People, and their labor, are the core of academic libraries. This work can be exciting, monotonous, high stakes, invisible, precarious, invigorating, and exhausting. Like other forms of labor, work in academic libraries has changed dramatically since the advent of the pandemic, and continues to change.
This conference is an opportunity to explore the different ways in which we engage with our work. How does your library ensure that others understand and value the labor that goes into providing library services and maintaining library collections? How does your institution value and engage all the workers in your library, including student workers? How do you work during a time of social and political anxiety that has direct ramifications for library workers and library patrons? What does it mean to ensure that your libraries are more equitable places in a time of “DEI work”? What strategies do you use to manage your workload and protect your personal and professional boundaries? What work are you proud of and why?
ACRL-OR is committed to supporting our academic, public library, and K-12 colleagues, and the principles protected by Academic Freedom and Intellectual Freedom. We also acknowledge that libraries—our collections and services—are not neutral, and we strive to uphold these principles while best serving students and patrons who identify as LGBTQIA+ and Black, Indigenous, and people of color. To this end, we recognize our professional principles can and will change.
The ACRL-OR Board endorses the following interpretations of Academic Freedom and Intellectual Freedom to be used as guidance for Oregon Academic Librarians:
It is the goal of academic libraries for library workers to build collections, services, spaces, and policies in accessible and just ways.
Academic library work carries with it the responsibility to support and uphold the professional research and teaching standards of the academic disciplines supported at the college or university.
Academic library work carries with it the responsibility to promote and increase critical information literacy.
Academic library work cannot be politically neutral.
Hate speech is not an acceptable form of discourse and, therefore, should not be protected by academic libraries using Intellectual Freedom principles.
Given this understanding of Intellectual Freedom and professional responsibilities, ACRL-OR commits to the following:
Advocate for these principles at the state level with the legislature and Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC).
Provide active opposition to challenges of Academic Freedom and Intellectual Freedom principles.
Offer professional development opportunities to our community on Academic Freedom and Intellectual Freedom.
Act in solidarity with and provide mutual support to our colleagues experiencing challenges and/or harassment based on their professional efforts.
Advocate for collaborative efforts with our state and national professional organizations to strengthen our field’s understanding and defense of Academic Freedom and Intellectual Freedom principles.
Due to low registration numbers, the ACRL-OR board decided to cancel our in-person meeting in Menucha.
However, we still want to offer everyone a chance to come together and share some of the amazing work that’s being done across our state. In place of the in-person conference, we will be offering two free virtual meetings, an online lightning talk and poster session from 10-11 am on October 28 and a social and skill sharing session from 4-6 pm on November 18.
Register for the October 28 session by clicking this link. More information to come about the November 18 social.
Lightning Talks and Poster topics include the following:
“Making the Most of your MLIS Intern” lightning talk presented by Amy Stanforth
“Having Fun with Wicked Problems: The Use of Digital Escape Rooms to Explore Complex Challenges” lightning talk presented by Erika Bailey
“400 First-Year Students. Five Librarians. Three Classrooms. 50 Minutes. One Day!” lightning talk presented by Eli Gandour-Rood
“More Than Just a Place to Study: Creating a Popular Fiction Collection in an Academic Library” poster presented by Julie Babka
“Academic Libraries and Health Literacy Outreach: Inter-Departmental Collaborations to Promote Community Health” poster presented by Candise Branum
“Library Intentions: Connection through Exploring Shared Values” poster presented by Sara DeWaaay
“How Students Use TikTok to Search for Information and What It Means For Your Teaching” lightning talk presented by Elizabeth Brookbank
The Future of University Libraries Discussion Group invites you to join us via Zoom on May 19, 2022 from 2 to 3:15 p.m. (EDT) for a conversation about the future of academic libraries post-pandemic. The group will encourage participants to consider questions such as these:
How are academic libraries responding to the need to change?
Are we inherently reactive, or are we ready to transform as needed to meet the future demands of our communities?
What questions should we be answering now to anticipate the work of academic libraries in the next 5-10 years?
Discussion topics might include:
Future plans for public services
Are we reactive, proactive, or pre-emptive?
Transformations to library spaces and services emerging from justice, equity, diversity, accessibility, and inclusion (JEDAI) work
Increasing online content and collections
Please bring your thoughts, questions, insights, and experiences to share with others! This conversation will be moderated by members of the ACRL ULS Future of University Libraries Discussion Group. Register today.
Talk title:Black Lives Matter in Academic Spaces: Three Lessons in Critical Literacy, Dr. Vershawn Young
Talk description: This talk describes ways that teachers and the public in both Canada and USA have misappropriated the linguistic concept of code-switching as it applies to both Black language and Standard language speakers. The effect of such misappropriation harms rather than assists (as it is intended) Black language speakers in their pursuit of academic and professional discourse. Misappropriated code-switching harms Black language users socially, culturally, and psychologically and further contributes to state sanctioned brutality against Black bodies. Drawing from the fields of linguistics, socio-cultural education, communication, and cultural studies, the researcher presents three calls to action, framed as solutions to the cultural conflict about Black language use in classrooms, boardrooms, and technical and professional environments.
I am sincerely honored to have been selected as the recipient of the Professional Development Scholarship. Thank you for your generosity, which has allowed me to obtain a Diversity and Inclusion Officer Certification with Cornell University.
This certification added an enormous value to my professional development and will benefit our library community for years to come.
The focus of this certification is to prepare leaders to communicate inclusion standards to others within their workgroup and organizations. The process of fostering equity diversity, inclusion and antiracism in our organizations involves much more than our willingness, it requires a deep knowledge of our key organizational inclusion needs, and the development of strong engagement strategies to move us forward.
Thank you again for your thoughtful and generous gift.
Marci Ramiro-Jenkins
Public Librarian/Latino Community Liaison, McMinnville Public Library
by Liliya K. Benz, Special Projects Processing Archivist
The University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce that access to previously unavailable material related to prominent three Oregon landscape architects is now available. The project “Creating Pathways to Oregon Historic Landscape Architectural Collections” was completed during this last year. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon.
The newly available material documents the working lives of the superintendent of parks in Ashland, Oregon, Chester E. Corry; the first woman to be elected fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), Barbara Fealy; and the first women working in landscape architecture in Oregon, Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver. The collections contain hundreds of newly processed landscape architectural designs, plans, and drawings.
Landscape designs by Chester E. Corry for Phase III of an extension development of Lithia Park, Ashland, Oregon, entitled the “Proposed Root Park Extension Project,” circa 1960s.
Special Collections and University Archives processed 47.1 linear feet of archival material never before accessible to the public, created remotely accessible digital surrogates of select large-format drawings and plans, and stabilized collection materials for long-term storage and preservation.
Landscape designs by Barbara Fealy in unstable rolls before preservation, and designs preserved in appropriately sized housing awaiting transport to storage.
Description and requesting options for materials are available on the Special Collections and University Archives website (https://scua.uoregon.edu/). Digitally accessible materials are available on the University of Oregon Libraries’ digital repository, Oregon Digital (https://oregondigital.org/catalog).
Mark your calendars for the upcoming ACRL WA/OR Joint Fall Summit (what in previous years we might have referred to as “Pack Forest”)! ACRL WA will host a virtual joint summit from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Friday, November 5, 2021.
The Summit Committee is currently accepting proposals for presentations connected to the summit theme of Old Spaces, New Spaces: Reimagining the Boundaries through Wednesday, July 14.
The ballots are now open for the 2021-22 ACRL-OR Board. Positions to be elected include the vice-president/president elect and 3 members-at-large positions.
In order to vote, you will need to log into your OLA account. If you need assistance with username or password, or other form difficulties, contact ola@olaweb.org. If you have any questions about the election or want to become more involved in ACRL-OR, contact acrlor@olaweb.org.
Thank you for your participation!
The ACRL-OR Nominating Committee Emily Ford, Vice President – President Elect Michele Burke Kirsten Hostetler
The Spring 2021 ACRL-OR Professional Development Scholarship has been awarded to Samantha Geary. Geary, who works in the children’s room at McMinnville Public Library, will be using her scholarship to attend the virtual LIOLA (Leadership Institute) in late July.
Geary is an MLIS online student with the University of Alabama, expecting to graduate in December 2021. She’s looking forward to making connections with library staff across the state and for opportunities for self-reflection and growth.
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship is designed to allow ACRL-OR members the chance to apply for awards to attend conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities multiple times throughout the year. You can learn more about the many scholarship opportunities we provide on the ACRL-OR Scholarships page.
2021 ACRL-Oregon Scholarship Committee: Candise Branum, ACRL-OR Past President David Isaak, Member at Large Heidi Senior, Private Colleges Representative Amy Stanforth, Member at Large
Registration is still open for the 15th Annual Oregon Information Literacy Summit, a virtual series of free lightning talk-style sessions on topics of interest to our IL community. More information including session abstracts can be found on the ILAGO website. Please register for each session separately, following the links below each session.
Registration is open to any person, so register soon! The sessions will be recorded. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session. Questions about the sessions can be directed to ilago.chair@gmail.com
New! Social Time
Join colleagues 4 pm Thursday, May 20. The ILAGO Social falls between two great days of The 2021 Oregon IL Summit. Let’s get together to catch up and celebrate another year of good work and learning. All are welcome!
Earlier this year the OLA EDI Antiracism Committee surveyed Oregon librarians about the work their libraries were doing to engage with EDI and antiracism. During this webinar we’ll present those survey findings, how they pertain to academic libraries in Oregon, and discuss next steps for our ACRL-OR community to continue this work. We will also discuss the OLA EDI and Antiracism Toolkit, which was published this year.
The webinar will be 10 am PST on May 19. Click here to register.
Presented by EDI and Antiracism Committee Co-Chair Alma Plasencia and EDI and Antiracism Committee members Melisa Anderson and Emily Ford.
The 2021 ACRL-OR Professional Development Scholarships have been awarded to Tracy Scharn and Marci Ramiro-Jenkins.
Tracy Scharn, who works as an Instruction and Outreach Librarian at the Oregon Institute of Technology, used her scholarship to attend the ACRL National Conference. Recently having started a new position at OIT, Scharn is looking forward to strengthening her skills in instruction, as well as learning new strategies around outreach, assessment, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Marci Ramiro-Jenkins works as a Reference Librarian/Latino Community Liaison at McMinnville Public Library, as well as chairing the Oregon Library Association’s EDI Anti Racism Committee. She will be using this scholarship to help fund her online certification in Diversity & Inclusion from Cornell University. As Ramiro-Jenkins points out, we lack “specialized professionals on EDI and Antiracism…I believe having at least one librarian collaborating with OLA and The State Library of Oregon, who possess the right set of credentials, will foster the creation of new initiatives on EDI and Antiracism for the whole library community.”
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship is designed to allow ACRL-OR members the chance to apply for awards to attend conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities multiple times throughout the year. You can learn more about the many scholarship opportunities we provide on the ACRL-OR Scholarships page.
The ACRL-Oregon Scholarship Committee Candise Branum, ACRL-OR Past President David Isaak, Member at Large Heidi Senior, Private Colleges Representative Amy Stanforth, Member at Large
Registration is now open for the 15th Annual Oregon Information Literacy Summit, a free virtual series of lightning talk-style sessions on topics of interest to our IL community. More information including session abstracts can be found on the ILAGO website. Please use the links below each session to register for each separately.
1-2 p.m. Tuesday, May 18
Andrew Wang and Kate Thornhill — Functional and Subject Specialists Collaborating in the Remote Classroom
Kate Thornhill — Talking Stories: An Open Pedagogy Collaboration and Partnership
Registration is open to any person, so register soon! The sessions will be recorded. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session.
The ACRL-OR Board stands with all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders against acts of white supremacy targeting Asians and Pacific Islander Americans. We are utterly heartbroken by the murder of eight people in the Atlanta area, six of whom were Asian and immigrant women. We stand in grief and solidarity with those who have experienced “gendered racial violence and racialized sexual violence.” We stand in community with APANO, APALA, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Chinese American Library Association, and the many other affinity groups of AAPI workers in libraries and beyond.
From 2020-21, there have been more than 3,800 incidents reported to the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center. As hate crimes targeting Asian American communities are on the rise, we also recognize that this is not an isolated moment in time. From the Chinese Exclusion Act and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, to outrageous stereotypes in the media ridiculing and dehumanizing Asian Americans, the United States has a long history of anti-Asian violence. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Asian American Studies and Gender and Women’s studies departments articulated this history:
“The recent rise in anti-Asian violence against all ages and genders in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic has a deep-seated history in U.S. culture, white supremacy, and harmful stereotypes of Asian migrants as carriers of disease and contagion. The former president fueled this hatred by repeatedly calling the coronavirus the “China virus,” and “kung flu,” and his words are echoed by millions of Americans even as reported anti-Asian violence rose 150% in 2020. But this latest incident of violence demands that we account for the specific vulnerabilities of Asian migrants who are targeted while working at massage parlors and spas, Asian migrants who are often poor and sometimes undocumented, Asian migrants who are subject to sexualized violence whether or not they traded sex because of an enduring animus toward sex workers, Asian women, and immigrants. After all, it is the fantasized figure of the migrant Asian sex worker who is the foundation of U.S. anti-immigration law. The first immigration restriction legislation, the Page Act of 1875, prohibited the migration of all Chinese women, described as “lewd” and “immoral,” on the assumption that all Chinese women engaged in sex work. A century of U.S. military operations in Asia and the Pacific oversaw the expansion of sex trades around bases, and reinforced the non-accountability for U.S. soldiers’ racialized sexual violence toward all Asian women, from Okinawa to Saigon to Manila. Asian and Asian immigrant women have been particularly vulnerable to multiple forms of violence within these longer histories of U.S. militarism and law.”
There is no room for hate in libraries. Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, sinophobia, systematic, intentional and intersectional violence, and other forms of white supremacy will not be tolerated in our communities or in our libraries. We encourage and support all academic libraries and academic library workers in their efforts to eliminate white supremacy in their communities.
How can academic libraries and library workers in Oregon respond?
Check in with your community of coworkers and patrons. In the middle of a pandemic, state-sanctioned murder of BIPOC, the grief of COVID-related losses, environmental disaster upon environmental disaster, the stresses of systemic racism we already endure, and now these murders, our community members need each others’ care, solidarity, and support more than ever.
Interrupt macro and micro aggressions. Commit to speaking up anytime you witness anti-Asian sentiments or other types of racism—in your family, among your friends, with your colleagues and patrons, and out in public.
Support the organizing work of AAPI-led groups and community-based solutions. Engage with racial equity work and build community solidarity by donating and volunteering at:
Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian and Migrant Sex workers, organizing transnationally.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice- Atlanta, first and only nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) in Georgia and the Southeast.
Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, a statewide, grassroots organization, uniting Asians and Pacific Islanders to achieve social justice, using collective strengths to advance equity through empowering, organizing and advocating with API communities.
The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) mission is to build collective power with AAPI women and girls to gain full agency over our lives, our families, and our communities. Using a reproductive justice framework, NAPAWF elevates AAPI women and girls to impact policy and drive systemic change in the United States.
18 Million Rising (18MR) brings Asian American communities together to reimagine Asian American identity with nuance, specificity, and power.
Distribute materials against hate in your library and to your patrons.
ACRL-OR is delighted to announce another round of Professional Development Scholarship awards aimed to support e-learning opportunities and virtual conference attendance. The Professional Development Scholarship applications are open and we are currently soliciting applications with an extended deadline of March 26th.
This scholarship is now open to all Oregon library workers and those who hope to work in Oregon libraries in the future. We strongly encourage people to apply. Essay questions are only required for scholarship requests over $100. Preference will be given to current ACRL-OR members and applicants who have not received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-OR in the last year. If you have already registered for an upcoming conference like OnlineNW, OLA, or ACRL, you can use the scholarship to be reimbursed.
OCOM Library is delighted to announce the launch of the Kam Wah Chung Medical Archive. This historical digital archive is the result of the 2019-20 project, Kam Wah Chung: A Historical Archive of Chinese Medicine in Rural Oregon, which is a collaboration between OCOM and the Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site in John Day, Oregon. The project was supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA Grant), administered by the State Library of Oregon.
The Kam Wah Chung Medical Archive captures a unique snapshot of Chinese medicine’s earliest practice in rural Oregon. In the late 1800s, two Chinese immigrants, Ing “Doc” Hay and Lung On, purchased the Kam Wah Chung building in the mining community of John Day, Oregon, where the two operated a Chinese apothecary and a general store until Hay’s death in 1952. The museum is well known for its treasure trove of artifacts detailing the Chinese immigrant experience in the American West. The Kam Wah Chung Medical Archive focuses on medical objects that are found in the museum collection. The digital archive provides digitized images and descriptions of Chinese medical herbs, Doc Hay’s handwritten formula prescriptions, Chinese patent medicine products, and books and pharmacy catalogs from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Translation has been done over the years by OCOM students and faculty, and is ongoing.
The Kam Wah Chung Medical Archive, now available to the public, is an excellent resource to those concerned with Oregon history, the Chinese immigrant experience in the American West, or traditional Chinese medicine and herbal practice. The Archive can be accessed atkwc.ocom.edu.
If you have questions about the Kam Wah Chung Medical Archive, please contact Candise Branum, OCOM’s Director of Library Services, at cbranum@ocom.edu.
You are invited to submit proprosals for the 15th Annual Oregon Information Literacy Summit. This virtual series of events will be held over the last two weeks of May and is sponsored by ILAGO, the Information Literacy Advisory Group of Oregon. MLS/MLIS graduate student presentations are welcome!
Each separately scheduled 60-minute session will have one or more 15-minute presentations on a topic, followed by group discussion with attendees.
Possible presentation topics include:
Critical assessment
Dual credit and IL teaching
Information literacy and data literacy or digital scholarship
The project started when Team Lead, Sara Robertson, saw a need for a metacognitive self-assessment for information literacy. When used thoughtfully, a metacognitive assessment approach has the potential to increase equity by positioning students as experts on their own learning. The ILRT is not an assessment that generates a score or a grade, it invites people to reflect on how they approach and use information and prompts them to consider what constitutes information literacy.
The ILRT contains a curated list of statements derived from threshold concepts articulated in the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Ed. A select group of information literacy librarians and writing instructors volunteered to be expert reviewers, and the team refined the original statements in light of their input. As part of three years of research and testing, the instrument was used in Fall 2019 with students in 20 foundational writing courses at Portland Community College, as well as several first-year-experience courses, also at PCC.
When testing was complete, the team worked with two graphic design classes and from their work selected an ILRT design by Sari Field.
The ILRT team invites discussions about the opportunities and challenges presented by teaching with self-reflection and is interested in sharing thoughts and ideas for using the Information Literacy Reflection Tool in instruction. They will be posting an all-text version of the ILRT on the website, along with a user manual that includes technical information about the development. They will also make the documents that map the statements to the ACRL frames available.
The ILRT research team is:
Sara Robertson, Team Lead, Faculty Librarian at Portland Community College
Michele Burke, Faculty Librarian at Chemeketa Community College
Kim Olson-Charles, Head of Library Public Services: Reference, Instruction and Access Services at University of Western States
Reed Mueller, Program Director for Undergraduate Psychology and Professor at Bushnell University
ACRL-OR is delighted to announce another round of Professional Development Scholarships aimed to support E-Learning opportunities and virtual conference attendance. The Professional Development Scholarship applications are currently open and are due on February 28. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-OR Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward remote conferences, remote workshops, E-Learning courses, E-Learning seminars, or other learning opportunities appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration costs incurred by the applicant.
