All Shook Up: The Future of Distance Librarianship in Changing Organizations - April 20, 2012

A panel of librarians from Portland State University, Oregon State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, California University of Pennsylvania, University of Montana, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Montana State University discussed their situations with distance librarianship. They've posted their individual summaries online at http://tinyurl.com/dlspanel Ultimately the discussion lead to the summary that the distinction between roles really depends on the college and library setup as well as librarian personality and levels of comfort. The Distance Librarians definitely serve as the primary advocate for distance library services, but might not be the only provider of those services. The session ended with comments from the audience that supplemented the presentation.  We are all in similar boats!

Using Systematic Design to Create Affective Library Instruction for Distance learning Students: A Model Baserrd on Kuhlthau's Information Serach Process (ISP) - April 20, 2012

Having Kulhthau's name in the title of this presentation caught my eye and brought me back to my days as a K-8 Librarian when I worked to incorporate her process into my library instruction classes.  One of the first questions the presenter (Angela Doucet Rand @ University of South Alabama - Baldwin County) asked was if our goal is to teach students to be librarians? She was being a bit facetious, but sometimes we wonder how much of our area of expertise we expect students to know after a session or two of library instruction.  The thrust of her presentation was focused on cognitive science and how students need to be motivated to learn. She believes we've focused too much on the search process itself and haven't helped students to think about how they learn and feel about their research experience.  She wants to move to a more learner-centric model. While this was a very academic presentation (she's a doctoral candidate) that was more theoretical than practical, it certainly offered librarians the chance to think about what our students may be going through as they encounter the research process.

SpringShare CampusGuides/LibGuides

One aspect of this conference I have always appreciated is that there isn't an emphasis on vendors. This is the first time I recall having vendors on site...and it was presented more as a Technology Showcase than a time to sell a product.  I did stop into the Springshare presentation - this is the company that does LibGuides  and many of the sessions I had attended referred to their use of LibGuides in reaching distance students. The presentation focused more on the CampusGuides portion that ties into LibGuides. I need to learn more about this tool and how it differentiates from LibData that we currently use.
Intelecom was also presenting; we currently have a trial for that video clip set. I did visit with that representative on Friday morning during the Poster presentation time.

Table for One: How Librarians Provide Individualized Services to Distance Students via Web Conferencing - April 19, 2012

Using web conferencing (in our case Adobe Connect) for reference or instruction sessions has been a service I'd like to start offering, so I was interested in hearing how the librarians on this panel approached it.  Librarians from Indiana State University, University of Central Missouri, Norwich University, University of West Georgia, University of Maryland, and Saint Leo University presented how they utilized this at their respective colleges.  While each approach was a bit different based on population needs and staffing availability, one similarity was the need to continually remind students (and faculty) that the service is available; ongoing marketing is needed. (Ultimately this is true for most of our library services.) It got me thinking about how we could set this up at Minnesota West....should it be set hours or by appointment only? Should specific kiosks be established at each campus? How would we advertise on the website? Could we be scheduling times for this via GradesFirst? 

Collegial Librarians; The Faculty-Librarian Partnership in Distance Education - April 19, 2012

The focus of this presentation was on graduate students, a population I don't serve in my current position. One could argue, as the presenters did, that graduate and doctoral students have differing needs than their undergraduate counterparts. These librarians from Benedictine University have a very hands-on, personalized approach to serving their distance learners.  They do many one-on-one consultations with students and offer many ways to be in contact with a librarian after the consultation; almost as a personal research assistant. This model doesn't match my situation, but their point that we need to stop being passive and actively be an involved service point works in all distance library scenarios.

Dr. Trey Martindale - Keynote Speaker - April 19, 2012

Dr. Trey Martindale is an instructional designer, and the Director of the IDT Studio at the University of Memphis. He gave an interesting talk and used headlines and graphics to help support his comments. See the range of topics he discussed at http://treymartindale.com/

Information Literacy Development at a Distance: Embedded or Reality? - April 19, 2012

I met Heather on the first day of my arrival in Memphis as we stood along the red carpet awaiting the departure from the fountain of the infamous Peabody ducks! She is from New Zealand and works at Massey University - a 4-campus institution with 52% online classes. Rings a bell...    Her presentation took a bit of a different approach to embedded librarianship than other sessions I attended; I appreciated her point-of-view. Her premise is that library skills is a small part of many courses, primarily due to the amount of content instructors need to cover. While faculty might appreciate a long information literacy section within their course, they can't afford the time. Heather's question to the audience was to think about if it really made sense to fully embed in online courses; she says no, it is more productive to take an integrated approach.  Massey's approach is to create a suite of online resources that are pretty generic and then customize/add to if needed for specific courses/assignment. While these Captivate tutorials do need to be kept up-to-date, they aren't needing to create a new one for each class and much content can be reused. Again the need to place the library information at the point-of-need for the students was highlighted; location/timing matters. She believes students need to learn the skills, and if librarians "hold their hand" each time they need to use the library, we aren't being good teachers. She takes more of a 'tough love' approach where students are redirected back to the content in their online course if they haven't already gone over it. She indicated that with this general content in so many online courses, the basics are learned/known by the students, so they can focus on more advanced searches in higher level courses.

