Library Day in the Life #7 - Friday

Disclaimer: The thoughts and ideas expressed in this post are strictly personal and do not reflect the ideas of my employer.

It's the fifth and final day (for me) of the Library Day in the Life Project... and I have thoroughly enjoyed posting throughout this week.

Today's post is a bit different in that I was traveling to the administration building with our north region for a round table event. This event covered all departments, not just the library, but it did get my gears turning with new ideas.

Our college (company) has recently made changes to implement collaboration amongst campuses by placing us all in regions. To some degree, the collaboration is almost forced because of the newly designed structure...but I see good potential with this model. Additionally, from a library perspective, we're already heavily collaborating amongst ourselves as library colleagues, but also with other departments by serving students that are outside of our campus realm by way of our virtual chat system. A librarian's nature is to collaborate and work hand-in-hand with other departments/faculty/curriculum, ensuring that our students get the full benefit of the education experience. It's what we do... and it's what we do well.

With that being said, the first item on the agenda today was a discussion about growth, leadership, talent development, adaptability, performance management, and expertise within the mission statement umbrella of our company. It was inspiring, but a downer as well - only because my campus needs a bit of work in the area of leadership and welcoming outside-of-the-box ideas and innovation. In a sense, we are crippled by the top-down effect of management. I realize this is a bold statement to make...but again, these are strictly my own thoughts - not those of my employer.

From there, the day took a different turn in a direction that I very much appreciated. In the round table discussions, much of the opinions I just voiced were able to be heard, but there were great ideas being discussed as well. We were given a set of 5 criteria that would be discussed amongst our tables that spoke to what we're doing well, areas that need improvement, and finally identifying opportunities that may be present. Below are the thoughts from my table:

1. Mission and Integrity
   Our mission statement, and the organization as a whole is very much student-centered. We would hope that we have the student's best interest at hand at all times, but more often than not on my campus, the mentality is heavily on the enrollment side of things with not a lot of focus on academics. The library systems across each campus play a huge part in student outcomes and retention, but often, our efforts aren't appreciated. 
   
2. Preparing for the Future
   The library system has been innovative and forward thinking in becoming an early adopter for Worldcat Local. This decision truly stemmed from wanting the best for our students, and providing them with the resources they need to be successful in their programs. OCLC's option gave us many options that we were lacking with our previously chosen ILS system.
   
   Additionally, the library system needed a web presence, but couldn't fund it and the IT department wouldn't allow us to piggy back on the organization domain, so we found ways around that by using Libguides as our working website. We've just recently debuted the newly designed site and it's working very well for us. We've even been nominated for the Best Of Libguides in the subcategory of CampusGuides as Website. I had the opportunity to serve on our Libguides 2.0 committee, and have spent countless hours helping to customize the framework and design by tweaking coding. So again, we're thinking outside-the-box to make a system work for us.
   
   One concept to be careful of though when dealing with the future, is the concept of change. Are we adopting new ideas just for the sake of doing something different? Are we adopting new technologies just because something new hit the market? Or are we really diving deep into the root of why there's a need for change? I have made it a personal mission of mine to be cautious with change - making sure that I'm not changing just for the sake of doing something different, but changing because there's a need and an opportunity available. I think our organization does this pretty well... but it's still something to note as a potential area of weakness.
   
3. Student Learning and Effective Teaching
   One area of weakness discussed was the Gen Ed skill set. How are we measuring our student's skill sets before entry to a program or course, and upon completion of a course or degree? How do we measure critical thinking skills - is it even measurable (it sure as heck is hard to teach!)?
   
   The information literacy course is a step in the right direction with this point. Through the course curriculum, we are providing trans-literary skill sets that equip students with a better understanding of information and technology. Not only that, they learn to retrieve information sources on a topic of choice, and then evaluate those sources with a set of criteria. By evaluating sources of information, students learn to think critically about the information they are finding...making double, triple, and quadruple sure that the information is credible and authoritative. This is huge! But it's not really being talked about. A COM instructor that I work very closely with mentioned to me on more than one occasion that she can tell the students that have been through info lit. Their reference pages and in-text citations are perfect, and the writing has gotten better because they are doing true research. This is GREAT!
   
4. Acquisition, Discovery, and Application of Knowledge
   This was my favorite topic because I feel that I'm already thinking in this direction by designing and implementing a 23 Things: Learning 2.0 for Faculty Development program. Professional development is very much encouraged, but often there are funding limitations for conferences. This 23 Things program is a great way to collaborate with faculty and to provide new technologies for them to use in their course curriculum - all for free!
   
   Other thoughts included placing a higher standard of professional development in terms of publication and presenting opportunities. Lacking the tenure process has crippled us in a sense. There isn't importance placed on research for publication purposes. And for those that are presenting and publishing works of researched material, it isn't talked about or recognized.
   