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing are eligible to apply. Additionally, preference will be given to applicants who
are from diverse cultural ethnic backgrounds and/or historically marginalized groups;
are employed at institutions or in positions serving under-represented groups;
have not previously been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship;
are employed at a community or technical college or at a smaller or rural institution with limited funding.
Who is not eligible?
Non ACRL-OR members or individuals who have already been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship in the current fiscal year are not eligible to receive this award.
How will applications be evaluated?
Evaluation rubrics are available on our FAQs page.
How do I apply?
Click here for the online application form. The deadline to apply is Sunday, February 28.
This toolkit was developed by a group of librarians interested in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion work and Antiracism advocacy. Marci Ramiro-Jenkins, Reference Librarian/Latino Community Liaison at McMinnville Public Library, served as EDI and Antiracism chair and Alma Plasencia, Adult Services Librarian/Bibliotecaria Para Adultos at Salem Public Library, served as EDI and Antiracism co-chair.
An introduction to the toolkit was provided by the PLD Director in January 2021.
Kerri Goergen-Doll accepted an appointment in January as Interim Associate University Librarian at Oregon State University Libraries and Press. She will continue to provide high-level oversight of the Resource Acquisition and Sharing Department within the library while she is serving in this interim role.
Goergen-Doll joined OSU Libraries and Press in 2005 as an On-Call Reference Librarian. In 2008, she took over management of the Inter-Library Loan unit, and in 2012 she became the manager of the Resource Acquisition and Sharing unit. At that time, RAS focused on resource sharing and acquisitions.
In 2014, Goergen-Doll became the Resource Acquisition and Sharing Director overseeing acquisitions, cataloging, collection development, collection maintenance and resource sharing. She has an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas, an MBA in Organizational Leadership from Oregon State University and a B.S. in Biology from Western Oregon University.
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know who would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections. Plus the deadline has been extended!
To nominate yourself, a colleague, or an employee, submit the online nomination form. The nomination period was extended and will close at midnight on May 10, 2021.
Eligibility
Vice-President/President Elect must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon and ACRL national
Member-at-Large candidates must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon
Scholarship Interest
The board is considering ways to increase participation of BIPOC individuals as well as individuals for whom service is a financial barrier. Please indicate on the nomination form if you would need a scholarship to subsidize association memberships in order to participate.
Questions or Need Assistance with the Nomination Process?
ACRL’s Professional Development Committee is hosting a free presentation 11 am (PST) on Friday, February 12 via Zoom. As an instructional librarian, this is something that I’ve been struggling with and I’m really excited to hear about how others have been handling ideological differences in critical library instruction! Presentation details and registration information can be found below.
Critical Information Literacy in Ideologically Pluralistic Classrooms: Exploring Challenges and Possibilities
Presenters: Andrea Baer, Rowan University; Sara Miller, Michigan State University; Claudia Vergara, Michigan State University; Gabe Ording, Michigan State University
Time: 1-2 pm (CT) Friday, February 12, 2021
Register here Sponsored by the ACRL ULS Professional Development Committee
About: Critical pedagogies that invite students to reflect on their personal and shared experiences and to engage with social, political, and ethical issues have greatly enriched information literacy education, particularly in the past decade. Critical pedagogies can also present unique challenges that tend to receive less attention. Critical pedagogy discourse often works from the assumption that students share a similar political ideology and similar goals with the instructor, but what happens when this is not the case? How can librarians and educators in ideologically pluralistic classrooms cultivate positive climates and encourage critical thinking and critical consciousness? Presenters on this panel (two librarians and two science faculty members who collaborate closely with one of the librarian presenters) will share their experiences with teaching in ideologically pluralistic classrooms.
Andrea Baer, a librarian since 2011 and a teacher since 2002, is the History and Political Science Librarian at Rowan University. Andrea’s work in libraries and education is informed by her prior teaching experience in writing, literature, and language and by her interests in writing studies, critical pedagogy, and reflective practice. Sara Miller is the Librarian for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning Initiatives at Michigan State University, partnering with the general education (Integrative Studies) programs for information literacy integration. Her interests include faculty development, reflective practice, and critical pedagogy
Dr. Claudia Vergara is an academic specialist in curricular design and evaluation and a teacher. She directs the program evaluation and assessment of student learning in the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science (CISGS) at Michigan State University. Her scholarly interests focus on the improvement of STEM teaching and learning processes in higher education. Dr. Vergara has expertise in educational research methods, program evaluation and curricular development including assessment of student learning. She is actively involved in the CISGS curricular reform efforts including collaborations with various institutional partners.
Gabe Ording is a faculty member in the Department of Entomology and is the Director of the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science (CISGS) at Michigan State University. In this capacity he provides leadership in shaping the future of general education at MSU through coordinated efforts with academic, administrative, and student success stakeholders across campus. These efforts include helping to change the culture of teaching general education courses at MSU to include assessment of student learning through formalized collaborative programmatic assessment, and then applying best pedagogical practice to improve student achievement.
If you can’t make this session but wish to view a recording later, please register so that you’ll receive an email that includes a link to the video of the presentation. Please direct questions and concerns to Laura Gariepy or Sam Harlow, co-chairs of the ACRL ULS Professional Development Committee. A full list of the committee’s past and future programs are available here.
The Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) is hosting a speaker series, Thinking Critically About Research and Power, beginning January 27 and ending February 24. The lineup looks really amazing, highlighting the voices of BIPOC women on the subject of integrating anti-racist and anti-colonial practices into research methodology.
One of the keynote speakers will be ACRL-OR Vice President and Portland State University librarian Emily Ford, who will be presenting “From Story to Research: Storying Human Experience Narratives” 12-1 pm on February 4.
The IRDL Scholars Speaker Series is designed to shine a spotlight on voices and ideas that challenge traditional ways of conducting research. It surveys various topics, including specific research methods and critiques of processes associated with western social science approaches, with the intention of inspiring research explicitly rooted in social justice. As librarians, educators, and researchers, we welcome this opportunity to reflect and incorporate what we learn from these speakers into our own research efforts, so that our methodologies integrate anti-racist and anti-colonial practices.
The series is coordinated by a working group of IRDL Scholars. Each speaker session is free to attend via Zoom; anyone interested is welcome.
Join ACRL-OR for the free webinar, “Free Film Studies Resources for Academic Libraries,” at 11 am PST Friday, January 29. The webinar will be presented by Elizabeth Peterson, University of Oregon. See below for a full description.
Registration is open to all library staff, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon by clicking this link.
The webinar will be uploaded to our YouTube channel following the presentation. All registrants will receive an emailed link to the recording as well.
PRESENTATION DETAILS:
Free Film Studies Resources for Academic Libraries
This presentation will introduce a variety of freely available resources for U.S. film studies. Participants will learn about finding credible background information on films, digital collections of primary sources, open access scholarly journals, and streaming video.
Presenter: Elizabeth Peterson is a Humanities Librarian and subject specialist for Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature, and Theater Arts at the University of Oregon, where she has worked since 2006. She has a MLIS is from San Jose State University, a M.A. in English/Film Studies from the University of Oregon, and a B.A. in Comparative Literature from University of California, Santa Cruz. She is co-creator and editor of the Oregon Theater Project (otp.uoregon.edu), a digital humanities project that documents the history of film exhibition and moviegoing in Oregon.
Questions about our webinars can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Rachel Bridgewater at acrlor@olaweb.org.
The ACRL-Oregon Board is currently investigating how we can most help people who work in Oregon academic libraries and we are seeking feedback from y’all.
First, we have started a document of resources with the intent of helping one another quickly find best practices, guidance from other academic libraries and training opportunities to get us through this. Feel free to use the resources in the document, and add links if you found something helpful that you’d like to share.
Sharing resources seemed like a good first step, but what next? In order to guide us in how to best advocate and help academic library staff in Oregon, we need to hear from you. What are some pending questions you have about academic librarianship and the pandemic? What do you need help with? Are there things you’ve done at your library that have worked well for you? Or things that did NOT work that you want to warn others against? We want to hear about it! So please let us know what you are doing / what you need by filling out this survey.
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a unique round of professional development scholarships aimed to support e-learning opportunities. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer multiple awards of up to $175. Applications are open for the E-Learning Professional Development Scholarship and we are currently soliciting applications until November 27. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks of the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward remote conferences, remote workshops, e-learning courses, e-learning seminars, or other learning opportunities appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration costs incurred by the applicant.
The following list contains examples of how past recipients have used their awards:
Sergio Lopez, from Mt. Hood Community College, completed a beginner JavaScript course to support the creation of interactive learning materials.
Stephanie Michel, from the University of Portland, completed a Mindfulness for Reduced Stress course from Library Juice Academy.
Meredith Farkus, from Portland Community College, completed a Mindfulness for Reduced Stress course from Library Juice Academy.
Dan Kelly, from the International School, completed an Online Instructional Design and Delivery course from Library Juice Academy.
SD DeWaay, from Clackamas Community College, completed a Techniques for Student Engagement in Library Instruction course from Library Juice Academy.
Kate Williams, from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, completed the course LRM: A New Foundation for RDA and the RDA Toolkit from Library Juice Academy.
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.
Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
In awarding scholarships, preference will be given to:
Applicants from diverse cultural/ethnic backgrounds and/or historically marginalized groups;
Applicants employed at institutions or in positions serving under-represented groups;
Applicants who have not previously been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship;
Applicants employed at community or technical colleges or applicants employed at smaller or rural institutions with limited funding.
Who is not eligible?
Non ACRL-Oregon members.
Individuals who have already been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship in the current fiscal year.
How will applications be evaluated?
Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.
The following is a statement from the OLA EDI Anti-Racism Special Committee. ACRL-Oregon endorses this statement.
Dear colleagues,
The social events we have witnessed in the past months triggered a series of new statements, training, and resources offered by professionals of different fields and institutions to reaffirm their commitment with Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
At this point, there is no doubt we have all heard of EDI, some of us have noticed these three letters have been misused in articles, statements, documents, policies, guidelines, terms and conditions. Unfortunately this acronym has become the new institutional jargon. The adversities BIPOC and members of minority segments in our society face on a daily basis are not a brand new event, not a trend, and not a tendency. As such, the OLA EDI Antiracism Committee believes we, as library professionals, need to refrain from using the letters EDI without understanding what each one of these letters represent in its social context.
Let’s not allow the common sense of equality destroy the fight for EQUITY. EQUITY means that we uplift and empower those who have been historically and are currently oppressed by dominant culture. Treating everyone “the same” is a weak and false statement, especially when there are still human beings from different races, classes, gender and individuals with disabilities who are not seen, heard, served, protected, and respected as they deserve. Creating library programs for “all” does not affirm or reiterate your library’s commitment to EDI. Creating programs that uplift and empower folks who have not been seen, heard, protected, and respected as they deserve, does.
Hiring different races, ethnicities, and gender-identity variances, does not show commitment to DIVERSITY, especially, if we still refuse or are hesitant to empower these individuals, if we do not invest in them, if we do not give them opportunities to thrive and advance in their careers. “Diversifying” means applying variation. We need to go above and beyond that definition in order to affirm our commitment with DIVERSITY. When we say we support diversity, we need to reject racist and xenophobic ideas on immigration policies, we need to be comfortable being part of uncomfortable conversations, we need to hear without being defensive, we need to advocate for causes that might even work against your own personal secure position (in the racist structure) to benefit those who are oppressed.
Being “included” is a matter of consideration. INCLUSION is much more than that, it is the duty to evaluate and recognize when laws, processes, terms, conditions and daily reality as a whole need to be audited, adjusted, adapted and sometimes completely changed in order to benefit people who are disadvantaged, even if that means fighting for a benefit in which you will never partake or a right you will never need to exercise.
For those of us excited about this statement, let us not forget, if you are NOT racist, it does not mean you are anti-racist. An anti-racist person will disagree with statements such as “this is not my problem”. An anti-racism advocate, recognizes privilege without feeling victimized or attacked. A person who is anti-racist, will not speak ill or participate in conversations to dismiss, demoralize and demonize other human beings based on their status in this country or the color of their skin. Anti-racist people do not passionately defend themselves stating they are not racists, on the contrary, they take time to examine their own biases and they educate themselves in order to become true allies.
Please understand we are not criticizing anybody’s attempt to be better and do better when it comes to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. We are bringing to your attention that these words need to be used in the right context so they can be as effective as they are meant to be.
We are excited to continue our work on OLA’s behalf to develop resources and tools for the Association, its members, and the Oregon Library community at large that will support EDI and anti-racism work. The committee is actively developing an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism toolkit. This toolkit is an educational resource that will help guide libraries in reflecting on their institutional practices and policies, and assist in guiding them to move forward. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with the OLA Board and with the Association, and anticipate a long-lasting relationship that will help move Oregon libraries forward with EDI and Anti-racism work.
The Oregon Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries/Academic Division of the Oregon Library Association (ACRL-OR) stands in solidarity with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) and REFORMA Oregon in condemning the systematic social injustices and violence endured by Black people and all people of color. We support the principles of the Black Lives Matter movement and pledge our support to library workers and the communities we serve by advocating for the eradication of racial injustice and White supremacy in our profession. We recognize the pervasive role of both implicit and explicit racism in denying equal rights and equitable access, and commit to working toward becoming an anti-racist chapter that confronts, deconstructs, and dismantles the systems, policies, and procedures that reify racism and anti-blackness.
In order to effect change within our organization, the ACRL-OR Board commits to:
Exploring ways to support academic library staff in Oregon in doing anti-racist work, including providing professional development and staff training opportunities that counteract anti-blackness, racism, and White supremacy in librarianship;
Assessing our internal processes and procedures and implementing systems that operationalize racial equity;
Deconstructing the Whiteness of our professional organization by actively recruiting BIPOC library staff for leadership positions, and by working towards identifying and dismantling the barriers that prevent BIPOC library staff from engaging in organizational leadership;
Ensuring that an ACRL-OR Board member is represented on (and ACRL-OR is accountable to) the OLA’s Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) Taskforce.
We recommend that academic library staff commit to:
Engaging in an equity audit of current policies, processes, and procedures that have been built upon and support a legacy of White supremacy, and then work to rectify or dismantle these policies and procedures;
Advocating for anti-racist actions within our institutions;
Ensuring that patrons from historically marginalized groups feel welcomed and included in the spaces we manage (both in our libraries and our classrooms);
Providing public programming and displays that further anti-racist causes;
Pursuing professional development and staff training opportunities that counteract racism;
Making resource purchasing decisions using an equity lens;
Incorporating inclusive design and anti-racist pedagogical principles in teaching.
As a first-time Board member and first-time President, the past year has been quite a handful. Even with the tremendous challenges that 2020 has thrown our way, I have really and truly enjoyed my time as your ACRL-Oregon President. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate with a group of compassionate and engaged individuals, people who are dedicated to making libraries more equitable. So with my Presidential term coming to a close, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the bright spots from ACRL-Oregon leadership over the past year.
One of the primary goals of ACRL-Oregon is advocacy work. This past year, our first major challenge came in the face of academic libraries being asked to remain open during the first major wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, ACRL-OR created a public statement in support of academic libraries protecting our staff by closing our doors, including writing a letter to HECC. One thing that the Board has recently been pondering is how we can best support library staff who are experiencing COVID-19 related setbacks, and what that support system could look like. We started a Slack channel for academic librarians to share resources and ideas, and published the “How We Work During the Pandemic” series for the blog, but if people have other ideas about what this support could look like, please email me!
In addition to ad-hoc advocacy work, ACRL-Oregon also expanded our webinar offerings to one free webinar every other month. With the cancellation of the Joint Conference at Menucha, we decided to extend our online educational opportunities this summer and into fall, including reaching out to people who were slated to present at the cancelled OLA Conference. We’ve also updated our website to include a space dedicated to ACRL National webinars, with explicit instructions for local members on how to take advantage of viewing these webinars for free.
(Speaking of our website, we’ve also been working on some critical updates. We know: it is ugly as sin. It’s also not accessible, and that is a serious problem. We are putting the finishing touches on our updated template, and are hoping to debut our new website this fall.)
Finally, the Board developed a few new coordinator positions. We now have a membership coordinator (focused on recruiting new members as well as retaining and engaging current members), a blog content lead (who collaborates with the Communications Coordinator to ensure create an editorial process for blog content), and a representative to the newly created OLA Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Taskforce. We are hoping these positions will help us to build a framework in ACRL-OR that will ensure that our policies are equitable, and that our group is moving towards being actively anti-racist.
So… yeah. Even though this year has been challenging, we are still getting it done. We are all figuring out how to work safely, and trying to support one another during COVID-19. While surviving a pandemic, we are also doing the uncomfortable and necessary work of investigating and dismantling White supremacy at our organizations. All of this work is exhausting, and we all have to think carefully how to best balance our mental and physical health with this necessary work. But I’m also excited about the possibilities, as we are starting to see real changes. Many schools are either disarming campus security or removing police presence completely, and there is a momentum for organizations to move beyond lip-service and to commit to creating systemic changes that benefit not just our White and cisgendered staff and community members. With remote learning, COVID safety, and budget cuts, it is easy for people (especially White people) to deprioritize racial and social justice work, but now is absolutely the time to keep your foot on the gas.
As I enter my term as the Past President, I want to thank Meredith Farkas for both her leadership and friendship — she has served as both a mentor and a facilitator during my time on the Board, and I truly appreciate her passion for making the profession better. I am so excited to work with Rachel Bridgewater as the incoming President, Emily Ford as our Vice President, and the rest of our new and existing Board members in continuing to serve the academic library community and move forward in making our field more equitable.
The ACRL-Oregon Board is proud to award this year’s ACRL-Oregon Award for Excellence to two excellent projects: Writing (Pacific Northwest) African American History into Wikipedia and the OLA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion/Anti-Racism Task Force. The ACRL-Oregon Award for Excellence is given to recognize a project that demonstrates excellence in the field by significantly improving Oregon academic libraries or librarianship. The Award for Excellence Committee uses a rubric to judge the projects, and both winning projects received exactly the same excellent score.
We are thrilled to recognize two projects that represent efforts to center BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) history in our region and the needs of BIPOC workers in our profession:
The Writing (Pacific Northwest) African American History into Wikipedia team recognized an information gap within Wikipedia related to African American history, especially for the Pacific Northwest. Librarians at Oregon State University organized Wikipedia Editathons to make this history more visible. As a result, they have not only increased access to information about Pacific Northwest African American history, but they have also trained new editors who can continue this work. They have held two Editathons and have had participation from students enrolled in OSU courses as well as community members. Overall the Editathons demonstrate a commitment to social justice by addressing Wikipedia’s well-documented racial bias and offer a valuable model for librarians and archivists to enact change. OSU Librarian Laurie Bridges led this effort along with a team that included OSU librarians Diana Park and Tiah Edmunson-Morton. This project was also written about in an OLA Quarterly article as part of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion issue in Fall 2019.
