It's Academic

You are cordially invited to our in-person and Zoom Spring Workshop. We look forward to sharing with you tools and procedures that will prepare you for any possible book challenge that may come your way. We are also thrilled to have author Lois Lowry joining us virtually to discuss, among other things, her challenged book “The Giver.” CLICK HERE for an agenda.

So don’t delay…register now, put it on your calendar and join us on May 20, 2022 from 8:30am until 2:30pm for what should be a very engaging event.

Cost: $20 PaLA member | $40 Non-member

Register: https://www.palibraries.org/event/2022SWChapter_SpringWS

Presented by Ashoo Kumar, Sandy Morgart, Eric Novotny, and Dan Peters

May 11, 2022 at 11:30 am EST

Registration Link

The pandemic disrupted many aspects of librarianship and provided an opportunity to rethink and revitalize library services. At Penn State it added new urgency to a long-standing desire to offer more convenient access to Microforms, breathing new life into a format often seen as outdated and inaccessible. In this session, speakers from Penn State’s Microforms and Government Information and Information Technology Units will share how we’ve improved access to microforms and increased impact. With WebLabs softwarepatrons no longer need to visit the library to use the treasures on microfilm. They can browse, view, and scan microfilm from home, the office, the beach, or even from the ski slopes! Dynamic links added to the library catalog allow patrons to seamlessly initiate a scan request at the point of discovery. The impact has been dramatic with individuals across the curriculum requesting materials. The new services promote equity of access and remove barriers, making the collections equally accessible to novices and seasoned researchers alike. We will share data and offer practical advice for those considering similar arrangements at their institutions. We hope to have a robust discussion on innovative ways to promote the use of legacy formats such as microfilm. 

Ashoo Kumar is Library Manager, Microform and Government Information at Penn State University Libraries.  

Sandy Morgart is the Services and Microforms Collections Assistant at Penn State University Libraries. 

Eric Novotny is History Librarian at Penn State University Libraries, and co-heads the Microforms and Government Information Unit.   

Dan Peters is the Systems Design Specialist for Penn State University Libraries Strategic Technologies. 

As a reminder, the Zoom link will be sent approximately 48 hours before the session. We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. Session will be recorded and available on YouTube after the session. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session.

If you would like to present with C&CS, 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, Tom Wolf, Governor.

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

I’m currently in the midst of running my first research project, attempting to learn more about faculty publication choices across Pitt’s five campuses. Because I ended up not taking an optional research methods course in graduate school, and have mostly learned by teaching myself and by imitating others, this process has been an incredibly valuable learning experience for me. Being self-taught, however, does have its challenges.

I’m struggling, as I’m sure all researchers must, with recruiting participants. My team and I wanted to have hour-long interviews over Zoom, compensating participants for their time. Very few of the faculty we approached took us up on that offer. It’s unfortunate, because we believe these interviews are still the best way to coax out the data we’re looking for, but we need more participants if our data is to be useful at all. Therefore, I’m taking steps to revise our methods to something less taxing on faculty’s time.

I also started thinking about the research projects my colleagues at Pitt have done with our teaching faculty in the past (we often participate in Ithaka S+R studies). I thought about the teaching faculty at Pitt, who are incredibly busy and would need a good reason to take the time to speak with us. Even beyond formal research, are librarians trying to learn about how their faculty use libraries and their services at a disadvantage?

On the one hand, you have several librarians asking the same population (or sub-population) to participate in studies that may only be useful for the greater good. For smaller universities and college, I imagine that scarcity is even more apparent. Unlike students, faculty aren’t necessarily on constant rotation. I wonder if faculty get tired of getting requests for our studies. On the other hand, it is convenient that librarians doing this kind of work have a distinct population to recruit from—who they may work with or know and can be recruited with just an email—and don’t necessarily have to cast a wide net using listservs or social media. I’m not a liaison either, so I don’t have relationships with faculty that my colleagues might, but I suppose I have the option to ask them for an introduction here and there.

On top of these considerations, I also wonder if new stresses brought on by the pandemic, whose effects we’re still feeling after two years, make faculty less available for participation in studies. I’m thinking of Zoom burnout and anxiety surrounding teaching and childcare, specifically, but there may be other compounding factors.

Satisfying these questions would require more research that I, like my teaching faculty colleagues, do not have the time for, so for now I’m left to wonder and to continue working on revising my IRB.

Please use this Google Form to share your thoughts about the Spring 2022 series of the Virtual Journal Club, sponsored by the College & Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association! Thanks to everyone who participated in our discussions of recent literature on inclusive practices in libraries.

Even if you were not able to participate in the series this spring, please feel free to use the form to indicate which topic(s) you would be interested in reading about in future series, as well as indicate your scheduling preferences.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions.

Thank you, and have a great day! Melissa