5. Engagement and Service
   For this point, I would really like to see our students return to being center focus of our mission and vision. If we engage our students with better learning opportunities, and if we show our appreciation to and for them, how much higher would our rate of retention be? Some campuses do this really well... others need a bit work. Our advisory board is also a good start to gaining community input into what we're doing, but even that isn't really taken to heart.
   

The irony of all of the points above is that they are each designed to be very student focused, but in reality, the focus has shifted to being enrollment focused. I see the region change as a good thing that may help to bring back a sense of being student driven.

The final points from the end of the day were centered around these talking points:

-Define your moment (what are you doing...and why are you doing it?)
-Take risks (I think I've done that here and hopefully it won't backfire on me)
-Make a positive difference (we may be the only positive thing a student sees all day... embrace that opportunity to make a difference)
-Be passionate (If you can't tell from the writing in this post...I am very passionate about continuing to be an advocate for our library systems)
-Fall forward (think towards the future and what it holds)
-Leave a legacy (be remembered for doing something great)
-Dream big (and don't let upper management stifle those dreams)
-Believe (believe that the impossible really can happen)

Library Day in the Life #7 - Thursday

It's the fourth day of the Library Day in the Life Project... and I have my 2nd late night of the week ahead of me. Before going in to work though, I saw my husband off for a 10 day trombone seminar (he's a professional orchestral trombone player). It will be good to have a work day packed with to-do's to keep my mind occupied.

10:00 - 11:00    As is a common theme when I arrive at work, I check and respond to e-mail and also check in with my online class. I also checked our holds queue and noticed an item being requested from our library. Unfortunately, the item is long overdue/lost, so I had to contact the campus requesting the item and suggest an ILL instead.

11:00 - 12:00    I did a bit of online grading. I will be in and out this weekend, so I wanted to get a good chunk of the grading completed today.

During this hour, an e-mail came through from a librarian colleague at one of the campuses, asking if any of us were familiar with the Khan Academy. I saw a TED talk with the founder of the academy a few months back, and it's a really neat concept. My faculty really like the resources it provides too. So...I spent some time formulating an e-mail and sending along my thoughts and how I've utilized Khan Academy material in my faculty newsletters. You can see the TED talk below

Finally, I fixed a link on our new APA research guide and spent some time collaborating with my committee co-leader on plans for our legal sources portion of the guide.

12:00 - 1:00      In preparation for Monday's Info Lit class, I inputted the chapter 3 quiz into quizstar. I also started working again on the monthly report and tried to figure out how to pull statistic reports with our new ILS system - no luck.

I spent some time assisting a student with printing and helped another student with a research assignment using our databases. I'm always super excited when I get to assist with real research!

1:00 - 1:30        Another student came through needing help with one of their online courses. This poor student didn't know how to open an internet window, and didn't know how to submit an assignment by attaching a file. Keep in mind, we're in week 5 of the quarter, and this student is taking more than one online course. I did the best I could and gave the student packet information from a basic computer workshop that I designed and present each quarter. Hopefully this helps.

1:30 - 2:30         Lunch. And yep, you guessed it, I ran home to let the dog out. Good ole' Ditters

2:45 - 4:00         I rushed back to work and grabbed my notes for a faculty meeting. Many agenda items were discussed, and towards the end, I was able to share what we've been doing in the library (yay for PR time!). As a result, an adjunct instructor approached my assistant after the meeting to ask about a new Free and Fabulous presentation we put together. We've set a date with his class to discuss parts of the presentation that will work for presentation skills and we will also incorporate a bit of research as well.  We're slowly getting our foot in the door with more and more faculty...in hopes that they will continue to utilize our research expertise.

4:00 - 5:00         I spent this time to finish inputting the quiz questions and started writing the narrative for the library monthly report. I'm always amazed at the amount of information I come up with for these reports. At the time of gathering info for the report, I never think I'll have enough information...but boy we've been busy!

5:00 - 6:00         An online chat came through with a student having trouble logging into EBSCO. Turns out, the link in our catalog sent them to the non-subscription EBSCO area, so I headed to the actual database to search for the item, only to find that we didn't have it available in full text.  So, I mentioned the possibility of ILL, but in the end walked the student through finding other resources directly in our database, narrowing by full-text.

I had an e-mail join.me discussion after an instructor insisted that it was a security risk. My thing is - 1) it's by the makers of logmein which is used by companies all across the US to remote into servers and computer workstations. 2) if it were truly a security risk, our IT department would be all over it by blocking it (affectionately known as the barracuda). So, I'm not so sure there's a real problem with it! It has come in handy NUMEROUS times with students that are phoning in or using the chat reference service with computer issues.