The OLA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion/Anti-Racism Task Force was charged by the Oregon Library Association Board in Fall 2019 with developing an EDI plan for the organization. The Task Force, which focused on anti-racism as its primary focus, presented its recommendations in Spring 2020 which were adopted by the OLA Board and have influenced the planning of the Oregon Association of School Librarians as well as ACRL-Oregon. According to Task Force Co-Chair, Marci Ramiro-Jenkins of the McMinnville Public Library, “this project will help with the implementation of anti-racist best practices, will promote education and guidance for librarians and library staff in regards to EDI and anti-racism best practices, will advocate for support for librarians of color when it comes to emotional labor, microaggressions and racial battle fatigue, and will improve the retention of library staff and patrons from underrepresented groups.” Ramiro-Jenkins shares this award with co-Chair Martín Blasco of Washington County Cooperative Library Services, Meredith Farkas of Portland Community College Library (who serves on the award committee and recused herself from the voting), Ayn Frazee of Portland Public Schools, Danielle Jones of Multnomah County Library, Max Macias of Portland Community College, Lisa Taylor of Happy Valley Library, and Alisa Williams of Multnomah County Library.
Both project leads will receive a plaque commemorating the award and will be recognized at the OLA Annual Conference’s awards ceremony.
ACRL-OR Award for Excellence Committee
Arlene Weible Candise Branum Katherine Donaldson Meredith Farkas
With the cancellation of the ACRL-OR/WA Joint Conference this year, ACRL-Oregon is organizing a series of free programming for the academic library community. Our first session, Big Little Learning: Lightning Talks and Poster Presentations, will take place next Friday, August 7th from 10-12 PST. There is a whole slate of presentations scheduled, including:
Small Scale IR for Community Colleges
#researchspeeddate: Think/Pair/Share for Online & Hybrid Courses
I bought a laptop: Connecting real-life experiences to Library research in First-Year Seminar
Changing Policies for Changing Times Team Science: A Question of Support for Undergraduate Research
Co-CREATE Your Class: Fostering Student Agency and Inquiry in Academic Literacies
Libros for Oregon – Collections Connect Communities
See below for full descriptions of the scheduled presentations.
Registration is open to any library staff person, but we are limited to 100 live attendees, so register soon!
The session will be recorded and made available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the event.
Questions about our webinars can be sent to Candise Branum, ACRL-Oregon President, at acrlor@olaweb.org.
PRESENTATION DETAILS:
Small Scale IR for Community Colleges
Presenter: Rowena McKernan (Whatcom Commuity College) Abstract: We’ve recently built and deployed an Omeka-S institutional repository and want to share some insights into how to make this possible even for small and rural community colleges.
#researchspeeddate: Think/Pair/Share for Online & Hybrid Courses
Presenter: Chelsea Nesvig (UW Bothell/Cascadia College) Abstract: Think/pair/share is an activity librarians and instructors regularly use in their teaching while students are present in a classroom. It offers opportunities for students to contemplate their answer to a question or prompt and discuss it with a classmate before sharing it with the whole classroom. Students benefit from sharing their thoughts and ideas with just one person before they are asked to share with the whole class. But what about in an online or hybrid classroom? Students are likely to complete research activities alone — without any interaction with their fellow classmates. By pairing students up to interact with each other in person, over the phone, or with a chat app, they are automatically able to talk to and engage with a classmate. In the early stages of the research process, students are often unsure about their topics and they regularly report that discussion with another student offers them peace of mind. Offering these students a way to engage with fellow classmates around their research helps break them out of the silos that online courses so often produce. The core structure of this activity can be applied to student interaction during different stages of the research process or even for non-research assignments.
I bought a laptop: Connecting real-life experiences to Library research in First-Year Seminar
Presenter: Lynda Irons (Pacific University) Abstract: Curriculum changes in two separate-but-connected courses sparked an overhaul of how First-Year Seminar freshmen received library instruction. The librarian changed from a traditional information transfer approach to an active learning and discovery approach by connecting the dots between what they already knew and library research. Fall 2019 FYS students (re)discovered their autonomy in their decision-making strategies through three activities — all without the instructional librarian showing a single PowerPoint slide or even turning on a computer. The activities reinforced that the students knew substantially more than they thought they knew, and they didn’t even know they knew it. Ultimately, they realized that their prior knowledge and existing skills easily transferred to the academic library setting.
Changing Policies for Changing Times
Presenter: Drew Jackson (Pacific University); Sarah Kirkley (Pacific University); Laura Baird (Pacific University); Lynda Irons (Pacific University); Angela Lee (Pacific University) Abstract: Policy writing is rarely nimble or innovative, but using change management techniques, Pacific University Libraries drafted policies to address the circumstances during this past year. We will discuss how we identified a need to change, which policies we changed, how we identified goals for change, and our methodology for working through changes. We will also share how we adapted our approach to accommodate remote work. We learned the importance of positioning policy within the University and legal framework; reframing the policies as part of an iterative, sustainable process; and involving a variety of perspectives. This process can be used not only for policies but also to build a responsive organization.
Team Science: A Question of Support for Undergraduate Research
Presenter: abby koehler (Western Washington University); Jenny Oleen (Western Washington University); Wyatt Heimbichner Goebel (Western Washington University) Abstract: After recent strategic and structural changes within our organization, Western Libraries is experimenting with new team-based and collaborative approaches to improve the undergraduate research support we offer. Our newly formed subject support team — Team Science — along with the Western Libraries’ Tutoring Center and Hacherl Research & Writing Studio is now positioned to consider important questions regarding STEM students’ unique research needs. We are excited to share the groundwork we have laid in supporting undergraduate research contributions at Western Washington University.
Co-CREATE Your Class: Fostering Student Agency and Inquiry in Academic Literacies
Presenter: Caitlan Maxwell (Western Washington University Libraries); abby koehler (Western Washington University Libraries) Abstract: Using an inquiry-based approach to a quarter-long linked credit course demands careful coordination among everyone involved. However, with innovative strategies like co-creating rubrics and assignments, using critical pedagogy focused on academic literacies, and implementing the CREATE (Consider, Read, Elucidate the hypotheses, Analyze and interpret the data, and Think of the next Experiment) method, it can be done. Join us for an overview of our team-teaching experience and a discussion of strengths-based, peer-to-peer learning approaches to information literacy that address student agency in writing, reading, research and more.
Libros for Oregon – Collections Connect Communities
Presenter: Hannah Bostrom (Salem Public Library); Deborah Gitlitz (Wilsonville Public Library); Valeria Davila (Oregon State University Libraries and Press); Alice Perez (Multnomah Law Library); Mark Peterson (Mt Hood Community College) Abstract: Our poster session is about the Libros for Oregon (LfO) organization, which is a subset of Reforma Oregon. The project centers around bringing quality Spanish materials from the Guadalajara International Book Fair, the largest Spanish language book fair in the world, to Oregon libraries and their communities. To accomplish this task, LfO selects a cohort of libraries each year that selected representatives will buy items for. Travelers apply for the ALA Free Pass Program, which covers most of the traveling costs. All participating libraries chip in $200 to cover the rest of the travel costs, and allocate $500-$2,000 of their budget to this project. Books are selected by library professionals, with the help of Mexican vendors. Materials are shipped to the libraries and they promote the collection through programming and outreach events.
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a unique round of Professional Development Scholarship awards aimed to support E-Learning opportunities. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer multiple awards of up to $175. The E-Learning Professional Development Scholarship applications are open and we are currently soliciting applications for the July 31st deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward remote conferences, remote workshops, E-Learning courses, E-Learning seminars, or other learning opportunities appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration costs incurred by the applicant.
For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Hello ACRL-Oregon members! During this pandemic, the way we all work and serve our patrons has radically changed. Inspired by the bloggers at ACRLog, we thought we’d provide a window into how some of your Oregon colleagues are managing during this time.
We’d also love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experiences on the blog, please feel free to email Meredith Farkas and respond to any or all of the following prompts:
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
This post is from Claire Dannenbaum, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Lane Community College.
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
The Lane Community College Library faced considerable challenges with the loss of several staff members early in the course of the pandemic. We were understaffed before the crisis started, so the emergency orders forced us to really look at what was possible given new staffing constraints. Our small staff was able to focus on as much direct support as possible to Library users through a Zoom Lobby and reference chat. Community college students tend to need a lot of support to navigate the bureaucratic environment of campus. When we weren’t hearing much from students a few weeks in, we weren’t sure why. Then I heard from several faculty that–even with regular forums and online assignments–many of their own courses felt like empty shells. I now understand how remote online learning and working can feel. As the state mandate shifts, we are shifting too. By mid-June, we will offer returns drop-off, and hope to pilot a holds/pick-up service in preparation for access to physical materials in fall term. Library instruction took a serious blow overall, but support for embedded instruction is improving through more centralized materials and messaging.
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
The day-to-day shift from moving through space and engaging with students and colleagues to the narrow confines of a “home office” setting has been disorienting. It wasn’t until my son said this to me that I realized how disjointed I really felt: “Mom, you are not just working from home. You have taken your job responsibilities home during a global public health crisis!” Even so, my biggest personal worry has been to maintain some semblance of library teaching for our dedicated instructors. Fortuitously, I enrolled in a Library Juice class called Embedded Librarianship in Online Courses which started the first week of spring term. I recommend the class! It really helped me get my bearings and figure out ways to start piloting online instruction scenarios with instructors (many of whom were just as gobsmacked as I was).
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
Most surprising to me is how adaptable the LCC Library has been as an organization. Many libraries have a lot of job hierarchy and stratification. We were able to leverage skills across all our staff to offer a variety of ways to be in contact with our users, and offer broad access to Library services. I still look forward to providing services–especially access to physical collections and library teaching in the classroom. But, honestly, the term was not the disaster that I thought it would be. Whew!
Hello ACRL-Oregon members! During this pandemic, the way we all work and serve our patrons has radically changed. Inspired by the bloggers at ACRLog, we thought we’d provide a window into how some of your Oregon colleagues are managing during this time.
We’d also love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experiences on the blog, please feel free to email Meredith Farkas and respond to any or all of the following prompts:
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
This post is from Steve Silver, Library Director at Northwest Christian University who also was ACRL-Oregon President in 2017-18.
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
Things are typically quiet around NCU in the summer, and even more so this year. We have very few if any on-campus summer classes, so this is giving us as an institution an opportunity to catch our breath and plan for the fall. NCU was better prepared than some for the rapid move to online teaching, plus we are on semesters so only had a few weeks (and no new term) to prepare for. So while that transition was certainly frantic, it was not quite the overwhelming amount of extra work that others have experienced. We have been in summer session since the 2nd week of May. For those last few weeks, and currently over the summer, the library is open by appointment so we can limit to one user in the library at a time. As a very small university (~800 FTE) with an even smaller on campus undergrad population (~350 I think), most of whom left campus, this worked very well for us. The library has the only computer workstations and only printer available to students, and our biblical studies collection, which supports many of our classes, does not have adequate online alternatives, so it was important to be able to provide some level of access while also practicing appropriate distancing, hygiene, and cleaning. It also gave us the chance to continue to offer employment to the few student workers who remained in the area. By only scheduling one in the building at a time and regular staff working from home we have been able to retain our usual summer student employment as well, which is a help to the library but even more so to these students who depend on that income for living expenses as well as school expenses. As of this writing (June 5) Lane County is entering phase 2 of the governor’s re-opening plan. We are still waiting to hear from our administration what that will mean for staff working in the building.
The really sad thing for us was commencement. We are changing our name to Bushnell University as of July 1, so this was literally the last graduating class of Northwest Christian University, and they did not get to have the usual commencement ceremony, which would have been an even bigger celebration this year. We are doing a virtual commencement (which will have already happened by the time you read this), plus graduating seniors are invited back to our winter commencement if they choose, where they will be especially honored. To prepare for the virtual commencement I had to retrieve my academic regalia from the library, and record a 3 second video congratulating our graduates. That was a lot of work and effort for three seconds! (but probably beats sitting in a warm gymnasium in robes for an hour and a half). Warm robes aside, I know I greatly missed being at commencement, the highlight of the year and the validation of the hard work we put in all year long.
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
My wife and I are both primarily working from home. I have been in the library for a couple hours at a time less than once a week since work from home orders were put in place. We have strict guidelines about how many can be working in the library and where, so we track all on-site work schedules (including student workers) on a shared calendar. The library had already been in the process of transitioning to cloud-based file storage, and our IT was able to set me up with a VPN connection, so we have largely been able to continue work with adequate access to needed documents. I am set up in our den (with a nice view of the neighbor’s apple tree out the window) while my wife sets up with our laptop on the dinning table. If I need something from the kitchen I do need to check she’s not on a confidential call or video meeting first. One really lovely silver lining of this situation has been having lunch on our patio with my wife every day. That and sleeping in a bit each day I will miss when I return to a more regular schedule in the office.
How have you kept communication going with students, faculty, or other users?
Microsoft Teams and Zoom for communication with library staff and with our faculty and other NCU staff. We have a form on our website for students requesting appointment times, which feeds into the library’s Teams channel so we all get notified. Lots of individual texts and emails with our student workers. Our library staff meet bi-monthly for staff meeting, and I meet with each one individually bi-monthly as well. Those have continued virtually, plus we added a no-agenda check-in staff meeting on the weeks where no regular staff meeting was scheduled, just to chat and keep up with one another’s lives. Replaces the usual “hallway chats” we would have when physically in the building together.
The institutional Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) has locked down all campus-wide communications to flow through them, which has greatly restricted the library’s ability to communicate en masse to students or to faculty. I understand the need for a unified “voice” in communications in times of crisis, but it does impede the library’s ability to effectively serve in some ways.
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
Two somewhat contradictory things. One, I have discovered that in many ways I actually enjoy working from home. Uninterrupted time has allowed me to be more productive to a certain extent (although the tedium of ALWAYS being home works against that to some extent). On the other hand, I find I greatly miss the personal interactions with staff and students – those very distractions that keep me from being more productive. I expect a full return to working in the office will include some regular time working from home moving forward, for me and potentially other library staff. NCU and the library have really been thinking about what we learn through this experience that will continue to help us serve better moving forward even after the pandemic is no longer an issue, and the demonstrated ability to work effectively remotely is high on that list.
Hello ACRL-Oregon members! During this pandemic, the way we all work and serve our patrons has radically changed. Inspired by the bloggers at ACRLog, we thought we’d provide a window into how some of your Oregon colleagues are managing during this time. During this week, we’ll be posting several blog posts from members of the ACRL-Oregon Board. We’d also love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experiences on the blog, please feel free to email Meredith Farkas and respond to any or all of the following prompts:
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
Our third post is from Amy Stanforth, Research & Instruction Librarian at Portland State University and ACRL-Oregon Board Member.
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
We are currently in Week 10, so we are in the sweet spot of reflecting on our work over the past few months and making informed decisions about how to move forward. Some of the things we are reflecting on include serving our various populations. I’m reflecting on our students who are in a forced remote environment and supporting them as they learn new ways to engage with learning materials and connect with other students. How to sustain a sense of campus culture and connect them to the services they need both on and off campus? We are serving faculty through the transition to online learning and as they plan for remote summer classes and possibly fall classes as well. Additionally, as a large, urban institution located in a downtown core, we are serving the community and our housing and food insecure patrons who rely on us for safe and clean spaces. We are finding the balance between learning from our experiences and anticipating upcoming changes, which seem to shift with every week that goes by.
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
Each day initially feels the same for me. I wake up, have coffee and make my way to my makeshift office – which is currently set up in my garden shed, and start running through my emails. However, so much has changed in terms of meetings being online, finding ways to engage students with remote instruction, and trying to anticipate the changing needs of the campus community. I’ve had to step outside of my comfort zone and find new ways to reach out to my colleagues. I can be pretty chatty and have always used that trait to engage with my colleagues about brewing ideas for our work. I’ve had to translate my chatty ideas into concise words and send them in emails. Additionally, it’s been tough to gauge how my coworkers are doing, what their capacity is, and trying to be mindful of each person’s circumstances as they deal with Covid, and Covid-related impacts, both at work and at home.
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
I’ll take a different approach here and say what hasn’t surprised me, and that is the continued dedication, care, and support of our faculty, staff, and community to the success of our students. And the reciprocal dedication, care, and support of our students for the PSU community.
Hello ACRL-Oregon members! During this pandemic, the way we all work and serve our patrons has radically changed. Inspired by the bloggers at ACRLog, we thought we’d provide a window into how some of your Oregon colleagues are managing during this time. During this week, we’ll be posting several blog posts from members of the ACRL-Oregon Board. We’d also love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experiences on the blog, please feel free to email Meredith Farkas and respond to any or all of the following prompts:
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
Our second post is from Meredith Farkas, Faculty Librarian at Portland Community College and ACRL-Oregon Past-President.
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
Like a lot of places, everything felt like it was happening way too slowly and then suddenly moved way too fast. We learned late on the night of Tuesday March 18th that the campus would be closing at the end of the day on Friday and then received an email at 5am Wednesday saying that each campus library would be closing at noon that very day. I’m so relieved I had the presence of mind to run to work that morning and grab my desk chair, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other office supplies. The speed of everything unfortunately left us no time to get faculty to grab and/or scan their reserve materials or to get any equipment other than our laptops parceled out. The libraries have been fully closed since then and we are not even supposed to visit campus (my campus has a locked gate!) so there is no access to our physical collection. We are definitely going to stay closed over the summer and our College President has said that we’ll be mostly remote for Fall, though that is open to revision if conditions change.
My colleagues in the Library did a fantastic job of quickly moving to support faculty teaching online with documentation, training, resources, collections, and teaching. In the midst of the upheaval in our own lives, everyone pulled together beautifully to support faculty (and, by extension, our students) as they moved their courses online. It was inspiring.
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
It took me a long time to setting into a sane routine. The first few weeks, I was so busy supporting library faculty and disciplinary faculty with online teaching that I was basically working from dawn to dusk and ignoring my family. Having taught online in various contexts since 2005, I wanted to share as much knowledge and provide as much support as I could. But I was totally burnt out by week 2 of the term. Now, I’ve found a better balance and one that gives me the flexibility to support my son’s learning as well (he’s in 5th grade and wow, elementary school remote teaching is a MESS!). I try to work relatively close to the hours that I worked pre-COVID-19, though work and life are definitely bleeding into each other a lot more — setting boundaries is tough! I embedded in a lot of classes this term — probably more than I should have — and built a lot of interactive tutorials to support specific classes. I’ve been using Google Forms to make them (here are some examples) which is deeply unfancy, but allows faculty to make their own copy and tailor it to their context.
At PCC, I work in cubicle-land and I’ve been shocked by how much I miss it, mainly because I miss chatting with my incredible colleagues. We’ve been using Slack as a virtual chat tool, but it’s not the same. These days, my work chats tend to involve my son running into the room with “important” things he needs to tell me like “did you know that as recently as 500 years ago, there was a land bridge connecting Sri Lanka and India?”
How have you kept communication going with students, faculty, or other users?
