The Next Chapter

It’s been five weeks since I started my new position as a Regional Campus Librarian for the University of Central Florida. I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed. I certainly intended to update my blog sooner than this, but the first few weeks of a job are intense, especially this one! I wrote a post before I left my last job that outlines what this one is. My position is unique in that I’m employed by the UCF library but work on the campus of Valencia College Osceola campus in Kissimmee. UCF has partnered with several state colleges in the Orlando vicinity to form a network of Regional Campuses that hold UCF classes. I am the first full time UCF Librarian at this campus, and will work to support the UCF students, faculty and staff located here in Osceola.

I also work at the reference desk which primarily serves Valencia students. The ratio of Valencia to UCF students in the Fall will be something like 30 to 1, so I have to know what their priorities are as well because I will be working with Valencia students on a daily basis. In terms of starting my new job, this means learning two separate systems. It’s been a lot of information to absorb but the UCF and Valencia librarians have all been amazing and supportive of my learning curve. I spent my first full week on the main UCF campus in Orlando meeting with various people and departments. My supervisor had lists of people to meet, information to learn, and tasks to complete. I am so thankful that she had these in place. It made the training process less scary and more manageable. I’m still working on checking a few key people off my list of meetings, but I’ve completed almost everything else I needed to.

I haven’t yet worked a full week on the Osceola campus, I keep going to the main Orlando campus or some of our other locations for meetings and trainings. Yesterday I got to visit the College of Medicine with other regional librarians and librarians from the main campus. We got a two hour tour of the school and the library and it was incredible! I feel so blessed to be a part of an institution that is focused on being innovative and forming partnerships within the local community to foster student success.

One of the most interesting things for me in this transition is to see how much of what I was doing at Cleveland transfers to my role here. I observed one of the Valencia librarians’ instruction sessions a few weeks ago and I could have easily taught the class myself. The only real difference is that students have different resources and a different way to access them. I have tried to spend time orienting myself to the resources that are new to me (or ones I haven’t had access to since graduate school).

My big focus at first is going to be outreach to the faculty and students on this campus. Last week I finally felt comfortable enough to introduce myself to a faculty member who teaches Public Administration. Within 5 minutes of talking with him he asked me to come to his class that afternoon to teach a short session on APA format. I was thrilled to be able to get into a class that quickly and took advantage of the opportunity. I had a few hours to prepare so I created a quick presentation based off the Plagiarism & Citations workshops I used to do at Cleveland. I had a great time working with the upper level students, something I didn’t get to experience at Cleveland. They were very engaged and asked at least 10 good questions. After the session I connected with the faculty member on LinkedIn and he actually endorsed me for Public Speaking, so I think I must have done something right! That faculty member has already been in the library and will hopefully be an advocate for the library with other faculty members in the Fall.

Last week I also had the opportunity to attend a day and a half long training on Scholarly Communications on the main campus. I hope to write a recap of the whole session for my next post. I am excited to get involved in some new areas of librarianship that weren’t relevant/feasible in my role as a community college librarian. So far this job has been perfect because I still get to do a little bit of everything, but now I get to work with upper level students and with faculty who are actively working on tenure and publications. Speaking of publications, one of my goals for my first year here is to get an article published. I’m just starting to work on that now.

This week I spent some time working on my ACRL committee duties. I am the co-chair of the ACRL DLS 2014 ALA Conference Program Planning Committee. We have partnered with the same committee in ULS to work on a joint program proposal. We had our first meeting this week using ALA Connect’s chat space. I facilitated the meeting and was extremely pleased with the results. Our groups worked well together and the pieces of the plan seemed to fall into place without much friction. After the meeting I felt that same runner’s high type feeling I get after a good instruction session (which I did experience after my APA session last week). I want to set a goal for myself to become involved in leadership. I enjoy doing it and think I have been successful in that role when I’ve taken it on in my life.

This change has been overwhelming in the usual ways (moving to a new state, new job, etc.) but has also been invigorating. I feel like I have access to a whole new set of opportunities and challenges, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next year brings. I know that this year will bring me to my first ALA conference at the end of the month and I am totally freaked out and excited about that! I can’t wait to see old friends, meet up with people I only know virtually, and make new connections that will last throughout my career.

