Author Archive: ltevents

What’s Next?: Reimagining Mentoring and Leadership Development

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
As our profession changes, opportunities arise all around us; will you be ready when the door opens? Mentoring and professional development attentions often focus on early-career librarians, but your needs might have changed just when you “graduated” from all that helpful guidance. This session will help you map your own career plan, identify potential opportunities, as well as discover potential gaps and barriers to reaching them. The attendees will work together to develop strategies for modifying long-standing institutional and professional conditions to improve opportunities for mid-career librarians. Individuals will begin to explore their future career paths with intentionality and self-reflection.

 

What makes a leader? An analysis of academic library leadership and organizational vision

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
Leaders come from all areas of an academic library; however, there are certain factors that contribute to leadership development. This paper discusses how academic libraries can cultivate leadership at all levels within their organization through a number of methods, including the adoption and communication of a clear strategic organizational vision statement. Do you consider yourself a leader, and if not, have you ever thought of recasting yourself in that role? Learn how your organization’s vision statement may be the reason you do or do not consider yourself a leader.

 

What I Learned from my Summer Research Scholar: The Transformative Impact of Undergraduate Research Mentorship on the Liaison Librarian Narrative

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
This interactive session introduces the audience to two liaison librarians’ experience as mentors in a unique partnership between the library and the office of undergraduate research. The librarians served as primary faculty mentors guiding undergraduates through a summer research program focusing on the role of the libraries within various disciplines. We will discuss the challenges of mentoring outside of one’s primary academic discipline, and highlight the benefits of the program. This session is relevant to librarians interested in mentorship, starting a similar program at their institutions, growing relationships with other disciplines, or becoming immersed in the the student research process.

 

We Don’t Need that Anymore, Exploring the Realities of the Impact of Digitization on Print Usage

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
Librarians speculate that the digitization and delivery of items through the HathiTrust may reduce or eliminate demand for the corresponding print content. This belief feeds into a perception that monographs housed within academic libraries and delivered via such services are ripe for deduplication or outright withdrawal from research libraries. Developing an evidence-based understanding of how the availability of digital access to these items might impact both local circulation and the rate of ILL/DD lending for such items is a critical step in determining how our institutions might approach the management of these collections in the future.

 

Valuing our expertise: Asserting teaching librarians’ roles in campus conversations

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
Teaching librarians often are viewed as playing a support role in our institutions’ teaching and research missions, yet our expertise in areas like information ecologies and information literacy pedagogy is instrumental in advancing student learning. Asserting our unique knowledge strengthens our voices in campus conversations. Examples from our panelists will illustrate how we have successfully developed and become recognized on our campuses as: disciplinary experts, faculty development facilitators, and teachers. We will also discuss pitfalls that can undermine librarians’ positions as campus leaders, as well as practical strategies to support new librarians seeking to develop and claim their own expertise.

 

Using Peer Budget Allocations as Benchmarks for Local Expenditures

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
This paper presents an analysis of financial data from dozens of North American academic libraries. The purpose was to search for patterns in the allocation of funds to different types of library expenditures: labor, materials and other operational expenditures. The relationships serve as a basis for comparing strategic decisions amongst peer institutions. The analysis also investigates shifts in budget allocations across years before, during and after the recent recession. The overall value of this research is to provide normative evidence for reference in strategic decision making.

 

Using Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Questions to Encourage Deep Thinking: Intentional Questioning as an Instructional Strategy

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
Do you ask thought provoking questions or are most of your questions asking students to repeat information from only moments ago? Asking questions during a library session is a simple and effective means to engage students, though asking good questions takes planning. The paper explores the pedagogical approach to asking thought provoking questions and encourage students learning. The authors will discuss the roots of inquiry found in the ACRL Framework as well as Depth of Knowledge analysis as a means to develop outcome-oriented questions. The authors will conclude with recommendations for integrating questions into lesson plans for information literacy sessions.

 

Using Change Management to Build Inclusion and Equity in Your Organization

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
While change is a constant in libraries today, many of us are not prepared to cope with the uncertainty it can create. Integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion into a constantly fluctuating environment leaves many of us overwhelmed and at a loss as to where to start. Drawing from organization development theories, including change management, can give librarians the ability to more productively navigate change in general but can also create agency for building and sustaining diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as part of a healthy organizational culture.

 

User-centered design in context

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
We have made great strides in shifting our focus toward embedding libraries into the lives of students, faculty and staff, rather than expecting them to come to us. User needs and user-driven data drive our most successful innovations. Panelists including user experience experts from outside the library industry, and librarians from several types of academic libraries, will share perspectives on user- and data-driven web design. The panel, experts in user experience and web design, will provide practical examples of techniques that will increase the effectiveness of our work to deliver exceptional user experiences through websites and other online tools.

 

User perspectives on personalized account-based recommender systems

Posted on by

 

Session Description:
This research is focused on understanding user preferences for “my account”-based recommendations of library content. By interviewing users we have explored user attitudes about three areas of recommendation services; including 1) eliciting preferences for recommendation, 2) displaying recommendations, and 3) revising recommendations based on results. User interviews indicated a need for crafting recommender services in library settings with transparent functionality. Users requested that system designers make clear how recommendations are designed and provided. Further findings indicated a desire to use recommender systems to explore interdisciplinary research domains that have otherwise not been considered.