Tag: strategic planning

Preparing for (Other Kinds of) Disasters

This guest post is from Garrison Libby, a community college librarian.

When COVID-19 swept the world last year, librarians were forced to adapt their services on the fly. Over the past year, we’ve probably all become very good at disaster planning. However, it’s worth thinking about the disasters that you haven’t planned for, and to begin making preparations for them now.

My institution recently suffered a major technology interruption which led to an extended shutdown of nearly of the college’s online systems: email, online courses, library proxy servers, and nearly everything we need to function, especially during a pandemic. Of course, an outage of that scale paused classes, so access to library resources was the last thing on anyone’s mind. However, it still prompted us to have to consider alternatives as we waited to see what systems would come back online and in what order. There was no guarantee that we would have access to our proxy server when classes resumed, for example, as systems had to return online one by one.

Consider constructing a technology audit as part of your disaster and continuity planning. Review the technology you use, how it’s used, and evaluate potential impacts if you lose access to that technology for an extended period of time. Here are some potential questions to ask yourselves when conducting the audit and developing a technology continuity plan:

  • Do you have alternate contact methods (phone numbers, personal email addresses) for all your staff members? Does anyone maintain this information, and where is it stored?
    • It’s a good idea for managers to have contact information for their staff.
    • Consider maintaining a centralized contact list as well, but ensure that it is kept up to date and accessible.
    • Remember that this is personal information for staff, so do not use their personal contact information except in event of emergency.
  • In a technology outage, how will you communicate updates to your staff?
    • A single text chain with all staff could be unwieldy for libraries with many employees. Communication can be distributed from managers to direct reports, but ensure a clear and consistent message from the top so that staff aren’t getting different or conflicting messages.
  • What technology is locally hosted, and what technology is hosted elsewhere?
    • Inventory your technology and plan for potential outages. We are fortunate that our Springshare LibApps suite was hosted by Springshare, meaning we still had access to LibGuides, LibAnswers, and also LibChat as an emergency staff chat space if necessary.
    • Many of our systems were authenticated using the college login, making them inaccessible during the outage. Can alternative logins be set up? We had both institutional logins and system-specific logins for Springshare, ensuring continued access. The College Google Drive, however, was tied to institutional logins and became inaccessible.
  • What can be done low- or no-tech?
    • Review and update manual check-out procedures for library materials.
    • Can you do reference without access to the library catalog? Do your staff know where popular subject areas are located in the stacks?
  • What alternatives are available for your technology?
    • If your proxy servers go down, can patrons access electronic resources? We are fortunate to be part of a state library consortium, which provided an alternative login that our students could use to access several key databases so that basic research needs could be met.
    • Many libraries are firmly embedded in the Springshare ecosystem. In the event that there is an outage in those systems, do you have alternative options, or can you quickly create emergency alternatives?
    • Are your systems regularly backed up so that they can be restored in the event of data loss?
  • What continuity planning has your institution done?
    • Consult with your IT department and college administration to review their own technology continuity plan. Ensure that your plan aligns with theirs.
    • If your institution does not have a technology continuity plan, encourage them to adopt one.

Just asking these questions alone is not enough. Continuity planning also requires building a robust plan and then ensuring it is reviewed regularly and kept current. A plan you make today may not help if you need it in 5 years and have not adjusted for our constantly changing technology.

The second step is to ensure that the technology continuity plan is also backed up and accessible multiple ways. Consider the 3-2-1 backup plan: Have 3 backups of the plan and key documents available, two of which are stored locally on different mediums (i.e., one on hard drive, one on USB key), and one of which is available via the cloud (Google Drive, college storage, Dropbox, or other options). You will also want multiple staff members to have access to the plan, so that someone will be able to get it. But because such a plan should also have contact information for staff, be sure to keep it secure.

Ideally, a continuity plan is something that you will never actually have to use. However, when an emergency happens, it is good to have the plans ready so that you can shift gears and keep services running as smoothly as possible. Whether it’s a pandemic or a technology outage, you can take actions now to be ready. Because if nothing else, the last year has taught all of us to expect the unexpected and to be prepared for anything.