Review of “The Accidental Law Librarian” by Anthony Aycock

I would like to thank Information Today for providing me with an advanced review copy of “The Accidental Law Librarian” by Anthony Aycock, available June 10^th. I received my copy nine days after my last day as a community college librarian, and eleven days before beginning my new position as a librarian at a large public university. I mention this because it changed the way I approached the book, especially knowing that the likelihood of getting legal reference questions will greatly increase in my future.

I had trouble getting started due to a tacky opening sequence in which the author describes his encounter with a patron at a small branch library. I was slightly offended by the way the author described his feelings about and assumptions of this patron, and that put me off a bit at first. I’m glad I stuck with it (and suffered through several other overwrought narratives) because the rest of the information in the book is incredibly useful. The first chapter lays the foundation for the book. The discussion of primary vs. secondary sources makes it clear that legal publishing is far outside the norm of traditional academic and popular publishing. The first chapter provides a historical overview that is very relevant to the material in the book and worth reading.

The subsequent chapters discuss various aspects of law librarianship including details on publication types, publishers, how to answer legal reference questions, free and subscription-based online sources, the various stakeholders involved in legal libraries, education and resources for law librarians, and a closing on the future of law libraries. The appendix should not be overlooked either. It contains an extensive list of real legal reference questions with accompanying answers, and a sample library business case.

Each chapter uses a well-chosen blend of content to enhance the discussion. The text is a mix of explanation, discussion, charts, lists, practical tips, strategies, philosophical discussion, and screen shots. Many of the topics are confusing due to the majority of important publications falling outside the traditional scope of academia and popular publishing avenues; however, the author handles these in a way that is manageable and succinct. I mentioned that I received this title in a transitory phase, and I’m glad I had it available on my phone during my first week as a university librarian! I was able to hold a discussion with my new supervisor about Shepardizing, a concept I was clueless about before reading this book. I also pulled out the text while I was shadowing at the reference desk to find a website that the author referenced for a student struggling to understand a case he was researching.

The text is written more for librarians in legal or public libraries, but it is still extremely useful for librarians in any library because of its excellent treatment of legal publishing. The book also contains information useful to librarians doing business reference and other general information inquiries. Beyond the technical details, Aycock devotes a lot of space to discussing practical issues such as workplace culture, marketing the library, and forming partnerships. These sections draw on his own experience and he cites examples from other librarians to provide an unbiased view on these issues. He also isn’t afraid to talk about costs and the bottom line, which is becoming an increasingly important issue for all libraries.

This book served a dual purpose for me. First, it was a good introduction to law librarianship, and would be priceless for the novice or occasional law librarian. Second, reading discussions on marketing, branding, and philosophies of librarianship while making a transition between jobs has helped me to re-energize my own thoughts on these issues and focus on how I can apply them in my new position. My favorite passage in the book came in the final chapter where the author is discussing his view of information. He writes “To me, information is the universal human right, not knowledge. Information is cloth; knowledge is clothing. One becomes the other through desire and hard work, which are not mandates. To make knowledge is to make meaning, and there is nothing universal about that: Each person’s meaning is sui generis. The materials, the information, are and should be free, but how many of us can make meaning from them? We pay others to assemble all sorts of consumer goods, so I don’t see the antidemocracy of paying others to organize information” (197). This is an excellent answer to the question of why librarians will be relevant in the increasingly digital world. This book should be added to the collection of any library that might have to provide legal reference, and is invaluable to librarians who aren’t intimately familiar with law librarianship.

Review of “Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences” by Nancy Duarte

“Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences” by Nancy Duarte 

One of the best things about being a librarian is that I possess the skills to do research and find the best sources to meet any information need. I’ve also become more adept at recognizing my personal information needs, and I have a sort of mental catalog of skills I want to develop and topics of interest that I curate materials for. I use RSS feeds combined with Chrome bookmarking and a personal learning site to keep track of useful resources as I find them. One resource that came up several times was the book “Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences” by Nancy Duarte. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I’d like to foster my professional development by presenting at conferences, and after reading several reviews I knew that Resonate would be a great resource to improve my skill set.

