Author: Hailley Fargo

Preparing for #ACRL2019

The time has come, our slides and posters are hopefully published online, our bags are (mostly) packed, preconferences are about to begin, and we are ready to be in Cleveland this week. It seems a little wild to me that it’s time for ACRL again. In 2017, this ended up being a pretty pivotal conference for me as a new professional to the field. In 2017, learned a lot in Baltimore, met the ladies who I would co-found The Librarian Parlor with, and met others who I consider good colleagues today. So needless to say, I’m excited to be in Ohio catching up with colleagues, learning about new programs and initiatives, and meeting new librarians.

However, as much as I’m excited about ACRL, I also know this can be an overwhelming conference. There are so many sessions, things to do, and a city to explore. It’s great to have so many choices, but also can feel like too much all at once. With that in mind, I wanted to bring together some tips and tricks for making the most of this conference as well as highlight some great ways to meet new folks.

Sessions

With so many panels, papers, roundtables, posters, and lighting talks, it can be hard to decide on where to go and what to attend. Here are a way fews to think about choosing your sessions:

  • Before the conference, I like to take a look at the schedule, mark any and all sessions I’m interested in, and then choose a few that I will attend, no matter what. These might be sessions my colleagues or friends are presenting at, a topic I’m really interested in, or something I’d like to learn more about. Having a few concrete sessions helps to create an outline for each day and then the rest, is up in the air, and based on how I’m feeling and who I run into.
  • Create some learning outcomes for what you’d like to accomplish and learn about at the conference. Use the learning outcomes to guide what sessions you choose.
  • Experienced conference go-ers recommend choosing one session/activity for the morning, one for the afternoon, and then setting aside some time to meet up with colleagues you do not see on a regular basis.
  • Attend the First-Time Attendee Orientation on Wednesday evening to learn more about ACRL and get a sense of what you might like to attend later in the week.

If you want some guidance on which sessions, we have had a few folks put together some lists of related sessions. These can be great ways to create your own theme to the conference, or find people who are interested in similar areas of librarianship.

Now, I know looking at all those sessions makes you realize there is so much you will miss. It’s important to remember that you won’t make it to everything (and that’s okay). Some recommend attending sessions for things you do not know much about, in order to make the most of your time at ACRL. For all those sessions you miss (or want to know more about), you can review any contributed papers on ACRL’s website, download slides and handouts from the online conference program, and send an email to presenters to learn more. You’ll see what you’ll see at ACRL, but that doesn’t mean the conversation has to stop once you leave Cleveland.  

Twitter & sharing resources

At a conference like #ACRL2019, Twitter can be a great way to learn more about what’s happening, connect with other colleagues, and share resources. Some folks will live tweet the conference, and others will tweet out their slides, surveys to fill out, and questions for the general #ACRL2019 community. It’s definitely worth following the hashtag and contributing tweets. The hashtag can also help you decide what sessions to attend. Along with Twitter, sometimes folks will create digital community notes to gather insight from sessions and share resources. For example, LibParlor has a shared community notes document where we’ll discuss a few sessions throughout the conference. These can also be great documents to return to once the conference is over.

Snacks, hydration, and breaks

Fun fact about me: I’m very pro snacks. I would highly recommend having a few snacks tucked away that you can have throughout the conference. We all know that conferences like ACRL can take a lot out of you. Knowing this, it’s important to take breaks and stay hydrated. Sometimes you just need to go to a quiet corner of the convention center, or take a little walk outside. Trust me, you’ll feel better when you do.

Outside the conference

Personally, I think some of the most memorable times at a conference isn’t necessarily in the sessions themselves, but during all the time before, between, and after sessions. ACRL hosts both an exhibit reception (Wednesday) and a conference reception (Friday, 8 PM, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame), which is high-energy and a nice way to celebrate the end of the conference. Beyond the ACRL reception, there are a variety of other social events. ACRL has organized a dine around for Thursday evening, some iSchools host a get together for their past and current students, and interest groups might put something together near the convention center. All of these events can be opportunities to meet new people, or connect with colleagues. I will shout out two Thursday evening events:

  • WOC + LIB Social Hour: Last week, a great new blog launched to showcase women of color in librarianship. Join co-founders LaQuanda Onyemth and Lorin Jackson to discuss future collaborations with the blog.
  • LibParlor Meet & Greet: Join me and the rest of the LibParlor Editorial Team at ACRL. Learn more about the blog, discuss all things research, and discover ways to get involved!

