MN Library Association

Keynote presentation (recording)

Breakout session 1

How You Can Demonstrate and Promote the Impact Your Library Has at Your Institution (exercise)

with Teresa Fishel, Macalester College; and Kara Malenfant, ACRL

Every campus has undertaken assessment activities, and if your library is not part of the conversation, you need to be. This session will be an overview of the research agenda in the ACRL publication Value of Academic Libraries. We will focus on how participants can develop a manageable program that will address how the library contributes to the overall student experience, assists in faculty research, or contributes to the institutional reputation. Join us for a lively discussion and hands-on activities that will provide you with at least one step you can take when you return to your library.

Library Spaces

with Ginny Heinrich, Macalester College; Jenny Sippel, Minneapolis Community & Technical College; David Collins, Macalester College; and Don Kelsey, consultant

As libraries adjust to changes in collections and services, we’re often working with analog buildings in our digital world. How do we adjust and adapt to changing student needs and continue to have our spaces work best for us? Can we rely on gradual change to support an increasingly transliterate learning environment? This roundtable discussion will engage you in a conversation about how we see our library spaces evolving. Bring your questions, ideas, and a curious mind.

Remix Revolutions: Trans(il)literacy, Copyright, and Emerging Forms of Scholarship & Critique

with Nancy Sims, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

The social value of new technologies and forms of expression often comes in the form of scholarship or cultural critique, but it can be difficult to make a case for the social value of a text to someone who cannot read it. This is a challenge faced by copyright educators and reformers and by scholars and creators working in new media. This session will explore issues of copyright law and other challenges of scholars working in nontraditional media by “reading” and discussing a variety of remix videos, musical mash-ups, and other transliterate texts.

Breakout session 2

Ask Us! Creating, Assessing, and Improving Chat Reference Services in Your Library

with Gabriel Gardner, Doreen Hansen, and Kim Pittman, University of Minnesota-Duluth

Instant messaging has been widely adopted by librarians as a means of expanding reference and outreach services to library users. At the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) Library, staff use Libraryh3lp, a low-cost solution created by and for librarians, to connect with patrons 24 hours a day across multiple platforms. Learn how to reach your patrons using customized chat widgets embedded in your library website, databases, or online research guides. We will also discuss usability issues and assessment and present free tools that can improve the chat experience, including screencasting programs, URL shorteners, and macros.

Equity and Diversity Programming in an Academic Library Setting

with Jody Gray, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

The University of Minnesota Libraries have partnered with the University of Minnesota’s Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence to create programming for both the undergraduate students of color and librarians serving those communities. This session will take a practical look at how to begin developing a program for equity and diversity within an academic library setting. The presenter will demonstrate many of the tools used to create a diversity program, from defining diversity to providing educational opportunities for colleagues and students alike, as well as setting priorities and communicating to upper administration. The objective of this session is to provide a sampling of practical tools and exercises in developing a diversity action plan to bring back to your library.

Library Data and Student Success

with Shane Nackerud, Jan Fransen, Kate Peterson, Kristen Mastel, and Krista Soria, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Does the use of library print and digital collections correlate with course pass/fail rates, grades, or GPA? How does use of instructional tools or attendance at instruction sessions or workshops correlate with student success in the classroom? Using circulation data, online resource usage records, workstation login data, workshop registrations, and more, the University of Minnesota Libraries are attempting to answer these questions. In addition, we are discovering very interesting demographic data about just who uses the libraries at the University of Minnesota. At this session, learn more about this unique project, how we hope to answer the questions above, demographic data revealed so far, and (hopefully) data that support what all of us know already: Using the libraries helps students succeed in the classroom and beyond.

Breakout session 3

In the Web: How Moving Towards a Linked Data Model Can Revolutionize Libraries (handout)

with Sara Ring, Minitex; and Sarah Beth Weeks, St. Olaf College

The amount of scholarly, historical and other curated content on the web is rapidly expanding as methods of digitizing, organizing, and storing content online have become more cost-effective and user-friendly. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Library of Congress, and a growing number of European libraries have begun a movement towards a “semantic web” where content holders publish “linked data” to allow their information and content to be shared, harvested, and used in exciting new ways. How can Minnesota libraries use and benefit from library linked data and how will moving towards this data model improve the lives of our users? In addition to answering these questions, we will be looking at existing tools a novice could use to create and consume linked data such as Google Refine, Freebase, and some of the tools coming out of MIT’s SIMILE Project.

