It's Academic

I appreciate this chance to share and reflect on my librarian experience through this blog. Diversity equity and inclusion. Such an important topic. With diverse perspectives, backgrounds and experiences, the library profession can continue to grow into a strong community of professionals.  Over this past year I have humbly had the opportunity to engage in learning and training about how to recognize my own personal biases, how to create inclusive environments for all people and participate in learning on topic of the devastating and long-lasting effects of racism within healthcare and medicine.  I thought I would take this opportunity to share and shine a light on the wonderful initiatives that I have had an opportunity to participate in through libraries and the library professional development support groups.   These examples can help you too, as you search, as I did, for meaningful ways to participate and encourage change.  

Creation of a racism and medicine toolkit of knowledge resources.

• With the help of librarians and medical staff a creation of a curated group of resources specifically geared to educational health professionals

Creation and management of Gold Humanism Book Collection focused on diverse voices and perspectives.

Work with local library chapters and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committees to look for ways to make a difference. Example of some of the projects I have had a chance to work on.

• Monthly newsletters sharing resources opportunities for training and exposure to informational materials on various topics including some topics such as LGBTQ health and invisible disabilities.
• Work with locally recognized established organizations within the field of diversity and inclusive education

Establishment and maintaining a Volunteer and Services partnership with local organizations that promote inclusivity and diversity practices.

• Committing to volunteer hours to support ongoing programs that benefit diverse communities.

-Marlowe B.

By: Kim Karim

Libraries train their student employees in many areas including, but not limited to: circulation, outreach, ducement delivery and archiving. Whether the training is on-the-job or over a period of several days before or during the semester, student employees are given the information and tools they need to help each library carry out its mission and services to their college community.

During the summer of 2022, our Head of Access Services and I created and carried out a two-day student training program, which varied greatly from the training I would do during each student’s library shift. The more students that were hired before the semester started (which was usually more for the fall), the busier I would be the first several weeks into the academic year. My very first academic semester was nearly five years ago when I was hired to be the Circulation Supervisor. I not only had to learn all the policies and procedures myself, but in turn had to teach nine new student employees that same information. I started one month before the semester began. It was stressful!

Thinking back to that time, it would have been extremely helpful to have a designated training period with those students as a group. Repeating the same information over and over to students each day, for multiple days and weeks in a row, was extremely daunting. Information got lost and the connection with my students waivered, as by the end of the day I was mentally drained from repeating myself. Our new training program, however, which was planned and executed with little negative outcome, is not only better for me as their supervisor, but better overall for the students.

They are able to get all the information about the library at the same time and in the same capacity as their peers. They are able to ask questions more freely, work together with their peers using hands-on activities, and feel better prepared heading into the semester with a real understanding of how our library functions. 

The return? Students begin to form a real connection with their peers and the staff. This happened right away with our students, both returning and new. This fall, we hope to continue to build on the success of our first training experience. With any luck, a new batch of enthusiastic employees will rise up and begin their successful tenure at the circulation desk.    

Presented by 

Haley Dittbrenner & Rob Sieczkiewicz

Wednesday, June 28, 2023 at 3:00 pm

Registration Link

Do you know how common digital piracy is on your campus? Are you curious about why students use pirate sites to download eBooks, and what their instructors think about this? In this interactive conversation, we will discuss the findings of our survey of Susquehanna University students and faculty, and explore attendees’ attitudes toward and experience with shadow libraries. Finally, we will conclude with a conversation about how these findings about the use of pirate sites might be used to inform library Open Educational Resources (OER) programs.

Haley Dittbrenner is a junior student at Susquehanna University. She studies creative and professional writing as well as publishing and editing. She currently works as a student manager at the Blough-Weis Library. She wants to make a career out of open access and publishing librarianship. Rob Sieczkiewicz is Associate Professor and Director of the Blough-Weis Library at Susquehanna University. Previously he was a digital scholarship and instruction librarian, and before that a university archivist. His research interests include digital humanities, information literacy, and open access.

We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session, and it will be recorded and available on the C&CS YouTube page afterwards.

If you would like to present with the Connect & Communicate Series, please contact the C&CS team.

This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, Governor.

Support is also provided by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association.

Rural communities still struggle with internet access, which can lead to serious challenges for college students. My library had debated circulating WIFI hotspots to students for years but concerns of price and managing them held us back. After the switch to online learning in 2020, we began researching WIFI hotspots again to see if we might make them available for our students. There were no shortage of local public libraries who were offering them to patrons, so we knew it could be done. We eventually determined that T-Mobile was a frequent partner with several public libraries so we reached out to them about the costs and other details. After meeting with some of their representatives, we found the costs reasonable and signed on for 12 WIFI hotspots that we would offer to students beginning in the 2021-22 academic year. Our early results were positive with there being many periods when every hotspot was checked out. We could only help so many students at once with 12 hotspots, but the students we did help let us know our help mattered a lot. We also found the hotspots were useful to fellow employees. We sometimes circulate them to help staff who are travelling on college business to areas without internet access. One afternoon our regular ISP went down, bringing work to a halt in every department, except the Library with out little hotspots ready to go.

We have had some bumps along the way, however. A few students dropped out and never returned their hotspots. Hotspots can disappear just as easily as books. Hotspots also require some management. Unused hotspots need to be deactivated to prevent monthly charges for them, then reactivated when circulated. None of this is too time consuming but libraries should be aware these aren’t set it and forget it devices. If you’re curious, our hotspot policies page has some more details. Of course, you can always reach out to me at akirby@pennhighlands.edu if you have questions about circulating hotspots at your library.