I’ve been sending a lot more emails to faculty than I normally would. Usually, I market instruction via our campus listserv at the start of the term. We didn’t hear from a lot of the faculty we usually collaborate with because they were so overwhelmed that they didn’t even have the bandwidth to ask for help (a good reminder of what happens to our students when they get overwhelmed!). So a couple of weeks in, I sent individual emails to each of the instructors we’ve worked with over the past two years and heard from a lot more people. In terms of keeping in touch with students, we’re mostly at the mercy of faculty. I sent faculty and other student support units a boilerplate email to send to students describing some of our most important services that are available. Last January, I convinced my colleagues to pilot offering bookable research help appointments face-to-face and via web conferencing for Spring. When colleges and universities started closing, I felt so grateful that we’d already done the legwork getting that service up and running. My colleagues and I are embedded in an absolute ton of classes this term, so that’s the main way we communicate with students beyond when they seek help from us.
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
I’ve been most surprised by my own lack of mental bandwidth. Since March, I have really struggled with staying focused and tracking on things. My attention span is fractured, my memory is fuzzy, and I feel constantly worried that I’m missing something. I’m usually a really organized person who thrives when I have a clear to-do list with deadlines. Only very recently have I even had the wherewithal to go back to using my to-do list app. If someone like me who has a ton of experience teaching online has been thrown off this much, I can only imagine what it’s like for most of our faculty who have never taught online before (and, in many cases, never wanted to). I’m only just now beginning to feel like myself again.
Hello ACRL-Oregon members! During this pandemic, the way we all work and serve our patrons has radically changed. Inspired by the bloggers at ACRLog, we thought we’d provide a window into how some of your Oregon colleagues are managing during this time. During this week, we’ll be posting several blog posts from members of the ACRL-Oregon Board. We’d also love to hear from you! If you’d like to share your experiences on the blog, please feel free to email Meredith Farkas and respond to any or all of the following prompts:
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
How have you kept communication going with students, faculty, or other users?
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
Here’s our first post from ACRL-Oregon President and Oregon College of Oriental Medicine Director, Candise Branum
What’s the situation at your institution, at the time of writing?
Like most other higher education institutions in Oregon, our campus is closed and we’ve transitioned to completely online education, and with very few exceptions, everyone is working remotely. For the college, this is pretty challenging because a huge part of our curriculum is clinical education. Moving didactic classes is fine, but any hands-on classes are either being delayed or having to rethink how to get students the necessary experience. Our clinics were also closed, and some of the clinical staff laid off. The college is pivoting to telemedicine, which is actually a great skill for students to have. But Traditional Chinese Medicine is so much about personal connection and touch that I think many students are having a really hard time believing that they are getting the education required to do this work, and also just missing their community. I know medical schools are looking at different ways they can reopen clinical education so students can get these skills and still graduate, and we’re still waiting for those guidelines to come out.
What is your day-to-day look like on the job right now?
The first month I felt like I was just in crisis mode, trying to get the textbooks and materials needed for our faculty and students, setting up online services, and creating administrative plans around all of this. I’m finally starting to feel like I have a handle on this and things are settling in, but I’m definitely still feeling a lot of anxiety. Especially as a library director who gets to make the decision on what services to offer and when to reopen, every day I’m thinking about what the infection numbers in Multnomah County look like, looking at what others are doing, and just trying to keep my staff safe. I created a staged reopening plan, but I still have a lot of questions and concerns, and it is honestly stressful.
The other day, Meredith asked on Twitter if people had taken time off work since the pandemic had closed us all down, and I realized that besides cutting out of work 2-hours early to get a head start on binge-watching the final season of She-Ra, I haven’t taken a single day off. I’ve been working longer hours and have been more focused from home than I ever had on campus. My partner sometimes comes into my “office” and says, “Break time! Right now!!” because I have a hard time stepping away from my desk. Everything has seemed like an emergency and time sensitive, so it has been really powerful to be able to finally say, “No. This can wait 5-10 minutes.” I’ve been doing logic puzzles on my breaks, which feels much better than reading news or scrolling through Twitter.
Right now, I’m staffing our virtual reference desk about 8 hours per week, gearing up to teach my first synchronous online class (via Zoom), and doing all the other day-to-day work I would generally do, only my office mates have been replaced by my lazy dog. I’ve been pretty much tied to my computer. All computing, all day. I realized the other day that my legs were cramping up from being at my desk and not getting the chance to walk around campus. So I’ve been taking bike rides after work, which feels so good and is also a good way to transition from “work brain” to “home brain.”
How have you kept communication going with students, faculty, or other users?
We use the regular channels, like posting on our SIS / course management system, and on our website. OCOM is also holding weekly student town halls, and staff members are invited to that. That is actually nice, because when there are breakout sessions and whatnot, the staff are in those groups with students.
But honestly, the most engagement we have is through our social media. We’ve started making weekly videos. Right now we are talking about services and providing walkthroughs, but eventually we’d like to do fun stuff like talking about what books we are reading or what we are watching on Netflix. We’ve also bumped our Newsletter up to be weekly. Our Newsletter already had really high stats, and we are seeing this continue even with a weekly newsletter.
What has surprised you most about library work during this crisis?
The OCOM community in general is not what you would call, “Comfortable with technology.” So the ability for our faculty (some who were still on dial up!) and students to be able to pivot to online learning is pretty impressive. One thing that has surprised me is the ability to transform from a community that definitely includes technophobes to a normalcy of online education. It does make me wonder how this will change the delivery of our curriculum in the future.
I genuinely miss our students and my colleagues. I’m mostly an introvert and can totally get by without seeing others, but on campus, I didn’t have my own office. Instead, all of the library staff shared an office, so I generally worked beside at least one other person per day, as well as the student workers who would come by the office to chat. But also, I am so much more productive working from home. Students aren’t stopping by my office, and I’m not chatting with my coworkers about the movies we watched this weekend. I really miss those things. But also it makes me think that once this is all over, everyone who wants to should be able to work from home at least once per week. I don’t have kids, and I know it is really different for parents with their children home. But for me, right now: It is so quiet here. I can hear a bird chirping outside my window and the hum of my computer. I feel centered. For me, I think working from home once a week could be a really nice way of rebooting and focusing in a way that just doesn’t happen for me on a noisy campus.
The ACRL-OR is pleased to announce the winners of the E-Learning Professional Development Scholarship. The E-Learning Scholarship was created in response to conference cancellations due to Covid-19 and is designed to support remote learning opportunities for librarians. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-OR awarded 8 scholarships of up to $175 each to the following individuals
Sergio Lopez, from Mt. Hood Community College, will be taking a beginner JavaScript course to support the creation of interactive learning materials.
Academic librarian Veronica Vichit-Vadakan is a jack of all trades. Systems Librarian at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine and Part-Time Reference Librarian at WSU Vancouver, Veronica also puts in hours at the NW Film Center and fosters kittens. Mushroom forager, pie aficionado, chocolatier, and overall renaissance woman, this past January, Veronica added another accolade to her repertoire: Jeopardy!Champ. Veronica went on a 4-day winning streak, raking in a whopping $90,001 and charming the nation in the process.
The following interview was originally conducted by Beth Howlett at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and has been edited for length.
Veronica Vichit-Vadakan with Alex Trebek (Photo by Jeopardy! Productions, Inc.)
When did you start being a Jeopardy! fan?
I watched Jeopardy! when it first came back on the air in the 80s in grade school. In high school, I was a total Jeopardy! nerd, I watched every episode, followed along and tracked my answers. We had a teacher in high school who was also a big fan; he would arrange Jeopardy! tournaments every year, and one year I won! That was very exciting, but once I went off to college, I stopped watching. I didn’t watch it for probably 20+ years except for here and there if it happened to be on, but I was not a regular watcher.
What was the qualification process like?
When a friend suggested that I take the test, I hadn’t thought about Jeopardy! in many many years, but I thought, “Sure why not?” The test is an online test of 50 questions. They do the tests once a year, and that’s it — that’s your opportunity to be on Jeopardy! The questions are a lot like the questions you would see on the show. They don’t tell you how you did and you don’t have to answer in the form of a question for the online test, which is good because you don’t have that much time — you only have 10 seconds for each question.
In between the test and the show there is an audition. The online test happened in January, and then that summer, I heard that I was invited for an audition. Luckily, the auditions were in Portland; they spread them out to different cities across the country and then they change them every year. They try to shift it around so that everyone gets a chance to be close to an audition city. The year that I took the test, just coincidentally, the audition city happened to be Portland. I got the call to audition about 4 months after I took the test.
Once you do the audition, you are in the contestant pool for 18 months — anytime between the time you audition and 18 months they might call you. For me it was about 16 months when they called me. I didn’t think I was going to be on the show and then at the last minute, I was. They give you four weeks notice… that’s enough time to buy a reasonably priced ticket to LA, get things in order to get time off work and stuff like that, but it’s not a ton of time.
How did you prepare for the show?
In between the time that I auditioned and the time that I was on the show, I hadn’t been watching the show for decades and even after I took the online test I still hadn’t really watched the show. So I started watching the show a lot — that’s what you hear again and again, the best way to prepare is to watch the show as much as possible. I started recording it and would play along, track how I was doing, and find my weak points. I used several different flashcard apps.
I was very very nervous when I showed up and I really didn’t feel prepared. I know a lot of people who go on Jeopardy! are serious trivia nerds and they have done bar trivia, College Bowl, all these quizzing tournaments, and I had never done any of that stuff. I don’t think my knowledge depth is that great, especially in comparison to other people on the show. After watching the show intensively for a year, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I can’t do that. How do they know these things?”
How many shows did you film in a day?
They only shoot two days a week, but it’s two weeks worth of shows. Five shows were filmed in a day. They do Monday through Friday in a single day, and then the very next day they’ll do another Monday through Friday, and then they take a break. Then they do it all again next week. There is about a 10-minute break between each filming, so it’s pretty fast-paced. If you win a show, they escort you off the stage very quickly. It’s such a whirlwind. They send you back to the dressing room; you have to change your clothes, get your makeup touched up, get your microphone back on, and then they push you back on the stage. That’s as much time as you have between each show. You do get a lunch break between the Wednesday and Thursday [tapings], but it’s a whirlwind. I kept saying I felt like a rag doll, asking myself, “What’s happening?”
How much of a calming presence is Alex Trebek? How did he influence your experience on the show?
Alex Trebek definitely is a very calming presence. We don’t get to spend a lot of time with him as contestants. We interact with him about as much as you see on the show. He comes out, does a little interview, and at the end of the show he’ll come chit chat with the contestants, but that’s about it. But even so, he seems like such a genuinely warm, charming, welcoming person. He’s so good at putting people at ease. I think it also helps that I see this guy, the guy I’ve seen since I was a little kid, there he is — it was just very familiar.
Was that your jacket in the 5th and final game and if not, did wearing it affect the outcome?
They tell you to bring two changes of clothes so that you have three outfits potentially to wear if you win multiple shows; it was just unlucky for me that the first show [I recorded] had been a “Monday” [the first filming of the day], so I ran through all my clothes by the time I got to the “Friday” shoot. I was in the back dressing room after the “Thursday” show, going through my clothes with a producer, and everything looks the same — there’s no way I could rearrange these clothes to look any different. So the producer just started digging through the closet. I don’t even know where she came up with this jacket, but she pulled out a jacket and said, “I found this in the back of the closet, do you want to try it on? I think it’ll fit you.” And it actually did fit me, which was kind of surprising. I had a little bit of a premonition as I was putting it on that this was going to be bad luck; I’m [wearing] a randomly left behind, lost and found jacket, so I had a thought it might be bad luck. And then I went on and did lose that show! But I shouldn’t blame the blazer. Mostly, I was just really exhausted.
What does the winning streak mean for you? How did the experience impact or change you?
Well first of all, I won a nice amount of money, which I don’t actually have yet — they don’t send out checks until 4 months after the show airs, but it’s nice to know that it’s there. I was talking about doing some work on the backyard, building a catio for my cats.
But actually being on the show… it’s nice to have a little bit of recognition. It’s a pretty low-level fame; people are stopping me on the street to say hey. I’ve heard from friends from college who’ve written me nice messages to congratulate me, and that’s probably my favorite part.
Another really fun part about being on Jeopardy! that I hadn’t really thought of before I went on is that there is this whole community of people who have been on Jeopardy! who communicate with each other, and that’s been really fun. They’re a support group, a group of funny nerds to talk to.
When you went on did you know your episodes would run concurrent with the Greatest of All Time Tournament?
No, they didn’t tell us it was happening; they hadn’t announced it yet. I think they actually shot that tournament a week or two after we were on. I think we suffered a little from the comparison. It was kind of fun because those episodes were on at the same time, and there was kind of a high Jeopardy! awareness.
Is anything different now when you watch the show, having been a contestant and now familiar with both sides of the screen?
When you’re down there, you are with a big pool of contestants because they film two weeks worth of shows. There are a lot of people that ended up being on shows that followed me, so it was exciting [because] after I lost, I didn’t know what happened to all those people that I had met — you know, they’re not allowed to tell me the results of the games. [It was] exciting to watch the shows afterwards and say, “I know all those people!” And then I continued to watch, partly because now I’m more invested in the show. Also, there’s the possibility that I might be in the Tournament of Champions, so I kind of want to keep watching and try and keep training just in case that happens. Whenever I see someone win on a Monday, I think, “Hang in there. You got a long day ahead of you.”
Is there anything else you want to share about your experience?
The one thing that surprised me was the amount of questions that I don’t know the answers to now. I was watching my show, and reading that question, I would think, “I don’t know what that is.” And then I’d watch myself buzzing in, and watch myself answer correctly. I don’t know how that happened. I also saw the opposite where I 100% knew the answer to that question, and I know that November-me knew the answer to that question, too, but I saw myself buzzing with the wrong answer.
If you could design a Jeopardy! category and question, what would it be?
Well, it would probably be food-related. If there was a pie category, I would totally ace that. Okay, I’ve got it: Food in Movies. A category of movies with famous food scenes. I think that would make a great Jeopardy! category.
Veronica is the Systems Librarian at OCOM and Part-Time Reference Librarian at WSU-Vancouver, and recently accepted a position as a Faculty Librarian at PCC Cascade.
The State Library Board has redirected approximately $100,000 of Oregon’s FFY2019 LSTA allotment from other LSTA projects and programs to be used for COVID-19 response mini-grants. Any legally established public, academic, school, or tribal library in Oregon, as well as special libraries with 501(c)(3) nonprofit status in Oregon may apply, and each library may choose which amount best suits their needs from the following: $500, $1,500 or $3,000 – your choice!
Applications will open on Monday, May 4, 2020, first to the following group of eligible entities:
Federally recognized tribes, K-12 schools, and special libraries
Academic libraries at institutions with student FTE enrollment of 1,000 or fewer (based on Fall 2018 enrollment data from the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission)
Applications will open for all other libraries on May 13, pending the level of interest we receive from the initial group, and will remain open until all funds have been awarded. The State Library of Oregon has set a goal that at least 40% of total funds awarded will go towards efforts supporting children, K-12 students, and youth services. Grants will otherwise be awarded on a rolling basis, limited to one grant per library/library system, school, or tribe.
For more information and instructions on how to apply, please visit our COVID-19 Response Grants page and find links to contact us with your questions.
ACRL-Oregon offers free webinars on topics relevant to academic library staff. Our upcoming webinar is “Makerspace Instruction & the ACRL Framework” and will be presented by Amy Vecchione at Boise State University and Stephanie Milne-Lane from Willamette University on 5/27/2020, at 10am PST.
In this presentation Amy Vecchione and Stephanie Milne-Lane will host a discussion about research and instruction in a makerspace setting. They will outline the process of how the maker instruction program developed iteratively at Boise State University (BSU). Additionally, they will share the final results of Stephanie’s University of Washington MLIS capstone project, the BSU MakerLab Toolkit. They will also report on their conclusions regarding how the ACRL Framework is the best lens for developing maker instruction.
Registration is open to any library staff-person, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon!
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session. Questions about our webinars can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Candise Branum.
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know that would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections.
To nominate yourself, a colleague, or an employee, submit our online nomination form. The nomination period has been extended and will close on Tuesday, May 5, 2020.
Eligibility:
Vice-President/President Elect must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon and ACRL national
Member-at-Large candidates must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon
Questions?
Please contact Michele Burke (michele.burke@chemeketa.edu) if you have any questions or concerns about the open positions.
Thank you,
The ACRL-OR Nominating Committee
Rachel Bridgewater, Vice President – President Elect
Patrick Wohlmut
Michele Burke
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a unique round of Professional Development Scholarship awards aimed to support E-Learning opportunities. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer multiple awards of up to $175. The E-Learning Professional Development Scholarship applications are open and we are currently soliciting applications for the April 24th deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.How can the scholarship be used? The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward remote conferences, remote workshops, E-Learning courses, E-Learning seminars, or other learning opportunities appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration costs incurred by the applicant. For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
In awarding scholarships, preference will be given to:
Applicants from diverse cultural/ethnic backgrounds and/or historically marginalized groups
Applicants employed at institutions or in positions serving under-represented groups
Applicants who have not previously been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship
Applicants employed at community or technical colleges or applicants employed at smaller or rural institutions with limited funding
Who is not eligible?
Non ACRL-Oregon members.
Individuals who have already been awarded an ACRL-OR scholarship in the current fiscal year
How will applications be evaluated?Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.How do I apply?Apply for the scholarship using this online form.Deadline: Friday, April 24 2020For more information, contact the ACRL-OR Board President:Candise BranumACRL-OR President, 2019-2020acrlor@olaweb.org
Did you know that ACRL-OR provides access to a variety of professional development opportunities for library workers – including two sets of professional development webinars!
ACRL-OR Webinars
ACRL-OR hosts a series of webinars featuring regional library workers sharing their expertise on a variety of library topics. Most recently, Brooke Robertshaw, PhD, Assessment Librarian at Oregon State University presented “What is Quantitative Data Really Good for? Throwing great big noisy fusses about white colonial power structures. *An ode to Ramona Quimby”. A full list of webinars (and recordings!) is available on the ACRL-OR Webinars page and make sure to keep up with the ACRL-OR blog for updates on future webinars including this one on March 18th!
ACRL National Webinars
ACRL-OR is excited to provide complimentary access to archived professional development e-Learning webinars from ACRL National! These webinars are available to ACRL-OR members only, but more information about webinar topics can be located on the ACRL National webinars page. If you are an ACRL-OR member, you should have received a password to access the full webinars page via email. If you’re interested in becoming a member, visit ACRL-OR’s membership page.
If you have any questions about the webinars provided by ACRL-OR, or suggestions for future topics, please email the ACRL-OR Communications Coordinator at aja.bettencourtmccarthy@oit.edu
Please find our updated call below and consider nominating yourself or someone else for the Board!
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know that would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections.
To nominate yourself, a colleague, or an employee, submit our online nomination form. The nomination period will close on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.
Eligibility:
Vice-President/President Elect must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon and ACRL national
Member-at-Large candidates must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon
Questions?
