student engagement

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

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

Navigating uncharted territory: Short Edition at Penn State

So, you might have heard of a machine that disenspers short stories. You’ll find these dispensers at airports, hospitals, gig cities, malls, and community spaces. With a press of a button, you can print off 1, 3, or 5 minute short stories or poetry. These dispensers are made by Short Edition, a company based in France whose mission is to “propel literature” and share short stories and poetry with as many people as possible. Their machines have been featured stories at Mental Floss, LitHub, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

There definitely is something novel about the machines; I’m actually writing this post while sitting near one in our library. Penn State got several dispensers in spring 2017 and PLA just finished up their Courage writing contest, and I can only assume some more libraries will be getting their own dispensers in the next several years. I love watching students approach the dispenser, some not quite sure what they are all about. They press the button and the machine whirls a bit, gearing up to print the story. It spits the story out, the five minute stories always my favorite to watch because it’s always longer than you’d expect. They smile when they pull it out of the dispenser, folding it carefully while they walk away. My favorite comment to hear is, “Can you actually read that story in one minute?”

Short Edition started in 2011 and the company created their dispensers in 2015. Libraries have gravitated towards these dispensers and the mission behind the company, we seem like a natural fit. When Penn State first got our dispensers, they were fun machines we had in our library and in spaces across campus. But we wanted to do more than just have students print out stories; we wanted to build a program that could showcase student, faculty, and staff writing. I became part of the group tasked with building this program in fall 2017. In the past year, I have learned a lot — about Short Edition, the creative writing scene at University Park and the campuses, and how to take a fuzzy vision for a program and turn it into something a bit more defined.

I got involved because our administration had felt strongly there should be students involved with the editorial process and naturally, the Student Engagement Librarian knows some students. Other than some loose guidelines from the Editorial Board at Short Edition, we really had the chance to create what we wanted. While the machines themselves are “easy” (just plug them in and let them print), there is much more beneath the surface, and at the complimentary website, where the magic really happens in converting community content into something you can print off on the dispensers. There was definitely a learning curve and when we’ve got a contest running, I email my contacts at Short Edition at least once a week. We’re currently running our second writing contest, around the theme of Lost & Found. Running these contests seem like the best way to get content onto our website and our dispensers — having a broad, general theme (and prize money) seems to attract more writers than a rolling submission process. Sometimes, I have gone up to the group of students printing off stories and ask, “Did you know you can submit your own stories to this dispenser?” The students often chuckle and shake their heads, “I just like reading the stories, I don’t write” they respond. We’ve got a little hurdle right now — finding folks who not only enjoy the machines, but also want their stories and poems to be the ones getting printed out.

The other aspect about this project is now that we have some consistency around contests, our Editorial Board and guidelines, we are adding other elements to the program. Community members in Centre county can now add their content to our website and dispensers, we are adding dispensers to some of our campuses across the state of Pennsylvania, and working locally with the high school to see what their program could look like. It’s a lot of juggling and deciding what is urgent, what decisions will be strategic, and what elements we can hold off on until we are more ready. In that way, this program is elastic, willing to bend in what direction we think is best, at the time.

In all of this, when you chart uncharted territory, people look to you for advice or ways forward. Since our Penn State Short Edition project has taken off, I’ve received emails from a whole host of librarians, all interested in what we’re up to. I send along documentation, neatly packaged in a Box folder, explaining some of the unique elements of our program. In these email exchanges, I receive my favorite compliment, “Wow, this is thorough.” I’m curious to see how many other academic libraries invest in Short Edition in the next few years. Maybe, in the future, we can find a way to connect them, in a contest or through our Editorial Boards.

The biggest thing I’ve learned since taking on this project is that you sometimes just have to do the thing, even if you’re not 100% sure it will work. I’m someone who craves feedback and seeks a lot of permission first; spearheading the Short Edition project has definitely challenged that side of me. I’ve gotten a little better at just doing the thing and being confident in whatever decision I’ve decided to make. There’s so much room to grow, experiment, and take this project to another level so onward we go, charting new territory and propelling literature forward.

