Technology Literacy

I had my yearly review this month and as part of my objectives for this year, my Dean put that I would provide support for HLC Preparation by leading Technology Information initiatives. Now, I know that she really means Technology Literacy because I am not an IT person. As part of the measurement of this objective, she has that I will provide 2 workshops to faculty and staff on Technology Literacy (my word). Has anyone else been asked to do this? If so (or if not) do you have suggestions on how you might provide a Technology Literacy workshop?

Ethical question

What would you do if you suspected that a student might turn in a piece of work that was plagiarized?

Let's say you were working with that student on a research paper. The student wanted the first draft to be proofread, and after reading it, you noted that most of the paper was taken word for word from the sources you had accessed earlier.

You advise the student that they need to put information in their own words, and to use proper citation when needed. You even discuss plagiarism and how the paper in its rough draft would be considered to be plagiarized if turned it as it was.

Let's say that you know that student pretty well and suspect that they will not take the time to make the appropriate changes.

What would you do? Would you hope for the best? Would you notify their instructor? Would you notify the Academic Dean? How far would you go?

Go Figure

Just when I was despairing that not many students care about print serials, I received an email from a student asking if the Fort Myers campus could subscribe to The New Yorker. Interestingly, the student responded immediately after I sent an email blast seeking recommendations for library materials. Just shows how hard it is to judge....

NAACLS team praises liaison concept

The Bismarck campus just completed an accreditation visit for our MLT program. (The accrediting agency is NAACLS.) During the exit interview, the site visitors listed the strengths of our campus program. They made specific mention of our use of library liaisons, and they praised the concept. One of the team members is going to send me a list of sites and resources she recommends.

Just more proof that the Rasmussen Library System is a great system!

More good news: The NAACLS team did not list any areas of concern in their report. Now we just have to wait until September for the NAACLS board to meet to rule on our accreditation, but it looks good.

Rassy loves books

The Bismarck library has been home to the RasMall mannequin for quite some time. In addition to startling unsuspecting library visitors, "Scary Mannequin Guy" models clothes from RasMall. However, he recently donned the Rassy costume. He's even celebrating his love of books with Mardi Gras beads.

Circ Stats!

I had a great idea the other day for keeping those circulation stats up. I often bring in print resources with me to workshops for students to check out, especially for classes that are writing papers on the same topic. However, since most classes write papers in their field, this is not always possible.

Last week, for my Success Strategies workshops, I had each student complete a self-checkout form to get comfortable with the idea, and then the instructor had them complete a worksheet about that particular source. So each student left with at least one book! At the next workshop for Success Strategies, I taught how to use the online catalog, and each student's "assignment" was to order an interlibrary loan on something in their field. Now, each student is comfortable checking out books, ordering ILL, they each have at least two resources for their research paper, AND my stats went up!

NYT's Future of Reading Part 3

Here's the latest installment of the NYT's "Future of Reading" series. (I like the idea of having students write book reviews that then go on the library web site!)


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16libr.html?_r=1&hp

Digital Branch Style Guide

Hello,

A blog author that I follow posted this style guide for online communications/resources for patrons.

Please keep this handy as you are preparing your website pages, so that we can provide the most effective service as possible to our patrons.

Scholarly journals in workshops

I've been wanting to add this post for a while, and I think it fits in nicely with Emily's previous post. For one of my workshops this quarter (for English Comp), the instructor wanted me to focus on explaining what scholarly articles are and how they are used. I've found that many of our students have not been exposed to the "world" of scholarly journals before, and I think there is a disconnect between information online and what students are used to seeing.

So I decided to bring in some print examples. Since my library doesn't really have a print journal collection, I grabbed some from home (mostly poli sci and humanities, and yes, even a couple Library Journals). I passed them out in the class, and had students start comparing them to popular magazines. We made a comparison list on the board, and talked about what makes scholarly journals so different from popular magazines, and why we use them.

I think this exercise helped the students understand that what they are viewing online is also available in print. It seems to help to have literal, hands-on examples for students to touch and look at it when explaining new concepts. However, I agree with Emily that perhaps our focus should be our online databases, and not print journals. Students may like seeing the resources for themselves, but when it comes to using the resources, they seem to prefer online.

The Budget: Meeting Student Needs

One of the projects slowly making its way up from the back of my mind is our budget. While it's still the beginning of the year, I need to start planning now for major anticipated purchases: namely, library resources, electronic or otherwise.

I've been looking over databases and ebook vendors most of today, and I can't help but wonder how to balance out the fiscal responsibility of resources for our students. We've danced around it for three years. Do we need less print and more online?