Create a Sense of Place for the Mobile Learner - April 19, 2012

Taken from the session description:  "“Sense of place” no longer applies only to the physical library. It’s time to start thinking of all your students as distance learners to one extent or another, and of all your distance services as a single virtual learning commons. Implement and integrate current teaching, learning, virtual reference, and mobile access technologies at reasonable cost and create online learning spaces that bring your students to the library no matter where they are."  This team from Bucks County Community College did a great job of discussing 'sense of place.' They highlighted how they have approached serving all learners at their college. I love their process of sequencing Information Literacy skills into the Composition classes...a little at a time.  Setting this up requires major buy-in from the faculty member, but it would seem to fit the students' needs the best.  They also require faculty to submit the assignment students will be doing that requires library resources prior to scheduling a library teaching session; it isn't optional.  (This reminds me of a MnSCU presentation I went to last year where the speaker said, "Students don't do optional.") They did get into some specific tools they've utilized to make their website (which is the focus of their efforts to bring everything together for the students, regardless of their location) easily accessible. They use LibGuides, video clips, xtranormal (animation tool, but now there's cost to that), and Boopsie as their backend tool.

In the Trenches: Librarians Embedding in the Online Classroom - April 19, 2012

This was a panel session with librarians from Northern Virginia Community College, Limestone College, Southern New Hampshire University, and Indiana State University. The panel discussed differing levels of embedding along with the difficulty of being both an online and on-campus librarian. One idea that I've been considering advertising is in place (I can't recall which librarian discussed this!) and that is the use of live instruction via a webinar setting and then doing follow-up in a discussion forum. This was mentioned several times in this session and in others I attended: the course faculty drive the level of involvement and it's important to meet with them individually and learn each others' expectation.  A general Research/Writing module has been put into one college's CMS and all students can access it. This doesn't include a discussion forum, but a librarian photo and contact information is provided so students have someone identified to reach out to.

From Add-on to Mainstream: Applying Distance Learning Models for ALL Students - April 18, 2012

Due to our high online enrollment at Minnesota West CTC, this title caught my attention.  Why do we differentiate between our online, on-campus, hybrid learners?  One of the initial comments by the presenters from Northern Kentucky University struck a chord with me; they dislike the one-shot bibliographic sessions. Me, too!! Although we can say we met with students and introduced them to the library or library resources, it's an ineffective method to really get students thinking about using the library and how to best use the library resources. It's like having one driver's ed session and then handing over the car keys. Young people have been in a car their whole lives and (sort of) know how driving a car  works...just like the libraries they've likely visited in their lives. Truly utilizing the library for academic work is a much different situation that requires a more advanced set of skills!  Okay, off my soapbox and back to the presentation... NKU focuses on embedding library instruction into online environments as much as possible. This allows students to access it at point-of-need vs. having to rely on retaining what was covered in a 1-shot session.  The librarians stay embedded in the course all semester and monitor forums, drop in new lessons as needed, and just try to be present for students. They indicated they are pretty close to eliminating face-to-face library instruction, and are not staffing the reference desk as many hours as they have an online question submission form and also are meeting students in the online course forums to answer questions there. I like this model!

Moving from Introverted to Extroverted Embedded Librarian Services - April 18, 2012

Wayne State (NE) College librarians moved from a hap-hazard embedded librarianship approach to a more systematic way of working with students in online classes. One major emphasis for their approach was to find the "right time" to introduce library skills, resources, etc. to the student. They would work with the faculty members to see what and when assignments were due and work to target to those. This first sessions was a good reinforcer of work I'm already doing :)

15th Distance Library Services Conference - April 18-20, 2012 - Memphis, TN

This was my third time attending the Distance Library Services Conference (formerly known as the Off-Campus Library Services Conference), and it once again was a well-planned, well-put together, informative conference. The narrow focus of this conference makes it so useful to the work of Distance Librarians; plus it's always great to commiserate with people who encounter similar difficulties and joys!
Memphis was a great host city and the Peabody was an extraordinary venue for the conference (only downside was not having free wireless access available in each presentation room). On Tuesday night, I had the opportunity to dine with 17 librarians from around the country at Charles Vergos' Rendezvous; a true dry-rub BBQ restaurant! With the Memphis Redbirds (St. Louis' Triple A affiliate) playing just across the street from the Peabody, a handful of us took in a baseball game Wednesday night. Ours was the "Lucky Row" for the night so we got our mugs on the big screen and we each took home a plastic baseball bat and wiffle ball...well, those of us who drove or brought a really large suitcase brought it home! (Only my wiffle ball made it!) Thursday night I took a self-guided tour around the area, visiting Beale street, and ending up at Huey's (a local hamburger joint). Each session I attended offered me oppportunities to learn something new, hear new perspectives, and meet wonderful librarians .

MnPALS Annual Meeting - April 12, 2012

The Annual meeting had a full agenda with emphasis given to three primary topics:
1. PALS Universe Proposal
2. Future ILS Taskforce (and related discussions about the need to research Discovery Tools)
3. Consortium Strategic Plan discussion
As always, time to connect with colleagues from around the state as well as the PALS staff was appreciated!

MnPALS System Workday - April 11, 2012

Learned some tips & tricks for customizing the PALSconnect Linker. Now the trick is to find the time to try them out! A presentation about the ERM made me want to look into this tool again. As our purchases of electronic resources continues to rise, our need for an electronic management tool will as well! As another librarian in the group mentioned, not having an efficient way to track electronic resources can hold one back from purchasing them; we can't afford to do that.
Enjoyed reconnecting with colleagues and meeting new librarians from around the state!