Archive for 'librarianship'

ACRL was ridiculously amazing this year. I feel energized, affirmed, and hopeful (and completely exhausted and sick since it ended). The programming was so high-quality and relevant that, in most cases, I had at least four options in every time slot on my planner that I wanted to attend. Luckily, ACRL records all the sessions …

When my brain was completely full on Thursday at the ACRL Conference, Jad Abumrad’s keynote felt like a spa for my brain. For those who don’t know, he is the co-host of Radiolab, a very cool and innovative show on NPR, and the recipient of one of those fancy schmancy MacArthur genius grants. Good call …

I’m sure most of you have already heard that the ACRL Board has decided to adopt the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. What I think is more interesting is that they deferred action on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, choosing instead to take a wait-and-see approach. I think this is a …

Update: I’ve been in touch with a Springshare representative who tells me that things like the contextually aware D2L widget from Portland State University will work in LibGuides 2.0 and apparently, the responses we’d received from support were based on hypotheticals (though we’d explicitly sent the link to PSU’s code in our emails to support). …

Teaching is such a solitary thing. Sure, you’re up in front of a bunch of students, and maybe an instructor if you’re doing course-integrated instruction, but the act still feels solitary. We try to make it less so by seeking feedback from instructors and doing assessment, but we rarely get feedback from people who really …

I know it’s been a while since I last posted. I’ve almost written a few posts on the vitriol I’ve been seeing from librarians on social media over the past couple of months, but in the end, I decided it was better not to. All I’ll say is that I expect a lot more tolerance, charitable …

Just gave a fun whirlwind instructional technology talk and I wanted to provide the slides and links below for the attendees (and anyone else who’s interested). Slides: Links: Tools for Point of Need and/or Mobile Instruction Library DIY ARIS QR Codes QR Codes Video Demo QR Code Generators Kaywa QR Stuff QR Code Readers Kaywa Quickmark …

I wanted to write about the Library Assessment Conference as soon as I returned, but unfortunately, life got in the way. I got barely a week and a half before I was set to leave my job and, not surprisingly, there was a lot of wrapping up of projects and getting things to a good …

Way back in 2005, I wrote a post about tenure for librarians in which I argued against it. Since then, I’ve spent six years as a librarian with faculty rank and no tenure and three years as a librarian on the tenure track, and I can say that my feelings against tenure status for librarians has …

We’ve all suspected it. We’ve all talked about it. Some have even written and spoken at conferences about it. But now we have hard evidence that there is incredible variation in terms of the amounts libraries are paying for the same content and that the variation doesn’t come close to relating to FTE or the …

This semester, I’m teaching I new course I developed for San Jose State’s MLIS program entitled “Embedded Librarians/Embedded Libraries: Embedding the Library into the Fabric of Higher Education.” It’s been a pleasure so far because the students are so ridiculously smart, insightful, and engaged that I can’t help but be excited about the future of …

I don’t have all the answers. There, I said it! I’m a pretty smart person who did well in school and has been relatively successful in her career, but I don’t consider myself an “expert” in anything. However, when you teach, write a column for a major magazine in your profession, or even express yourself …

I don’t really think of myself as a victim. I feel exceptionally lucky when I think of the life I’ve had so far. I grew up in an upper middle class family, got a fantastic private liberal arts college education, and am now living the American dream with a family of my own, a house, …

In September, I went to a lecture given by Allison Head of Project Information Literacy fame at a local university. During the lecture, she offered a preview of the research report that would be coming out soon on first-year students. I hadn’t realized until then that none of the other PIL research had examined this …

Over four years ago, I wrote a post about how EBSCO had shut off my institution’s links to all Harvard Business Review articles after we declined their “generous” offer to let us pay to use articles already available through a database we were paying for. At the time that we were asked about this, we …

I’m not a hero. I’m not an open access warrior. I’m not one of those people who would risk their career on the cross of Open Access. I’m not a badass who makes demands of publishers. I ask nicely. I’m on the tenure track and the idea of walking away from an opportunity to publish …

This is just a quick note to say that Library DIY (which I wrote about in a previous post) has been released! I am so very proud of this project. This research tool is still very much in beta, so please feel free to share with me any feedback you might have.

People incorrectly using “big words” has always been one of my pet peeves. When I see a fancy word used incorrectly in a cover letter (and I have seen way too many… we’re librarians people!!!), I cringe. There’s something about it that rubs me the wrong way; like someone is trying to be something they’re …

I’m working with a colleague of mine (Amy Hofer of Threshold Concepts fame) to create a suite of tutorials that are going to be integrated into online University Studies (think General Education) classes. One of the learning objects we plan to create is envisioned as being called “good for what?” Students tend to look at …

I’ve been wanting to write about managing people for a long time. This post has been marinating in my head for years and a few things managed to knock it out of me. The first was this post from Wayne Bivens-Tatum that talks about how much his institution (and specific people within) enabled his recent …