6:00 - 7:00         I kept getting sidetracked, so I spent a good chunk of this hour working to finish the monthly report narrative. It's looking pretty set, except for statistics, which I'll have to figure out on Monday.

7:00 - 7:30         A few students and faculty members came in on their break from class to check out books and DVDs. I was able to promote our Novel Destinations summer reading promotion and was excited to see another student checking out the Hunger Games (yes, I work in a college... but it's a fantastic series and I had to purchase it! The COM instructor even said she was glad we had it for book reports).

Tomorrow I'm in an all day meeting in Indianapolis, so stay tuned for a different kind of post tomorrow evening.

Library Day in the Life #7 - Wednesday

It's the third day of the Library Day in the Life Project...

8:00 - 9:00      Yep, you guessed it... I started my workday by checking e-mail and checking in with my online class. During my first hour, I also assisted a student with an assignment requiring them to search LexisNexis.  They weren't understanding the layout of the different search areas, so I got them back on track with what they were needing to search. During this time, a phone call also came through with a student asking for an ISBN number for a course textbook. I grabbed the number and moved on to my to-do list.

9:00 - 10:00      Yesterday, an e-mail went out to the librarians across our campuses asking for information on how each of us train our work study students, and what training material we use to do so. In my hunt for materials to send out this morning, I realized that I never updated our training packet material after the launch of our new website and catalog. I spent just a bit of time grabbing screenshots and updating terminology for the packet. It really turned out to be perfect timing since one of our work studies couldn't remember the procedure for checking out an item (this is a problem...). With the new packet material, it will give my assistant and I the perfect opportunity to "retrain."

During this time, I also assisted a student that stopped by needing  help finding business planning information. I pointed her to a presentation I recently gave to a class, as well as a few databases that could get her started.

10:00 - 11:00  One of my online students stopped by the library to ask about an assignment. I spent just a bit of time walking her through what was being asked of her. I also got my notes and assessment worksheets ready for a class presentation.

11:00 - 12:00  Today's Google Bucket presentation was for one of our COM classes. This class happened to have a balance of students that have already had library presentations before, or that have taken my info lit course. When this happens, I like to use the Google Bucket, a presentation idea taken from the Library Instruction Cookbook. Students have a chance to dive into a bucket that details a specific database. They get hands on practice searching the databases, we talk about it, I do a little bit of show-and-tell, and in the end, most students learn gobs of new stuff they never knew before.

During this time, my assistant gave a simultaneous presentation to a Computers and Office Automation class. We titled it Free and Fabulous, and it's a whirlwind journey through free and fabulous online tools that students can use for presentations, studying, etc.. This was a brand new presentation but it went over VERY well!

12:30 - 1:30     Lunch! I met my husband for a mexican lunch - quite yummy!

1:30 - 4:00       I spent a good chunk of the rest of my day working on a 23 Things program that I am wanting to implement in the Fall. I'm just in the beginning stages of writing the blog posts for each week, but I'm really getting excited about this!

4:00 - 6:00       I'm not sure why I decided to end with this, but I spent the remainder of my day at work working on the library monthly report. It's a constant struggle to educate people of my campus on the validity of what we do and the need for our library services - and in reality, those that receive my monthly report don't read it, therefore continuing the cycle of non-appreciation. But, I've made a vow to myself to continue with the reports...if nothing else, it provides self fulfillment in seeing on paper what we've accomplished during the month.

Tomorrow will include more writing of the report, and completing one of my research guides.

Library Day in the Life #7 - Tuesday

It's the second day of the Library Day in the Life Project.  On Tuesdays, I go in a bit later due to working the late shift, so I have started this post at 10am.

10:00 - 11:00  As always, I spent my first hour of work reading and answering e-mail.

11:00 - 12:00  I had a few e-mail questions from my online students, so I checked into my online class and tried to calm a few of them down. It's that time of the quarter where students see the mass of work being asked of them, and they're slacking and getting behind. Because of this, I get to play "hunt the student down," making sure they understand the material.
After this, a student came through that needed help printing from a flash drive. While this is a common question for us, and I'm still baffled that people don't know how to do this, I'm happy to help.  The student gets logged into a computer and I sit down to begin helping. I notice though that the file in question doesn't have the normal Word icon associated with it. I ask the student what program was used to create the document, and I'm told Abiword. I've never heard of such ... but apparently it's freeware. It seems to have the capability to save as a .doc, but that's not how this student saved it. Word couldn't open the file, so I try a zamzar conversion. Zamzar couldn't convert the file either. In the end, I ended up opening the file in notepad and editing out the coding gibberish. So here again, I'm baffled that students don't have the tools they need to complete their coursework successfully. In my library though, where there's a will, there's a way and we'll find a way to make it work!

