NDLA 2009 Conference in Dickinson, ND

Chandra and I attended the NDLA Conference September 23-25. It was great to meet Chandra and other ND librarians.

You might all know about this already, but EBSCO has some great training videos that may be useful during classroom presentations and some free, customizable, downloadable promotional materials (posters, bookmarks, etc.) available for free at http://support.ebsco.com.

Is It All Online For Free

Check out this SlideShare Presentation I saw at NDLA. Great links we may want to add to Delicious or in presentations.

Is It All Online For Free

View more presentations from Valley City State University.

new APA tidbits

I'm wondering what my library teammates have discovered in th 6th edition of the beloved APA Manual. I've already found a couple things new things, plus a few I thought were new but were really old things that I just didn't know from the previous edition.

What's new to you in the latest APA Manual?

1. NEW: In the reference page listing for a book, all cities now get their 2-letter state abbreviations. So no more trying to remember the list of which cities were exempt.

2. NEW TO ME: Although I knew that personal communications don't get listed on the reference page, I learned that classical words (like the Bible and the Qur'an) do not get listed on the reference page either. (See p. 174.)

New Student Orientation

While I'm still getting oriented to my new job, I have started working with the Dean of Student Learning to be involved in new student orientations. The Learning Center instructor and myself are going to give 20-minute presentations at all of the orientations about the library/learning center services available to students. We figure it will be a great opportunity to increase usage.

ND Author visits Bismarck

During summer quarter, I worked with a campus instructor and a librarian at the local public library to bring a noted North Dakota author into the Bismarck/Mandan community. Shadd, the instructor, contacted Larry Woiwode, a North Dakota native whose works have received high acclaim, and asked him to come to Bismarck to do a reading of his book A Step from Death: A Memoir and to discuss his experiences as a writer. I launched a campus-wide book discussion group over A Step from Death and invited the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Library to partner with the college for the author’s visit. The public library hosted event and publicized the event through displays, on its webpage, and to its mailing lists. The marketing team from Rasmussen crafted a press release which was picked up by the local newspaper.

On August 20, approximately 70 people gathered in a meeting room at the public library. After an introduction by Shadd, Larry Woiwode shared a poems and then read sections from his novel. He then took questions from the audience, many focusing on his writing process. The evening finished with Larry signing books and visiting one-on-one with attendees.

As a result of this successful event, my contact from the local public library and I are already discussing ways to collaborate in the future for more community and lifelong learning events.

TLC - Helping students get what they need!

Since using TLC, I have to say I'm hugely impressed with the usability and the interest my students have had in using the catalog. In the past, students were NOT very receptive to searching within ALEPH for items ... perhaps because it was lacking visual aides. I believe that TLC is already proving it's value at my campus (and most likely at other campuses) because I'm noticing a HUGE uptick in the number of items borrowed and loaned by my campus. What about at your campuses? Also, is there a way to track how many requests are being placed directly by the students, as opposed to being mediated by library staff? I think that would be an interesting figure to track. I know that many of my students were delighted that they could now, seamlessly, request books on their own.

On a side note... Have we included the additional cost of postage and bubble mailers into our budget for 2009-2010? Seriously, we may need to! :)

Amazing connections

An amazing thing just happened to me at work in the library this Saturday afternoon, July 18, 2009. I checked my email and got the following:

"Hi Libby, May I borrow parts of your MA libguide as I construct my own? Thanks so much!"

The email came from Paula J. Hearn of ivytech.edu. I racked my brain to think: "How do I know her?" "How does she know me?" I could not come up with anything....

Then I forwarded the email to Emily and IM'd her to ask if she would take a look at it. I also asked Emily to affirm if I remembered correctly that sharing can be part of Libguides, if you want, and if your stuff is public. (My MA libguide is set to public even though, ironically, we are not yet using it.)

During our IM'ing, Emily and I also both decided to look up ivytech.edu. It is a community college in Indiana with 23 campuses that serve more than 75 communities.

Emily said of course we can share if we want, and it is probably a good idea. I agree, because I am a big believer in what goes around comes around! So the upshot is that I emailed Paula that of course she can use my stuff, and that I am flattered. (Now I will have to remember to check her MA page!)

