My Milk Bowl Brings All the Cats to the Yard: Some Thoughts on Faculty Outreach

You know that phrase, "herding cats"? I sometimes think it was invented to describe what it's like to work with faculty when you're an academic librarian. Please don't misunderstand. I have some amazing faculty colleagues (and plenty of them read my blog regularly). Further, and I know this next thing sounds like a joke, my best friend is a member of the faculty at a college where I used to work. Regardless, faculty are as diverse and hard to round up a group as cats. So, working on that idea, I'd like to share some of the ways I've metaphorically put a bowl of milk out in the yard and made working with me and with the library more appealing to members of the faculty.

First things first: get to know them. Find out about their interests, both professional and personal. Bonus points if you find out you have something in common. I got my foot in the door with a communication professor because of a shared love of Godzilla, and with a political science professor because of a shared love of a particular director. I made serious points with a provost because I was the one to let him know that his favorite poet was coming out with a new collection.

Next, be the first or one of the first people to make contact with new faculty. If you go out of your way to make them feel comfortable and welcome at your institution, they'll start to come to you for things they need - even non-library things. Also, if you build a relationship with the junior faculty in a department, you can sometimes parlay it into relationships with senior faculty. That political science professor I mentioned above? He helped me to get his department chair to answer my emails finally.

Another thing you need to do is show up to their events. Is that creative nonfiction writing instructor giving a reading of a new essay? Go. The biochemistry professor is hosting an open lab period? Go. If you really want to get on their good side, try hosting faculty events in the library. We had a faculty scholarship series at a previous job, and I'm starting to work on plans to create something similar here.

Those three ideas can be boiled down to one theme: be a good colleague. If you want to collaborate with faculty, show them that you are connecting with them for more reasons than fulfilling library needs. Faculty outreach needs to be about the connection, and then you can build it into collaboration. You want to demonstrate that you have a lot to offer.

By the way, I first got to know my best friend when I expressed interest in her research. She teaches animal cognition (among other things) and she had a rat lab when she first started at that institution. I asked some questions and next thing I knew, I was helping her socialize a litter of rat babies (pictured below). The library at that institution already had a good relationship with the psychology department, and our connection strengthened it even more.




What do you think? Could you use these techniques? If you've had successful faculty outreach, did you use techniques similar to what I have listed above? Something I didn't mention? Please share!


p.s. I know it is probably bad form to use a picture of cute baby rats in a post that has cats in the title, but oh well. 

The Information Literacy Wrestling Spectacular

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If you've been doing information literacy instruction for any length of time, you've had to deal with the faculty member who wants a laundry list of skills and websites shown to their students. If you're especially lucky, you've also gotten "teach them everything they'll ever need to know ever about the databases" with a heaping side dish of "oh, and can you do it the first week because I'm sure they'll need it." Of course, there are variations on this theme, like faculty who see you as a substitute teacher who want you to come when they're at a conference or others who wait until you're in the information literacy session to ask for yet another thing... It's enough to make you sigh dramatically just thinking about it, right? The thing is, librarians know the laundry list isn't going to work. By the time students need the skills we've taught them, sometimes years later, they will have forgotten everything including the librarian's name.

It's all very frustrating. Feels like a wrestling match at times, and if you're at an institution that considers librarians staff instead of faculty, it can feel like a very mismatched sumo match.

The truth is, though, that it's been years since I've had to consciously think about this kind of issue. I have my arguments and responses so firmly in place that it's become second nature to me. But then I saw a string of tweets from Carolyn Ciesla, and I started to think about it again. I realized it would be a good thing to share on my blog, so here is how I approach the situation, including some of the phrases I use over and over again:

