Robyn Hall» Librarianship (misc)

Library Day in the Life: Wed/Thurs

Robyn — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:43:17 +0000

In further documenting my days as a librarian at Red Deer College Library, as part of the Library Day in the Life project, here is how the last two days went.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning I headed to the Black Knight Inn to discuss details about the upcoming RDC Faculty Association social (the Sizzler) I am helping to coordinate for a second year. After, I went to a doctor appointment then rolled into work at 1:30PM. After some class prep, a brief meeting with the Library Chair to discuss what I am up to, and doing a very quiet virtual reference shift, I went to the night class I teach each week. It was a work period so only a few students attended with questions about a project they have to do researching Web 2.0 applications.

Thursday

Today I taught an education assistant class all about researching exceptionalities, so much of the morning was devoted to creating a handout and PowerPoint for them. We covered evaluating websites, finding books, and finding articles. Most of the class was hands on, with students needing to explore various resources while answering questions on the worksheet I prepared, followed by a review of what they had learned. It felt rushed, but went well overall.

After my class, I met another librarian who had been showing some of his art work in the Library. Together, we took down his pieces and replaced them with some prints of photos I have taken from across Canada. (These images are available on Flickr.) I am a very amateur photographer and am very happy to have the opportunity to show my work.

I ended my work day by attending the General Meeting for the RDC Faculty Association then attending the faculty pub the association hosts following each meeting. It was a good time to relax, and sell tickets for the Sizzler. I then went shopping for decorations for the event (including fishing twine to hang decorations, and organza bags) before calling it a day.

Library Day in the Life, Round 8

Robyn — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:22:47 +0000

… started yesterday (January 30) and goes until February 5.

Take a look at how librarians around the world are documenting their days using social media by visiting the Library Day in the Life Project Wiki. Or check back here for my own daily updates.

To catch up, here is how my Monday-Tuesday of this week went down.

Monday

I got a drive to work, still basking in the afterglow of a great few days in Edmonton, where I attended the Forum for Information Professionals at the library school at the University of Alberta, as well as Canmore and Banff, where I enjoyed a much needed weekend getaway filled with music, food and friends.

I am teaching classes for the Computer Learning @ the Library program at Red Deer College this year, so I started my day by doing my office hours. A few students dropped by to ask questions. I then marked a few assignments, prepared for my Tueday classes, and worked a shift at the Information Desk in the Library.

The highlight of the day was receiving an email letting me know my conference presentation proposal for WILU 2012 had been accepted. The presentation will report findings from a survey I intend to send out to health sciences librarians about the degree to which they educate students about open access resources. I will be using Canadian-based Fluid Surveys to create the survey and am really excited to move forward with this project.

Tuesday (today)

I woke up around 8am, sent a few emails, walked to work, and prepared for a class I was teaching on creating PowerPoints using principles taken from Presentation Zen, as well as editing images using copyright-friendly photography sites and picnik.com (which will unfortunately be shutting down in April).

After a quick lunch, I made my way to the two other computer courses I teach every Tuesday. I’d given both classes a work period to complete their projects–one on Web 2.0 and another on basic Word Processing–so these were pretty laid back.

At 4:30pm, my classes wrapped up and I headed to my office to drop off my things and join my co-workers at the Long-Term Service Awards ceremony the college holds annually to recognize staff.

On arriving home, I signed in to the virtual reference chat service offered by AskOntario. I am in my second year of volunteering for this service, and do a shift for an hour every Tuesday night. Usually I get one or two reference questions but tonight it was dead quiet so I used the time to email an instructor back who had a copyright question.

And now I am catching up on trashy TV shows and intending to add myself to the Library Day in the Life Wiki before bed.

*BIG thanks to librarian Bobbi Newman for coordinating this bi-annual initiative. It is always a great opportunity to share experiences, and reflect on my own practice and that of others.