I copied you all on the email to Paula, but this is the "back story," as they say. Cool, huh?!

Book River

I love it that the book river comes up when a student goes to the Internet in the library. It looks fabulous and it gets students interested. I had a student ask about it yesterday and today a student called me over to explain it. She liked the idea that she could manage her own holds and she created an account on the spot.

Jing

Have you used Jing? It's a free screen capturing service.

I was able to make this video in literally less than 5 minutes. It's so cool! It's really quick and easy.. and I can envision it being really helpful when email or chat reference hits a dead end. You know? I usually take a lot of screenshots in those situations and request the student's email address, but we could just paste the Jing video URL into the Meebo chat with this service.

Get Caught Reading

May was "Get Caught Reading" month. I caught the Bismarck faculty and staff reading books which matched their professional or personal interests. Even our RasMall mannequin got into the spirit.

To view staff/faculty pictures, checkout my Flickr photostream.

Library Promo

Last week, I did a promotion "Celebrate Romance!" for June which is Nat'l Wedding & Marriage Month. The first 10 students had their choice of a free romance novel. While low-key, this was a success and something fun & different for the students. They let me take their picture w/the book, but many didn't want them 'posted on the Internet'- so I'll have to figure something else for that. I rec'd a number of free books at one of the FLA programs, donated some of my own that were new (and was willing to part with), and received donated copies from our Gen Ed instructor of one of her books (signed).

ebook tutorial

I found this ebook tutorial to be really helpful. I didn't even know about some of these features.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

The Fort Myers campus has hired an MLT coordinator (Steve Shelfer) and is trying to get enough students to start the program. I was surprised when Steve told me that 70% to 80% of a patient's medical record are lab results, but there's going to be a severe shortage of lab technicians to meet the needs of a growing and aging U.S. population. It "smelled" like a good news story to me, even if I weren't connected to a college that is new in town and offers the MLT associate's degree.

I emailed the story idea and some Labor Dept. stats to some local editors and reporters, some of whom I know. I wrote that although I have a vested interest in the college, "I think it is a great story idea - really a worry if the labs are unable to hire people - esp. in this economy."

The editor of Florida Weekly, with whom I am acquainted, sent a reporter to interview Steve and our MLT program was featured on the cover of the Business section, with a teaser on the front page: http://fortmyers.floridaweekly.com/news/2009/0603/business_plans/032.html

Now we just hope it piques students' interest!

The Golden Day

Originally I was going to name this post the Golden Notebook, but Jon, the Learning Center coordinator who shares space with me, said I should name it the Golden Day because that really reflects how my day has gone. It started off with my first workshop on APA formatting in which I had 10 participants! Students from one instructor’s class brought the rough drafts that had been returned to them. This lent itself very well to the workshop as they could fix mistakes and learn the proper way to format. Aside from those students, I had one who is a midstart, online only, who has been to two of my workshops and another student who hasn’t even started yet. She is excited to start in July and she will already be a step ahead of her fellow students. After my workshop, I found two boxes of books from B&T. One of the tutors was so eager to open the box and see what had arrived. When she and I were talking, Jon came over to see if the book he had recommended for staff picks came in. That book was “The Golden Notebook.” He was so excited that we had it. He ran his hands over the cover and then he looked at the edges of the pages and said it was just like he remembered. I told him I had to blog about it because it was so sweet that he was caressing the book. The only blip in the day was when a sociology student who was working on his paper asked me if I had attended the Woodstock music festival. All in all, a golden day.

poetryslam

poetryslam
Originally uploaded by Rasmussen College - Green Bay

Military Appreciation Month

Last month was National Military Appreciation Month and I'm happy to say our campus had a very successful display - with student, faculty, and staff participation. My student assistants put together the background for the bulletin board and we included information on the branches of service, etc. We received a number of photos, which is great. For June we are doing something similar to continue campus participation/community by asking for comments/memories of parents and/or photos.

Better Signage for All

I’ve had the opportunity to visit a few campus as of late, or see pictures of your libraries, and I’ve noticed that we have quite a bit of signage. Some of it is positive, and some of it has a clearly negative vibe - “Absolutely NO Cell Phones” – as an example.