I present quite often in the classroom setting, and I found Resonate to be useful for my work there as well as my original focus of professional presentations. Resonate is clearly written in the context of presenting in a more formal business-like environment, but the majority of the material was relevant to what I do as a librarian. The book itself is physically stunning. The imagery is high quality, well-used, and informative (clearly a theme of the book!). It was a fun book to read, and Duarte uses practical examples throughout the text (many of which can be viewed online). Her examples transcend the business medium and include examples from entertainment and politics as well as the traditional Steve Jobs type examples. Duarte did an excellent job of presenting an idea, teaching it, and then analyzing it in the context of a famous/viewable example presentation.

This format made the concepts easy to grasp, and the concepts built upon each other in a way that felt like a natural progression. As in my review of “What the Best College Teachers Do”, I don’t want to include too much of the meat of the information because I feel that the experience of reading through the entire book is valuable to anyone who presents information to an audience. The most basic representation of her overall concept  for the structure of a presentation is: Beginning (picture of world as is) – - > Call to Adventure (what could be ) – - > Call to Action (how to make the change) – - > End (description of potential new bliss).

The gist of Duarte’s information is that a good presentation follows a story-like format, creates contrast, and resonates emotionally with the audience. She uses these ideas throughout the book and discusses them from different perspectives. Duarte includes some concrete rules (such as never spend more than 2 minutes on a slide) that are easy to implement alongside the more theoretical/conceptual information. She emphasizes the importance of devoting significant amounts of time to developing, practicing, and refining your presentations in order to get the best possible result (ex. “The journey should be mapped out, and all related messages should propel the audience closer to the destination” (76).)

I finished this book a few weeks ago, and was reading it while I developed my “Flexing Your Library Muscles” presentation. I know that my presentation was stronger because of Duarte’s information, and I wish I’d been able to finish the book before I created it in the first place! It’s funny how life sometimes makes connections for you, I just finished watching “An Inconvenient Truth” this morning before work and Al Gore’s presentation style is a wonderful example of Duarte’s main principles. He starts with laying a foundation of what’s going on, lets us know after every scary fact that the problems can be ameliorated, and gives us the message that we can make a difference in a way that’s emotional, funny, and non-threatening to our egos. The documentary was phenomenal and it was the best example I’ve seen of Duarte’s principles since I finished the book. Resonate is very inspiring and motivating, the message is clear that if you work hard at it, you can be a great communicator. I’m looking forward to putting these skills into practice in my new job!

The Next Step

The absence of a post on this blog for three weeks is something I’m not proud of, but life has a funny way of throwing wrenches in your plans (and your back up plans!). Part of my struggle to write posts recently has been the fact that this is the post I’ve been wanting to write for over a month but was not able to until now. The other part of my struggle is the crazy schedule I’ve been keeping due to the fact that I’ve been in the process of job hunting. I’m happy to finally report that I’ve been hired as a Regional Campus Librarian for the University of Central Florida’s Valencia College Osceola Campus!

I began seriously job hunting in late Fall of last year. My goal when I started at Cleveland Community College was to do as much as possible, learn as much as possible, and meet as many librarians as possible in the hopes of moving to a University after two years.  I began my initial job board monitoring in November because I knew that some Universities have extended hiring processes. The sources I used were INALJ, ALA’s Joblist, several state library websites, and a HootSuite Twitter feed for the #libraryjobs hash tag. My initial job hunt was scattered, so this time I kept a spreadsheet with columns for position, institution, location, apply by date and a URL for the job ad.

I completely redesigned my resume. To do this I checked out examples of resumes/CVs for librarians I respected that had them posted on their websites. I also made a giant list of all the things I do in my current job, both daily tasks like circ/reference shifts and long term projects I’d completed or was working on. That helped me to group my experience into categories of skills that I could use for my resume. I re-drafted my standard cover letter. I used the same style I had in the past, but obviously had a lot of new content. The list I made of everything I do was enormously helpful when drafting cover letters.

I didn’t keep track of how many positions I applied for on this search. I’d say between 10 and 15. Of those, I received a request for a phone interview from 7 institutions and have received 3 or 4 rejections. I feel pretty awesome about the response I got and the hard work I put in on the application process. During this time I attended the American Libraries Live “Landing Your Ideal Library Job” webcast, and picked up some amazing tips for interviewing. My in person interview for UCF was a whole day of presenting and interviews with varying groups/individuals. I put a lot of work into my presentation for the interview and I was rewarded with the job offer!