Please contact Michele Burke (michele.burke@chemeketa.edu) if you have any questions or concerns about the open positions.Thank you,The ACRL-OR Nominating CommitteeRachel Bridgewater, Vice President – President ElectPatrick WohlmutMichele Burke
The American Library Association issued a statement on March 17, 2020 recommending that academic leaders close libraries to the public to protect library workers, students, faculty, and staff from exposure to COVID-19. ACRL-Oregon supports the ALA recommendation and encourages academic libraries to act immediately for the health and safety of library workers and the communities they serve. Staying open increases exposure for library employees, the larger community, and our most vulnerable students. Academic libraries are, by design, unsuited to support the social distancing recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health authorities. Keeping large public spaces like academic libraries open creates a false sense of security in direct opposition to efforts to decrease transmission of COVID-19. The strategy of having students without computer or Internet access use the Library during the pandemic also puts our most vulnerable community members at the greatest risk of infection.Online access, virtual services, and remote collaboration are standard characteristics of academic library culture that can be employed immediately to move work online and offset library closures. While specific plans and resources differ between libraries, ACRL-OR encourages all academic libraries to ensure that library workers are fully compensated, with health coverage, while libraries are closed.We are experiencing an unprecedented time of uncertainty and academic libraries must take the initiative to respond early and do their part to minimize community spread of COVID-19 and protect our number one resource: library workers. We urge you to close all academic libraries as soon as possible. Signed,The ACRL-Oregon Boardhttp://acrloregon.orgCandise Branum, ACRL-OR President, Oregon College of Oriental MedicineMeredith Farkas, ACRL-OR Past-President, Portland Community CollegeRachel Bridgewater, ACRL-OR Vice-President, Portland Community CollegeAja Bettencourt-McCarthy, Oregon Institute of TechnologyAnn Matsushima Chiu, Reed CollegeHeidi E. K. Senior, University of PortlandKatherine S. Donaldson, University of Oregon
Michele Burke, Chemeketa Community College
Patrick Wohlmut, Linfield College
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know that would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections.
To nominate yourself, a colleague, or an employee, submit our online nomination form. The nomination period will close on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.
Eligibility:
Vice-President/President Elect must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon and ACRL national
Member-at-Large candidates must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon
Questions?
Please contact Michele Burke (michele.burke@chemeketa.edu) if you have any questions or concerns about the open positions.Thank you,The ACRL-OR Nominating CommitteeRachel BridgewaterPatrick WohlmutMichele Burke
The following is a letter from Candise Branum, ACRL-Oregon PresidentAs many of you may already know, the World Health Organization has publicly classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. Across the country, K-12 schools are shuttering, colleges and universities are moving curriculum online, music festivals, conferences, and sporting events are cancelled or are proceeding without fans. When the NBA cancels the rest of the season, you know things are serious. So much has happened in the past few days that I don’t even know how to process it all.One thing that has come up for me, though, is thinking about the academic library’s role in continuing education throughout a pandemic. As universities cancel in-person classes and move towards providing online education, libraries continue to remain open to provide services to suddenly displaced students. Some academic libraries are business as usual, while others are operating at reduced hours. There are a select few who are closing facilities altogether but are promoting online library services, like MIT. I was speaking with another library director at a smaller college recently about the decision to remain open or to close in the event that our respective organizations move curriculum online. We are both adamant about protecting our library staff, and she mentioned allowing her employees to work from home and staffing the library at reduced hours by herself. My first thought was, yes, this is absolutely something that I would do as well. And something that I have done. As a library director, sometimes you have to work an extra long day or otherwise pick up the slack; that is completely understandable. But then I started to question why I tend to not prioritize my own physical and mental health, and why administrations are not prioritizing the safety of library staff when making decisions to close facilities. So why do so many colleges come to the conclusion that being on campus and in a classroom is a risk, but justify keeping the library open? It almost feels like the burden has recklessly been displaced onto library staff. Moving curriculum online and leaving libraries to support those changes also makes the assumption that library staff are not high-risk themselves, or that they do not live with immunocompromised or elderly people. And what is the actual goal in keeping the library open? Is it primarily about access to the facilities? Because I think we could all be pretty creative in how we provide access to other library services, including reference, document delivery, and even book delivery. Why is it so hard to close a library? There is an assumption that libraries will continue to remain open, and of course we don’t want to disappoint our communities, but we’ve also been programmed to believe that it is our responsibility to lay our bodies on the line in order to remain open. Yes, I absolutely signed on to provide library services and to be a leader in difficult times. I am still here and committed to that. But I also pause to remind myself that Librarianship is a primarily female-identified profession, and that as academic librarians, we are seen as both educators and caretakers, and in the time of a crisis, martyrs. I question the extent to which we are expected to put our bodies on the line during this public health crisis. Public librarians (shout out!) are physically and mentally challenged every day, but I also think: where is the line? When do we value our own safety? I don’t have an answer to this except to say that this is the conflict I’m currently struggling with — valuing the health and safety of our library staff, and balancing that with our commitment to serving our communities through dangerous times. And understanding that there can be an intrinsic conflict in being both a caretaker and in taking care of yourself.In times of crisis, libraries have the potential to be places of sanctuary. Sometimes a library provides computing services that allow students to continue their education online when they do not have the technology, space, or quiet that is required to do this from home (and this is all assuming that they have a safe home). Sometimes a library’s value can be as simple as providing a safe, warm space for people to rest. But there is no road map for how academic libraries handle a pandemic. Oregon colleges and universities have yet to close down their campuses, but as administrations prepare for what seems to be the inevitable, I encourage everyone working in academic libraries to take a moment to think about your own values and boundaries. Think about how to balance the desire to support our students, but also make the right choice for yourself and your family when it comes to staffing your library during a healthcare crisis.And continue to take care of yourself and one another.—Candise BranumACRL-Oregon President, 2019-2020
Any librarian that has helped students or faculty access demographic data knows how essential the Census is for many research activities in higher education. But did you know that most federal programs that support higher education institutions, including those funding scholarships, college readiness, and research, rely on accurate Census data to allocate funding? In 2020 Census officials face an even bigger than normal challenge in getting an accurate count, given the distrust of government and concern over privacy in current times.
Academic library staff can help to boost 2020 Census participation among one of the country’s hard-to-count groups, college students. This highly-mobile part of the population is difficult to count because there is often confusion about where they should be counted and who is responsible for counting them.
ALA provides a helpful guide that outlines how college students are counted, whether they live on campus, live at home, or rent off-campus. Getting these facts out to students when census participation is being promoted (mid-March through April 2020) is a great way to help insure accurate information is widely available. More outreach materials that explain confidentiality and residency issues are also available.
Partnering with faculty, student groups, or community organizations to host informational events about the Census is also a great way to help promote participation. Along with Census promotional materials, information resources like the Counting for Dollars research provided George Washington Institute of Public Policy or the Hard to Count 2020 map from CUNY’s Center for Urban Research help provide data and context for why Census participation is so important.
Oregon-specific resources such as the Oregon 2020 Census Communications Toolkit and #WeCountOregon campaign offer promotional resources and messaging tailored specifically to Oregonians and those in hard-to-count communities throughout the state.
If you are looking for more promotion ideas or resources, see the State Library’s Census 2020 Resources for Oregon Libraries or Campus Compact’s 2020 Census hub. Aren’t finding what you’re looking for, or want to share a success story? Please let me know! Arlene Weible, arlene.weible@state.or.us or 503-378-5020.
By the Mt. Hood Community College Bird Safety Action TeamMHCC’s Bird Safety Action Team. From left to right: Troy Builta, Building Information Specialist, Facilities Management; Susan J. Spencer, Instructor – Anatomy & Physiology, Science; Mark Peterson, Faculty Librarian; Walter Shriner, Instructor – Biology, Science; Heather White, Library Technical Services and OER Coordinator
Having read the recent article “Decline of the North American Avifauna”¹ which explores and documents the alarming loss of migratory birds over the last 40 years (the U.S. and Canada have lost nearly 3 billion birds, a massive reduction in abundance involving hundreds of species, from beloved backyard songbirds to long-distance migrants), Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) Library Technical Services and OER Coordinator Heather White decided to take action.
She has organized the Bird Safety Action Team, which operates under the oversight of the campus Infrastructure Council. This team is composed of herself as well as Library, Biology, and Anatomy & Physiology faculty, which is working with various relevant campus stakeholders and governing bodies in order to make the entire campus a safer environment for both the birds that call our campus home, and for those that visit during their annual migrations.
The team’s short term goals are to raise awareness and gather data from our campus community so we can have anti-collision bird-proofing on highest risk windows by February 2020, in time for the spring migration season. Long term goals include getting the entire campus certified as Bird Safe, Bee Safe, Tree Safe, and maybe certified by the Audubon Society as a “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” through their Institutional program.
In 2016, MHCC became the first Salmon-Safe certified community college in the country.
As this initiative continues, the action team will be working with faculty and students from a variety of programs, including Biology and Integrated Media, in order to implement bird safety solutions such as professional grade anti-collision window treatments, hosting nature-scaping workshops for the east county community, and habitat restoration projects across campus.
As the site of two Sandy River tributaries (Beaver and Kelly creeks), Mt. Hood Community College’s 212-acre Gresham Campus serves an integral role in the encompassing 500-square-mile Sandy River basin. The campus has more than 40 acres of forested lands, as well as wetlands, a 1.62 acre pond, and is home to several endangered species as well as large numbers of migratory birds and waterfowl. The unique nature of our campus provides the Bird Safety Action Team with an opportunity to have a significant impact on east county bird populations through local campus efforts.
This project is a wonderful example of how applied information literacy skills, along with the cross-pollination of skill sets and areas of expertise from a variety of discipline areas, can be utilized to great positive effect on campus and in the local community.
More information about this project can be found at the following libguide: https://libguides.mhcc.edu/birds
¹Rosenberg, Kenneth V, Adriaan M. Dokter, Peter J. Blancher, John R. Sauer, Adam C. Smith, Paul A. Smith, Jessica C. Stanton, Arvind Panjabi, Laura Helft, Michael Parr, and Peter P. Marra. “Decline of the North American Avifauna.” Science. 366.6461 (2019): 120-124. Print.
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a new round of Professional Development Scholarship awards. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer up to $675 for each award for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Applications are accepted at three points throughout the year (see below for specific deadlines); we are currently soliciting applications for the March 27th deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant. For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
ACRL-Oregon offers free webinars on topics relevant to academic library staff. Our upcoming webinar is “Improving Library Tutorials: The Multimedia Design Principles” and will be presented by Darlene Aguilar, Instructional Design Librarian at Loyola Marymount University, on Wednesday, March 18th, 2020, at 10:00 a.m. Pacific.Are you creating online modules, videos, or tutorials to teach information literacy skills?Whether designing instruction online or in-person, you must implement research-based instructional methods for successful learning to occur, and Mayer’s Multimedia Design Principles are the best place to start. In this session, you will better understand the relationship between memory and learning to differentiate between effective and ineffective multimedia with the guidance of 12 principles: multimedia, spatial contiguity, temporal contiguity, coherence, modality, redundancy, individual differences, signaling, pacing, concepts first, personalization, and human voice.Join us for this live webinar to ensure your questions get answered and you are able to apply these principles in your own tutorials.Registration is open to any library staff-person, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon! https://forms.gle/GP1djZqJ11YCDNFD6We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session. Questions about our webinars can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Candise Branum at acrlor@olaweb.org.
The Concordia University Libraries recently opened a new Undergraduate Research and Writing Studio. The new space is located on the first floor of the George R. White Library & Learning Center and will operate by a studio-based learning model, meaning that students can drop in to work on their papers at their own pace with the help of peer tutors. The Studio will still offer some 45-minute appointment sessions as well as online help for distance students. Faculty are also encouraged to reserve the space for their classes.
At a grand opening event on January 22nd, student tutors, faculty, and staff were on hand to celebrate the new space. Interim President Tom Ries was in attendance, where he remarked on the importance of Concordia University supporting student writing.
Acting Dean of Libraries Nancy Hoover also gave remarks at the event, stating that the reorganization of Concordia’s college structure, which resulted in moving the Writing Center into the library, “created a wonderful opportunity, not only for the co-location of the vital student resources of Research and Writing, but also the formation of a deep collaboration of student focused support.” She also emphasized how the new Studio will “provide strong support for student choice, access, and success” as well as provide opportunities for the Writing Center to collaborate with librarians. Krista Reynolds, Head of Reference & Instruction, also emphasized the opportunities for collaboration. “I’m excited the librarians have the opportunity to join forces with writing services to serve students even more seamlessly and effectively than ever,” she said.
The Studio is meant to be an active learning space. “Studio pedagogy is a different framework for the process of how students learn to be better writers. It engages the process of research as well as the process of generating ideas, drafting, and revision,” Meg Roland, Undergraduate Writing Chair and Director of the Research and Writing Studio shared. “The Reference librarians are here to support the mutually informed process of researching, reading, evaluating, synthesizing, and drafting.” Roland says that the learning model for the Studio will incorporate practices found at other Northwest universities like Oregon State and Western Washington that have a studio-based learning model to support research and writing.
ACRL-Oregon offers free webinars on topics relevant to academic library staff. Our upcoming webinar is “What is quantitative data good for? Throwing great big noisy fusses about white colonial power structures. *An ode to Ramona Quimby” and will be presented by M. Brooke Robertshaw, PhD, Assistant Professor and Assessment Librarian at Oregon State University on Thursday, January 30th, 2020, at 10am Pacific.
If you don’t know Ramona Quimby, through this presentation you will learn a bit more about her. If you do know her, you know she is all about justice and fairness, but sometimes context needs to be changed so we can get to that space of justice. Thus, this webinar will discuss how, as a society, we got to a space where we are using quantitative methods as a tool of oppression, how we can rethink these uses, and ways to think about research as activism. Data, like Ramona’s rain boots, should be shown off, but it’s much prettier when we can rinse off some of the muck of white patriarchal colonialism.
Registration is open to any library staff-person, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon!
https://forms.gle/rpZwQ8PMs3wZeYMX6
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session.
ACRL-OR is delighted to announce the awarding of a professional development scholarship to Steve Silver, the Library Director at Northwest Christian University. Mr. Silver will be attending the 2020 OLA Annual Conference in Bend, Oregon. He will be representing private colleges at a session sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committee on diversity and inclusion and sharing his experiences working at a private, Christian liberal arts college.
Steve Silver, Director, Kellenberger Library at Northwest Christian University
Congratulations to Steve Silver on receiving this scholarship. We wish Mr. Silver safe travels to Bend and look forward to hearing about his experiences following the conference in May.
Ginny Blackson, Director, Linfield College Libraries and Educational Media Services
Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into librarianship?
I have always been a library user. My mother loves to tell the story of when I was in first grade; after my first trip to the library I came home and took her masking tape and gave every book in the house a call number. My first library job was between my freshman year and my sophomore year of college and I worked for the Lexington (Kentucky) Public Library, and that was just pretty much it for me. I worked at the University of Kentucky Education Library and Law Library and the law firm of Stites and Harbison as an undergrad. And then I went and had this totally different career as an advocate and shelter manager for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault in Alaska. And then our public library closed, and I went to the city council meeting – I was seven months pregnant and crying uncontrollably about living in a town with no library, and so they made me the public librarian. I’ve worked in libraries ever since.
What is an achievement in your career of which you are especially proud?
I think that the thing I’m most proud of is that when I was a high school librarian in Sitka, Alaska, a group of us did a program called the Alaska Spirit of Reading, and for seven years we brought authors to rural Alaska. We always of course had them visit Sitka, because we were managing it, and then we would choose different areas. One year we chose a Philippino-Canadian author, so he came to Sitka, but then we also sent him to Kodiak, which the population is about a quarter Philippino-American, and Anchorage, which has a large Philippino-American population. And we had them visit schools and public libraries, we’d distribute copies of their book around the state, and then each year we did a statewide call-in show where students from all over the state could call in and ask questions of the author. I think that’s probably my greatest achievement as a librarian and the most fun I’ve had as a librarian.
What is the biggest challenge facing your library in the upcoming year?
I think that it is the same challenge facing all libraries, but specifically academic libraries: and that is that prices go up, enrollment goes down, and so really balancing our students’ need for information. There is a lot of information out there – most of it is of very poor quality – and so we have students coming out of high school having been allowed to use Wikipedia their whole career and then come to college. I think one of the big challenges for post-secondary librarians is the loss of certified librarians in high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools that we’re seeing all over the country, so that we are the first professional librarian that many of these students have ever encountered. And that’s very different than when I was in school and every librarian that I had growing up was a certified teacher-librarian. And the loss of the certified teacher-librarian is making us have to do a lot of remediation.
What has been the best thing that has happened to you since you started your position?
I think really just the interaction with the students. You know, I found that in my last job, the higher I moved up the career ladder, the less time that I got to spend with students. And I think the best thing about this job is that I don’t have to make the choice between being a library administrator and being a boots-on-the-ground librarian, and I really like that. I’m not excited about balancing Excel spreadsheets, but I’m very excited about taking a journey with a student in learning
What does advocacy for academic libraries look like from your perspective as a library director?
I think that advocacy for academic libraries means advocacy for all libraries. It’s interconnected. Our students don’t just use our library; good public and school library experiences make for good college library users. I think that as colleges face these budget issues, librarians seem like the natural place to cut. But in the academy, libraries are the only real neutral space. We are not tied to the humanities, or tied to the social sciences, or tied to the physical sciences – we are a neutral place with a little bit of knowledge about all areas and the ability to help everyone. We serve the entire campus: we serve faculty and their research needs, we serve staff and their research needs, and we serve students in both their research and their growth and lifelong learning. We produce scholarship in a wide range of information and human service areas, but we’re not discipline specific, and we’re not tied to a specific college. We are here for everyone at the college. And as libraries are getting merged with IT, or getting merged with academic departments, we’re starting to lose that a lot.
What’s happening in or around our profession that you’re really excited about?
I am really excited about this upcoming generation of Millennial librarians, for a lot of reasons. Their absolute commitment to social justice, and that’s not their hobby – that’s something that they’ve been raised to believe in. There’s sort of this intergenerational thing in our profession and in other professions that says, “Well they just don’t know how hard it is, they don’t know how hard we fought.” Well, that’s okay. The fact that they take basic human rights as a given is a good thing. Also, I started out in librarianship pre-Internet, so I will always argue that no profession that still exists has made as many changes as librarians have in the last 50 years. That we fully embraced the Internet, that we fully embraced going digital, that we fully embraced all kinds of formats, and this generation of librarians coming out of library school are true digital natives in a way that I’m just not. So their understanding of issues of privacy and equitable access are just far beyond. For me, it’s a real challenge to sit down and think about the new digital divide, because I spent half my life without the Internet, so it really is the Millennial librarians that really excite me. They seem to be fearless in what they’re willing to experiment with. They haven’t been raised with the concept that they’re going to work at one institution their whole lives. And I just see these new kick ass librarians coming up that just impress me so, so much every time I work with them.
University of Portland (UP) librarians Jane Scott, Heidi Senior, and Diane Sotak, along with two library student workers, offered a Digital Privacy Checkup pop-up event on Tuesday, October 29, 2019, that we thought other ACRL-OR members would like to know about. We were inspired by similar events (Sullivan et al., 2018) elsewhere that have been successful.
Digital Privacy Checkup pop-up event in the University of Porland Library lobby
Heeding research related to attendance at traditional library workshops (Witherspoon & Taber, 2018) recommending that librarians “be there,” (i.e., be where the students are) we set up in the library’s lobby rather than holding a drop-in workshop, and we were “pushy” (Witherspoon & Taber, p. 12), approaching students as they entered the building to ask if they “wanted to learn a little bit about digital privacy.”
