Guardienne of the Tomes

I've been thinking more about research agendas and large-scale research projects lately. I'll readily admit (as will my CV) that most of my research before the dissertation consisted of one-off sorts of things. A lit review here, a best practices there, presentations on bits and pieces of my work that all together paint a decent picture of the sorts of things I was working on as a professional academic librarian. But they were never coherently planned as something to present as a set, or to build upon each other. My dissertation is truly the first time I've articulated a large, multi-stage, likely multi-publication research agenda for a particular phenomenon. My dissertation project itself can, I think, be carved neatly into three separate articles to articulate the research succinctly. The first part, on the relationship between academic library department experience and perceived leadership skill development, was published in The Journal of Academic Librarianship . Anothe...

Things on my librarian brain: Our library team is working on our MOU (Memo of Understanding) in response to the program review we recently had (where outside folks come in and evaluate us). [Side note: in my previous life as an Access Services manager, an MOU was the first step in the disciplinary process of an employee. Not so with this MOU, this is just a normal response with a 2 and 5 year plan to address each item where needs were noted.] Sort of related to the above, the 2015 ACRL Immersion Program has begun! Though I won't head to Seattle until the beginning of August, the Moodle course is up and running, our readings and pre-assignments have been posted. I'm hoping to leverage the Immersion program to inform how we want our information literacy program to evolve for a growing campus with semistatic resources. A "freemium " model of peer-review, where authors could pay for faster review of their articles, was pretty much unanimously shot down as privileg...

Those of you who know me know that I'm a perpetual student, addicted to lifelong learning (and the pieces of paper that certify I accomplished something). In September 2014, I started work on the  Ph.D. in Mythological Studies, with an emphasis in depth psychology . As I finish the readings for the first session of my third semester in my latest academic endeavor, I find myself thinking about the different ways of knowing in academic disciplines. I've had a lot of experience as a student. (I remarked to a class the other day that I've been doing homework for 30 of my 35 years. And then I nearly cried. They looked a mixture of horrified and awed.) At the undergraduate level, I overloaded my schedule each term (requiring the Dean of Students' signature) and did significant work in international relations and political science, economics, Spanish, and foreign language study (Spanish, Italian, French, German, Ancient Greek, and Japanese). At the Master's level, I've...

To my great delight, I've been invited to teach in the Freedom and Justice Studies minor in Fall 2015. I'll be teaching the three-credit upper-division interdisciplinary general education course FJS 340: Exploring Freedom and Justice on Thursday afternoons in fall 2015. The course description as it appears in the catalog is: Starting from philosophical understandings of identity, community, and democracy the course focuses on themes such as slavery and emancipation; migration, exile, and diaspora; violence and reconciliation. Using an interdisciplinary lens that engages fields as wide-ranging as economics and literature, students will engage in trans-historical, cross-cultural exploration of freedom and justice and the various ways different peoples have attempted to put them into practice. Students will engage tools to analyze the relationship between these concepts and the structure of identity and its material effects. Effectively the course chooses a wicked problem and expl...

Each spring semester, the CSUCI Broome Library throws the gala of the year, the Faculty Accomplishments Celebration. The Library hosts the faculty accomplishments database , where you can go ogle our faculty and their work. The celebration is a chance for faculty to get together and see what each other are working on, and discuss interests over delicious foodstuffs. Not only does the library host the shindig, but the planning happens months in advance. This was my first chance to attend, as a newbie, and what a wonderful time it was! The library hands out awards, celebrity-roast-style, such as the Golden Bookend, the Golden Clicker, and the Golden Key to the Library, with concomitant descriptions for why each faculty member won. There was much laughter, and it was just the point in the semester where I think we all needed that to lift our spirits. We played Cards against Faculty (a slightly more PC-version of Cards Against Humanity) as well as mad libs where nouns and verbs were remove...

In order of importance, the things going on as the semester careens to a close: On the library front: Finals are coming, finals are coming! Students are feeling the pressure, which means we at the library do, too. ALL OF THE PRINTING.  On an admittedly less-than-superior printing setup. And the last papers of the semester, so we're seeing some hail-Marys at the reference desk; This will be my first finals where I take lead on the end of semester feedback. We set up "graffiti" boards with giant post-it's on whiteboards asking what we're doing right, and what we can improve, and collect all that information. We also have a student survey, and a faculty survey. My colleagues all tabulate and organize the data, and we'll see what we can do to improve for next finals season; The 24-hour library. The week before and the week of finals, we stretch the library and its staff to 24 hours for our students. Thank goodness for the folks who work the overnight! I'...

