and I suggest you do) look over conference handouts or contact Barbara

*Thought to share- why not create this idea for not just FYE but all students to entice them to attend library events? We typically don’t have the ability to offer attendance slips so this might be another way to entice students. Create an events passport and offer prizes via a drawing.

Open Access & IRs: Educating & Empowering the Campus Community (in honor, of Open Access Week Oct. 19-25, 2015) by Adam Hess, Arcadia University

• Educate and entice faculty offering space for authorship (ask them to send CV and find out permissions for authorship rights, etc.)
• Visit faculty meetings and offer presentations about repository
• Create a campus-wide steering committee (i.e. faculty champions)
• University of Winnipeg offers a great graph of the Publication Cycle
• If not available, attempt to assist with the creation an University-wide  open access policy
• Visit events that deem relevant for possibility submitting to repository such as Thesis Day, etc.
• Duke University has an awesome Scholarly Communication blog
• Some Universities have created publishing funds to encourage open access
• Repository page landing pages for authors link online sites such as LinkedIn
• Open Access Directory
• Discover ORCID
• Consider working with University Relations, Alumni, and Student Organizations
• Create marketing strategy (print and virtual)
• Presentation catch phrase “Pound the Pavement” (i.e. best advertisement = ‘word of mouth’)

Teaching at Learner, Learning as Teacher: Energizing Your Library Instruction Practice through Feminist Pedagogy by Maria T. Accardi, Indiana University Southeast

• Very inter-active participant centered workshop patterning the style the presenter wanted to teach
• Had an opportunity for reflection and think-pair-share
• Student- centered, being thoughtful of the power structure in the classroom
• Handout offered great examples of feminist instruction librarian strategies
• Handout was from Maria’s book, Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction
• Website is very helpful http://mariataccardi.com/
• Referenced educational professionals in the field that believe in feminist pedagogy in education
• Shout out to participants (inside joke – #evilowls)

Overall, due to time and self-imposed word count, I did not summarize every session that I attended. To be honest, I felt that most of the academic sessions could easily be explained by the conference handouts as some of the presenters posted their power point presentations. Finally, coming from a public library setting, I felt that most of the academic sessions were primarily focused on research or ongoing research ideals. These sessions were very different from public sessions. “It’s Academic!”… after all! 950 words

On Friday, October 23rd, ACLCP will be hosting its 50th Anniversary Conference at the Red Lion Hotel-Harrisburg East (formerly the Holiday Inn-Harrisburg East). The conference will be a celebration of ACLCP’s half-century mark and a member showcase featuring the themes of Access, Collaboration, Learning, Community, and Preservation.

Registration is now live. Please see the flyer below for more details and link to the registration form:

http://www2.aclcp.org/documents/program-fall2015flyer.pdf

Questions can be directed to programs@aclcp.org.

We look forward to seeing you there!

As part of our outreach initiatives, we have offered roving reference services since 2012, stationing librarians in various locations such as computer labs on campus, study areas in other buildings, and high-traffic areas, such as the lobby of the student center. We also offer roving reference services at a campus building that is down the street from our main campus and houses our health sciences departments. Over three years, we’ve come to fine-tune our approaches to these services. We call the service Reference On-the-Go when we are aiming to assist students with research and library-related questions outside of the building, especially in study areas of other buildings and in computer labs. For this approach, one librarian usually goes to another campus location with a sign and an iPad and/or laptop, and this is more suited to places where studying and writing take place. We call it Pop-Up Library when we are in busy, high-traffic areas, such as the campus student center, and usually two library staff members (or a staff member and one of our student workers) attend, bringing library giveaways, an iPad and/or laptop, and sometimes coffee and donuts! This is more for general outreach and visibility and not as focused on reference or user instruction.

This year, we are trying to visit all of the campus buildings that house our various liaison departments, so each librarian has scheduled multiple one-hour time frames throughout October and November to visit the main department areas or the computer labs close to her liaison departments. We find that Reference On-the-Go has typically been more successful, drawing more reference and citation questions, in the building that is down the street from the main campus and the library, which seems to make sense! It’s a wonderful service for busy health sciences students who are a short drive (or a longer walk) away from the library; they can stop between classes at the cafe in the building to speak to their liaison librarian. The other buildings closer to the library on campus have had fewer occurrences of reference questions, but the program has still initiated conversation and interaction with students outside of the library, so we find it valuable nonetheless. We have also tried holding Reference On-the-Go in the Writing Center. It never hurts to remind students — wherever they are — that they can ask us questions and approach us for help.

There is a host of library literature on this topic; I’ve listed just a few articles below that have been helpful to me in the planning of these services:

• Lotts, M., & Graves, S. (2011). Using the iPad for reference services: Librarians go mobile. College & Research Libraries News, 72(4), 217-220.
• Kuchi, T., Mullen, L. B., & Tama-Bartels, S. (2004). Librarians without borders: Reaching out to students at a campus center. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 43(4), 310-317.
• Holmes, C., & Woznicki, L. (2010). Librarians at your doorstep: Roving reference at Towson University. College & Research Libraries News, 71(11), 582-585.
• Hines, S. S. (2007). Outpost reference: Meeting patrons on their own ground. PNLA Quarterly, 72(1), 12-13, 26.

Have you tried any versions of this type of outreach at your library and on your campus?

Join CRD’s Connect & Communicate Series
for a Presentation on “Library Security Strategies”
Friday, October 30, 2015, 11:30AM-12:30PM EST

What is your library’s strategy for dealing with security threats on campus? Is it an effective one? Does it even have one? Can it afford not to have one?  Nobody wants to consider that their library may be the target of a security threat. Preparing ourselves–making ourselves aware of our options–is our best line of defense in facing threats.

Please join us for a presentation by Scott R. DiMarco, Director of Library and Information Resources at Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, on library security strategies.

Register at the following link: http://goo.gl/forms/00BE5IGTXu

Registered participants will receive instructions for linking to the discussion via email on October 28th.

If you do not receive an email, please contact Jill Hallam-Miller at jbhm001@bucknell.edu

For this program, you will need speakers or headphones to hear the presenter. Participants are encouraged to ask questions via the chatbox; moderators will monitor the chatbox and facilitate question and response at the end of the presentation.

If you would like to be emailed directly about other upcoming Connect & Communicate Series events, provide us with your name and email address here: http://goo.gl/4urXl

Please continue to share your ideas for programming topics, speakers, or formats with us! If you or someone you know is doing something great in Pennsylvania’s academic libraries, tell us about it!

The Connect & Communicate Series of online programming offered by the PaLA College & Research Division aims to help foster a community of academic librarians in Pennsylvania. Please contact Jill Hallam-Miller at jbhm001@bucknell.edu or at 570-577-2055 with questions.