Note: If you’re interested in seeing some of our documentation for Short Edition or learning more, feel free to send me an email at hmf14@psu.edu.

One of Today’s Lucky Ten Thousand

If you aren’t familiar with the webcomic XKCD, go take a look now. I have been a huge fan for years, and find his comics relevant to many areas of life. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about this one:

XKCD, “Ten Thousand,” https://xkcd.com/1053/

As a reference librarian, I get a lot of the same questions day in and day out. (I know that a lot of you can relate.) How do I find a book on my topic? How does the printing system work? Can you help me connect my laptop to the Wi-Fi here? Where is the bathroom? How does citation work? It happens in the classroom, too. How do I narrow these results down to scholarly journals only? What do I do if it says “no full text available”? Can I put a book on hold from off campus?

I’m going to take a moment to clarify that today, I’m not talking about the questions like, “I wasn’t paying attention; can you show us how you got to that page again?” I’m also not talking about the same person showing up every single day to ask for help logging into their online homework system but they don’t remember their own username and password, or where they wrote that information down when you helped them yesterday. I’m only talking about the questions that we answer over and over for different people every day, week, semester, and year.

Sometimes, I used to get frustrated or annoyed by having to answer, “Where is the classroom?” twenty times in a row for each individual student attending library instruction that hour, or showing different students how to find books over and over on the same three argument paper topics all week. And I see the same thing happen to my colleagues, especially during this time of semester, when midterms are gearing up and every other student we see is working on one of a handful of similar assignments.

But then I remembered this XKCD comic, and it reminded me of a few things.

One: We are here to teach people the things they don’t already know. If students already knew how to find resources or write citations or even where the classroom is, what would they need me for at the reference desk?

Two: Everyone has to learn a thing before they know it. That sounds really obvious, doesn’t it? To dismissively think, “You’re in college, you should know this!” is to do your students a disservice.* It reminds me of all the times I’ve said I haven’t seen a particular movie, and someone reacts with an overly dramatic gasp and, “But you’re in your thirties! How have you never seen The Godfather?” It makes me feel guilty, like I’ve avoided that movie on purpose, instead of just not being shown the movie or being prompted to go find it and sit down and watch it. I know it exists (like a student knows the library exists), and I’m aware of several of the more famous scenes (like a student knows that libraries can help students with research); I just haven’t watched it myself (like a student who hasn’t used library resources or asked a question at the reference desk). A better reaction, in my opinion, is, “You haven’t seen The Godfather? I highly recommend it. Here, borrow my copy, or let’s watch it together this weekend.” Or, in our case, “You haven’t used the databases? They’re really great, and I think they make it easier to find what you’re looking for than using Google Scholar. Here, let me show you where to find them and how they work.”

And that’s the attitude I try to conjure up in myself three times per semester: week one, midterms, and finals. Because the student standing in front of me needs to find a journal article and does not yet know about the wonders of EBSCOhost, and they are one of today’s lucky ten thousand.

*Side note: At some point, yes, you have to be able to say, “Didn’t you ever have to write a paper before this point in your education?” But if they haven’t, it’s not exactly their fault. I do not present this as an excuse for learned helplessness or not doing the work. We just need to remember that we don’t necessarily know a student’s background or experience when they first approach the reference desk. My college has a lot of non-traditional returning students who may not have done this kind of work in a long time (and during the intervening years, the majority of the process has changed), a lot of students from underprivileged schools (who may have been focused on different priorities from citation and evaluating sources), and a lot of students who are not high academic achievers, and just want to fulfill degree requirements so they can learn a trade, so their English paper is not the high priority it is to some other students, who may want to transfer to a four-year university and major in literature. This “one of today’s lucky ten thousand” concept does rely heavily on giving each student the benefit of the doubt, and not being discouraged by the ones who do ask the “I didn’t listen to what you just said; can you repeat it verbatim?” questions.