Other tips

I know I’m not the only person who has put together a list of tips and tricks for making it through conferences like ACRL. Take a dive into these posts here at ACRLog and over at Hack Library School. If you have more tips or questions, feel free to comment below.

Safe travels to all and I hope to see some of you at ACRL. Oh, and with spring weather in Ohio, it’s always a good idea to pack an umbrella!

Featured image by DJ Johnson on Unsplash

Supporting the other side

So far in my research career, I’ve put a lot of stock, energy, and passion around the benefits of hiring and supporting student employment in the library. It’s the topic that gets me most fired up at conferences, the thing I’ll tweet about until I can’t tweet anymore, and one part of my job that I keep coming back to, regardless of my job title. I believe in the potential of undergraduate employees to be crucial part of the library. I believe that if you set the bar high, undergraduates will rise to the occasion. But recently, I’ve realized that in that belief, I had forgotten about the other side: the role of the supervisor.

A few months ago, I worked with a colleague to put together a landscape survey around student employment in our libraries. The goal was to discover who in the library was supervising students and if we could find areas of synergy. We asked questions around hiring, on-boarding, continual training, and barriers to success. As we reviewed the answers, the one I remember the most clearly mentioned that as a supervisor, they felt unprepared because the rules and policies around hiring, training, and supporting student employees were unclear. It’s one of those things they never give you a manual for, you’re just suppose to know. And of course, any manual that might exist is in pieces, scattered throughout HR websites, the library’s intranet pages, and library legends told to you by your colleagues. This stuff isn’t clear or transparent and often requires lots of time to figure out. This was the first moment where I thought, “Okay, building a program is more than just for the students. The supervisors also are an audience to consider.”

Recently, I’ve been reminded of this fact when I was leading an informational session on our internship program. In the session, as we talked about the components of the program, including a new community of practice group I’m building, one participant asked, “Will the supervisors also meet regularly, just like the students?”

After a small beat, I nodded. “Of course.” I was reminded of the survey and once again reminded of my own assumptions around supervision. In reflecting on that situation, I think I assume that people who had studente employees for a long time just knew how to do in a meaningful way. But it’s becoming more clear that just because you have student employees, doesn’t mean that you know everything or feel supported.

And upon even further reflection, I realized that since I started trying to create some program structures for our interns, I’ve done my share of complaining about how I never hear from some interns and that I can’t seem to get through to some of their supervisors. I often chalk it up to structural issues, or a desire for an official announcement to the library about my role with our interns. However, the more I think about this angle, the more I realize part of the problem is that while I logically understand having an intern takes a ton of time and energy, I’m not valuing that idea in practice. I’m not recognizing or finding ways to support my colleagues who do this work. In other aspects of my job, I talk about how I am there to support my colleagues who do student engagement, and this also applies to student employees and their supervisors. This support can happens in many ways — from having intern community of practice meetings to getting the supervisors together to let them know they’re not alone in this. I’m a coordinator and that means both for students and for my colleagues.

For every program that we create to support our student employees, we are also responsible for creating the necessary structures and support for our supervisors. If we want unified programs, complimentary training modules, and a shared vision for student employment in the libraries, we have to create the network for our supervisors. This lines up so nicely with George Kuh’s definition of student engagement, where institutions must be willing to provides the resources and support for these opportunities. If we want meaningful internships or purposeful part-time employment, we have to be willing to provide the support (through professional development, regular meetings, and honest conversations) to our supervisors. Neither the students nor supervisors can do this work alone and both groups need to feel supported in this endeavor.

So where do I go from here? I’m trying to be more intentional and start thinking of how I can help build those structures in my role. I’ve started using the word “support” in talking to supervisors about my role with our interns. I’ll probably add monthly intern supervisor meetings to my calendar this fall, and start to note down obstacles that this group might face (and how we can problem solve together). As the moderator for both groups (students and supervisors), I’m in the best position to provide feedback to either group and translate each other’s needs to one another.  

At your library, how do you (or others) support the supervisors who oversee your student employees? Do supervisors meet on a regular basis? Are they given chances for professional development or ways to gain new supervisory skills? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Featured image by Riccardo Bresciani from Pexels

Celebrating friendships in academia

I first saw this tweet in a direct message between myself, Chelsea, and Charissa, after we got back from a little writing weekend in Austin. It seemed so appropriate that would see that tweet after spending four days eating breakfast tacos, running through the rain, and writing our LibParlor ACRL paper.

In the following days, I couldn’t stop thinking about that tweet. So, I want to spend this post creating a little space to talk about and celebrate friendships in academia. Spoiler alert: the goal of this post is to confirm that yes, these friendships are important. For me, my friendships in academia are also bound up in the fact they almost exclusively female friendships, so this post also seems apt with Galentine’s Day approaching.  