I’ve changed the post below slightly to encourage a different set of responses. I’m going to post this to the blog, as well – please use that space to post your comments. I encourage ALL of you to post at least one comment. It might be time for us to develop some better signage to provide better customer service to our users.

The group he is referring to is:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=bad%20library%20signs&w=all

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Stephen Abram wonders... Now think about libraries. We have alll followed the Flickr group on bad library signs. There's much to learn. If we had a good discussion about behaviours we wanted to encourage what would our signs look like?
If you accepted the research based communication results above, how would you:
1. Communicate about fines or returning books (on time)?
2. Communicate about not reshelving books?
3. Discourage the use of cell phones?
4. Encourage groups to move to the learning center or student lounge if they are disturbing others?
5. Discourage children being on the computers? (Note: this does not say “discourage children being in the library”. Unless your campus has strict children’s policies AND made students aware of those policies. Children will come in the library. Please don’t fight that battle).

MILE 2009

During the last week in April, I attended MILE. MILE is the Minnesota Library Association Institute for Leadership Excellence.

It was held at the Bug-Bee Hive Resort in Paynesville, MN. Librarians from around the state gathered to:
-learn about leadership styles
-develop our strengths
-ask questions of a leadership forum of current librarians holding leadership roles in the state of Minnesota
-mind map our goals
-get set up with mentors that were in our career path. The mentor and mentee will meet monthly over an 18 month period.

We each took an assessment to find our strengths. We used Strengths Finder 2.0. I found that my top five strengths were Input, Command, Ideation, Activator, and Achiever. The book explains how we can use our strengths to our maximum potential. Much of the institute focused on building our lives around our strengths and simply learning to manage our weaknesses instead of obsessing over them.

Comedy Sportz did several improv activities with the group during the first evening. I learned many new ice breaker games that I have now incorporated in my library instruction. Some examples are having all the students pick their celebrity baby name or robot name. There were several games that required team work and/or expressed status. We did several exercises where we could witness power struggles between two individuals of high status or the empowerment of a high status individual over a low status individual. This occurs in the workplace on a daily basis as well as on the sidewalk or hallway each day when the decision is made who is going to be the person to "back down" in a given space OR be the person to power through. There are certain behaviors that we use each day without even realizing it. This is a nice guide on some of the different behaviors of each status.

Overall, it was a great experience. I met some great people, and I was set up with a mentor. Being accepted into this institute required an application process and letters of recommendation. I encourage the Minnesota librarians to participate in the future.

Disabled student

We have a new mid-start student who uses a wheelchair, and I am becoming well acquainted with her because she uses the library often. The other day she asked me to retrieve a book for her from a top shelf, and of course I was happy to help.

I have been thinking about her request ever since, however. Her disability literally "handicaps" her from being able to physically browse many of the bookshelves -- not just top shelves, but the second to the top shelves as well. I also know there are implements for even able-bodied people to retrieve hard-to-reach items. Yet I do not think she would want to use something like that even if I ordered one.

I don't think there is any "answer" to this ... it is just something I have been thinking about, especially since Emily noted we will be stressing "customer service" at our team meeting. Fortunately, the student seems comfortable asking for help, as I strive to have a "low key" and "accepting" environment.

Workshop series

This quarter I tried to turn my open workshops into a series. The flyers had the same elements. I did not use the word 'workshop' on any of them in hopes that students would be more apt to attend. I planned Internet Searching for Week 7, Database Demonstrations for Week 8, and APA Format for Week 9. Unfortunately I had no attendance for the Internet workshop. However, students at my Database Demonstrations said that they would have liked to attend. Note that all of the workshops are advertised on the monitors on campus, on the student portal, and emailed to all of the students. I exceeded my goal for increased attendance at my Database Demonstrations. I decided to do it as demonstrations, as Emily has suggested in an earlier blog. I had a signup sheet next to a bowl of Snickers. I had different databases set up on different monitors so that students could go around and check them out. Each monitor that had a database already set up had a sign with the name on the top and handouts next to it on how to use the database. They could also sign on to the open computers and do their own thing. I had a PowerPoint set up that kept running showing students how to create an account in EBSCO, save articles to a folder, and search several databases at once. The feedback from the students was positive and they expressed interest in attending the APA workshop next week. You can view the flyers on GoogleDocs in the very near future.