PD in 140 Characters or Less

Robyn — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:27:43 +0000

“Social is just one part of what we do. We think of it as an information utility,” he said, describing Twitter as a personal news service as much as a social network. (Twitter is much more than social: co-founder Dorsey)

Twitter is a social networking site I am not ashamed to check routinely throughout the work day. I primarily use it to follow other librarians and people/organizations in similar fields. It’s a great way to find out about tech news, conferences, job postings, interesting websites and articles, etc.

Twitter feeds to follow (my recommendations):

Mashable: Independent news covering tech, social media and web culture
Open Access Hulk: Open Access news as delivered by the Hulk
mgeist: Keep up with Canadian copyright by following Micheal Geist’s Tweets
sparkcbc:Feed for the CBC’s tech news radio show Spark
LISNews.org: News for librarians updated regularly
Awfullibbooks: Find out about new posts to the weeding-wonders blog Awful Library Books
librarianmer:Librarian, writer & avid blogger Meredith Farkas’ tweets
AMSciForum: Open Access advocate & scholar Steven Harnad’s Twitter
SPARC NA: Feed for the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
Very Short Story: Not really library-related but still great Twitter sized fiction

Directories of Library Twitter feeds to follow:

ALA Twitter feeds: Follow the activities of a variety of American Library Association units
American & International (including Canadian) library feeds: Many examples of libraries using Twitter for promotion, outreach and overall communication with users

Can Wikipedia Improve Students’ Work? Yes!

Robyn — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:33:37 +0000

I was on the plane to WILU 2011 in Regina last week when the woman sitting beside me, also headed to the conference (I am pretty sure the plane was full of library folks), handed me a newspaper article in the National Post entitled Can Wikipedia improve students’ work?

It’s a good read. It discusses the merits of Wikipedia as a jumping off point in research, and how it can be integrated into course assignments in a way that challenges students to think about evaluating information and the rigorous work that goes into producing scholarly research articles.

While librarians are not mentioned in the article, it sheds light on the type of assignment design we could be assisting faculty with in our efforts to become increasingly more involved in helping students develop information literacy skills.

Just some food for thought.

Don’t Discard the Librarians

Robyn — Sat, 21 May 2011 04:11:50 +0000

Check it out! Don’t Discard the Librarians is an article by Ian Brown appearing in the Globe and Mail. It will warm your heart.

Some key quotes:

“Here is the case for human librarians: You, the information consumer, don’t want to go insane.”

“Librarians know what’s available in a field, where to find it, whether to use it. You, on the other hand, have to write a paper about the self in Hamlet. Try Googling that without the help of a professional librarian: 12.3 million results.”

“Nearly 19 million people visit its [Toronto Public Library's] 99 branches every year, and borrow 32 million items (which means every item goes out about three times). Nearly 90 per cent of recent immigrants stop by the library. Many can’t speak English.

None of that works without human librarians in the equation.”

“‘I think it’s a very exciting time,’ Ms. Moore insisted, contradicting the stereotype of the librarian as a backward-looking shusher who is happiest dusting book jackets. (I have yet to meet an actual librarian who fits it.)”

“There’s only an under-allocation of money, and the digital technocracy’s strange distrust of human beings sitting in a public room while communally enjoying the freedom of their own minds.”

Who will speak for the librarian?

Robyn — Thu, 19 May 2011 07:03:11 +0000

Take a listen to Jian Ghomeshi’s eloquent plea for the survival of school librarians in his opening essay for Q on CBC Radio 1 today. Bravo!

Digital & Media Literacy @ RDC

Robyn — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:14:54 +0000

On Thursday, April 14, I helped lead a workshop (turned webinar thanks to bad weather) at the Annual General Meeting- Spring 2011 of the Alberta Association of Academic Libraries (AAAL) in Calgary, Alberta.