• Start early. I email all the first year seminar faculty, and anyone else who incorporates librarian led info lit, way ahead of time so I can be the one to start the conversation. This way I am more likely to be the one steering it to make sure my outcomes are in the mix. I use phrases like "we want to partner with you" to bring that thought home.
• Make sure there's an assignment involved. This helps with faculty who want their students to see all the things now because I can tailor my suggestions to what the students will actually need. When there isn't an existing assignment, I offer to help them design one. "It will help cement the lessons, if your students have to use the skills right away."
• Establish a pedagogically sound timeline. Make sure your instruction happens between the students getting the assignment and when it's due. I admit I stole this line, but I tell faculty "it's better that the instruction be just in time instead of just in case."
• Have a pre-established information literacy curriculum. This can be hard to establish, but nothing has helped me push back against the laundry list approach more than this answer. "With first year seminars, we teach X, Y, and Z, and since your class is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, there isn't a lot of time left over." Also, "Since this is a senior seminar, most if not all of them will have already seen X, Y, and Z, but to be safe how about I breeze through that before moving onto A, B, and C." (How to establish a curriculum for your information literacy program is a whole other kettle of fish.)
• Be willing to say, "no." This is the most difficult thing, and you might want to check in with your boss before you do it, but it is possible to decline and come out alive. "We want to establish the basics for the students before we go onto something as advanced as that." This can be harder when faculty plop a request into your lap in the middle of the session, but it's still possible to tell them no, but kindly, at that point. "Your students will be able to find everything they need using the database I'm showing them now, but if we have time at the end I'll try to fit that in" is especially apt.
• Know when to give in. I once worked with a faculty member who wanted to teach databases and web analysis on their own, and they wanted me to show their first year students how to use our citation management software. I still think citation management software is a bad idea for first years. Using that kind of software for a paper that will have five citations is overkill and useless since first students won't use it again for months or even years. When this particular faculty member came to me (at a previous job), I complained to my director. "Do I really have to do this? Can I tell them no?" He told me it was my choice, but then wisely pointed out that I could embed my own agenda in the larger lesson and show them how to assess websites in the midst of teaching them how to use the software to create a citation. Smart man, and his idea worked perfectly.

I hope this post helps. I know I said, "yes! sure!" to everything early in my career, and don't beat up on yourself too much if you aren't comfortable turning down faculty requests and demands. As for the more experienced info lit instructors reading this, chime in with ideas that have worked for you in the past.

Talkin' 'Bout Weeding

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This post outlines the approach I use when weeding a library's physical collection. I'm going to assume that you already have established criteria for your own weeding projects. If you want more on that, there are lots of helpful articles and texts out there. Also, I've written about how I weeded my reference collection if you want an overview from me. However, that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about how I involve members of my community in the decisions.

Before I begin, let me lay all the caveats on you. My methods for communicating with faculty about deaccessioning/weeding books and other materials have always worked for me. The one time I had someone get fussy, it was super minor and I headed it off by making a small concession. Even though I've had no real problems with this approach, I also know that it is not a cure-all. As you look through what I've written, know that I've worked exclusively at academic libraries that were part of small colleges where I have/had personal relationships with the faculty (we weren't always on the best of terms, we did at least speak regularly). Also, I have never had to weed a collection with a super-quick turnaround time. In other words: your mileage may vary,

Now, onto the good stuff.

The first part of my process is to go through the criteria established by the library and pull all the books I/we want to weed and set them aside. How much I do at a time has always been determined by space constraints. Usually it's one or two carts. It's crucial to make sure I have room to leave them where they won't get in the way because they may be there for a while. You'll see why in a moment.

Second, I contact the faculty who use the books that we're weeding. When we weeded the 800s (yes, I'm at a Dewey library), I contacted all of our English faculty for feedback. There have been times that I've contacted just the chair of a department, but usually I contact everyone. 

This contact is the contact crucial step. I've crafted my words carefully and I'll explain why after I share the text of an email I sent recently - on 10/20/14 - as we started weeding the 900s.

"One of the biggest complaints we get from students about the library’s collection is how old and out of date it is. (Based on results of the exiting senior survey from last academic year.) We take those comments with more than the proverbial grain of salt, of course, but there is some truth to their concern. We add newer materials as our budget allows, and that will help, but we are also trying to cut down the existing collection to make room for the new materials.