The gist of the job is as follows (taken directly from the ad!): “The University of Central Florida (UCF) Libraries is accepting applications for a full-time librarian to serve in a joint-use library at the Valencia College Osceola Campus.  Regional Campus librarians participate in service delivery with college librarians in a shared facility and report to the UCF Head of Regional Campus Libraries.  Primary responsibilities include participation in all modes of reference, library instruction, outreach and collection development duties in a partnership environment.” I am super excited to be working with a wider range of students, from first years and community college all the way through graduate students. My first day at UCF will be May 10^th, and my last day here at Cleveland will be next Friday April 19^th.

I’ve been spending my time at work trying to tie up loose ends, teach people how to do the things I do, transfer contact information for companies/services we use, cram in instruction sessions, and resign from the various committees I’m involved in. I am beyond thankful for the opportunities I was given during my time at Cleveland to try new things, be involved with all aspects of academic library service, and take advantage of professional development opportunities. If there’s anyone reading interested in my job, here’s the ad: http://clevelandcc.edu/uploads/HR/Librarian%20Instruction-Reference%20-%202013%204-4.pdf

This process has been one of the most stressful and edifying experiences I’ve had. Juggling multiple opportunities/interview processes during a busy Spring semester is not something I’d like to repeat any time soon. That being said, I have heard so many nice things about my work here at Cleveland and in the library community from my references, from other librarians I’ve discussed this with, and from the faculty/staff at Cleveland. It feels good to know that other people find value in what I do, and it helps me be more sure than ever that librarianship is the right fit for me. I feel so blessed that my search was successful, and that I was offered an opportunity that is more than I was hoping for. I’d still like to post one more blog entry before I leave, but I expect another hiatus as I move even further south and start on the next chapter in my career.

My Top Five Blogging Heroes

I firmly believe that blogging is one of the best ways to stay informed and up to date on the Library world. It is one of the best professional development tools we have, and I follow quite a few LIS blogs in my RSS feed. There are several bloggers who I enjoy so much that I consistently read every post they publish. I call them my blogging heroes because they inspire me to be a better blogger and a better librarian. Here they are in no particular order:

Char Booth

I wrote Char Booth’s section last. I almost don’t have words to express how much I admire her.  A book I read on instruction last year, referenced in this post (http://carriemoran.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/tutorial/) introduced me to her as an author, and I’ve been hooked on her Informational blog ever since. Before that I had seen a presentation recording of a talk she gave with Brian Mathews (see below!) and I was blown away by both of them. Char’s posts are usually long, and she’s incredibly intelligent. They are worth reading from start to finish every time. I can’t possibly pick a favorite recent post. I keep a list of blog ideas and her last 3 posts are on my list as possible discussion points. Her most recent post was a very practical overview of teaching group editing tools (Prezi, Google & Wikipedia), the post before was her outstanding analysis of learning styles, and the one before is her perspective on the ongoing library crisis narrative that seems all too prevalent in the news and blog world. She doesn’t post as frequently as the other bloggers on my list, but her blog is definitely a must read for me.

Barbara Fister

Barbara Fister’s posts for Inside Higher Ed focus on many of the challenges and broader issues faced by academic libraries/librarians. I find her posts easy to read even when they are about challenging topics, and she is obviously very in touch with the LIS world. She often mentions other sources for information that are just as valuable as her posts. She’s also not afraid to make bold statements on current issues. Although I may not always agree with her, she always gives me a new perspective and understanding of the issues.

Brian Mathews 

I love Brian Mathews’ Ubiquitous Librarian entries because they are usually short and make me think. His view of libraries is large scale and visionary, and I love reading about what he’s doing and what trends he thinks are important. We got his book “Marketing Today’s Academic Library: A Bold New Approach to Communicating with Students” in about a month ago but I haven’t had a chance to dig in yet. That will be my next work related book when I finally finish Resonate!