When I think about who knows the most about my day-to-day, it’s friends who are either are at the institution with me, or at another academic library somewhere in the United States. The common thread that  pulls us together is how we, as professionals, navigate the ecosystem of higher education. What we’ve learned through our friendship is that despite being in different places, departments, or stages within our careers, there is still a lot we share in common as we figure out how to work within and disrupt this system. And from that common thread, our friendship expands, into the rest of our lives.  

Last year I read Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship by Kayleen Schaefer. I couldn’t put it down, mainly because Kayleen’s thesis of the importance and recognition of female friendship really resonated with me. In seeing that tweet about friendship in academia, I immediately thought of Kayleen’s book. I think a lot of the conclusions she comes to could be transposed into an academic context.  

For example, Kayleen states that, “We’re reshaping the idea of what our public support systems are supposed to look like and what they can be” (6) through female friendships. Both in graduate school and now in my job at Penn State, I look to my gals to celebrate successes and work through challenges. When I first “became” a librarian, I use to get frustrated that my family didn’t understand what I was doing. I had been taught that a close family meant they would understand all the intricacies of my job. I finally realized that my family wouldn’t get why I did outreach, would not understand the full extent to which I tried to build community in an academic library, and would forever to fuzzy with what tenure was and how I was trying to achieve it. That is okay. Instead, I realized it was more meaningful to turn to my friends who are also in this academic space. They are my support system; they keep me in check, talk through ideas, cheer me on, and show up when I need them. And in being each other’s support system, we all find ways to show up for each other; if they shine, I shine.  

To bring these ideas together, I do want to share one friendship in academia story. When I first started at Penn State, I was lonely. I didn’t work typical, 9-5 hours or even the normal Monday-Friday work schedule. In the beginning months, as I stayed true to my hours, I missed opportunities to get to know other librarians who were in my department and across the library. However, as I got acquainted with the library during those off hours, I also got to know my closest friend at the library: Rachel. Rachel works in our Lending and Circulation department and in those first months, she taught me so much about the library. I could count on her to help me with just about anything — from looping her employees in on how to get a hold of me, to understanding the ins and outs of closing the library, and more. It was nice to have a gal working similiar hours. Eventually we our work friendship became just a good old friendship. While my job doesn’t overlap as much with hers anymore, we still find ways to collaborate and since she has just as much passion as I do around training student employees, we have found our own ways to make our jobs cross paths. If something is bothering me at work, you know she’s the one I’ll send a Slack message to or hope that I see her when I go pick up a book at the desk. Our friendship is one big part of my work-life narrative and I know my thoughts about the library would be different if we weren’t friends.     

And Rachel’s wasn’t the only story that came to mind when I saw that tweet; I’ve got a whole little collection of friendship meet cutes stories. I feel lucky to know so many wonderful women, doing great things in academia and I’m glad I get to be there to watch it all unfold. In the beginning chapter of Text Me When You Get Home, Kayleen says, “I look to my friends for the kind of support that comes from wanting only to be good to each other”(5). This idea feels important for academic friendships, especially when we are in an ecosystem that can be competitive, especially between women. Female friendships within academia can be a way we can subvert that competition aspect. Sure, at times we might be in competition, but these friendships remind us that at the end of the day, we want the best for one another and need to show up for our friends. Having good friends who can help you through academia does count and does make a difference. So, what does friendship in academia mean to you? How do you celebrate these friendships? Let’s keep this conversation going.  

 

Chatting with Penn State’s Student Engagement & Outreach Intern

This school year myself and our Outreach Coordinator had the opportunity to hire a Student Engagement & Outreach intern. We had been wanting to have an intern for a while, both to help us plan programming and also to give us some insight into the world of a Penn State undergraduate. In the work we do with student engagement and outreach, we talk about how we are student-focused and student-centered and want to collaborate with other folks who feel the same way. It only seemed appropriate to have an intern working with us and helping us stay true to being student-centered. We were so lucky to have found Lily, who has a ton of enthusiasm for the job and the library, and is interested in librarianship. I thought it would be neat to start 2019 off with a little interview with her for the blog and hear about her thoughts on working in the library so far.

Hailley: Hello Lily, thanks so much for doing an interview with ACRLog. Can you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

A picture of Lily standing next to a poster
Lily at an internship showcase, fall 2018

Lily: Hi! I’m a Junior at Penn State studying History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I hope to head right to grad school after undergrad and get my degree in Library Science! In my (tragically infrequent) free time I like running and knitting.