The event had two main themes “Creating Strong Passwords” and “Your Digital Footprint (Understanding What the Internet Knows About You).” These themes correspond to pages of resources on a Digital Privacy Checkup LibGuide we created for the event. We set up four laptops on tables in the lobby so that students could explore the LibGuide’s sites, with a spinner provided by the UP Student Activities office as a fun way to select a site at random. We offered a diceware game (Reinhold, 2019) to illustrate the passphrase approach to creating strong passwords. We also set up two whiteboards asking students to share their concerns about digital privacy, and to fill in the blank: “I am concerned about sharing ____ on the Internet.”
In addition to these activities, we gave out freebies: zine-style instruction booklets about creating a strong password (McElroy, 2018); “#cyberaware” pens and magnets provided by UP’s Information Services unit; and buttons designed by our Digital Lab Coordinator José Velazco with three sayings: “I’m a Privacy Superhero,” “Bet You Can’t Guess My Password,” and “I Had a Digital Privacy Checkup Today.”
Compared with traditional drop-in workshops at which we’d feel lucky to have five attendees, this event reached many more people; for example, we gave out 50 zine-style instruction booklets about creating a strong password, and nearly 100 cards with the LibGuide address. We enjoyed the discussion with students about their privacy online, and their concerns or lack of concerns, as another benefit of this type of workshop. We are planning another event to observe International Data Privacy Day on January 28, 2020.
References
McElroy, K. (2018). Password 1234: How to use diceware to build a strong passphrase. Library Freedom Institute. Retrieved from https://github.com/alisonLFP/libraryfreedominstitute/blob/master/assignments/week3/McElroy%20Week%203.pdf
Reinhold, A. (n.d.). The Diceware passphrase home page. Retrieved from http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html
Sullivan, M., Rainey, H., Cross, W., & Nakasone, S. (2018). Digital safety and privacy: Raising awareness through library outreach. Presentation at the Online Northwest conference, Portland, Oregon. Retrieved from https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/onlinenorthwest/2018/presentations/11/
Witherspoon, R., & Taber, P. (2018). Student attendance at library workshops: What the data tells us. Presentation at the Workshop on Instruction in Library Use (WILU) conference, Ottawa, Ontario. Retrieved from http://ruor.uottawa.ca/handle/10393/37937
The following is a letter from Candise Branum, ACRL-Oregon President
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending the ACRL-Washington/Oregon Joint Conference at Pack Forest. The conference theme was Whiteness and Racism in Academic Libraries: Dismantling Structures of Oppression; I’ll write a separate review of my experiences at the conference in another article, but I left the conference feeling like I had some specific tools to confront microaggressions in the workplace and a bit more hopeful about the possibility of change in academic library culture.
And then less than a week later, the latest issue of OLA Quarterly was delivered to my inbox. The closing article, Yes, but… One Librarian’s Thoughts on Doing It Right was extremely disturbing; as many of our colleagues have already pointed out, the article diminishes the work, experiences, and knowledge that women of color provide in leading discussions of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI), and instead centers the author’s own experience as a white woman as the “right way” to do this work. This is an inflammatory article, in which the author specifically names and critiques BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) scholars and allies for intentionally making white people feel bad and uninformed.
There is no excuse for this. We need to do better.
White librarians have to reckon with both our institutional and our own individual roles in white supremacy. Hosting White Nationalist groups explicitly puts the safety of our communities at risk; this is not a question of intellectual freedom, but of ensuring that our communities literally are not in fear for their well-being. As allies, white librarians must be the ones to step up and do the emotional labor of working towards racial justice, and not just waiting for our BIPOC colleagues to point out injustices; if we are passive or neutral, we are inherently supporting the racist, white supremacist status quo. There is no getting over this: the culture will not change unless white librarians force a change.
Since returning from Pack Forest, I’ve been doing some soul searching about my role in disrupting whiteness in both my personal life and my professional one. I’d like to explore how ACRL-Oregon as a body can propel the conversation forward in a community-driven and constructive way, and to build a network of librarians unified in doing work (not just making statements) towards racial justice. I obviously don’t have all the answers, but I do still have hope that our community will continue to grow together, and that we can work together in confronting white supremacy in our profession.
Some additional reading:
to document new local history resources, including pioneer diaries, oral histories, historic photos and video, and to develop an Eagle Point Historic Resources Guide / finding aid for these resources;
to supplement instruction in Eagle Point High School teaching and learning;
to move an already-existing oral history workshop into an online course delivery environment, where it will be open to local museums, historical societies, public libraries, and schools at no cost.
Funding provided by this award will support Maureen and Carol’s work on this project, and will enable them to purchase microphones and tripods to support video and audio capabilities on already-existing iPads. They are planning to purchase the equipment in preparation for Eagle Point’s 2020 spring term; during the spring term, they will develop the Historic Resources Guide and the online workshop. They plan to be mostly completed with the project by the end of June 2020, with some online course testing and revision continuing through the summer. Our congratulations to Maureen Battistella and Carol Bailey. We wish you a successful collaboration and look forward to seeing your reports on the outcomes of this work!
Kristine Alpi, MLS, MPH, PhD, AHIP, University Librarian, OHSU Library
Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into librarianship?
My first library job was as a shelver in my neighborhood branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. My education in art history, Spanish and Italian at Indiana University led me to working in the Fine Arts and Slide Libraries, but an exciting day of field shadowing at the Ruth Lilly Medical Library seduced me over to health sciences librarianship.
What is an achievement in your career of which you’re particularly proud?
My first solo-authored journal article, Expert searching in public health, indexed in PubMed, the largest biomedical database in the world from the National Library of Medicine is also my most cited paper with 70 citations. I love seeing that same excitement in the student and new faculty authors with whom I publish.
What would you like Oregon academic librarians to know about your institution?
OHSU Library serves learners statewide, from patients and families to those pursuing advanced certifications. We partner with several Oregon universities on joint academic programs and since our 3,000 students are mostly graduate students, we might be the Library serving your recently graduated alumni. Even though we are Oregon Health & Science University, we are very interested in the humanities and last April our Library hosted a Humanities month with a poetry and art contest. For 2020, we hope to spread these activities over the year. We are also passionate about making the history of health in the Pacific Northwest more accessible. We would love to collaborate on building and exposing collections to learners and researchers who would benefit from access to primary source materials.
What has been the best thing that has happened to you since you started your position?
It was an honor to present at both the Oregon Library Association-Support Staff Division Conference and the Emporia State University Commencement ceremony. I treasured these opportunities to engage with library staff and students and share what I have learned from visiting 30+ libraries in OR/WA in my first eight months here.
What does advocacy for academic libraries look like from your perspective as a library director?
My perspective has changed as I moved across regions, as much advocacy is local. Understanding advocacy for public libraries and school libraries in the same region is an important part of the library advocacy ecosystem. I always talk about the key role of school and public libraries in preparing students to want to be part of academia, and then the complementary role of public and academic libraries in serving the needs of the whole learner. Advocacy for maintaining robust and transparent resource sharing among libraries of all types is a major priority. In the face of electronic book publishing models that prohibit sharing, and the shift to purchasing almost entirely ebooks in some disciplines, this is a major concern.
Anything else you’d like Oregon academic librarians to know about you?
I am excited to travel all over Oregon and visit libraries and meet library staff, so please invite me to visit and learn from your teams.
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a new round of Professional Development Scholarship awards. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer up to $675 for each award for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Applications are accepted at three points throughout the year (see below for specific deadlines); we are currently soliciting applications for the November 29th deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.How can the scholarship be used? The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant. For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not previously received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon.
Congratulations to Katherine McDonald and Tova Johnson who both recently received $155.00 scholarships from the ACRL-OR scholarship committee to cover registration costs for the 2019 ACRL-Oregon and Washington Joint Fall Conference. The conference is October 24-25, 2019 at the Pack Forest Conference Center in Eatonville, WA. The scholarship is designed for those who live and/or work in Oregon and more information can be found on the ACRL-OR Scholarships page.
Katherine is an MLIS student living in Clatsop County, Oregon. She volunteers as a tutor for Clatsop Community College’s literacy program, focusing on ESL (English as a Second Language) adult students. Katherine works to improve the dialogue and understanding towards the marginalized demographics of Clatsop County.
Tova is a Health Sciences librarian at OHSU (Oregon Health & Science University). She is looking forward to this conference because it addresses racism in academic libraries. Tova works to make academic libraries more diverse, inclusive and equitable for all.
Applications are currently open for ACRL-OR’s K-12/Academic librarian collaboration scholarship. Up to $1000 is available to support a joint project involving an academic and a school librarian. The application deadline is Oct. 18, 2019.
Who is eligible?
All Oregon academic and school librarians
Preference will be given to teams that include at least one ACRL-Oregon member in good standing
Preference will also be given to applicants who have not previously received a School/Academic Librarian Collaboration Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon
Who is not eligible?
Academic and school librarians outside of Oregon (unless part of a team of collaborators that includes at least one Oregon librarian).
How can the scholarship be used?
This funding opportunity covers any collaboration between at least one school librarian and at least one academic librarian that the applicant(s) can make a good case for. This includes, but is not limited to:
Sponsorship to attend, exhibit, or present at a relevant conference (OASL, regional conferences, or others)
Creation of programming, such as a conference, workshop, unconference, or pre-conference
Work on a collaborative research project
Something else we haven’t thought of
Find examples of past projects from 2019 and 2018 on the ACRL-Oregon blog.
How will applications be evaluated?
Reviewers will look for applications that:
Have at least one applicant who is a member of ACRL-Oregon.
Demonstrate meaningful collaboration between school and academic librarians.
Have the potential to favorably influence information literacy awareness/education in Oregon.
Deadlines:
First round due October 18, 2019, 5:00pm.
Second round deadline TBA if there is still scholarship funding to be awarded.
Apply today! Follow the scholarship application link to access the application.
Contact Meredith Farkas, ACRL-OR Scholarship Committee Chair, with any questions (contact info below).
Meredith Farkas
ACRL-Oregon President, 2018-2019
Portland Community College
meredith.farkas@pcc.edu
ACRL-Oregon offers free webinars on topics relevant to academic library staff. Our upcoming webinar is “Data Visualization: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How” and will be presented by Negeen Aghassibake, Data Visualization Librarian at the UW Health Sciences Library on Friday September 13th, from 10-11am Pacific.
DataVisualization: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
This webinar is designed to be an overview of the fundamentals of data visualization. If you’re new to data visualization or are just curious about what it is and why it’s important, then please join us!
Registration is open to any library staff-person, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon!
https://forms.gle/DbjWtHB9eAAwXSsu7
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our YouTube channel. If you register, we will email you a link to the recording after the session.
ACRL-OR is delighted to announce the awarding of a professional development scholarship to Heidi Senior, reference and instruction librarian at the University of Portland (UP). Ms. Senior will be co-presenting a poster at the Access Services Conference November 21 and 22 in Atlanta, Georgia, and will use these scholarship funds to support her travel and attendance at the conference. The poster will present information on UP’s Clark Library’s recent professional development activities related to ethical practices. Jane Scott, UP’s Head of Public Services will be co-presenting the poster.
Heidi Senior, Reference & Instruction Librarian, University of Portland
Congratulations to Ms. Senior on receiving this scholarship. We wish her and Ms. Scott safe travels and look forward to hearing about her experiences following the conference in November.
As I prepare to step down at the end of my year as President of ACRL-Oregon, I wanted to share with you some of the terrific work our Board has done this past academic year. In October 2018, we held another successful ACRL-OR/WA Conference at Menucha. The theme was focused on “Reimagining Advocacy: Personal, Professional, Political” and one of the highlights of the conference was OLA lobbyist Amanda Dalton’s presentation on how to develop a convincing elevator pitch. We hope to see many of you at this year’s ACRL-OR/WA Conference at Pack Forest which is focused on another very important topic: “Whiteness and Racism in Academic Libraries: Dismantling Structures of Oppression.” We are currently seeking ideas for the 2020 conference theme — please fill out our survey!When I decided to run for ACRL-Oregon President-Elect, I really wanted to explore the possibility of offering webinars. Plenty of people working in academic libraries have little or no access to professional development funding and I wanted our organization to offer professional development that is accessible to every academic library worker in the state regardless of membership status. I also know that we have a lot of talent and wisdom across the state and I’m hoping this will give people opportunities to present that they may not have otherwise had (if you’re interested, please fill out our proposal form!). We offered three pilot webinars in the Winter and Spring of 2019 and will start our official webinar schedule on September 13th at 10am with a presentation entitled “Data Visualization: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How.” Please register if you’re interested; it’s free to members and non-members alike. Getting this program off the ground was definitely a passion project for me and my partners-in-crime on the project (Aja Bettencourt-McCarthy from OIT, Katherine Donaldson from UO, Sarah Rowland from EOU, and Candise Branum from OCOM) and I hope you find it valuable.ACRL-Oregon offers a number of scholarships every year, including professional development scholarships, scholarships to the ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference, and funding to support a collaborative project between K-12 and academic library workers. The latter was awarded this year to librarians at Eastern Oregon University and library and instructional staff at the North Powder School District to support the development of information literacy instructional strategies for students at the high school. A full report of their activities can be found on our blog. One area that is nearly impossible to plan for is advocacy, and this was a big year for the Board in terms of advocacy work. After we heard reports about the racist incidents at ALA Midwinter, we felt compelled to write a statement of concern to ACRL encouraging them to address the issues and suggesting anti-bias and bystander training for staff and volunteer leaders. When we learned that the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) had a draft revision of their standards that significantly pared down the library section and removed any language about academic freedom, we took action. In our letter to NWCCU, we advocated for the importance and value of academic libraries and library personnel to student learning as well as the importance of a robust support of academic freedom. We also worked with various state and regional membership organizations, colleges, and universities to coordinate advocacy efforts. They have since added in additional verbiage about the critical human resources in our libraries and added back in the section on academic freedom. The ACRL-OR Board provided written testimony in favor of Oregon HB 3263 which supported school librarians in Oregon. We also encouraged our members to advocate in support of two bills regarding Open Educational Resources (one of which was successful). Finally, our fantastic ACRL-OR Legislative Representative, Kim Olson-Charles from Concordia University served as Oregon’s representative at National Library Legislative Day this year.Another big project we took on this year was documenting all of the different roles people play on the ACRL-Oregon Board, so if you decide to serve on the Board in the future, you’ll have a clear sense of what each volunteer position entails along with useful tips from people who have had the role in the past. It has been an honor and a pleasure leading ACRL-Oregon’s work this year. I can’t recommend highly enough service on the ACRL-Oregon Board; it’s a perfect opportunity to get to know other fantastic and committed library workers in Oregon and to help support librarianship across the state. It has definitely been one of the most fulfilling service opportunities I’ve taken on. I look forward to supporting Candise Branum, your incoming-President, this year in my role as Past-President. If you have any questions about the Board’s activities or what it’s like to serve on the ACRL-Oregon Board, please get in touch (meredith.farkas@pcc.edu)!
ACRL-OR has funds to award two scholarships to attend the ACRL Oregon and Washington Joint Fall Conference. This year, the Washington chapter is hosting the conference on October 24 & 25 at the Pack Forest Conference Center in Washington. Apply now!
How can the scholarships be used?
The scholarship covers the registration fee of $155 for the conference, which includes room (dorm option) and meals.
Who is eligible?
This scholarship is designed for those who live and/or work in Oregon. For those who live and/or work in Washington, please refer to the ACRL-WA site for conference scholarship information. Those meeting at least one of the criteria below are eligible to apply. Each criteria met will be awarded points in the evaluation process (see below under how the application will be evaluated).
First-time attendee of the joint conference.
ACRL-OR member.
MLIS student in an ALA-accredited program who lives in Oregon.
Paraprofessional employee in an Oregon academic library.
Part-time or temporary employee in an Oregon academic library.
Who is not eligible?
Those who do not live and/or work in Oregon.
Those who meet none of the criteria described above.
Those who have received a Fall Conference Scholarship in the past.
How will applications be evaluated?
A point system will be used to rank applicant eligibility (First time attendee: 2 points; ACRL-OR member: 2 points; MLIS student: 1 point; Paraprofessional: 1 point; part-time or temporary employee: 1 point). In addition, application essays will be evaluated for:
Financial need.
Interest in the conference theme/program.
Plans to apply knowledge gained at the conference.
Deadline:
The deadline for the 2019 Fall Conference Scholarship applications will be Friday, September 13. Apply now!
Applicants will be notified shortly after the application period closes. Registration for the ACRL Oregon and Washington Joint Fall Conference is open until Friday, October 4th.
Last month we posted an update on the 2018-19 ACRL-Oregon School/Academic Librarian Collaboration Scholarship recipients’ collaboration to put together an information literacy instruction workshop. Since then, Sherry Loennig and Sally Jo Mielke have put together a report with more details about the collaboration between Eastern Oregon University and the Powder River School District. Please take a moment to read the full report.
After receiving notification of the scholarship, we met to plan for implementation of the project. We discussed plans for a half-day workshop, to include information literacy instruction. In addition to looking at possible dates for the workshop we also worked to begin planning a pre-workshop meeting to talk with teachers about priorities for information literacy instruction.
Sherry identified three teachers who would participate in the workshop, the High School Language Arts/PE/Health/Social Studies teacher, Middle/High School Science teacher, and Middle/High School Language Arts/Computer teacher. Sherry also set up a meeting with school administration to discuss the project. Winter weather and bad road conditions derailed-several in person meetings but on March 27th, we met with the North Powder teachers to discuss the content and plan a date for the workshop.
Based on the teachers’ meeting, the information literacy instruction priorities were identified to include:
developing a research question
search strategies using online resources
types of online resources
evaluation of online resources
The teachers also expressed interest in developing online course/subject research guides to be hosted on a “to-be-created” library web page off the school website. Sally agreed to create a template using Google Sites, that teachers could then customize for particular courses or subject areas, and Sherry will work with district IT to have a library web page created. Sherry and the North Powder teachers were tasked with identifying a date in April or May for the workshop.
Holding the Workshop
Due to school/teacher schedule conflicts, we were not able to hold the workshop in April/May, and rescheduled for June 25. At the workshop we enjoyed a morning of working together discussing information literacy instruction for North Powder students and possibilities for continued outreach and collaboration. Sherry plans to follow up with an evaluation from the teachers, and we will create a report to submit for the project as a whole.
Publicity
Sally notified EOU Library Director and Administration of the scholarship award, and North Powder Administration included a report on the scholarship for the upcoming board meeting and a small article was included in the school newspaper.
Visit the ACLR-OR website for more information about the ACRL-OR Collaboration scholarship and stay tuned to the blog for the final project report.
Whiteness and Racism in Academic Libraries: Dismantling Structures of Oppression
The Fall 2019 conference takes place amongst intensified organizing of white nationalists on college campuses, continued brutality against black and brown communities, policies that restrict immigration and border movement, and policing of body rights. In libraries we are making strategic claims towards equity, diversity and inclusion, yet our profession remains centered on cultures of white supremacy.
This conference is an effort to openly acknowledge the ways that whiteness and racism are supported in our libraries, and strategies for practicing anti-racism across the breadth of our work. The goal is to explicitly name the racist hegemony that underpins libraries and library work. Intersectional anti-racist practices must be central to our work in order to resist causing further harm. Investigations into how racism operates in tandem with white supremacy are essential to our work of making libraries sites of equity and social justice. This conference calls on each of us to take active engagement in understanding and learning about racism in libraries, making ourselves and our library systems those that resist oppression.