12:00 - 1:00    I did a few background searches and sent a few e-mails to students in my ground class that are having trouble finding information on their topics (medicare cost & child social security fraud). I think I've got them back on track...and one student e-mailed me back very appreciative of my help (yay!).

1:00 - 2:00      My assistant librarian is the subject specialist for Logistics, and she has never worked with Libguides before, so we conversed just a bit about a framework for her research in preparation of starting her research guide. As she did some background work, I began more work on my own subject specialty research guides (project management and gaming & interactive media).

2:00 - 3:00      Lunch! I ran home again to let the dog out, and spent my lunch hour reading a bit. I'm currently re-reading A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. My first time reading this series, I didn't get all the way through the first book. I'm not sure why, but I wanted to try it again.

3:00 - 4:00      After getting back from lunch, I spent some time going over the basics of Libguides with my assistant, and she was able to run with it.  We also played with join.me a bit in preparation for our Free and Fabulous presentation tomorrow.

4:00 - 5:00      I'm the administrator for our campus Facebook page, and I noticed a question come through after posting event information. I answered the question and administered 3 keyboarding exams.

5:00 - 6:00      A student came through wanting to checkout 2 of our newly purchased books. Once she was checked out, I restocked the book display with other new items, and then proceeded to work on my Libguides pages. I have decided to create a delicious account for my subject specialty areas in order to create a bookmark tag cloud. I spent the time creating the account and researching websites and associations of interest. You can see what I was able to accomplish today below:

6:00 - 7:30      My day is coming to a close, and I spent my last bit of time conversing via e-mail with our APA committee on our abstract guide. I fixed a bit of coding on that page to remain consistent with our other guides.
During this time, I noticed an e-mail come through from an online student. This student completed an extra credit assignment! I introduced my ground and online classes to diigo and gave them a quick assignment that walks them through the setup and bookmarking process, with hopes that they will use this frequently when searching for their sources. I was quite pleased to see a student completing this already! 

7:30                 Headed home! I grabbed a quick dinner, and then the hubs and I needed to make a grocery run. Just a bit of time is left of today before bed... and then I get to wake up and do it all over again. Stay tuned...

Library Day in the Life #7 - Monday

It's time yet again for the Library Day in the Life project.  This happens to be round 7, and I'm excited to share with my readers what I've been up to.

Today was heavily a course prep and grading day for the information literacy course I'm teaching (both online and ground).

8:00 - 8:30    I arrived right at 8am and spent time making sure my lesson notes were ready and all copies were made for class.

8:30 - 10:30  Taught my information literacy course. This week we discussed website searching, making sure students know how to find credible information when searching popular search engines. You can see the lesson for today below (there was a lot of show-and-tell with Google and Wolfram|Alpha, so there aren't many slides):

Information Literacy Week 5: Website Searching

View more presentations from Rebecca Johnson

10:30 - 1:45  Checked in with my online course (I'm also teaching an online section), answered gobs of e-mail, and then spoke with a faculty member on campus to discuss class instruction session options for a presentation skills course. I have started designing a "Free and Fabulous" presentation that incorporates free online technology tools for students to use - she was impressed and thinks this presentation will work wonderfully (yay!).

1:45 - 2:45    It's lunch time, and I rush home to eat and let the dog out.


2:45 - 3:45    I spend a bit more time grading for my online class and adding 0's into the gradebook for students not turning in work.

3:45 - 4:00    IM'd with a librarian colleague.  He asked if I had a PowerPoint presentation made for the information literacy database week lesson. I was happy to share and sent it his way with a bit of commentary.

4:00 - 4:15    Tracked down a student with an overdue book and called several others that have overdue items. Wouldn't it be easier on all of us if they would just turn in their items on time?!

4:15 - 4:45    Sent e-mails to students that missed class today and sent e-mails to online students not turning in work. I'm finding that there is much less work involved when students are doing what they should be doing. When I have to hunt them down, it becomes very time consuming.

5:00 - 5:30    Read and answered more e-mail. A few strings of e-mail came through regarding the APA citation (known as APA Yay!) committee I am co-leading. We are adding an abstract area to our guide and discussed ideas for this area. And since I'm so excited and proud of this guide, I'll share it here for you!

5:30 - 6:00    Graded ground assignments that were turned in today.

6:00 - 7:00    More e-mail and making a to-do list for the rest of the week. I only have a 4 day work week due to a meeting I must travel for on Friday. Plans for the rest of the week include subject specialty libguides work and prepping for our 23Things Learning 2.0 program set to launch in the Fall. I also have several class presentations this week, so I'll stay pretty busy!

Once I made it home, I ate dinner with the hubs, and then worked in the yard a bit. It's been a long day, and with the added exercise this evening, I'm a bit spent. Stay tuned for tomorrow!