Ellyssa Kroski 
Ellyssa Kroski’s iLibrarian blog is one of my favorites because she always has very practical information that’s often broken into lists. She posts frequently (but not overwhelmingly so), and is always posting about relevant LIS topics. One of my favorite recent posts by her was “10 Tips for Conference Presentations That Rock”. I definitely did my best to follow them last week!

Lauren Pressley

Lauren Pressley’s blog is my go to for information on instruction. She did a great series on Teaching Strategies for Librarians that posted while I was in my own big push to get a better foundation in pedagogy and teaching. Her posts can be long but they are always a good mix of theoretical, factual, and anecdotal content.  She will often post materials she uses in classes and is very open about what works and what doesn’t.

Flexing My Library Muscles

This week started with the North Carolina Community College Learning Resources Association annual conference in Wilmington, NC. I went to school in Wilmington so it was nice to be in a familiar place. I also enjoy this particular conference because it’s only for NC community college librarians so every session was relevant and I got to catch up with some friends from across the state. The conference started with a short welcome by the president of the host college followed by a keynote from Cal Shepard (State Librarian at the State Library of North Carolina). Both of them mentioned my presentation by name during their talks! It was pretty funny, all the people in the room that knew me and my title were giving me looks.

Speaking of people I knew, not only did I get to see my library friends, but I also had family at the conference. My Aunt Barbara is a part time librarian at Cape Fear CC and was able to attend the conference. It was neat to have a family member there, certainly a unique experience! My presentation was in the first slot after the keynote, and I was a bit frustrated with the conference planners. I left a minute or two early to make sure I could set up and got to my assigned room to find it locked. Thankfully my aunt was able to track down a maintenance person to open the room. Obviously, the computer wasn’t running and by the time I had my slides downloaded it was already time to start. There were no instructions on  how to use the projector and I was worried about timing so I started without them projected and turned my monitor out to the room.

I had great attendance. I didn’t count but I know I made 30 handouts which I ran out of, and I had about 10 people standing at the back of the room. I actually had a nightmare two nights before the conference that I couldn’t get my slides to work and I told that story as an ice breaker and to give myself time to recover. One of the librarians from Cape Fear was able to get my slides projected by the 3^rd or 4^th slide and I think I handled it as well as I could have. Once I got past the beginning hiccups I was pleased with the rest of the presentation, but feel as though I could have done better if I hadn’t started that way.

My presentation was titled “Flexing Your Library Muscles”. In hindsight I would have added a subtitle like “Outreach across the campus” or something similar. The description I wrote was “This presentation identifies how to use your strengths, be flexible, and stretch yourself as a librarian in a community college library. These skills will be paired with concrete examples of how each skill has been used by librarians at Cleveland Community College to enhance the services provided to our patrons. Participants will leave this presentation with strategies for improving outreach to students and faculty, enhancing in person and online library instruction, and partnering with other campus departments.” You can find my slides here  and the conference website has my handout document.

I left time at the end for people to pair & share using their handout to discuss ideas for things they could do in their own library or that they already do. The room burst into chaos so I thought that was a good sign. Several people shared their experiences and asked questions. My co-worker that attended told me it’s one of the most useful presentations she’s ever been to at a library conference (and that includes multiple ALA and ACRL conferences). That was really nice to hear. I also got a shoutout on Twitter from someone I didn’t know personally that said “great presentation”, so I feel good about the whole thing. I’m keeping an eye out for calls for proposals at upcoming conferences. I really enjoy presenting.

The rest of the conference was good. I had several great conversations about library and non-library things with new and old friends. I picked up some ideas for eBooks. Unfortunately, I started the day with a sore throat and ended it with a worse sore throat, canceled plans with friends for that night, and the inability to attend the second half day of the conference. I’m still feeling rough today. I had to come in yesterday as I had two Psychology classes scheduled in the morning that no one else could have taught. The classes went well. Both of them ended before their class session and every single student in both classes stayed after being dismissed to look for resources or ask questions. I’ve been using the Habits Pro app to record one positive moment from each work day, and that was definitely it yesterday!

As a final note, I’m a huge blog fan and I love Google Reader. Check out this article by John Paul Titlow for a great perspective on the loss of Google Reader.