We invite proposals to join and extend these conversations. Sessions will consist of presentations, facilitated conversations, or trainings and workshops. While theory and praxis are central to this work, we seek sessions that help library workers to examine and name racialized power dynamics, and to practice building anti-oppressive communities and services. We recognize that anti-racism work is not perfect, and we expect proposals may include lessons learned for approaches that did not go as planned. Proposals that highlight these lessons learned should keep the focus on the ongoing work of dismantling racism and those most impacted by it.
Example topics for presentations and workshops may include, but are not limited to:
Addressing white fragility and its impacts in libraries
Policy audits and changes
Resisting white nationalist organizing
Leadership, recruitment and hiring practices that support library workers of color
Support, retention and graduation of students of color
Experiences of library workers and students of color
Activism and programming that centers students of color
Addressing and resisting cultures of white supremacy
Affinity and caucus organizing in libraries
Bystander intervention training
Lessons learned from interventions, policy changes, programming, etc.
If you are just beginning to engage with racism and whiteness and need a starting point, we recommend beginning with Tema Okun’swhite supremacy culture; Jennifer Brown, Jennifer Ferretti, Sofia Leung, and Marisa Mendez-Brady’s 2018 article We Here: Speaking Our Truth; Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It’s Hard for White People To Talk About Racism; and Lorin Jackson and LaQuanda Onyemeh’s web-based forum WOC+Lib.
Questions
ACRL WA-OR Joint Conference is held on October 24-25, 2019 the the Pack Forest Conference Center in Eatonville, WA.
For questions or comments contact president@acrlwa.org
Mark Waston, Interim Dean of Libraries, University of Oregon
On June 10 the University of Oregon announced that Mark Watson, associate dean for research services, UO libraries, has been named interim dean of UO libraries. Watson has worked in various capacities in the UO libraries since 1986, including stints as interim head of UO science libraries and co-interim dean of libraries. He will begin this new role starting July 9. ACRL-OR caught up with the incoming interim dean to answer a few questions about his new role:
What can you tell us about why Adrienne Lim (current dean UO Libraries) is leaving and where she is going?
Adriene Lim has accepted a position as Dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland in College Park. Dean Lim is a recognized leader in the national academic library community, and her record of achievement, leadership and scholarship has been recognized and rewarded by this offer to take the helm at one of the country’s largest research libraries. As a respected leader at the University of Oregon, she will be sorely missed.
What do you most look forward to as interim dean?
As interim Dean, I will have the opportunity to work directly under the University’s Vice President and Provost for Academic Affairs. Involvement at this level of governance and the opportunity to help shape the academic direction of the institution is an exciting prospect. Within the library, I look forward to working with the same great team of colleagues but in new ways. As the interim Dean, I will be able to deepen and extend my efforts to support them in providing excellent library service to the campus community.
What is the biggest challenge you see in the year to come for the UO libraries?
Like many of its peers, the University of Oregon is dealing with a downturn in enrollment, especially when it comes to international students, with the consequence that all sectors of the institution are facing funding constraints. It will be challenging to maintain fiscal balance and still deliver the quality service that faculty and students have come to expect. This challenge extends to both maintaining adequate levels of staffing and the library’s ability to build collections commensurate with teaching and research needs.
What can you tell us about the search process for a permanent dean?
The UO is facing the prospect of recruiting several new Deans during the coming year; however, the stated expectation is that a search for a permanent Dean of Libraries will commence sometime in the fall.
Anything else you’d like the Oregon academic library community to know?
As interim Dean, I will have the opportunity to attend more meetings and conferences where I hope to meet new colleagues and interact with people I already know. I look forward to making new connections with my Oregon colleagues!
ACRL-OR extends our best wishes to Mark Watson and to the UO Libraries during this interim leadership and search for a new dean of UO Libraries.
The Oregon State University Libraries and Press (OSULP) has been awarded the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award for 2019 for their Undergraduate Research and Writing Studio. Opened in 2017, the Studio provides a place for undergraduate students to work on writing projects and receive assistance with writing and research from trained peers. The Studio is a collaboration between the Writing Center and the OSULP. The implementation and ongoing steering team includes Writing Center and OSULP staff, including: Dennis Bennett, Chris Ervin, and Vanessa Petroj from the Writing Center and Anne-Marie Deitering, Beth Filar Williams, Uta Hussong-Christian, Hannah Gascho Rempel and Jane Nichols from the library.
The award includes recognition in the C&RL News, a plaque, and $3000.
ACRL-OR was able to ask a few questions of the team. Their answers are provided below (ACRL also published a short interview).
Our heartiest congratulations to OSULP and to the implementation team on this prestigious award. Read on for some of their comments.
Who or what was the driving force behind creating the Studio?
Jane: There was a pressing need for more space for the writing center because they were outgrowing their space. At the same time there was a rising idea of reclaiming and re-invigorating the space where tutoring was happening in the library, the Collaborative Learning Center (CLC). The library had been aware of the trend of library – writing center partnerships and locating the campus writing center in the library. The Associate University Librarian for Learning Spaces, Anne-Marie Deitering, and the Writing Center Director, Dennis Bennett, began talking about partnering with an eye towards addressing respective service goals centered on student learning and success. As discussions progressed, the idea to move into the library gained traction and was approved by senior leadership by both the library and the writing center. Following this, a team was tasked with carrying out the project.
An important foundation to the relationship is the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding which outlines various aspects of the terms of agreement and includes substantive calls for the partners to collaborate on issues such as learning outcomes, service design, assessment, and training.
What was the collaboration process like between librarians, writing center staff, and media specialists?
Beth Filar Williams and Uta Hussong-Christian: The nine months we all worked together on the implementation team was truly a collaborative process. Over the duration of our well-organized and facilitated bi-weekly meetings, we used a service design process to develop a shared holistic student-focused framework for the project. In the process of working through space and service concepts and eventually plans, we learned a lot about each other as individuals and about what our respective units did. This helped us compromise in ways that worked for everyone. By the time the space opened, we had laid the groundwork for our partnership as we went through the ups and downs of the first year (and beyond) of Research & Writing Studio operations.
What did writing center folks learn about the library/librarians that was new to them and what did librarians learn about writing center folks that was new to them?
Jane Nichols: As librarians we were unfamiliar with the extensive training, much of it focused on theory and pedagogical concepts, that the student writing consultants received. We appreciated seeing the consultants be open to learning about the theoretical foundations to their work.
Chris Ervin: Something I already knew as an experienced academic is that there is more happening within other disciplines than those of us who are disciplinary outsiders understand. Working alongside librarians and in the physical space of the library has shown me some of the inner workings of the discipline of librarianship, in particular where those inner workings come into contact with the Studio. For example, we in writing centers and writing studies don’t tend to think of the work we do as “service,” but rather as teaching and mentoring. There’s even a debate within our discipline about whether to consider first-year writing as a “service course” (in service to the other disciplines) or as an introduction to the discipline of writing studies. Librarians, however, often use language like that—service points, service models, etc., but I understand better what that means now. The “information seeking process” that’s iterative is very much like our studio pedagogy approach, also iterative. Librarians must suffer a fundamental misunderstanding (from the public, students, faculty) of the work they do, just like writing center professionals. One place that misunderstanding comes into the Studio is in what students think of the role of our research consultants. Students, I believe, want to see the research consultant’s role as serving their information needs rather than teaching them skills that will help them meet their own information needs. As a writing center professional whose priority is facilitating student learning through teaching (classroom or one-to-one), I see the potential for research consultants to practice the studio pedagogy we associate with writing consultations—the process-focused, metacognitive kinds of conversations that would encourage research writers to investigate their own research processes and to advance their information literacy skills.
What do you see as the next steps for the Studio?
Beth: I would like to continue to grow the partnership and iterate as we learn more from assessment. I hope we can integrate Student Mulitmedia Services better maybe in an adjacent space? And I hope we get a better referral process to library liaisons and to other resources.
What are you all going to use the $3000 for?
Chris: The four members of the Studio Steering Committee have agreed that the funds will be used mostly or fully to support the Studio’s food pantry. Because Oregon State University’s students, like college students around the country, wrestle with food indsecurity, we created a pantry in the Studio for our student staff. The $3000 will be used to stock the pantry for at least a year, possibly more.
Hannah, this comes on the heels of you being selected as the ACRL IS Featured Teaching Librarian in 2018. Is it safe to say you’re now a library rock star?
Hannah: Hannah who? In other news, tickets are on sale now for my upcoming world-wide tour “Curiouser and Curiouser.”
Anything else you want the Oregon academic library community to know about this award or about the Studio?
Beth: We welcome visitors and conversation as we grow our knowledge, our services, and learn about best practices.
Applications for ACRL-OR’s professional development scholarship will be accepted through July 31. Don’t delay; get your application in now!
ACRL-OR is pleased to offer a scholarship up to $250 to cover expenses related to an eligible professional development activity. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant.
For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.
Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not previously received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon.
Who is not eligible?
Non ACRL-Oregon members.
How will applications be evaluated?
Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.
How do I apply?Apply for the scholarship using this online form.
For more information, contact the ACRL-OR Board President:
Meredith Farkas
acrlor@olaweb.org
I just finished up John Maxwell’s online course entitled “Developing the Leader Within You.” I really wanted to take this course for several reasons, one of them having to do with some of the changes that Corban University is going through. There has been discussion of the library moving to a new building. I was hoping that this course might enable me to lead better through that process. While the discussion really has not developed since I applied for the scholarship (that is, there really is no more or no less certainty that moving will actually take place), I can say that this online course really developed me in several facets.
If I had to point out two particular areas where I feel I learned the most they would be as follows:
Attitude really makes a huge difference in many facets of life, including leadership. In this particular context of potentially moving to a new building, seeing it as an opportunity to expand and develop the services which the library offers and not simply focusing on the work it will take to get there (and it does have potential to be a lot of work) or what can go wrong, really helps the scenario tremendously. The VPs who are in charge of this transition see my attitude and their eagerness to provide us with what we need is in large part reflective of the attitude I carry through this scenario.
Personal/professional development needs to be planned out with a goal of where I want to be. I have always enjoyed many facets of both professional and personal development, but they have often been only for the sake of the development itself, not necessarily for the sake of developing as a leader. If I can focus on developing skills that will aid me in this particular scenario, it can be a great asset. For example, one area that I am working on developing is my skills in conflict resolution. I do not do this simply so I can learn, but because of the likeliness that these skills can be utilized as we discuss moving the library.
Perri Parise, Director, Emporia State University Library and Information Management, Portland Program
When people find out I am retiring after almost 50 years in the library profession, they often remark that I must have seen a lot of changes over the years. But as I reflect back, I have to admit that although on the surface libraries today indeed appear very different, I think that the foundation I was lucky enough to have received has supported me through the seeming changes.
The formats of the materials we provide have certainly evolved, although newer formats do not necessarily replace older formats. The challenge of access is an enormous issue as technologies change, but I think that access was also an issue when libraries were buildings fixed in place and not necessarily available to all segments of a community, or they housed materials that were not relevant or accessible to the needs of all in a community.
I entered the profession at a time when most libraries probably functioned in the traditional, stereotypical sense of libraries – quiet places, full of books, usually supporting a white middle-class American value system. However, I was very fortunate to have been part of a federally funded program in library school that was called, “Cross-cultural Training in Librarianship: The Librarian in a Pluralistic Society,” which focused on underserved populations.
Through that library school program and a stint in the Peace Corps in Fiji where their public library system was *the* center of the community and an integral part of everything that went on in that town, I began my career understanding what a dynamic library can mean to a community. I took those experiences with me as a core value, no matter where I worked or what type of position I held.
Now more than ever, we need to justify our existence everyday by the proactive work we do to make sure there is no doubt how important we are to those we serve. What I appreciate so much today is the call for advocacy and social action within the profession. But I do worry about how polarized our society has become, and I see this sometimes within the library field, also. How can we advocate without alienating the “other side?” How do encourage engagement and empathy? How do we assert our ideals, but at the same time truly listen?
ACRL-Oregon has begun offering free webinars on topics relevant to academic library workers. These are usually hour-long online sessions (presentations and facilitated discussions) that are moderated and supported by ACRL-Oregon Board members and are presented via Zoom Web Conferencing.
We are currently seeking webinar presenters to share their knowledge, ideas, and experiences between September 2019 and May 2020. If you are interested in presenting as part of the webinar series, please fill out our call for proposals form. Please note that you do not need to be a member of ACRL-Oregon in order to present.
Sessions will be recorded and made available via YouTube and on our website.
You can view the archived webinars from our pilot on our website: https://acrloregon.org/acrl-or-webinars/
Thank you for considering sharing your knowledge and experiences with library workers in the Pacific Northwest!
Best wishes,
Meredith Farkas
ACRL-Oregon President
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a new round of Professional Development Scholarship awards. We are currently soliciting applications for the July 31 deadline for a scholarship up to $250. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.
How can the scholarship be used?
The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant.
For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference as a director representing the Association of Independent Colleges of Art
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.
Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not previously received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon.
Who is not eligible?
Non ACRL-Oregon members.
How will applications be evaluated?
Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.
How do I apply?Apply for the scholarship using this online form.
For more information, contact the ACRL-OR Board President:
Meredith Farkas
acrlor@olaweb.org
Academic Libraries: A Cool Place
Warm weather is fast approaching! For those of you at libraries who have student populations which stay on/near campus during the summer months, consider reaching out to student groups and on-campus housing associations to advertise Summer and Intersession hours. I don’t know about other campuses, but our on-site dorms don’t have any air conditioning in them and many new or international students arrive on campus well before the term officially begins. Advertising the library as a place of respite from the weather could be an easy way to boost summer attendance and introduce new students to the library as a space. For more information, I wrote about libraries helping patrons ‘beat the heat’ for the blog last summer.
“The Public” and Library Services to Homeless and in-need PatronsOn April 5th, Emilio Estavez’s film, ‘The Public’ had its official theatrical release –although at this time the only listing I can find is for the Bijou in Lincoln City. The film was originally screened multiple times last year, including at the June 2018 ALA meeting, and again at ALA Midwinter in Seattle this year. If you’re one of the few in the library sphere who hasn’t at least heard of the film, ‘The Public’ is a dramatic story centered around a group of homeless patrons who, in an act of civil disobedience, refuse to leave the public library at closing time during a brutal Winter storm because it is their only place of refuge. From my understanding, the film had a mostly positive reception in 2018; especially among those in the library profession. Estavez also did a PSA on the importance of libraries to modern societies and communities, which you can currently find on the ALA site.
If you’re interest in learning more about providing services to homeless, or in-need patrons, I recommend ‘The Librarian’s Guide to Homelessness’. Many academic libraries are also community-serving and it helps to be familiar with local and state resources in the immediate area. For example, Polk County has put together a Community Resource Guide which is quite comprehensive and I have used on multiple occasions to direct individual toward necessity resources such as food bank and access to clothing. Your county or city likely has one as well; we keep a physical copy on hand at the main desk and print out a new copy when we give it away.
Dear members,
On Wednesday, March 27, the House Education Committee will vote to send HB 2213 and HB 2214 to the Joint Ways & Means Committee. These bills support open education and affordable textbooks in higher ed.
The committee members need to know that their constituents care about this issue. If you are represented by one of the committee members listed below, will you please email, call, or visit with this message (sample included)?
Find out who represents you: https://bit.ly/1zqJ5pmHB 2213 would require each of Oregon’s 24 public colleges and universities to create a textbook affordability plan.
HB 2214 continues to fund Oregon’s textbook affordability and open education program, which includes offering grants to faculty who redesign their courses to include open educational resources.
Thank you, and please feel free to share this message!
*****
Chair: Rep Doherty, Democrat – District 35 – Tigard
Vice Chair: Rep Alonso León, Democrat – District 22 – Woodburn
Vice Chair: Cheri Helt, Republican – District 54 – Bend
Rep Hernandez, Democrat – District 47 – Portland
Rep Neron, Democrat – District 26 – Aloha, Beaverton, Hillsboro, King City, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville
Rep Reardon, Democrat – District 48 – Happy Valley
Rep Reschke, Republican – District 56 – Klamath Falls
Rep Sollman, Democrat – District 30 – Hillsboro
Rep Wallan, Republican – District 6 – Medford
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Dear Representative _______,
The high cost of textbooks is a barrier to Oregon students completing their college or university degree. HB 2214 continues to fund textbook affordability and open education in Oregon through a program that has a track record of helping students save millions of dollars on textbooks. Can I count on your support for HB 2214 when it is scheduled for a work session?
Please let me know if there are any questions I can answer about this bill.
Thank you,
[constituent name]
Some of you may be following the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) accreditation standards revision process. They published a First Draft of the revised accreditation standards in which the standards overall have been pared down considerably. The library community is concerned that in the revised draft, the library is only mentioned in relation to collections, and information literacy is only mentioned as one of several examples of potential core competencies set at the institution level. We want to make sure that information literacy instruction and a requirement to employ qualified personnel remain in the standards. We are also concerned about the removal of any language about Academic Freedom, a critical element of intellectual freedom in higher education. The current NWCCU Standards are available for comparison.
The ACRL-Oregon Board has shared our concerns and suggestions with NWCCU. You can read our letter here and also at the bottom of this post. Please feel free to share it with others and you are welcome to use our suggestions in your own advocacy.
Nearly this exact same thing happened in New England several years ago with the NEASC accreditation standards and librarians had to mount a significant advocacy campaign to keep information literacy and libraries in the standards. Here are a few ways that you can help support library presence and values in the revised standards.
Ask your institution’s Accreditation Liaison Officer (ALO) to advocate for libraries and academic freedom. The ALO is the individual at your college or university who is responsible for working with NWCCU on accreditation. It’s often a Provost or Vice President of Academic Affairs, but the institution can designate who they wish. Advocacy from an ALO will be very influential. Please feel free to share our letter with your ALO.
Spread the word! Get others — librarians, non-librarians, and organizations that have an interest in this — involved in advocacy. Librarians are not the only ones who should be concerned by these proposed changes.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best wishes,
Meredith Farkas
ACRL-Oregon President
______________________________________
Dear Drs. Huftalin and Powell and members of the NWCCU Bylaws, Standards, and Policies Committee:
The Association of College and Research Libraries, Oregon Chapter (ACRL-Oregon) Board is pleased to provide feedback on the current draft of NWCCU’s Accreditation Standards. Accreditation standards provide critical guidance to colleges and universities about what a successful institution should provide to students. Library resources, services, and personnel are critical components of institutional quality. By evaluating academic libraries merely on the adequacy of their information resources, NWCCU sends a message that libraries’ instructional work in support of student and faculty information literacy is not critical to maintaining a high quality institution of higher education.
We assert that collections, information resources, and information literacy instruction require the expertise of library and information professionals for both instruction and resource development and management. It is because of the dedicated work and teaching of qualified library faculty and staff that academic libraries are at the heart of their campuses. Librarians are frequent information literacy teaching partners with disciplinary faculty and are often embedded in courses, curricula, and campus initiatives. Library instruction is not only critical to improving student information literacy and mitigating achievement gaps, but also helps institutions maximize the value of those collections in which they’ve invested.