Hailley: Excellent! It definitely has been fun talking about librarianship with you throughout this internship. Now that the readers know you a little bit, can you tell them what sort of things have you been up to as our Student Engagement & Outreach intern?

Lily: So, I’ve been doing a whole variety of things. Broadly, I work with academic and non-academic organizations on campus to plan events that include library resources. In the fall I planned an LGBTQ+ Movie Night in collaboration with the LGBTQA Student Resource Center; before the movie, we showed a Powerpoint of scanned images and files I had found in our Special Collections Library on local queer history. I also facilitated a feminist book club with a student club. Aside from event planning, I’m also helping to develop and reimagine the Leisure Reading Collection by adding books that are independently published and/or deal with more “diverse” themes, like LGBTQ+ and cultural studies.

Hailley: You have definitely kept yourself busy and have accomplished a lot in your first semester as our intern. In the time you’ve been our intern, what’s something you have learned (about the library or about student engagement and outreach, or both)?

Lily: I’ve learned that, sometimes, working in large organizations can be frustrating. There are lots of things and people you have to work with and through to do pretty much anything. Large organizations, like this library, can be really neat though. There are lots of people with lots of expertise in lots of things, and it’s cool being surrounded by that.

Hailley: Ah yes, you’re exactly right about the hoops we have to jump through, but also the great people we can work with. Sort of along those lines, what has been the most surprising thing you’ve learned while in this internship?

Lily: I guess I was kind of surprised to see how much personality and passion lives in the library. Often, people think about the library as a static and boring building, useful only for book borrowing; during my time here, though, I’ve met so many interesting and driven people who do a lot more than scan books and shush students. It has, in a way, solidified my interest in librarianship, because I can see myself, someone who is passionate and driven, working somewhere like this library.

Hailley: Yes, there is always a lot happening the library, whether you realize it or not. So Lily, to wrap this interview up, can you leave the readers with a preview for what you’re working on in 2019?

Lily: I’m super excited to be planning a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Wiki Edit-a-thon, set to take place this March. I get to use my knowledge in two areas, the Library and Women’s Studies, and work with  variety of people, planning something I’m really passionate about; the goal is to “diversify” the subjects and editors of Wikipedia pages. I’ve already made some professor connections and everyone involved seems to be really excited. I’m so thankful that I can get this kind of experience at my internship, because not only is this event really awesome, it’s also the perfect way for me to try my hand at librarianship.

Hailley: Yes, the Edit-a-thon should be great, along with all the other things you’ll be up to. Thanks for chatting with me for the ACRLog!

Leisure reading collections in the academic library

Here’s my honest opinion: I wasn’t a big fan of collection development during graduate school. When I was supervising the residence halls libraries at Illinois, putting new books in my virtual cart was always at the bottom of my to-do list. I didn’t have a good system of finding new books and once I found something cool, usually one of my colleagues had it in their cart. For me, I was always more interested in using my time to support the student employees or plan programming with residence life than I was in spending my time building a collection. The work of collection development felt like a chore.

Needless to say I was jazzed when I started at Penn State and had zero collection development responsibilities. I could go back to just me requesting the books for myself I heard about on podcasts or read in the many email newsletters I subscribed to. I “escaped” collection development for two years and this fall, the Leisure Reading  collection in the Pattee & Paterno Libraries fell on to my plate of responsibilities.

Leisure reading collections (also known as recreational reading, browsing collection, or popular reading collections) were first started in academic libraries in the 1920s and 30s, when a core value of academic librarians was to promote reading. These collections became less prevalent in the 1940s and 50s, when war impacted library budgets and people found it less important to have these collections (Dewan, 2010). It wasn’t until the 1990s that academic libraries started to create leisure reading collections again and publish on the importance of these collections. These collections continue to get pushback from the academic library world; some consider the collection not within the mission of an academic library; others talk of tight budgets and space limitations (Alsop, 2007); there is even an assumption that faculty, staff, and students do not have or any interest in reading for leisure (Van Fleet, 2003). However, more recent studies have shown the benefits of reading for leisure, including a correlation with higher academic achievement (National Endowment for the Arts, 2004), promotion of critical thinking, and improvement of reading comprehension and developing one’s own writing voice (Rathe & Blankenship, 2006; Trott & Elliott, 2007). But just like anything done well, building this sort of collection takes time, energy, and resources.