Today I read a piece that hit close to home. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by Andrea N. Geurin-Eagleman on dealing with academia, divorce, and name changes. The article does a good job of relating the concerns of many female academics I've talked to--namely, that changing your name may effectively erase all of the name recognition we've been building in our fields since we started out into the hallowed halls of higher ed. Fabulous Husband and I are approaching our second wedding anniversary at the end of this month. Both before and after our actual wedding, we talked long and hard about what we wanted to do with our names. Our conversations covered a lot of territory, and these are some of the facets of the issue that came up: I already had a significant number of publications under my maiden name, and was concerned about the academia/continuity-of-recognition factor; We were both over 30 years old when we married, so each of us had significant years ...

Yesterday I received an email from the Journal of Academic Librarianship requesting some minor revisions on a paper I submitted a bare few weeks ago (a portion of my dissertation work, rewritten as a scholarly journal article). It took me all of perhaps 40 minutes to respond to the reviewers' suggestions and make recommended edits, and I resubmitted the manuscript around 3:45pm PST before preparing to teach an information literacy session at 4:30. This morning I received the following email (excerpted) from the editor: I am pleased to inform you that your paper "The Relationship Between Academic Library Department Experience and Perceptions of Leadership Skill Development Relevant to the Academic Library Directorship" has been accepted for publication in The Journal of Academic Librarianship." Huzzah! This may be the record for fastest 'revise and resubmit' ever. I was thrilled--I was afraid the article might be too long, might be too statistical in nature, ...

I have been a nerd since I was a toddler. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to get a doctorate.  At 7:00am PDT this morning, I defended my dissertation research, " An exploratory study of the relationship between academic library work experience and perceptions of leadership skill development relevant to the academic library directorship." After my 30 minute presentation, Q&A session with the audience, and discussion with the committee members, I left the Zoom instance (I defended from a distance). When I was reinvited after the committee's consultation, the inimitable Dr. Ted Miller (my chair, or He Who Is Responsible for Wrangling Colleen and Committee) let me know that the committee's decision was unanimous: They are recommendaing that the Graduate School of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga award me the degree of Doctor of Education in Learning and Leadership. From here on out, it's paperwork. My committee members are dealing with signa...

For those interested in the writing life of an academic librarian who is on the tenure track, you may be interested in what my research and writing schedule looks like. If you include all of my writing for librarianship, professional conferences, my Ed.D. work, and my Ph.D. work, it adds up to a lot. I usually don't list it out this way, since it makes me want to hyperventilate, but it is helpful to see it in this form to (1) give myself credit for what I've accomplished, and (2) budget my time wisely for what remains. Not much writing happened in January and February - largely my focus was polishing up the dissertation, and getting healthy after some wicked bouts of illness. Papers submitted for publication or a grade already this month (March 2015) include: "The Relationship between Academic Library Department Experience and Perceptions of Leadership Skill Development Relevant to Academic Library Directorship" (submitted to peer-reviewed journal in academic librar...

I am thrilled to share with everyone that my dissertation defense is scheduled for next Thursday. I'll be defending via Zoom (a Skype-like video conferencing software)--welcome to the future! Also, in terms of preparation for the defense, a huge shout-out to my CSUCI Broome Library colleagues who sat through my first-ever run-through of the slides, and to Fabulous Husband Jed, who sits through more than his earthly share of my practicing. Text of email sent from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga's Graduate School: The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Ms. Colleen Susan Harris-Keith will present her dissertation research titled, “An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Academic Library Work Experience and Perceptions of Leadership Skill Development Relevant to Academic Library Directorship,” on March 19 at 10:00 am in Hunter Hall #208. Everyone is invited to attend. Candidate for Doctorate of Education: Learning and Leadership Chairperson: Dr. Ted Mi...

