It's Academic

Improving Learning Outcomes with Real-Time Surveys

June 26, 2024

tags: class evaluation, learning outcomes, Professional Development, survey tools

The question I receive the most from April to May is what am I doing for the summer because most people I meet assume the library is closed for summer. I don’t know if it’s because people forget students take classes in the summer, but I also respond that I am still working in the summer. I would argue this summer has been busier than my spring semester. It’s the end of June, and I’ve taught three classes, all asking for different information. I still have two orientations before the end of July that will not overlap much information.

This is all to say that I’ve introduced a new evaluation method into my classes this summer. Rather than sending out an evaluation post-class or relying on professor feedback, I’m having students fill out a pre & post-class survey during class time. These surveys have increased student engagement and allowed me to gauge what I should focus on and student familiarity with the materials I present. It also lets me know what I should change and how to change class, depending on materials, content, or activity. I use the feedback to improve upon the next class and the next. I have used Menti and Microsoft Forms to create my surveys and will also try Google Forms soon.

My favorite part of the real-time survey is that I can adjust the length of presentation sections based on what students expect and their comfort levels on various topics. This does not always work as I had hoped, but it’s a process like everything else. While going over the agenda, I also ask students what they expect from me and the class. I do not include the question in the survey. It is something I like to do to give ownership over the class to students. I find this helps their engagement levels.

I have questions specific to what I am covering for each class but follow a similar flow. Rather than send out a survey link, I ask students to scan a QR code to complete the survey and have them fill out the first two questions before we begin and the last two at the end of class. I give students one to two minutes to fill out the form. The first question is what you would like to focus on most today, and I have students rank agenda topics. I ask this question to adjust my talking points. I do not want to spend 30 minutes going over using databases if it turns out students would instead take more time on citations. From here, I ask how comfortable they are coming into class on our agenda topics. Students have five options, from very uncomfortable to very comfortable. I am again able to gauge my time in an area and how engaged I should make a section. For example, I most recently taught on Citations and included a Zotero setup. I walked students through setting up accounts, finding an article, and joining a group.

After we have gone over all the materials to cover, I will take about 5 minutes at the end of class to answer any follow-up questions and have students take the second half of the survey. Again, I ask them to rate their comfort level with our agenda topics post class from very uncomfortable to very comfortable, with a range of 5 options. This lets me know how students feel after class and what (if any) additional information I should include on slides I send out after, and it enables the professor to know what students got out of the class. The final question is open-ended and receives the least number of responses, but it lets me know how to improve upon covered topics directly. I ask if there is anything they would like to see or do differently from me in the class.

When I send the slides to professors after class, I include a summary of the survey results. I do this so that they know and will (hopefully) continue to use library resources and share their experience with colleagues. Sharing the results also lets professors know how valuable a resource the library is and continues to be. As I continue to improve upon the survey, I would love to know more about the types of measures and questions others ask. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, feel free to reach out or comment below!

PaLRaP Accepting Submissions for Fall Edition

June 24, 2024

tags: palrap, submissions

by colemanluzerne

Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice (PaLRaP.org) is accepting submissions for research, practice, feature, and commentary articles as well as news items for the Fall 2024 issue (vol. 12, no. 2).

Research, practice, feature, and commentary manuscripts are welcomed at any time; however, for full consideration for the fall issue, please submit your manuscripts by August 31, 2024.

News item submissions (staff changes, awards/recognitions, events, initiatives, etc. happening in PA libraries that may be of interest to other libraries) are also welcome at any time. However, for full consideration for the spring issue, please submit your news items here by October 1, 2024.

For more information about PaLRaP, including submission guidelines and section policies, visit http://www.palrap.org.

PaLRaP is a peer-reviewed, online, open access publication of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s College & Research Division. This journal provides an opportunity for librarians in Pennsylvania to share their knowledge and experience with practicing librarians across the Commonwealth and beyond. It includes articles from all areas of librarianship, with a special focus on activities at or of interest to Pennsylvania’s academic libraries.

Copy written by Roseann Perkins and Kate Cummings

A Summer of Learning Through Research Guides

June 17, 2024

tags: career-growth, education, professional development, Professional Development, Reference

by Cecelia Lasley

Research guides are a core element of many of our reference practices whether as a vehicle for asynchronous reference or a tool in synchronous reference consultations. Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber (2018) conducted a study that determined that subject guides are also one of the primary tools for librarian professional development for keeping current with their liaison areas and the resources available to support those disciplines. Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber (2018) establish the baseline through their literature review that librarians are primarily self-teaching about liaison areas and resources unless they were lucky enough to have previous coursework or degrees in or professional experience with a discipline (p.). Their literature review and study concluded with the suggestion that the profession develop more channels for librarian learning in these areas beyond subject guide.

Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber seem to agree with Berry and Reynolds’ (2001) argument that new librarians are “[…] in charge of [their] education[,]” despite the 17-year gap in the two articles (Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber, 2017, p. 32; Berry and Reynolds, p.34). This echoes much of my personal experience as an early career liaison librarian. In the spirit of Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber, I am planning to revise my research guides this summer as a method structuring my learning about the Tufts curriculum, Tisch Library’s resources, and the subject matter of my new liaison areas. However, where I plan to differ from the librarians who participated in Bagshaw and Yorke-Barber’s study is by participating in a community of learning – a number of my colleagues are undertaking similar research guide revamp projects (and therefore librarian learning projects). The driving force behind many of my colleague’s projects is a library-wide LibGuide cleanup taking place this summer. It will be exciting to be able to bounce ideas off of colleagues who are all working on similar efforts and to hear what everyone learns as they assess, maintain, and revamp guides.