The decision to put the Leisure Reading collection on my work plate was strategic — pivot the collection to take a student engagement approach, leverage the talents and energy of our student engagement intern and part time student employee to help with the vision and maintenance of the collection, and tie the collection more closely with our outreach work in order think about how we highlight and promote this collection. During the first few weeks where the collection was now “mine,” I drew inspiration from UCLA’s Powell Library, who worked with students and student clubs in a variety of ways to help build a student-driven collection (Glassman, Lee, Salomon, & Worsham, 2017). I felt like I was sort of stumbling through the dark those first few weeks, just trying to understand what the collection was, and where we could take it. Luckily, I wasn’t tackling this project alone — the Leisure Reading team is up to five: 3 full-time library employees, and two student employees.

I definitely took for granted the system that the residence halls libraries had set up for collection development. As a small system, we didn’t have too many other people to work with in order to keep the collection up and running. Here at Penn State, there’s 10+ people or groups interacting and supporting the Leisure Reading collection in some way. This meant that any changes we decided to make, had to be communicate clearly and often to all those involved. These folks also gave us some of the best feedback on the collection; their sometimes daily interaction really helped the new team wrap our heads around the current situation and see potential ways forward that would make the collection easier to find and use for both staff and patrons.

Our collection is mostly leased; something I hadn’t really considered before. In doing some research about recreational reading collections in academic libraries, I learned that academic libraries have been talking about leased collections since at least 1976 (Cushman) and people are interested in the pros and cons of having this type of collection, especially when considering if these popular books are “worthy” to keep for a long time (Odess-Harnish, 2002). Part of our lease agreement is that we get to keep a percentage of the books we lease, giving a new option to the research already out there about leased collections. Our monthly weeding gives us the chance to think about what we should keep and starts to give us a better sense of how our patrons are using this collection.

A big challenge that the Leisure Reading team tackled in the first few months was wayfinding and discoverability. Our collection is shelved in the Library of Congress classification, which can make it confusing to figure out where the new book by Phoebe Robinson or Tana French is going to be. As Pauline Dewan says so succinctly, “The Library of Congress classification is not an effective scheme for browsing fiction” (2010, p. 44). Our two student employees helping with the collection learned first hand how difficult the classification system can be when creating new signage to help people discover new items in this collection. But, we are working on it — trying things knowing they might fail and also trying to get as much feedback as we can from the people actively using the collection. The collection is constantly a work in progress.

As we look towards 2019, there are big plans on the horizon for this collection. Our spring will be devoted to tying the collection more closely to programming, making a stronger connection between our leisure reading and viewing (DVD) collection, and assessing if the things we are doing are actually impacting circulation and patrons who use the collection. The past several months, I’ve come to love this collection; it’s tough and challenging but it’s fun to collaborate with others and try to build a dynamic, usable, interesting collection.

Do you have a leisure reading collection in your library? Do you help maintain the collection? If you are in charge of this collection, what are some challenges you face and what are exciting elements of this sort of collection in an academic library?

References:

Alsop, J. (2007). Bridget Jones Meets Mr. Darcy: Challenges of Contemporary Fiction. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33(5), 581–585. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2007.05.004

Cushman, R. C. (1976). Lease Plans– A New Lease On Life For Libraries? Journal of Academic Librarianship, 2(1), 15–19.

Dewan, P. (2010). Why Your Academic Library Needs a Popular Reading Collection Now More Than Ever. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 17(1), 44–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691310903584775

Van Fleet, C. (2003). Popular Fiction Collections in Academic and Public Libraries. The Acquisitions Librarian, 15(29), 63–85. https://doi.org/10.1300/J101v15n29_07

Glassman, J., Lee, S., Salomon, D., & Worsham, D. (2017). Community Collections: Nurturing Student Curators. In S. Arnold-Garza & C. Tomlinson (Eds.), Students Lead the Library: The Importance of Student Contributions to the Academic Library (pp. 77–92). Chicago, IL: ACRL.

National Endowment for the Arts. (2004). Reading at risk: A survey of literacy reading in America. Retrieved from https://www.arts.gov/publications/reading-risk-survey-literary-reading-america-0

Odess-Harnish, K. (2002). Making Sense of Leased Popular Literature Collections. Collection Management, 27(2), 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1300/J105v27n02_06

Rathe, B., & Blankenship, L. (2006). Recreational Reading Collections in Academic Libraries. Collection Management, 30(2), 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1300/J105v30n02_06

Trott, B., & Elliott, J. (2007). Academic Libraries and Extracurricular Reading Promotion. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 46(3), 34–43. https://doi.org/10.5860/rusq.46n3.34