The two professional librarians here have 33 years of library experience between us. Add to that the fact that we've also gotten our graduate assistant to help since he is a recent graduate of the history department. The thing is, though, we’re not experts in your fields of study. And that’s where you come in:

We’ve pulled books from the 900s (history) section of our collection that don’t seem to fit the current curriculum or your areas of research, but would love if you could double check. [Name of librarian] has a cart in her office right now with the books we’ve pulled. This will be an ongoing process, so there will be more books to check in the future, but if you could stop by sometime before 10/31 we’d appreciate it. After that point we’re going to assume that you trust our judgment, and move on.

Thanks ahead of time,

Jessica"

Things I included:

• Citing student satisfaction, or lack thereof. This is another way to use the data you collect: to help you tell your story.
• Citing library expertise. 
• Appealing to faculty expertise.
• Being up front about the fact that this process will take a while.
• Giving them a deadline.

Things I did not include:

• Any mention of specific criteria.
• Specific numbers relating to how many books we'll weed, how many books we'll buy, or how many complaints we received.

Third and final step is to make sure someone is present when the faculty members come by to look at the books. This is the point at which we answer questions about our criteria, but I have to tell you that is a rare event. I also make sure to tell faculty that we're happy to keep any and all of the books we've set aside, but that most of them will have to be replaced with newer editions that aren't falling apart or stinky or whatever else.

There have been a few times I've deviated from this method, such as the time I begged the Victorianist to come help me go through that part of our fiction collection. But this is the method I've stuck to for a while now, with variations on the themes in that letter above being the crucial part of the process.

How about you? How do you communicate with your patrons about weeding? I'm especially curious about how non-academic libraries approach this.

Making Connections

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I'm still within my first year at this job, so I'm still doing all those new person things you need to do. High on my "new person" list of priorities is getting better connected with the faculty. (Caveat: my drive to connect with all of the faculty is partially a factor of the size of my school. Small school = fewer faculty = manageable for the library director to get to know all of them.) I'm doing everything I can think of to make these connections - asking to attend department meetings, learning about their research interests, participating in campus wide committees, etc. 

There's something else I've been doing lately that you, the newbrarian who is my intended audience, might not think of doing. I do my best to keep keep up with publishing news, and I then share it with my school. I want to make sure that the members of my faculty are informed, leaving them to concentrate on their main mission: research and teaching. How do I keep the faculty up-to-date? It's pretty simple: I sent a couple of emails recently that illustrate the idea.

I sent the first to all faculty and staff, and it included the full text of an email about SUNY's open textbook program, with an introduction:

"Hello all. Please excuse the wholesale forward, but I believe this entire email will be of interest. The cost of textbooks is major barrier for many of our students, and this new effort from SUNY is very promising. If anyone wants assistance accessing this or other open access resources, we in the library are here to help."

The second was more directed, sent solely to the two people on campus who teach chemistry:

"Have you two seen this yet? Apparently ACS has digitized and opened up their pre-1996 archives: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2013/october/acs-publications-announces-the-large-scale-digitization.html

Nice development."

Both emails led to good conversations, and the second one actually got me a one-on-one meeting with a full professor of chemistry. I was so excited about the meeting that I even tweeted about it:

Impromptu strategy meeting with one of the senior science faculty, ftw! #librarianwin
— Jessica Olin (@olinj) October 25, 2013

I've written about building faculty/community relationships in the past, and I'm sure I'll write about it again in the future. With my background as an instruction librarian -> instruction coordinator -> director, I'm definitely centered on students, so community building and outreach are important to me. However, I know that faculty are my surest path to students, so the professoriate is an equally important part of my community.

How about those of you who work with faculty? I know there are plenty of academic librarians who read LtaYL. Any advice to share with the newbrarian readers?


One last note - those kitties are up there because I still think of academic community outreach, especially faculty outreach, as herding cats (and trust me, I know I'm not the only one to use that analogy). Those kitties look tense, like they could fight or love on each other at the drop of a whisker, but there's a tentative connection. Even the smallest connections can lead to something good.