The Beginning of the Middle

Today is the 5th anniversary of my job as an information literacy librarian, my first full-time library position. Five years: while it’s not all that long — certainly many of my colleagues have much more experience than I do — it seems momentous in some ways. In my previous two careers I had serious reservations about whether to continue down each path by the five year mark, and it’s wonderful to have none of those doubts this time around. Instead this seems like the very beginning of the middle of my career, and feels like a good time for reflection, for both looking back and projecting forward.

The past five years have flown by as I’ve worked on and learned about information literacy and library instruction, my library and institution, the research expectations for the tenure track, and service at my college, university, and beyond. In my first couple of years I spent lots of time engaging with new faculty at my college and new library faculty across my university, and I have to admit that I sort of miss it. I was in a meeting the other day with a Biologist in her first year at the college and her energy and enthusiasm was infectious (pun intended). I see announcements posted about meetings for new or junior faculty and realize somewhat wistfully that’s not me anymore, as I was (happily!) promoted last September.

While I’m a bit nostalgic for the strong camaraderie of the newbie experience, I’ve enjoyed transitioning into the role of a more knowledgeable colleague who (I hope) can offer support. The first few times I was asked for advice by colleagues it was genuinely surprising to me, but it’s less unexpected and more comfortable now. I’m also just about at the halfway mark in a leadership role in a large faculty development grant at my college. I’ve had the opportunity to work with new and seasoned faculty from across the college, and that’s definitely had an impact on my knowledge and self-perception.

This Spring both the college and the library where I work are creating five-year strategic plans. For me the immediate future seems fairly clear: I have two more years until I go up for tenure, I’m in the midst of writing up a big research project, our library instruction team is starting to pilot strategies we hope will help us reach more students with more relevant information literacy instruction. But farther out than that seems less certain. One aspect of being a faculty member that I’m very grateful for is that I have some freedom in considering projects to work on, especially in my own research but also as a librarian. And libraries and higher education are in a constant state of flux, from the introduction of new technologies and tools to the fact that the population we serve is ever-changing as students enter college and progress through their degrees, so certainty may be elusive.

If you’re at the beginning of the middle, do you have a five-year plan for yourself? Have you taken on new responsibilities as you’ve become a more experienced librarian? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Zen and the Art of Information Literacy

Last month marks two years that I’ve been at my job as an Information Literacy Librarian, and I’ve spent some time recently reflecting on how much has changed. There are certainly more students on campus (as at many colleges and universities), which means more bodies in the library, more classes to teach, more questions at the reference desk. My work on several committees has introduced me to colleagues across the college and helped me settle in. I’m much more experienced now as a librarian and an educator, and my teaching reflects that, even as I keep working to improve each semester.

I think the biggest change is that over the past two years I have become much more zen about doing information literacy. In my first semester at my job I read as much as I could get my hands on about library and information literacy instruction: theories, methods, case studies, you name it. I concentrated on articles and books from the past decade or so, but I also read a few older sources like Breivik and Gee’s Information Literacy: Revolution in the Library (1989). I spent lots of time thinking about the best way to do information literacy at my place of work. Given the particular constraints of my library and college, how can we best reach all students? Which are the best strategies and plans for delivering IL: one-shots, many-shots, intensive collaboration with faculty in other departments, train the trainers, course-integrated, credit-bearing courses?

I still plan and strategize (hey, it’s part of my job), but what’s changed for me is that I’ve come to accept the multiplicity of options for information literacy instruction. Just like in so many situations, there isn’t one best way to do it. Methods for integrating IL into the curriculum will necessarily vary by discipline, course, and even student. On the one hand this can seem somewhat chaotic. I know that information literacy is a critical component of a college education, and the need for IL instruction can feel urgent. How can we use several different approaches at once? Won’t we lose focus? And what about the students? Wouldn’t they all benefit from the exact same kind of information literacy instruction?

But it’s important to be realistic. Students, faculty, and courses are different, and what works at one institution might not be feasible at another. Much in the higher ed, library, and information landscape has changed and will continue to change. With so many moving targets, our information literacy plans must be flexible and we must be willing to shift our strategies. Two years ago this seemed like uncertainty to me, but today it feels like a necessary part of my job, and one that I really enjoy. And isn’t one of the great things about being a librarian that it’s never boring?