It's Academic

Registration is now open for the 2014 WPWVC/ACRL Fall Meeting!

October 3, 2014

The Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia Chapter of ACRL presents its fall meeting:

“Under Construction: Building Community Among Students, Faculty, and Library Staff”

Friday, October 24, 2014, 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA

Keynote Speakers:

Loanne Snavely, Head Librarian and Coordinator for Library Services, Penn State World Campus and Andrea Gregg, Manager of Instructional Design, Penn State World Campus

Program:

Morning Keynote –

Loanne Snavely and Andrea Gregg – “Building Geographically Distributed Communities and Working Relationships: Libraries, Online Learning and Beyond”

Afternoon Sessions –

Gail Reese and Brian C. Gray, Case Western Reserve University – “Transforming the First Year Experience and Other Relationship Efforts of the Library”

Robin Wagner, Gettysburg College – “Building Community in a Small College Setting”

Jon Cawthorne, West Virginia University Libraries – “Diversity Residency Program and Outreach Initiatives”

Optional Tour of the Jennie King Mellon Library

Registrations will be accepted until October 17 at http://tinyurl.com/wpwvcFall14. Seating is limited; no walk-in registrations. Join or renew your chapter membership and attend the meeting for free! $30 for non-members.

For more information, visit the chapter website at http://wpwvcacrl.org. For questions about the meeting, contact the WPWVC Program Committee at program.wpwv.chapter@gmail.com.

ALA-PaLA Career Development Facilitator Opportunity; Seeking Applicants

October 1, 2014

by leslieawc

ALA President Courtney Young set as one of her initiatives the creation of a cohort of 25 librarians who would receive training and certification as Career Development Facilitators. State chapters were invited to apply to take part in this initiative and, several days ago, PaLA was notified that we are one of the successful applicants.

Here is some information excerpted from ALA’s call to the chapters:

Created by the National Career Development Association (NCDA), the CDF program is a comprehensive training designed to address several facets of career planning and the job search. Established in 1913, NCDA is the premier provider of professional development in the career field. With a nationwide system of instructors, NCDA has prepared over 18,000 CDFs for inter/national certification. The training program provides standards, training specifications, and the opportunity for a credential for those who provide career services in a variety of settings such as K-12 education, higher education, workforce development and government, business and industry, human resources, libraries, one-stop career centers and many other settings. It provides individuals with relevant skills and knowledge to assist others in planning careers and obtaining meaningful work. This specific training will be tailored for special emphasis on the role of the librarian in helping patrons and job seekers. By offering this innovative training to those in state chapters, participants will be able to assist their peers as well as the thousands of patrons from their libraries that they assist every day.

Chapter Participants will receive training in each of 12 career development competencies:

• Career resources and labor market information/ • Career planning processes;

• Basic helping and facilitation skills; / • Career development models and theories;

• Informal and formal assessment approaches; /• Diversity and specific population needs;

• Development and maintenance of an effective career resource center; / • Cutting-edge job searching; /• Training others and program promotion; / • Case management and referral skills;

• Ethical and scope-of-practice issues; / • Professional and resource portfolios;

The program commences with two days of intensive face-to-face workshops just prior to the 2015 Midwinter in Chicago, IL. (January 29 – February 3, 2015.) Afterwards, the training will move to a virtual online format for an additional 14 weeks in a Moodle classroom. During this time, participants will be expected to complete homework assignments and participate in interactive online discussions. The training culminates with a program during the 2015 Annual Conference in San Francisco, CA where a select group of participants from the program will make presentations based on the topics learned and how they plan on applying them to their chapters and home institutions. During the 2015 Annual Conference program, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion. At that point, they will then become eligible to apply for the Global CDF Certification, if they wish. Throughout the program, they will receive access to a wealth of resource materials provided by ALA and NCDA. (This includes a free one-year membership in NCDA at the end of the program.)

President Courtney Young’s budget will cover the cost for all online training, materials and the two days of intensive face-to-face workshops (which includes lunch and breaks on both days.) Participants or their institutions will be responsible for paying for their individual travel, lodging and registrations for both ALA Conferences in 2015. As a sponsoring state chapter and the home for the ALA President, PaLA is committed to supporting the PaLA-chosen participant’s costs not to exceed $1000 total for both conferences.

In exchange for this support, the successful PaLA applicant will make the following commitments subsequent to the in-person and online training:

Development of a timeline of 2015 CDF activities;
Participation in the 2015 PaLA Annual Conference;
Participation in 2015 Chapter and/or division workshops, and one or more PaLA leadership gatherings, TBD;
Participation in a PaLA-sponsored webinar;
Involvement with periodic PaLA/CDF publicity; and,
Regular updates for the PaLA board on CDF activities.

We invite letters of interest from PA librarians, with endorsements from your relevant supervisor, that is, the person who can authorize the time to participate in this program, as described above, and including time to present at state and/or local chapter conferences and/or webinars, and also authorize any financial support not provided by ALA, PaLA, and not paid by the individual. The strongest application will demonstrate that the individual is well positioned to provide maximum impact from the training, both in his/her workplace and through information sharing with other Pennsylvania librarians. The successful applicant will demonstrate sustained dedication to career facilitation and professional development for the state’s librarians working in an ongoing way with and through the Pennsylvania Library Association.

Letters are due to PaLA First Vice-President, David Schappert, dschappert@marywood.edu, by October 15. The successful applicant will be notified on or about October 27. For additional information, please contact David Schappert at the address above.

