Category: ACRL News

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Finalizing the “Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education”

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Sara Harrington, Head of Arts and Archives at Ohio University Libraries.

The Task Force is pleased to announce the release of the Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education document. The Task Force revising the “Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators” now called “Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education” announced a call for feedback via ACRLog and the ILI-L listerv. Feedback was submitted via the gmail address set up for this purpose as well as came in-person at the ALA annual poster session presentation in 2015.

The stakeholder community offered robust feedback on the “Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education.”  This input ranged from overarching comments to specific suggestions, and included:

  • Awareness of the fact that hiring institutions will be looking to this document for guidance as position descriptions for teaching librarians are developed
  • Word changes to improve readability and clarity
  • Background information on the quantitative analysis of job posting done before the Task Force’s writing process began
  • Questions and suggestions about the nature and formulation of references to the Framework
  • Questions about how the Task Force engaged in its work
  • Questions and suggestions about the organization and order of the roles
  • Suggestions about the relationships of the roles to each other
  • Suggestions about the revision or expansion of specific strengths statements
  • Suggestions about the relationship of specific strengths to roles and suggestions for additional strengths under particular roles
  • Recommendations to include particular concepts, including innovation, curricula, and hospitality
  • Questions and concerns about the significance of the terminology used in the document, most notably the shift from “instruction librarian” to “teaching librarian” and “skills” to “strengths”

The Task Force made a number of grammatical corrections and clarifications based on feedback, as well as made a range of more substantive changes intended to clarify and strengthen the descriptions of the roles and attendant strengths. The Task Force did retain the terminology “teaching librarian” as well as “roles” and “strengths.”

A Google doc containing feedback can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V4XKtoOf-GQ05YwQaDN9Rwnk0LrDXfzuOlC2LjM-pgs/edit?usp=sharing

After the revision process the document was sent to the Instruction Section Executive Committee and Standards Committee for approval.

The “Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians” is now available at: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/teachinglibrarians

This document will be formally shared via a variety channels in the coming months, including ili-l, the Instruction Section Newsletter, College and Research Libraries News, and other ACRL digital promotion channels of communication.

The Task Force plans to propose an online session for Fall 2017/Winter 2018 on practical applications for implementation of the Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians document including, for example:

  • how a librarian writing position descriptions for teaching librarians might use the language
  • how a coordinator of instruction might plan a professional development session around the document
  • how a librarian might apply the document’s language in collaborative work with a faculty member
  • how several teaching librarians might use the document in their own practice.

The Task Force will be sending out a call for volunteers to participate in the session. Please share your comments for us here, as well.

Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Sara Harrington, Head of Arts and Archives at Ohio University Libraries.

The ACRL Instruction Section charged a Task Force with revising the Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators. On November 2, 2016 the new draft document “Roles and Strengths of Teaching Librarians in Higher Education” was released to the ILI-l listserv for review and comment by stakeholders.

Major changes in the revision include a shift in language from proficiencies to roles and from “instruction librarian” to “teaching librarian,” a structural change from a list to a conceptual model, and a change in focus from skills to strengths needed to thrive in each of the roles. The document is intended to help both clarify roles which may be assumed by a proficient teaching librarian as well as inspire new roles.

Included in the draft is a summary of the Task Force’s charge, the timeline and approach the Task Force followed, a discussion of the contexts framing the draft, and guidelines for intended use.

The document is divided into the following sections:

  • Charge and History
  • Approach
  • Context
  • How the Document was Created
  • Purpose of the Roles
  • Intended Use
  • Roles
  • Bibliography

The Roles Are:

  • Advocate
  • Coordinator
  • Instructional Designer
  • Lifelong Learner
  • Leader
  • Teacher
  • Teaching Partner

Each role is accompanied by a short description of the function and activities exemplified by the role, and a series of strengths demonstrated by the proficient teaching librarian working in that role.

A previous ACRLog post discussed the role of Advocate.

Word, Google doc, and PDF versions of the full draft are available:

The Task Force invites your comments on the draft. Your feedback can be submitted on ACRLog using the comment box below, or you can send an email to: teachinglibrarianroles@gmail.com. (The comment function at each location where the document is posted is not available.)

  1. Write up your comments and use one of the feedback methods listed above.
  2. Comments sent to teachinglibrarianroles@gmail.com will have identifying information redacted to maintain privacy and will be posted to a publicly available Google doc.
  3. Names and email addresses of those sending email to teachinglibrarianroles@gmail.com will not be shared with anyone outside the Task Force.
  4. A narrative summary of comments will also be prepared by the Task Force.

Please submit your comments by December 1, 2016.

The Task Force will then compile the feedback and submit recommendations for revision to the ACRL/IS Executive Committee by Midwinter 2017.

We encourage you to review the document and provide your feedback in order to make the document a truly useful tool for librarians, instruction coordinators, administrators, library school students, and others.

The Task Force hopes to receive constructive response to this draft over the next few weeks. We intend to summarize all comments and share them before everything goes forward to the ACRL/IS Executive Committee.

Thank you!

Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators Revision Task Force Members
Dawn Amsberry, Penn State, Member, dua4@psu.edu
Candice Benjes-Small, Radford University, Member, cbsmall@radford.edu
Sara Harrington, Ohio University, Co-chair harrings@ohio.edu
Sara Miller, Michigan State University, Member and IS Executive Board Liaison, smiller@mail.lib.msu.edu
Courtney Mlinar, Austin Community College, Member, courtney.mlinar@austincc.edu
Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson, West Virginia University, Co-chair, cwilkins@wvu.edu

Update on the Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Sara Harrington, Head of Arts and Archives at Ohio University Libraries.

The Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators are being revised by a Task Force appointed by the Instruction Section Executive Committee. A July 27, 2015 post on the ACRLog described the goals in revising these standards. This post shares the seven new roles that will be included in the revised standards and includes the draft section on the advocate role.

The roles are:

  • Advocate
  • Coordinator
  • Learner
  • Teaching Partner
  • Instructional Designer
  • Leader
  • Teacher

standards-roles

From Amsberry, Dawn and Wilkinson, Carroll Wetzel. Revitalizing the ACRL Standards for Proficiency: Evolving Expertise for Instruction Librarians. Poster Session, Saturday June 27, 2015 San Francisco at the Annual Conference of the American Library Association.

The revised draft Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators are structured in the following way. Each role includes a short description followed by a list of strengths displayed as a part of professional practice that provide evidence for that role.

Here is the draft content for the Advocate role:

ADVOCATE

Advocacy can involve persuasion, activism, encouragement, and support in many forms. An instruction librarian will need to be able to contextually situate information literacy and communicate its value across a range of audiences in the university community.

Strengths:

  1. Advocates for professional development opportunities and other forms of career advancement.
  2. Communicates the value of information literacy to colleagues within the library system.
  3. Partners with faculty to encourage the integration of information literacy within courses and within curricula.
  4. Engages with other campus entities to integrate information literacy into co-curricular activities.
  5. Promotes and advances information literacy framework to library leaders and campus administrators.
  6. Advocate for information literacy in relationship to student success in the context of institutional learning goals or outcomes.

The Task Force is currently completing the full draft of the roles and will share the draft document beginning in January 2016.

Please contact co-chairs Sara Harrington (harrings@ohio.edu) and Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson (cwilkins@wvu.edu) with questions, comments, and feedback.

Revising the Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Sara Harrington, Head of Arts and Archives at Ohio University Libraries.

Your thoughts and feedback are invited!

The Instruction Section has charged a Task Force to Revise the 2007 document “Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators” as part of the Section’s cyclical review of standards.

The work of this Task Force builds on the recommendations of an earlier review task force that recommended that the Standards be revised to:

  • adopt a contextual and holistic approach and wider vision which encompasses the roles and responsibilities of the instruction librarian within the academy
  • bridge the broader context and potential practical applications
  • simplify the document.

Over the coming months, the Task Force will be sharing information about the draft revisions to the Standards via the ILI-L listserv and this blog.  We invite your comments, questions and suggestions at via email to Co-Chairs Sara Harrington (harrings@ohio.edu) and Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson (cwilkins@wvu.edu) or in response to this post.

The Charge of the Revision Task Force is to:
“To update and revise the Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators document in accordance with the recommendations published in the report of the Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinator Review Task Force. The Revision Task Force should solicit comments on drafts of the new document from Instruction Section membership prior to seeking approval from the IS Executive Committee and ACRL Board.”

The Task Force Members are:
Sara Harrington (harrings@ohio.edu) – Co-chair
Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson (cwilkins@wvu.edu) – Co-chair
Dawn Amsberry (dua4@psu.edu)
Sara D. Miller (smiller@mail.lib.msu.edu) member and incoming Executive Committee Liaison
Courtney Mlinar (courtney.mlinar@austincc.edu)
Candice Benjes-Small (cbsmall@radford.edu)
Nikhat Ghouse (ghouse@american.edu) – outgoing Executive Committee Liaison

Yeas, Nays, and Next Steps

I was in the midst of a particularly busy day last Wednesday when the decisions on the ACRL 2013 Conference contributed paper, panel, preconference, and workshop submissions were sent out, so it was a few hours later that I had a chance to catch up on Twitter. Suddenly my feed was full of happy tweets from librarians with accepted conference proposals, and somewhat more melancholy tweets from those who had their proposals turned down this year.

According to ACRL there were 20% more submissions for the 2013 conference across all four formats than for the ACRL 2011 Conference. The acceptance rates were 30% for contributed papers, 23% for panels, 45% for preconferences, and 39% for workshops.

I’m full of conflicting feelings about these conference yeas and nays. I’m delighted that the panel proposal I submitted with two collaborators was accepted, and it’s great to see the yea announcements from other librarians I follow on Twitter. But I was also disappointed to read the nay tweets from many librarians whom I admire. I found myself wondering what their proposals were about and whether they would have been relevant or interesting to me.

While pleased about this year’s yea I’m no stranger to nays: last time around the panel proposal I submitted for the ACRL Conference with several collaborators was rejected. However, my collaborators and I reconsidered our ideas, and in the end we reworked our panel proposal into a poster session submission which was accepted. If you’re thinking about next steps for a proposal that wasn’t accepted, you might want to take a look at some of the alternatives that Steven suggested in a past ACRLog post (retooling and resubmitting as a poster session proposal among them).

And if you didn’t send in a proposal for a paper, panel, or other session last May, remember that there’s still time to submit a proposal for a poster session, cyber zed shed presentation, roundtable discussion, and virtual conference webcast. Those proposals for the ACRL 2013 Conference are due on November 9, 2012.