Get Your Head in the Cloud: Teaching Academic Research in an Increasingly Online and Increasingly Collaborative World

with Thomas Eland, Elissah Becknell, and Rebecca March, Minneapolis Community & Technical College

In the fall of 2011, the librarians of Minneapolis Community and Technical College Library began using a wiki hosting site for team assignments in their Information Literacy & Research Skills classes. PBworks Classroom Edition was implemented to improve the process of student teamwork and facilitate instructor assessment of student learning outcomes. For students, PBWorks helped develop confidence and skill with web-based technology, aided their collaborative teamwork efforts, and helped them learn new research skills. During this session, MCTC librarians will discuss what they have learned about facilitating collaborative research in a web environment and how this trend is developing in the Academy. They will also share tips and recommendations for creating research skills coursework, workshops, or one-shots with transliteracy and gaming theory in mind.

Leading Without Authority: Maintaining Balance and Relationships (handout)

with Robin Ewing and Melissa Prescott, St. Cloud State University

Due to the collaborative nature of our profession, librarians accomplish tasks, develop plans and procedures, initiate and carry out projects, and draft recommendations as part of committees or other working groups. At some point in your career, you will have an opportunity to take on an informal leadership role as part of a self-managed team, committee, task force, or working group. In this session, we will discuss four major challenges of informal leadership, including representing your department, working on committees and task forces, reaching consensus, and balancing personalities. Our techniques can easily be applied to informal leadership positions in any library.

Lightning Round sessions

Catching Students at the Point of Need: Strategic Placement of Information Literacy Instruction Boosts Academic Success in Synchronous Online Instruction

with Suzanne Schriefer, Beth Marie Gooding, Lisa Spieker, and Libby Grimm, Rasmussen College

Finding that critical moment when information literacy instruction has the highest impact with students is a constant challenge for academic librarians. Learn how Rasmussen College librarians partnered with faculty teaching a course experiencing high failure rates. Through a collaboration of faculty, librarians, and Learning Center staff, the students are showing improvement in comprehension and performance. This is attributed to strategically placing focused information literacy instruction in a synchronous online class. Explore the multiple touch points used by the addition of a customized multi-media web page guide that highlights key resources through video tutorials and direct access to course-related library materials.

Google Docs: A Project Kick-off Tool

with Jessica McIntyre, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Quick, malleable, and cost-effective, Google Docs can kick off large, long-term projects. An NHPRC grant project to set up the Archives at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts includes the development of an online, publicly-accessible inventory of exhibitions, cross-referencing Archives files. As an initial step, a Google spreadsheet and form were set up for data entry. The spreadsheet is edited by an administrator and embedded into HTML for user access. Beginning the project in Google allowed us to define and clarify our needs and workflow prior to communicating these to the Museum’s webmaster/markup specialist, who will develop the final database.

Librarian on the Loose

with Peter Bremer, University of Minnesota-Morris

The Librarian on the Loose reference outreach initiative at the University of Minnesota-Morris has been bringing the reference desk to the three different campus locations in a fun and informative way for the past four years. This session will detail the nature of the service provided, the challenges of providing reference outreach on a small liberal arts college, and the rewards offered.

Teaching Legal Literacy Outside the Law Library

with Brian Huffman, Washington County Law Library

What’s the recipe for an effective transliteracy program? Ingredients: information, presenter, technology, audience, public space, publicity. Find a knowledgeable presenter and an eager audience. Locate useful information and online resources through technology. Host a workshop in a public space (public library) and promote the event through various publicity outlets. This method has been tested with legal resources and public libraries.

Treat Yo’ Self

with Amy Springer, College of St. Benedict/S. John’s University

Are you looking for exciting ways to use popular culture in the classroom? Come to this session and “treat yo’ self” to some new techniques for teaching library research. Learn how one librarian used a video clip from NBC’s hit television show Parks and Recreation to teach students how to do library research.

TREC: Youth Literacy Outreach from the Academic Library

with Heather G. James, University of Minnesota-Morris

The TREC (Tutoring, Reading, and Enabling Children) program has recently found a home in the University of Minnesota-Morris Briggs Library. This program builds literacy and other academic and social skills for local children ranging from toddlers to grade 6. This program not only contributes to the community, it diminishes perceived boundaries between the university and the surrounding town by bringing librarians and university tutors out into local schools and events and by bringing kids into the academic library. Similar programs have generally been the domain of the public library, but there are advantages for academic libraries, as well.