Thank you.

David G. Schappert

PaLA First Vice-President/President-Elect

and
Director of Library Services
Marywood University
570-961-4764

Connect & Communicate Series Event

September 26, 2014

by Jill Hallam-Miller

Save the Date!

How Learning Objects and OERs Position the Library to Enhance Student Success

October 17, 2:00pm EST

by John Shank, Head of the Boscov-Lakin Information Commons & Thun Library
at Penn State Berks

The Connect & Communicate Series Planning Committee is pleased to offer this virtual presentation, in which John Shank will discuss how learning objects and open educational resources can change the perspective of how librarians can help enhance student learning.

Please register at the following link: http://goo.gl/mHQuqp

For this program, participants will need speakers to hear the presenter speaking, but will not need any additional audio equipment. Participants may ask questions via the Chat box; moderators will monitor the Chat box and facilitate question and response.
A recording of the program will be made available to PaLA members following the program.

If you would like to be emailed directly about this and other upcoming Connect & Communicate Series events, you may provide us with your name and email address here: http://goo.gl/4urXl . (If you submitted previously, you are still on our list.)

Please continue to share your ideas for programming topics, speakers, or formats with us! We’re getting some great suggestions and themes are starting to emerge, but we could also use some more speaker names. 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 with any questions at jillhallam-miller@centralpenn.edu.

The Reilly Learning Commons

September 19, 2014

tags: buildings, learning commons, learning spaces

by Bonnie Oldham

This guest post was written by Sheli McHugh.

The University of Scranton’s Weinberg Memorial Library held a Ribbon Cutting ceremony this week to officially open its Reilly Learning Commons. Space on the first floor of the library was renovated over the summer to include new group study rooms, collaboration spaces, and high-end technology. The renovation was entirely completed with donations raised through an initiative led by Dean Charles Kratz for the Weinberg Memorial Library’s Twentieth Anniversary. The main donations came from the Reilly family. Joseph Reilly worked at the University of Scranton for many years in the maintenance department and two of his sisters, Evelyn and Katherine, were both early female graduates of the school.

Planning:

A Learning Commons committee assembled and consisted of library staff, teaching faculty, CTLE staff, IT Services, and campus facilities. The committee began with researching other libraries’ learning commons and trends in services. The committee took field trips to Penn State University, University of Pennsylvania, and St. Joseph’s University to tour their libraries. Focus groups were conducted with faculty to learn about services and technology they would like to see in the library for their students to complete projects in their courses.

The committee created a plan from their research for what they wanted in the Reilly Learning Commons and presented this vision to the architects from Hemler & Camayd. The architects, campus facilities, and IT services worked to bring this vision to life over the course of one year. In spring 2014, the committee finalized a floor plan, ordered technology, and green lighted construction.

The Space:

The Reilly Learning Commons has 8 group study rooms. Two are dedicated to the Writing Center, which provides help to students in the evening. They will be holding both appointments and drop-in hours. When tutoring is not scheduled, the rooms will be available for students to reserve.

There are 5 group study rooms around the perimeter. They each have large monitors with HDMI connections for students to view their laptops as a group. The group study rooms are reservable through SpringShare’s LibCal software. We are encouraging students to always reserve a room. In each of the rooms, the blue walls are writeable. Some have chalk and some have dry-erase markers.

We also have a room dedicated to lecture capture. Students are able to record presentations using Panopto software and save them online. They can view themselves back for critique or send copies to their professors.

There are four booth seating, or collaboration areas with large monitors and HDMI cables. Four students can have their devices plugged in at a time and switch between them by pushing the play button on each chord. We are circulating additional adapters for other devices in case they don’t have HDMI ports on their devices. These seating areas also have two stools and a high counter for additional students to work together.

In addition to the group study rooms and the collaborative booth areas, we’ve also added 6 new high end PCs and 6 new iMacs. They each have dual monitors and have brand new software including Adobe creative suite, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and more. Students can work in pairs or small groups at these stations. We also have our 19 older lab PCs and open stations for students to bring their own device. We have also added a Tech Support office that is staffed by student workers daily to help with technology in the space.

The Future:

We see our new Learning Commons as the first step toward our long term plans for the Weinberg Memorial Library. We hope that feedback and use of the space will drive change upward to the other floors of the building. We are very excited to see how students use the new space and the technology we are providing. For more information about this initiative, contact Sheli McHugh, Learning Commons Coordinator.

Call for Panelists

September 18, 2014

by Jill Hallam-Miller

Good morning.
The “Connect & Communicate Series” of free virtual events for academic librarians is seeking panelists to discuss “Discovery and the Future of the Catalog” in a one-hour virtual panel discussion (using the AnyMeeting presentation platform) to be held the week of November 10th.

Topics to be covered include: what a discovery service will and will not do; how it can be used with the catalog, integrated into the catalog, or as a replacement for the catalog; issues with implementation; effects on staffing; and patron response and usage.

The panel discussion will consist of a moderator posing questions to a group of panelists. Attendees will be given the opportunity to ask questions of the panelists in the final portion of the discussion.

Serving as a panelist will look great on your résumé or CV!

Please submit a brief statement of your interest in participating as a panelist, including information about your experience with your institution’s discovery service, by Tuesday, September 30th via our form at http://goo.gl/WEf9Yo

Contact Jill Hallam-Miller, Connect & Communicate Series Planning Committee Chair,
at jillhallam-miller@centralpenn.edu with questions.

Best regards,
Connect & Communicate Series Planning Committee