Do you like to use research guide work as a tool for professional development/learning about your liaison areas? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Works Cited

Bagshaw, A., & Yorke-Barber, P. (2018). Guiding librarians: rethinking library guides as a staff development tool. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 67(1), 31-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2017.1410629.

Berry, S. S., & Reynolds, E. W. (2001). “I got the job! Now what do I do?:” A practical guide for new
reference librarians. The Reference Librarian, 34(72), 33–42. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.tufts.edu/10.1300/J120v34n72_04.

Submit a Proposal for a Poster Session at the Pennsylvania Library Association Conference in Harrisburg!

May 20, 2024

by Alex K.

The 2024 Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA) annual conference will take place October 6 – 9 in Harrisburg, our State Capital. Poster sessions provide the opportunity to engage with other library professionals in an informal, idea-sharing format.

We invite you to submit a proposal for a poster session and share your findings, successful ideas or innovations with colleagues through the use of pictures, graphs and text in poster format. Several posters are on display during each 60-minute poster period, with you, as the presenter, on hand to fill in the details and answer questions from those viewing your poster. The tone is casual and the mode is highly interactive. The objective is to share information, gather feedback and make connections with others interested in the topic.

The poster sessions will take place on Monday & Tuesday (October 7 & 8) during exhibit no-conflict time and will not compete with other educational sessions.

For more information, and for the link to submit, please visit the
Poster FAQ page.

The deadline to submit is Friday, May 31.

On behalf of the 2024 Poster Session Committee, we look forward to your proposal and hearing about your latest programs and innovations!

Kim Snyder Wise
Education & Finance Manager
Pennsylvania Library Association

Breaking Down a Collection, Building Up Community

April 30, 2024

by paulmcmonigle

The Pennsylvania State University Engineering Library is undergoing a major transformation. In October 2021, PSU announced that the Engineering Library would move to the Engineering Collaborative Research and Education (ECoRE) Building, a new construction set to be completed by Fall 2024. However, there was a catch to receiving a new space: we will not be taking our collection with us. The new Engineering Library will be bookless, except for our reserve and reference collections. Faculty and staff sprung into work to prepare for our move to a new building and a new service model. The most important factor in preparing for this move was what to do with the over 30,000 books in our collection that we cannot take with us. After three and a half years of hard work, the Engineering Library successfully emptied our stacks in March 2024. By the end of the project, approximately 12,850 items were redistributed to other PSU libraries on the University Park campus and to other campuses across the commonwealth and 24,660 items were deselected from our collection to be donated or recycled. While losing a collection and gaining a new space has been a bittersweet journey, the process had an unforeseen consequence: community building.

Departmental Community

The Engineering Library is a part of the STEM Branch Libraries Department at the University Park campus. In preparation for this change, the Engineering Library employees relied on institutional knowledge and support from the other libraries in the STEM department. Engineering Library employees worked most intimately with the STEM employees at the Pattee and Paterno Library, as this library received over 10,000 items from our collection. Monthly meetings and nearly daily communication between the two libraries forged strong relationships that allowed for the clear communication, strong collaboration, and mutual trust that resulted in a .01% error rate when transferring items.[1] As the PSU STEM Libraries prepare for any future collection changes, they can continue to draw on the relationships and workflows established during the Engineering Library collection move.

University Wide Community

The Engineering Library asked for help from every library location at Pennsylvania State University. Items in the Engineering Library collection were offered to other PSU library locations across the commonwealth. When library locations accepted items, employees worked closely together to ensure the accurate and timely transfer of items. Additionally, the Engineering Library conducted a university wide search for every lost item in our collection. The cooperation of every library location allowed for the Engineering Library to be fully confident in the accuracy of our holdings during this time of drastic change. Furthermore, Engineering Library employees relied on the knowledge and expertise of collection maintenance, cataloging, and library IT services departments (to name a few).

Engineering Move Party

The collaborative spirit of the Engineering Collection move culminated in Spring 2024. By March, the Engineering Library had deselected, donated, recycled, and relocated every item in our collection, except for the approximately 10,000 items that were scheduled to move to the Pattee and Paterno Library. In order to pack and process the vast number of items, the Engineering Library called upon our library community for help. Volunteers from PSU library locations across the commonwealth gathered on the first Monday of Spring Break, to help us move our collection in a “Goodbye” Moving Party. Our enthusiastic, meticulous, and diligent volunteers exceeded our expectations: the Engineering Library packed all 10,000 items by the end of the day.

After three and a half long years, the Engineering Library has whittled our collection down from 30,000+ items to a few hundred reference and reserve items. This monumental task could not have happened without the support from across the commonwealth. In the process of moving our collection, the Engineering Library faculty and staff grew closer not only to our departmental partners, but to the entire library community. In our new location, the Engineering Library is primed to continue to develop the communication, trust, and collaboration we have curated across our library community.

Katie Woods
Engineering Collection Move Project Manager
Library Services Associate — Penn State University Libraries
MSLIS, expected May 2024

[1] When moving over 10,000 items to the Pattee and Paterno Library, employees only missed processing one item that stuck to another in transit. This item was quickly found and the error fixed.