Spring 2015 started with a bang, and the reference and instruction folks have been swamped with very full teaching schedules. I hear rave reviews from discipline faculty about how those sessions go, which is heartening. Maybe even better, I hear rave reviews from our students who stop by the reference desk! Our recent program review by outside parties, a regular requirement of all programs here at CSUCI, also went very well and it was good to hear what our faculty and students thought about our strengths and weaknesses. In all the hubbub, I also wanted to point out some upcoming professional development excitement: I've been selected to be a Spring 2015 Project ISLAS (Institutionalizing Student Learning, Access and Success) Faculty Fellow. This means I'll be attending various faculty-taught workshops on best practices in areas such as: teaching and engaging first generation and underrepresented students; research-based innovations in learning to learn; cross-campus collaborat...

The blog isn't dying, it's just moving - you'll find me blogging about librarystuffs and other relevant information topics at Eve of Instruction  from now on. I do hope you'll follow me over to my new Wordpress site and join the conversation. Blogger has been a great (and super easy) way for me to blog, but changes both in my professional life and how I view librarianship have changed greatly since I started blogging as the Guardienne more than a decade ago. Starting out in Access Services, I was very much oriented towards the 'guardienne' idea of librarianship - keeping the building safe from dropped drinks, and materials safe from french-fried fingerprints. More than a decade into this career, I'm much more interested in greater access for everyone, in every way--chocolate shake drips be damned. So the title of 'guardienne' rubs me wrong nowadays. I'm also interested in having a bit more control of my layout and information than I can usefu...

A call for chapters! I'm turning my dissertation into the preface for a book intended to help our directors overcome what data indicate are severe shortfalls in leadership development prior to the directorship. I'm excited that ALA Editions has contracted for the work. See below, and contact me with questions or for more details! Edited volume title (tentative): So You Want to be an Academic Library Director: Leadership Lessons and Critical Reflections Publisher: ALA Editions Editor: Colleen S. Harris-Keith A number of studies have highlighted that we know what the leadership skills and qualities are that make a good library director. However, there’s not much research that says where academic librarians in particular develop those skills along their career paths, giving the impression that all paths are considered equal. Recently collected data from mid-sized college and university library directors (a much larger leadership pool than just ARLs) reveals disturbing information:...

A call for chapters! I'm turning my dissertation into the preface for a book intended to help our directors overcome what data indicate are severe shortfalls in leadership development prior to the directorship. I'm excited that ALA Editions has contracted for the work. See below, and contact me with questions or for more details! Edited volume title (tentative): So You Want to be an Academic Library Director: Leadership Lessons and Critical Reflections Publisher: ALA Editions Editor: Colleen S. Harris-Keith A number of studies have highlighted that we know what the leadership skills and qualities are that make a good library director. However, there’s not much research that says where academic librarians in particular develop those skills along their career paths, giving the impression that all paths are considered equal. Recently collected data from mid-sized college and university library directors (a much larger leadership pool than just ARLs) reveals distur...

Things have been quiet on my end of this blog for a bit. not necessarily because life is quiet, but because my plate has been full. More from me soon, but the biggest news items include the following: Successfully surviving my first semester at CSU Channel Islands, and confirming this is the right place for me, and the perfect position for me;   Seeing mom for the first time in two years, over Christmas holiday (hooray);  Surviving the January plague that has lasted two weeks (and counting, with this lost voice), which included upper respiratory infection complete with eau de fever, tracheitis, epiglottitis, and laryngitis. (I AM HAVE ALL THE ITIS!) My survival was largely due to the gentle and patient ministrations of Fabulous Husband, and the flexibility of Honored Coworkers; Taking on the role of Information Literacy Coordinator a bit more. So far, over 85 information literacy sessions for this spring semester have been scheduled by our campus faculty;  Submitti...

As I've mentioned previously, I started my position as Information Literacy Coordinator at CSU Channel Islands on July 1 of this year (2014). My libraryfolk have a general idea of what my position entails, but I'm pretty sure my friends and family just nod their heads and smile and have no earthly clue what I do. So, here's a post about what exactly it is that I do all day. Information Literacy First, let me start with a brief statement about Information Literacy, since that. Is a huge part of my job. What is it? It's the set of skills and critical thinking applied to a person's need for information. So, the recognition that one needs information to solve a problem or question; determining the best place to find that information; critically reviewing the information and its source for relevance, validity and reliability; deciding on the best way to incorporate that information into decision-making...all of these fall into the realm of information literacy. Generally...