Welcome to Our World

We're wearing goofy hats this week - exams week - for comedy relief for students. #librarylife #librarydirectorlife pic.twitter.com/Q55sBbBtS6

— Jessica Olin (@olinj) April 29, 2015

I have this theory about libraries and students who are under-prepared and/or who learn differently (catch all phrase for learning disabilities, ADHD/ADD, autism spectrum, etc.): the library represents academic pursuits and things that make them struggle. It is so important to remember that we have patrons who struggle with the things we assume users can do easily. We've made our lives in the library, but it can be intimidating to others. We libr* types need to do something about that. As for me, one of the things I try to do wherever I'm working is to make the library more welcoming. We all have students who learn differently and who aren't as prepared. Besides, even if your patrons aren't under-prepared or learning disabled, it never hurts to enhance your relationship with the members of your community.

That relationship building and enhancing is something we're trying to do at my library, and towards that end we spent the entirety of a monthly staff meeting brainstorming and hashing out different ways to make our library more welcoming to students. That's why that picture above happened: one of the ideas was for all staff members to dress for a theme of some sort, like goofy hats. And so, once I determined that everyone was comfortable with the idea of the hats, we picked a week and went with it. Wow did it work. So many stressed out students would see me in my witch hat or my tiara, or the reference librarian in her pith helmet, and burst into laughter. At one point a colleague in another department said something like, "You should advertise that you're doing it. Otherwise people will think you're just being silly." My response: "But we are just being silly. That's the point." The best part? People in other departments around campus wanted to join in the next time we do this!

Other ideas we have for the future or that we have put into action:

• Student art exhibited in the library, either temporarily or permanently.
• Coffee bar at night during exams.
• Giving student groups the opportunity to design and put up book displays in the library.
• A library sponsored essay contest that ties into an existing celebration of student scholarship.

I want to bring this post back to where I started, so I can explain how I got from students who learn differently to the goofy hat brigade: it's about how our buildings make our students and patrons feel. If a member of the community is intimidated - for whatever reason - they are never going to come into our buildings and we won't have a chance to help them. However, if we make them laugh and show our human sides, it's going to help our patrons relax. If they are more relaxed, they'll be more likely to come in to our buildings to ask for our help... and that's where we can do our work.

We have other ideas for building the library's relationship with faculty, but I'm curious what you all are doing to build relationships with any of your stakeholders/segments of your community. And be warned: if you share your ideas here, I may end up stealing/borrowing them.

Content, Not Format

Can we PLEASE stop pretending that just because it's on paper it's good and just because it's on the web it's bad? #librarianlament
— Jessica Olin (@olinj) September 17, 2013

I sent this tweet (and posted it as a status update on Facebook as well) in a moment of deep frustration. Leading up to that point, I'd had a string of interactions, with students, faculty, and staff that left me slightly gobsmacked. Although the specifics were different, in each moment I was being told, "Paper good. Electronic bad." I don't want to share further details since I'm not interested in shaming the people involved. What I want is to educate them. Even still, I can't help imagining these people talking like characters from Animal Farm:

Source

When I posted the above to my social networks, I was expecting it to be one of the many many tweets/Facebook status updates I send off into the abyss. I was wrong. In fact, the response was so strong, that I realized there was a blog post in it. However, before I go any further, I want you to know that I know writing this post to my typical audience is preaching to the converted. I see this more as me giving you ways to present the topic to those who still need convincing.

So, we need to ignore my previous exhortations that all sources should be evaluated based on the Five Ws, and pretend that we know absolutely nothing about the merit of different resources. Let's look at the kinds of arguments that might work to convince someone to change their stance on this issue:

• There is no such thing as a source that is never appropriate (go ahead, write an essay about Wikipedia without citing Wikipedia, and see what kind of response you get).
• Also, there is a risk in professors taking this kind of stance around students, particularly those who are younger than 25 and whose brains are still maturing, is that students can be so literal. I have, more than once, tried to bring a student over to a computer to show him/her how to use the online public access catalog, only to be told, "Oh, I'm not allowed to use online sources."
• What about all the craptastic, self-published books?
• What about all the refereed, web-based publications? One example is Disability Studies Quarterly, a source that, in the past, I required my own students to read.
• We also need to remind people that so many online sources are faithful reproductions of publications that were originally hard copies.
• A more practical argument is that, with book budgets being slashed, the books in the physical library can sometimes (though not always) be terribly out of date.

I tell people all these things, and yet some of them still insist that paper is supreme. Usually, though, if I'm persistent and keep presenting examples, I win them over.

How do you change people's minds about this? Also, why do you think we're still fighting this fight? Is it that nobody has tried to convince the "Paper good; electronic bad" crowd? Or is it something deeper?