Digital & Media Literacy @ RDC
PRESENTERS: Kristine Plastow, Robyn Hall & Teneil Vuori, Red Deer College Library

The ability to interact with information across a variety of technological platforms, tools and media is a vital skill for students and faculty to possess in contemporary learning and workplace environments. This session will address challenges and opportunities academic librarians and staff at RDC Library have experienced in seeking to foster patrons’ digital and media literacy skills.

Learn more about Digital & Media Literacy:

Digital & Media Literacy: A Plan of Action: http://www.scribd.com/doc/41889496/Digital-and-Media-Literacy-A-Plan-of-Action
White paper by Renee Hobbs; a project of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute outlining steps to improve digital and media literacy education.
The Horizon Report 2011: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/HR2011.pdf
Describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years.

RDC Library Guides:

Research Guides: http://rdc.libguides.com/browse.php?o=s
Library staff have created subject guides to help students & faculty find resources, including books, articles & websites.
Copyright: http://rdc.libguides.com/copyright
Information for students & faculty about using copyrighted materials at RDC.
Open Resources: http://rdc.libguides.com/open
This guide will help you find copyright-friendly resources online, including scholarly literature, multimedia, teaching objects, and software.
Information Fluency: http://rdc.libguides.com/info_fluency
Learn how to book an instruction session with a librarian. This guide provides an overview of resources, services, and programs designed and delivered by librarians to support students and instructors at RDC.
RDC citation guides:
APA: http://rdc.libguides.com/apa
MLA: http://rdc.libguides.com/mla
Chicago: http://rdc.libguides.com/chicago

Considering library school?

Robyn — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:06:30 +0000

Tonight I was pleased to come across placement surveys on the Faculty of Information & Media Studies website (University of Western Ontario).

These surveys, taken by Library and Information Science (LIS) grads between 2003 and 2008, offer insight into things like how long it took them to find work, salary, types of jobs, length of job search, and location of placement.

If you’re considering library school–or looking for library work–I’d definitely recommend taking a look at them. They do not provide a full and complete picture of what the job hunt is like right now across the country, but they do still shed some light on the realities facing library school graduates over the last decade.

I would also recommend taking a look at the following blog post. It provides a lot of great advice on applying for library jobs from the perspective of an employer, including valuable advice on writing cover letters:

Tough Times: Thoughts on the Library Job Market from a Department Head Who Just Hired a Reference Librarian

The author, Rick Roche, also provides a number of insights into the profession of librarianship as a whole. For instance, Roche points out that new librarians need to explore non-traditional professions, and be prepared for the risk of being unemployed or under-employed. Furthermore, he argues that library schools need to scale back their enrolment numbers. I concur. With several library schools in Canada alone churning out graduates (in addition to US schools and online MLIS programs), supply is increasingly exceeding demand.

The Human Library

Robyn — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:39:55 +0000

Human Libraries are springing up all over the world. During these events, people become “living books” that can be signed out by library patrons and “read” via sharing their experiences. It is a great way to create stronger social cohesion and understanding among library community members.

I learned about this library phenomenon at the AAAL (Alberta Association of Academic Libraries) Fall 2010 Meeting. At the meeting, librarian Melinda Spears talked about her experiences organizing a Human Library at Grant MacEwan University. Similar events have taken place in Canada at a number of public and academic libraries including:

Inspired by these events, RDC librarian/learning designer Sona Macnaughton and I organized a Human Instruction Library last December whereby faculty acted as living books specializing in specific topics around instruction strategies and technologies. This Spring we hope to do this event once more.

Similarly, the Ontario Library Association hosted a Human Library at the 2011 Super Conference. Here, delegates could sign out professionals to hear about their career experiences.

Taking these ideas further, at some point I would like to try a “human training library” and allow library staff to sign out other staff with expertise in a certain area.

To learn more about organizing a Human Library, take a look at: Don’t judge a book by its cover: The Living Library Organizer’s Guide.

Library Day in the Life “word cloud”

Robyn — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 07:59:45 +0000

Generated from my Library Day in the Life posts using: http://www.wordle.net