Review of “What the Best College Teachers Do” by Ken Bain

“What the Best College Teachers Do” by Ken Bain

This is my first attempt at a review. I’m starting to look at getting published as part of my professional development, and I think writing reviews is an interesting option. Writing reviews on my blog is a good way to test the waters in that regard! Another part of my professional development is self-directed learning, and I like to look for material that has an audience outside librarianship. I think this helps me stretch as a librarian, and it makes sense to get ideas and guidance from as many areas as possible. I chose this book to read after seeing it recommended on a listserv. The version I read was published in 2004, but there is a 2012 edition as well.

I enjoyed reading this book for several reasons. It was well-written, it had a lot of lists (and I’m a sucker for them!), and he thoroughly explained his methodology throughout the book. I appreciated the last point because I feel that any work making a claim to impart knowledge on the best of something should document how that determination was made. Bain used a combination of methods such as surveys, focus groups, anecdotal evidence, performance measures and observation to come to his conclusion. He used a lot of concrete examples of how different teachers work with students both in an out of the classroom. It’s very inspiring stuff.

That being said, some of it didn’t apply to the work I currently do. I only teach one shot sessions at this stage in my career, so some of the advice and information that applied to building over a semester, grading, and testing was not applicable. I recognize that in the future I may have the opportunity to teach all or part of a semester long course, so I still made an effort to read and digest those sections of the text. It’s a short book, so I don’t want to get too in detail about the contents.

The biggest lesson I took from the text was that students have mental models and perceptions about everything, and if you don’t work to change these you won’t have had a significant impact on the student. Bain gave many examples of how to identify these perceptions and how to help students overcome, modify, or confirm them. One of the notes I made as I read says “all students come to an educational situation with ingrained stereotypes and expectations based on past experience; need to motivate and encourage students to achieve their goals without triggering these negative pressures”. Anyone who teaches should take time to think about who their students are and what they are bringing with them when they step in your class. This will inform how you build activities and lessons, interact with students in class, and react to their successes or failures.

Bain also discussed the spectrum of scholarship and how we need to teach students how to be successful in a discipline, which incorporates much more than factual knowledge. This reminded me of my AP Psychology teacher in high school. In our first class she introduced a method for taking notes where you read an article in sections and highlight the important parts. After each section you go back to what you highlighted and make notes on the side. At the end of the article you can go back through your highlights and notes to add anything else that came up after reading. We were graded on how well we did this. Looking back I realize what an enormous amount of effort she put into teaching us this skill, and how valuable it was to me for the rest of my academic career. Taking the time to teach a skill like note taking may seem like a distraction from the necessities of learning facts, but in actuality these skills will make it easier for students to incorporate and assimilate knowledge throughout the course and their lives.

Throughout the book it becomes clear that Bain favors a Socratic-style method of asking scaffolded questions of the students and guiding their struggle to come up with answers.  One quote I copied summed this up nicely -“In the discussion, the teachers asked students what they thought about important issues and problems and why. As ideas began to flow, they pressed them for evidence, questioned them about the nature of the evidence, invoked arguments from the resources, encouraged and allowed students to challenge each other, pointed out agreements and disagreements in belief and attitude, and raised appropriate questions.” p. 127-128

The most important thing I can do now that I review my experience reading the book is tie it back to what I do.  Another note I made was “it’s likely more important for me to teach students the value of authority in research and  this will inspire them to want to know the mechanics of database and catalog searching.” I have started to incorporate this philosophy into some of my instruction, especially in higher level classes. I can’t expect students to choose academic sources if they haven’t first begun to think critically about the research process and the value of authoritative sources. Another theme that came up was using storytelling and other methods to get the students to relax and accept your information. Bain gave examples of how teachers would share their struggles in the discipline with students. This is another technique I try to use when possible. When I discuss academic journals and the peer review process I always tell students that when I was a freshman in college I didn’t understand a lot of the jargon in the articles, but that by the time I was a senior I used them almost exclusively.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who teaches at a college level, even if you aren’t a faculty member. I can see how it would also be useful to college staff who work with students as advisors, as tutors or in student services. There are a lot of fundamental ideas about how people learn, what they bring with them to any situation, and the barriers to successful learning that apply to a much broader audience than college faculty.