My Approach to Teaching

Creative Commons Licensed Picture from Todd Petrie

Had an involved conversation with a libr* friend about how I teach and realized I've never discussed my pedagogical philosophy here. Sure, I've discussed how my approach to librarianship is constantly evolving, but this is even more true of my approach to teaching. That recent conversation made me realize I've actually gotten my philosophy of teaching information literacy skills so refined that I can sum it up in five points, so here they are:

1. Be yourself. For me, that mostly means letting my nerd flag fly and using humor in every session. (Here's a joke I've told frequently: How many librarians does it take to change a light bulb? I don't know, but I can help you look it up.) For you, that might mean talking about music or your dog or whatever. If you aren't comfortable with yourself in the classroom, the students won't be comfortable either.
2. I believe in a constructivist theory of knowledge, and my teaching reflects this belief. Ascribing to this approach means I teach in a way that builds on my students' existing knowledge. For instance, when I teach students how to evaluate websites, I skip all the carefully constructed and clever acronyms that my libr* brothers and sisters have devised. Instead, I go with the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, & why) since 99% of my students already have that mnemonic in their knowledge base.
3. If it's at all possible, I make them use the skills/knowledge right away. Frequently, this can be done during the information literacy session. Here's a recent example: this semester, in our first semester FYE classes, we break the students up into small groups and have each group evaluate a website that comes up in a search for a keyword related to the class materials.
4. Make it as real as possible. I talk about how I used the web to research the car I bought. I come up with papers I would want to write if I were in that class. When I teach web evaluation, I do a live, untested Google search. I do my best to make the context of my teaching reflect what they'll be facing when they use the skills and knowledge I'm presenting.
5. Most importantly, I give them a path back to the new information and skills, since even the best and most attentive students will forget stuff. Although this idea shows itself in a lot of ways, the biggest thing I do to give them that path is to make them memorize my name. It helps them feel comfortable with me. Students can search for my email in a campus directory, stop by my office, or even stop me on campus to ask a question. Presenting myself as the path back has been incredibly successful.

What about you? How do you teach? (And if you work with the public at all, you teach. One on one instruction is even more important at times than classroom instruction.)

My Experience With eBooks: Yea or Nay?

To some extent, I've been ignoring eBooks other than from a personal level. Professionally, I'm more worried about electronic access to periodical literature than anything else. If not for the fact that my two roles on campus collided recently, I might still feel that way. You see, Adjunct Professor Jessica decided to try an experiment this semester: I assigned an eBook to my freshmen writing class. To be honest, I wasn't too keen on the idea, but it was the only way to get affordable access to the material in question. So there you are.

Before I share the results, let me give you a little background. The class is a First-Year Seminar (think of a typical Freshmen Writing class, give it steroids and add lots more reading, and you'll be close) built around the focus of cartoons as a reflection of society. The topic lends itself easily to videos and nonfiction reading, but not so easily to fiction. It's not that fiction is required, but I like to vary the kinds of reading I assign. I did a lot of research, but I kept coming back to the fact that the only book that would work for the topic, that was also easily available, was Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf - a book that's only available as an eBook. (Yes, this is the book on which Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was based. VERY different story, though.)

Now that you have the context, flash forward to last week when we discussed the book in class. Most of my students enjoyed the content, but the format got mixed reviews. Since I'd known this would be a gamble, I decided asked what they thought of using an eBook. I heard some positive and some negative, so I decided to ask more directly. "Okay, who liked working with an eBook?" A little less than half of my students raised their hands in response to that question. I followed with, "And who owns an eReader?" The exact same group raised their hands. I wasn't surprised by the results, seeing as I'd read the book on my laptop and found it an irksome experience.

I know people were making a big thing about a recent Pearson Foundation study that reported a majority of high school and college students "believe that tablets will effectively replace textbooks within the next five years." Based on my personal experience, we've still got a long way to go before it's a truly viable option - at least where I work. Even if all the other problems are solved, eReaders are still out of the reach, price-wise, of our poorer students.

What about you? What do you think about the recent study? And what about your own experiences with eBooks - do you like them or not, and why?

Adjuncting as Outreach and Marketing, or Professor Jessica is in the House

I'm pretty busy right now because I've been spending a lot of time getting ready for the new semester. You see, I teach as an adjunct professor at the same college where I'm a librarian. I've taught for the education department, the English department, and this semester (not for the first time) for the Writing Across the Curriculum program. I'll be teaching a First-Year Seminar (FSEM), which means I'll be teaching college freshmen how to write, read, speak, eat, breath, dream like successful college students. Okay, maybe not those last three, but by the time the semester is over my students will feel that way.

This is not easy work, especially when you layer it on top of my full time librarian position, but it's worth it. And I don't mean the money, even though I do get paid above and beyond my librarian salary to adjunct. No, I mean the way this part-time job of mine changes the relationship I have with members of my library's community. By spending so much time with students, I get to build a deeper relationship with them. Further, I have gained a reputation as tough but fair and as a go to person. It also enhances my relationship with faculty. When I am trying to convince a professor to change something about a research assignment, or to give me more time with his or her students, I can speak from experience about how to fit these things into a course schedule. This has helped me gain respect from faculty, especially since the FSEM gig has a well-deserved reputation for being a tough one. Lots and lots of grading plus it ends up being a bit of a gatekeeper course. Finally, and most importantly, it gives me a built in marketing and outreach platform. "Did you know the library has a gender studies database?" is easy to work into conversations with students when I'm the professor of the class, and I hear more about faculty research and curriculum interests when attending an informal lunch meeting of all FSEM professors.

I've talked to other academic and high school librarians who also teach at their institutions. I also know some public librarians who teach at colleges near their libraries. From these discussions, I assume that it's just as rewarding for them as it is for me. If you can manage it, it's a part-time job that I recommend.

What do you think? Have you taught any semester long classes? What was it like for you? If you haven't, do you want to? Why/why not?