I would never suggest eliminating the print budget completely. Print materials are essential to our campus libraries, and as our circulation increases it is obvious that our students value print resources. However, there are many valuable resources that we were unable to purchase last year due to cost. If we cut back our print budgets by 25%, it would save us over 100K a year - enough to purchase 4 or 5 quality databases.

One of your esteemed colleagues suggested to me today that we move our journal collections completely online. We could definitely do this (I think) - that is, we have the technology available to do this, or will with the new catalog. But, do you have enough students who use your print resources to warrant having items in print? Many items, or just some general magazines & your local newspaper?

I know that your responses to the following question will vary campus to campus. I expect some of you could cut back your print budgets to only 20% of this fiscal year's allotment and probably do quite well. So, I ask you: what are your opinions on print & electronic?

-E

Evaluating websites exercise

I just gave my "Clean Off Your Google Goggles" Workshop for the 3rd time. This time was very successful. I presented the workshop, and then I had the students complete the exercise that is shown above. I think it really helped the students have an understanding of the quality of resources they will receive with using different search engines.

In this workshop, I also introduced how to search for only government websites in Google. This feature is at www.google.com/unclesam. This website will definitely be useful to our Criminal Justice students.


A Search for the "death penalty" is shown below. The students were able to see the quality of results were better than searching for the death penalty under the normal google.com platform.

** Sorry for cross posting. I also put this blog post on my personal/professional blog.

Gamin' @ Rasmussen

I'm so thrilled about an event I planned in response to goal-planning for the campus & the library.

Backstory first. We have a large number of students in this community who are simply afraid of technology, afraid of trying things out, and afraid to make mistakes. We also have a large number of students who are quite adept at Web 2.0 stuff and aren't afraid of texting or messaging.

I went to a "Gaming In The Libraries" session last October for the Wisconsin Library Association annual conference and was intrigued about the idea of using gaming as a tool for literacy (or in many ways technology literacy) in the library.

After mulling over the session with Emily, we decided it would be interesting if we could have an event on this campus and see what happens!

We're on!

I'm working with the Admissions department and have MANY volunteers. I sent out an email to the leadership team on campus:

I will be hosting the PS3 & RockBand2. The college has the Wii and Pam has some games that she will share. It will be a fantastic way to have fun with our students, a good way to assist in retention, and possibly even a way for some of our tech-wary students to have some fun and learn not to be afraid of technology.

I'm so excited that the event seems to be gaining momentum. We will have at least 1 person in each room to staff each room for the Wii & the RockBand2 so students can come in, and even if they don't know HOW to do the game, they will be able to shown how.

Did I mention that I actually have fantastic support from the leadership team, including the DOA and the Campus Director?

I'm so excited for this, and hope it will be successful. I'll be starting to advertise it in the near future.

Cataloging accomplishment

It's amazing what one can accomplish in just a few months. I'm finally feeling GOOD. If not 100% then pretty darn close, and it's apparent in the work I've been able to accomplish recently.

We have the internal auditors here this week, and it was important to the campus director to get as much cataloging as we could for this campus. It's not to say nothing was cataloged. There was a slight glitch here because Aleph was going through an upgrade around the same time I started, and while items were ready from OCLC, we couldn't get them into ALEPH. I'm not complaining - it just is what it is.

Well, nothing like a deadline to just get things done…

We now have 700+ books, reference books & DVDs in the ALEPH (public online) catalog. Since June 2008, I’ve cataloged +550!!!

Since I returned from vacation / surgery / 2008 craziness, 351 items were cataloged. I’ve had assistance from Sara from St. Cloud (THANKS!) who successfully cataloged 124 which helped tremendously.

Phew ... bring on the world! :)

Captive Audience for Open Workshop

Last quarter, I had 14 students attend one of my open workshops. Hurray! The back story? It was in Week 9, and was on resumes and cover letters (now Fort Myers has a mentor center coordinator who will handle these in the future). But per the terrific suggestion of Tara, our dean, I held that workshop in the lunchroom during lunch break!

At least 20 people were actually coming and going, but it was easy to get the 14 students to take a look at my "portable resume workshop info." I didn't even need a laptop; just had lots of copies of things like template ideas, lists of active verbs, pathway info, etc., that I handed out.

(I caught everyone's attention initially by displaying that funny poster from Ras Career Services. It shows an appropriately dressed job interviewee and her "clean" resume, contrasting with a picture of her slacker alter ego and a resume that potential employers would immediately put in a circular file.)

The Big Time

I feel like I have finally hit the big time. I just filled my first request for Interlibrary Loan from a library outside of Rasmussen College. I believe I did it correctly and it will be picked up tomorrow and delivered to another library system. I have to give credit to my practicum student for this as he is the one who discovered that I was not listed as a reciprocal lender in OCLC.