Internet Librarian 2010: Faculty and Library Partnership for Learning

With Amy Buckland (McGill University) and Doris Small Helfer (Cal State Northridge), and Rebecca Jones moderating (blogging via iPad, which means my clumsy fingers will inevitably typo, so i know I'll have to come back and clean this up - forgive some clumsy typing as i get accustomed to the onscreen keyboard.

Setting up about 15 minutes prior. Lots of cardigans in the audience - it's freezing in here! Also, lots of new faces - I felt like I knew everyone at IL08, it's great to see so many new faces interested in the intersection of libraries and tech. Glad to see the projector is very viewable, bodes well for my own slides, I hope. Sauers is poised and ready with his camera, as ever. Lots of glowing apples in the audience from matchbooks, and a few matte PC laptops, but the macs are definitely outweighing pcs by a decent margin here. Also, this is a great room, the comfy and wide chairs with flip desks, very handy.

Exhibits not open for lunch, FYI, will open later. Original planned speaker accepted position at Ohiolink, so new speakers here for this reason.

How do your libraries and librarians and staff work with faculty to support student learning and achievement? What challenges do you experience?

Amy on McGill: most librarians called liaison librarians. Not separated by instruction, collection and reference, each liaison does everything for their departments. Speak in all entry level classes for the disciplines and are also attached to specific assignments for research and info lit training. Librarians have posters that go up in faculty areas so faculty know the face, have office hours in various buildings. Amy in charge lf scholarly communication, talks to faculty about rings as authors, hints to think about when sending items to print and depositing articles, speaking to them as peers since librarians are also tenure track. Also support by going in on grants with faculty to support databases, building websites for faculty. Have been doing this since 1996, early digital collections created by faculty with librarians as full partners with students also involved in the development. Gets librarians involved in the faculty's day to day. Teaching is definitely strong point, between teaching classes and one on ones, liaisons find themselves very busy. Challenge is being liaison to multiple departments, which can be daunting, especially if the areas are unrelated. Depends on the size of the department. Do they have physical offices or spaces in the departments? If library is embedded in building, they have office. Of not, they do hold additional office hours in the faculty areas. Do librarians spend more time with faculty or students? Students. Work with faculty to get in there, and then continue with contact with students during the school year, during the summer work largely with faculty to develop courses and maximize lms.

Doris at cal state: similar organization. All do collection development, liaison, reference, etc. cSI has info competency initiative stresses importance of teaching info lit skills to faculty. Embedded info lit competencies into gene Ed requirements, which has led to developing additional courses and part of learning outcomes of department classes. Reach 22k students a year through deep embedding. A lot of teaching and working closely with faculty, target classes with research papers And other research assignments. Moving traditional print resource professors to online, demonstrating that databases have back files of older information. When csu libs made faculty, department faculty not impressed. Now that they see libs have a critical body of knowledge critical to student success, libs receive different level of respect. Also through working closely with them. Now math classes also receiving library instruction in math ideas class on math applied in society, which requires a research paper. Library also embedded in the university 100 program for at risk students. How was that partnership formed? There is a component in lms to embed librarian (moved from bb and webct to moodle which is more library friendly), makes it easy for faculty to use librarian resources like tutorials. You want to be there because your students and faculty are there. May replace face to face, but more likely simply to supplement. Faculty realize that librarians know more than they do about resources and see librarians as equals and partners. Faculty nominated librarian for a teaching award, which wasn't previously seen as the work of a librarian. Faculty targeted, and emphasize importance to student outcomes.

Q: embedding librarian in moodle. In elluminate can collaborate, can be added as an instructor, easier to embed databases, tutorials, YouTube channel (message in a minute project), assessment of effectiveness of library relationships. Lynne lampert article : getting psyched about information literacy ( reference librarian 2005).

Is there an assessment component at McGill? Depends on liaison, not institutionalized. At north ridge, clicker assessment did not work at all. Student evils required since they are faculty, though, and those evils can be brought to admin as proof of helping student outcomes.

Q: is the partnership more or less formal? Is there a reporting relationship? Mcgill : Liaison faculty sit in on department meetings when the library is located in the department, but the library faculty report through the library. Faculty comments are definitely considered though, but no direct sporting through discipline departments. Northridge: similar, try to get into as many department meetings as possible. Talk to dacoity about budget cuts, faculty will kick in part of costs of cuts, input into cut decisions. Example IEEE package, a piece kicked in by engineering faculty. Relating to faculty about why hinge will be lost, not that librarians enjoy taking resources away.

Q: partnerships ply as good as competence of both parties. What about when there isn't competency or willingness? Amy: "the but that's more work for me factor" can be an issue. Faculty ask why they should care about scholarly communication, why shouldn't they just put all readings into webct, or post all their papers on their website? Issues with getting faculty to see you as a peer. Need to open your ears, handle misperceptions, highlight "the library can help you with that" factor, be very. In their face about it

Restructuring and downsizing. Northridge: streamlined quietly, didn't replace some retirees. There are certain things considered essential, but don't man desks as in the past, mostly virtual and chat and text. Be sure to make clear to faculty the impact of the library, especially when they start new programs, they need to state what the cost to the library will be, not allowed to say there is no impact or need. Especially with adding phd programs, library estimates cost to get program up and equipped and that is now required.

Title of library partner impacts how faculty see them. The Teaching Chair of the Library as opposed to Librarian. Director of libraries vs Dean of Libraries to demonstrate similar relationship at McGill. Doris: librarians now have a space for presenting at the faculty retreat, topics of interest like ereserves, video furnace for streaming video, other high interest to faculty items. Amy: campus teaching and technology fair on campus yearly, library has a booth.























































I want to ask about what happens when librarians and departmental faculty agree and want to implement a program, but higher admin is required.

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