It's Academic

Register today for the 2022 College & Research Division Spring Workshop!

May 10, 2022

Registration to attend the 2022 College & Research Division Spring Workshop is now open! Academic libraries are constantly adapting and evolving to meet the changing needs of our diverse patrons and communities. The pandemic continues to expose fissures in higher education and library employees have been working diligently to address issues as they arise. Perhaps your library has needed to create new policies or implement new services; maybe your library is designing new physical spaces to accommodate patron needs. As the course curriculum evolves, so do library practices.

On Thursday, June 2, at the Madlyn L. Hanes Library at Penn State Harrisburg, we will explore how academic libraries have adapted and evolved in new and different ways to meet the needs of our campuses and communities. A full event program with session descriptions can be found at this link. The Spring Workshop will include a light breakfast and welcome remarks, morning presentations, boxed lunch, followed by afternoon presentations.

Investment: PaLA Member $50 | Non-member $75 | Student $25

Register HERE:
https://www.palibraries.org/event/2022CRDSpringConf

If you are interested in staying in a nearby hotel, we encourage you to review these options:

Comfort Inn and Suites (1.3 miles away from the Penn State Harrisburg Campus)
Fairfield Inn and Suites (2.2 miles away from the Penn State Harrisburg Campus)

Workshop registration will close on Friday, May 20, 2022.

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 (https://crdpala.org/). Show your appreciation by becoming a member of PaLA! And if you are a member – thank you!

Creating Tutorials for Asynchronous Citation Management Instruction

May 6, 2022

tags: citation management, Information Literacy, LibWizard, Springshare, tutorials, undergraduate students, zotero

by aprilnkelley

Zotero + LibWizard = Success!

Image of person typing on a laptop. — Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Zotero is a citation manager that has been widely used across many college campuses by students to collect, store, and cite their research references, often at the suggestion of a librarian or professor. As a librarian at the University of Pittsburgh’s Johnstown Campus, I have witnessed the look of amazement on a student’s face once they realize how valuable this tool is, especially if they are working on a lengthy research paper or plan to go to grad school and continue their studies. Anyone who has taught Zotero (or any citation manager software) workshop should be well familiar with this reaction.

Unfortunately, these moments are few and far between lately. When the COVID-19 pandemic first began, I found myself, like many others in academic librarians, wondering how to best provide valuable information literacy instruction virtually. I also found myself thinking about ways to provide citation management workshops online.

In the fall of 2020, I decided to try out a flipped learning activity for a communications research course that I had worked with on citation management tools the previous year. As someone who has taught Zotero workshops in person pre-pandemic, I knew how technology issues could derail an entire instruction session and I wanted to find a way to provide instruction through asynchronous means, but still be able to connect and engage with the students.

I proposed to the faculty member that I create a self-guided tutorial using Springshare’s LibWizard for her students to complete prior to the class session that I would attend with them on Zoom. This allowed for the students to learn the basics of installing and using Zotero before the class met synchronously online and could ask questions they had about the tutorial or learn more specific information that the tutorial didn’t cover. As this was a course outside of my regular liaison area, I had help from my colleague who supports the discipline, and he was able to show the students how to find resources that students could then import into their Zotero libraries.

This approach seems to have worked well, based on feedback from the faculty and students. When instruction resumed in-person, we tried this approach again with success. One of the students answered, “How to cite articles in a much easier way” to our post-class evaluation question about the most useful part of the session, so I know at least one student found some value in learning Zotero, which is a success in my book.

Screenshot of introductory slide and accompanying text.

Creating a Self-Guided Zotero Tutorial with LibWizard

Create your learning objectives (I kept mine broad to be able to use the tutorial for any student, independent of a class requirement).
Create an outline of how to structure lesson (it helps if you already have this!).
Organize your LibWizard slides using your outline.
- Welcome message/intro
- Intro about Zotero
- Lessons on how to use Zotero (where recorded videos will be inserted)
- Conclusion/Where to get help
Test out tutorial (ask for volunteers or student assistants).
Make changes as needed.
Share the link and review reports for follow-up.

Pro-Tips

To help create the lessons, I recorded narrated videos that demonstrate the steps I use in an in-person class. I used Panopto, which is available at our institution, but since then I have found Active Presenter to be a more user-friendly software for video creation. In later tutorials, I have created videos with Active Presenter and then uploaded them to Panopto. Be sure to include captions and edit any mistakes. Chunking the demonstration videos into shorter lessons helps the user digest the content more easily, and hopefully helps them to retain it better as well. I also included places in the tutorial where the user can submit questions with their email address so I can follow up with them after completion.

If you would like to try the tutorial out yourself, please do so online (Intro to Zotero Tutorial). Please feel free to leave any constructive criticism so that I can make improvements over the summer. I know that there is a new Zotero 6.0 version out now that may offer new features, so I may need to update the lessons.

CIC “Humanities Research for the Public Good”

May 4, 2022

by smartin592

In the Spring of 2020, our college was awarded a “Humanities Research for the Public Good” grant from the Council of Independent Colleges. This was pre-covid and pre-our archivist leaving to take another job. Fast forward to November of 2021, when I took over mid-way through the project as the “collection professional” on the grant team. Student researchers from an Advanced Public History course had been meeting in the archives with their professor and our former archivist twice a week to research in our archives. In the spring, an Intro to Public History course began which added about 10 researchers to the project who worked on teams with the experienced researchers to finish the research and begin building an exhibit.

I definitely did not feel like a collections professional once I took over. I was not overly familiar with our collections but thankfully, we had two experienced student workers in the archives who had been working there since their freshman year. These students were able to continue finding and pulling items for the researchers in the class which kept up the progress on this project. We also relied heavily on them to help us make decisions on which items were OK to be only display and which were more fragile and would need to be scanned for a printed reproduction. I often felt like I existed only to be the “bad cop” who had to say no. However, what I learned from other “collections professionals” at the closing workshop for the grant is that saying no, is what makes me an honorary archivist – LOL!

At times this project felt like it was not going to come together but I am excited to say that tomorrow, Thursday, May 5th, we are hosting the opening reception for “Dynamic Decades: W&J and Washington in the Midst of Social Change”. The physical exhibit will be up in our library through the beginning of the fall semester so if you’re in Washington and have a chance to stop by the Clark Family Library we welcome you to check it out. Over the summer we’re open Monday-Friday regular business hours. There’s also a website that a group of senior Computing & Information Studies students are putting together. I understand there are some finishing touches still being added to this site but once it’s live I’ll link it in the comments.

Last weekend I and the other members of our project team traveled to Baltimore for the closing workshop for CIC grant and I was excited to see so many other PA libraries represented. I hope that someone from these institutions sees my post and adds links and info to their projects in the comments because they all deserve to be celebrated!

I talked to the teams from Carlow University, Muhlenberg College, St. Vincent College, & Thiel College. During the poster presentations I was able to talk with the student researchers for each project and I was impressed by both their depth of understanding and their passion for what they accomplished. Opportunities for students to engage with special collections can often be limited but for those who get the opportunity they obviously benefit from it greatly.

I’m proud to be part of the network of awesome academic libraries in PA!

SW Chapter PaLA Workshop – Featuring Lois Lowry

May 3, 2022

by Alex K.

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

Connect and Communicate PresentsMicrofilm Enters the Digital Age: A Big Evolution for a Microformat

April 29, 2022

by Alex K.

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.

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