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.