ACRL-Oregon suggests the following addition to section 2G, focused on Library and Information Resources:
2.G.2 Consistent with its mission, programs, services, and characteristics, the institution employs sufficient appropriately qualified library and information resources personnel to provide information literacy instruction in support of institutional student learning outcomes.
If standards around library instruction are softened, we will very likely see a decline in institutional support for these services. The removal of any mention of qualified library personnel or library instruction from the Standards could have a tremendously negative impact on library staffing and student information literacy.
We also believe that librarians should continue to serve on NWCCU accreditation review teams. Librarians are best positioned to evaluate the adequacy of library resources, personnel, and instruction, and also often have a unique birds-eye view of academic curricula as a consequence of their support of college or university disciplines.
The ACRL-Oregon Board is also deeply concerned about the proposed removal of the entire section of the current standards focused on academic freedom. Academic freedom is a bedrock principle for higher education. This principle is under attack on many fronts in the U.S today. The removal of any reference to academic freedom in the NWCCU accreditation standards removes an important and vital defense of this core principle. As such, ACRL-OR suggests the following addition to the draft standards:
2.B.5 Within the context of its mission, the institution defines and actively promotes an environment that supports academic freedom in the pursuit, dissemination, and teaching of knowledge. The institution adopts and adheres to policies and procedures that affirm the freedom of faculty, staff, administrators, and students to share their scholarship and reasoned conclusions with others, and protects its constituencies from inappropriate internal and external influences, pressures, and harassment.
Thank you for considering our suggestions.
Sincerely,
The Association of College and Research Libraries, Oregon Board
Meredith Farkas, ACRL-Oregon President, Portland Community College
Candise Branum, ACRL-Oregon Vice-President, Oregon College of Oriental Medicine
Steve Silver, ACRL-Oregon Past-President, Northwest Christian University
Angie Beiriger, Reed College
Kim Olson-Charles, Concordia University
Arlene Weible, State Library of Oregon
Rick Ball, Klamath Community College
Christopher Mansayon, Western Oregon University
Patrick Wohlmut, Linfield College
Katherine Donaldson, University of Oregon
Sarah Rowland, Eastern Oregon University
Janet Tapper, University of Western States
Aja Bettencourt-McCarthy, Oregon Institute of Technology
Garrett Trott, Library Director , Corban University
ACRL-OR is happy to announce the awarding of a professional development scholarship to Garrett Trott, library director at Corban University in Salem. Garrett was recently promoted to library director and will use the scholarship funds to partially offset the cost of an online course on “Developing the Leader Within You.” Garrett will be taking this course to improve his “relational intelligence” and to help him transition from “an individual focused on production … to an individual focused on people development,” as he makes the transition from a front line librarian to library director. Garrett will apply what he learns in this course to more effectively lead the library through some university-wide changes under discussion. Look for a future ACRL-OR blog post from Garrett sharing his experiences and insight gained following completion of this course.
Our congratulations to Garrett!
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know that would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections.
To nominate yourself, a colleague, or an employee, submit our online nomination form. The nomination period will close on Tuesday, April 23rd.
Eligibility
Vice-President/President Elect must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon and ACRL national
Member-at-Large candidates must be members of OLA and ACRL-Oregon
Questions?
Email Candise Branum (cbranum@ocom.edu), who is our current Vice-President/President Elect, if you have any questions or concerns about the open positions.Thanks,The ACRL-OR Nominating CommitteeCandise BranumKatherine DonaldsonPatrick Wohlmut
Academic librarians spend most of their time working with faculty and students to promote library services. With all the attention these groups require, it is easy to overlook campus support staff as potential users of library resources and advocates for library services. Staff providing student and financial services, grounds or building maintenance, administrative support, or food service may not be obvious library users, but you might be surprised about their information needs and the resources you might have to help them.
LearningExpress Library is a resource provided to Oregon libraries by the Statewide Database Licensing Program. It provides standardized test preparation materials, career and employment resources, computer and other skill building tutorials. In many ways, this resource has something for everyone, and this point was brought home to me at a training session the State Library provided at a community college campus. Hoping to boost attendance at the session, the local librarian sent out an invitation to all campus staff. While it was not surprising to see staff from the student services office attend the training, we were delighted to see general administrative staff and maintenance staff also show up.
Student services staff were interested in career placement and assessment tools available, and well as skill building tutorial available in math, reading, grammar and writing for the students they worked with. The administrative staff member was looking for resources to help her daughter study for the SAT and was also excited to see the job search tools available through Job and Career Accelerator. The maintenance staff member was looking for opportunities for self-improvement and was thrilled to see tutorials for Excel and Adobe Photoshop. It’s a librarian’s dream to get resources into the hands of users when they need them, and this session really inspired me to think about the value of LearningExpress Library as tool for outreach beyond the usual library user groups.
If campus staff feel that the library is welcoming source of information and support in their own lives, they are certainly more likely to spread the word to the faculty and students they interact with every day. Consider cultivating these untapped library champions as part of your outreach strategy.
Please contact Arlene Weible to arrange a training session for your campus.
Arlene WeibleElectronic Services ConsultantState Library of Oregon
ACRL-Oregon is piloting offering webinars on topics relevant to academic library workers. Members and non-members alike are welcome to join us.
Our second webinar is entitled “Geek out, don’t freak out: How to chill out and learn to love assessment” and will be presented by librarians Colleen Sanders of Clackamas Community College and Meredith Farkas of Portland Community College on Wednesday, February 27th from 10-11am Pacific.
Assessment is such a valuable tool to help learn more about our patrons, demonstrate the value of what we do, and improve our teaching. So why is it so difficult to build an assessment culture in library instruction programs? Often, resistance to and anxiety about assessment come from common causes that have been both discussed in the literature and illustrated in our own experiences. Meredith and Colleen will talk about their experiences working with nascent assessment programs at their libraries, the projects they’ve worked on, and what they’ve learned from trial and sometimes error. They will discuss ways that librarians can move past resistance and anxiety to reap the benefits of an assessment culture.
Registration is open to any Oregon library staff, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/848284084394267c7510d14dfea9e911
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available to registrants after the live broadcast.
Past Webinars:
On January 11th, ACRL-Oregon held its first pilot webinar on Critical Library Management! Here is the link to the archived webinar so you can watch it at your convenience: http://bit.ly/acrl-or-jan19. You can also access Candise Branum and Molly Gunderson’s slides separately. It was a terrific webinar with tips relevant to library workers wherever they are in their organizational hierarchy.
If you do view the webinar, we’d very much appreciate it if you’d provide feedback to us via our evaluation form — it should only take a moment: https://goo.gl/forms/IHHpC0HpVPRKgP4o2
Questions about our webinar pilot can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Meredith Farkas at acrlor@olaweb.org.
Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into librarianship?
Growing up, the public library was like a second home to me. One of my earliest memories is negotiating to go to the library before nap time. In college, my favorite part of any paper was doing the literature review and background research. I have always had an inclination towards social justice and an insatiable curiosity, so librarianship seemed like a natural choice.
What is an achievement in your career of which you’re particularly proud?
Working on a shoestring budget, I have sought out creative ways to get resources to students and faculty. I go out of my way to find solutions outside of established channels so that I can connect patrons to peer reviewed articles, books, and other resources that support their learning. I see myself as an advocate for my library’s users.
What would you like Oregon academic librarians to know about your institution?
Birthingway is a very unique place. It’s the only school in the Pacific Northwest that is Midwifery Education and Accreditation Council accredited to educate direct entry midwives. The founder, Holly, is dedicated to training skilled and competent doulas, lactation consultants, and midwives. Birthingway’s collaborative approach towards learning and multi-vocal approach to policy development have made it my favorite place to work.
The library is similarly unique; it includes traditional western medicine resources as well as resources on plant medicine and homeopathy. The librarian’s role, particularly in teaching information literacy and giving students the tools to find and evaluate information to support evidence based practice, is a small but vital part of students’ education.
What is the biggest challenge facing your library in the upcoming year?
In 2018, Birthingway’s board decided not to admit new students to the midwifery program, which is the oldest and largest program at the college. Once current students complete their education, the program will end. This will likely lead to the school closing within the next few years. Unfortunately, it’s a challenging financial climate for small, private, academic institutions, as has been demonstrated with the recent closures of Marylhurst and others colleges across the country.
The biggest challenge will be continuing to provide the best library services possible for our students and faculty. Despite a probable closure and shrinking budget, my aim as the librarian is to ensure that students continue to have access to all the resources and instruction they need to support their educations and become lifelong critical consumers of information.
What has been the best thing that has happened to you since you started your position?
I love the feeling I get when patrons go out of their way to thank me for for how helpful I’ve been, or when I’m able to get them access to something they didn’t think they’d be able to access.
Having the opportunity to get to know other librarians is another wonderful thing that’s happened since I started. I’ve applied for and received a number of scholarships to attend continuing education courses and conferences. Equally if not more valuable than the conference sessions has been my discussions with other professionals, many of whom I have kept in touch with. Whether I have wanted to bounce ideas about information literacy exercises and lesson plans or ask a technical question, these individuals have been helpful and constructive. It’s great to see the values displayed that led me to the profession in the first place.
We are pleased to announce the recipients of funding for the current cycle of the ACRL-Oregon School/Academic Librarian Collaboration Scholarship: Sally Mielke of Eastern Oregon University, and Sherry Loennig of North Powder Charter School. This scholarship was created to foster collaboration between academic librarians and school librarians.Sally Mielke, Eastern Oregon UniversityTheir project goals are to increase student access to online resources and assistance in the North Powder Charter School library, and also to increase students’ information literacy skills. Prior to Ms. Loennig’s recent hire, North Powder had no dedicated librarian. Students have not been receiving information literacy instruction, and there is no computer workstation for searching library resources available to students in their library. The North Powder School District superintendent has asked Ms. Loennig to meet with North Powder teachers to address school library standards and information literacy instruction.Sherry Loennig, North Powder Charter SchoolFunding provided by this award will allow for the purchase of a computer for students to access in their library, with a librarian present to provide assistance and instruction in finding and evaluating information resources. Ms. Mielke will provide a workshop on teaching information literacy for Ms. Loennig and three of North Powder’s teachers in late Spring or early Summer 2019. During the summer of 2019 Mss. Mielke and Loennig will work with these three teachers to prepare research guides on specific subject areas, to be ready in time for the opening of the 2019/20 school year. These teachers, with the assistance of Ms. Loennig, will then be able to integrate information literacy instruction into their classes. The research guides will be posted to the School Site Academic Page so that students and families can find and access the resources easily when at home or other locations.Their project supports these Oregon School Library Standards:LIB 1.1.C Develop, select, clarify, and use questions and strategies to search for informationLIB 1.1.D Find, evaluate and select appropriate sources to answer questionsLIB 3.2.A Consider a variety of balanced and authoritative sourcesLIB 4.1.A Find, evaluate and select appropriate digital resources to answer questionsLIB 4.1.C Evaluate digital information sources for accuracy, validity, importance and biasOur congratulations to Sally Mielke and Sherry Loennig. We look forward to your successful collaboration and to seeing the outcomes of this work!
Looking for a way to pay for OLA-WLA? ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a new round of Professional Development Scholarship awards. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer up to $500 for each award for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Applications are accepted at three points throughout the year (see below for specific deadlines); we are currently soliciting applications for the March 3 deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.How can the scholarship be used? The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences (including, but not limited to, OLA-WLA), workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant. For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, – Art Libraries Society of North America conference
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not previously received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon.
Who is not eligible?Non ACRL-Oregon members.How will applications be evaluated?Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.How do I apply?Apply for the scholarship using this online form.Deadline:Applications will be accepted at three points throughout the 2018-2019 year:
March 3
April 30
November 30 (done)
For more information, contact the ACRL-OR Board President:Steve SilverNorthwest Christian University
ssilver@nwcu.edu
acrlor@olaweb.org
ACRL-Oregon would like to echo and support the statement sent earlier by ACRL/NY regarding the reported verbal abuse of their member as well as to express concern about additional racist incidents at the ALA Midwinter Conference that were reported on social media.
ACRL-Oregon affirms our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion and would like to see ALA uphold their commitment to creating inclusive spaces throughout their conferences, including in programs, the exhibit hall, social events, and governance meetings. While having a Statement of Appropriate Conduct is critical to ensuring victims of harassment have recourse, what matters most is how victims and the accused are treated in the investigative process. That one victim felt that she was being silenced during the process is concerning. Greater transparency should be provided to members of ALA’s elected governance structures about how reports are handled while respecting the privacy of those involved.
We appreciate the ACRL Executive Board’s statement and hope that it will ensure that structures are in place to address equity issues and limit racial trauma within our organization. We appreciate that both ALA and ACRL are committed to providing anti-bias training for leaders and hope that this is extended to staff as well.
While our profession is focused on serving our diverse communities, there is a history in this country of libraries and librarians upholding racism. The lack of diversity of our own profession reflects this. We can all do more to confront racism in our libraries and professional organizations and ACRL-Oregon is committed to this work as well.
The ACRL-Oregon Board
http://acrloregon.org
ACRL-OR is proud to sponsor a preconference at this year’s joint OLA/WLA Conference! Please consider signing up for Copyright Outreach, Education, and Advocacy on Campus when you register for this year’s conference.
Academic library staff often have formal or informal copyright responsibilities on their campuses. Whether you are charged with creating copyright education for your campus community or just want some tools to chip away at the misinformation regarding copyright that you encounter from staff, students, and faculty, this interactive workshop is designed to help you design copyright outreach efforts that will work. Participants will leave with plans to either begin or extend copyright-related outreach from whatever role they occupy at their institution.
This preconference workshop is presented by Rachel Bridgewater from Portland Community College; Sue Kunda from Western Oregon University; and Patrick Wohlmut from Linfield College and takes place Wednesday, April 17th, from 8:30am – 12:30pm.
Rick Ball, Learning Resources Center Director, Klamath Community College
Tell us a little bit about your work background.
I started my library career as a K-12 librarian. I then worked as a public library director and now I am the LRC director at Klamath Community College. I feel fortunate to have experienced librarianship in the school, public and academic realms.
What has been the best thing that has happened to you since you started your position?
The best thing that has happened to me since starting my position has been the overwhelming support received by the administration, faculty and staff at Klamath Community College. It is encouraging to work in an environment that values the role you play in student success and in community empowerment.
What would you like Oregon academic librarians to know about you?
I have a passion for helping others succeed. It is what motivates me to get up in the morning. I learned a long time ago that life is about the journey. If I can help, people learn how to embrace and enjoy the journey, to learn from it, success will come. Some of the best moments in my life have been when I’ve seen people whether students or others, stick with it, work through one obstacle after another and achieve a level of success they didn’t realize was possible. It makes me feel good to know that I was a part of that.
What is the biggest challenge facing your library in the upcoming year?
The biggest challenge we face this upcoming year is continuing to build upon the success of past efforts without our “newness to KCC” detrimentally affecting the services to our community. The library experienced a complete turnover in staff this last year. Fortunately, our current staff brings many years of successful librarianship and library leadership to KCC.
What would you like Oregon academic librarians to know about your institution?
Klamath Community College has formed a partnership with other colleges and universities in order to realize a shared vision. That vision is to empower our communities through education. KCC is dedicated to student success and to the economic success of the communities that our partner institutions and we serve.
What does advocacy for academic libraries look like from your perspective as an LRC director?
I see two major components to advocacy. The first is demonstrating a spirit of service and trust. Model professional excellence. People will notice. Academic libraries exist to serve. We are here to support our students, faculty and staff in their efforts to be successful. They need to trust that we can and will provide them with the educational support and resources they need to realize their goals. The second component is networking. Librarians need to network with other librarians, institutions, governmental entities, community organizations and businesses. If you are not talking with people, not listening, how do you know what they need? How do you learn where to go for resources? You have to communicate with people and build positive relationships.
ACRL-Oregon is piloting offering webinars on topics relevant to academic library workers. While this may become a member benefit, for the pilot period, we are opening the webinars up to any Oregon library staff who wish to participate.
Our first webinar is titled “Critical Library Management” and will be presented by Candise Branum, Director of Library Services at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine and Molly Gunderson, Access Services Manager at Portland State University on Friday, January 11th from 2-3pm PCT.
Critical Library Management
Oregon libraries work to meet the information needs of our communities, a mission that is dependent on teamwork. Library managers are tasked with leading, supporting and developing the teams that serve our communities. Social justice and critical theory are frameworks that are often discussed within library practice, but are only starting to be applied to library management practice. The more we discuss social justice, the more apparent it is that inclusion and equity are essential aspects of library management. The goal is for audience members to think critically about their own management practice and consider ways of improving equity and in their own organizations.
Register Now
Registration is open to any Oregon library staff, but we are limited to 100 attendees in the session, so register soon: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/5b1e973165ad47f54ac87b605f06faf5
We also plan to record the webinar and make it available on our website after the live broadcast.
Questions about our webinar pilot can be directed to ACRL-Oregon President Meredith Farkas at acrlor@olaweb.org.
Hi! I’m Meredith Farkas and I’m ACRL-Oregon’s president from September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2019. In even years, ACRL-Oregon presidents hit the ground running as our Joint Conference at Menucha is in October, though my predecessor, Steve Silver, has been tremendously helpful in bringing me up to speed. Now that I’m settling into the role, I wanted to tell you a bit about myself. I’m a librarian at Portland Community College (PCC) where I work at our Sylvania Campus. I’m currently the Library’s SAC (Subject Area Committee) Chair, which means that I basically lead work involving our curriculum and our yearly assessment expectations from the College. I love teaching and am a notorious assessment geek, so it’s a good role for me. I just finished working with a team that spent the last year redeveloping our LIB 101 (credit course) online shell, shifting the class to focus on the ACRL Framework – particularly the frames Authority Is Constructed and Contextual, Information Creation as a Process, and Information Has Value – and social justice issues in information/infolit. I am extremely fond of my colleagues and feel very lucky to work in a community college environment where there is a laser-focus on student success and supporting the whole student.I’ve lived in Oregon for close to eight years and really hope that it will be my forever home. Prior to coming to PCC in 2014, I worked at the Portland State University Library and before that I worked at a small private university in rural Vermont. I received my MLIS from Florida State University in 2004. I live with my fantastic husband and nine-year-old son (who I’m pleased has become an avid reader like his mother). Last year my son’s team won his school’s Oregon Battle of the Books and went on to Regionals! Coaching his team to victory was one of my proudest accomplishments, and so fun for a non-athletic person who is not likely to coach anything else. The best books I’ve read so far this year are There There and The Bright Hour(which are both heartbreaking, sorry!).Prior to joining the ACRL-Oregon Board, I was a member and then Chair of the OLA Membership Committee where I helped start and administer the OLA Mentoring Program. Getting involved in OLA service when I moved to Oregon helped me get to know so many inspiring librarians throughout the state and I can’t recommend that path enough to other library staff or people new to the area or the profession.In addition to the things ACRL-Oregon always does for its membership, the thing I came into this role most passionate about was creating ways for Oregon academic library staff to learn from each other without having to travel or pay to attend a conference. We’ll be piloting our online professional development offerings this winter and we hope you’ll participate and share your feedback.I’m so thrilled to be a member of the Oregon academic library community and am proud to have been elected into this role. Please do get in touch if you have any feedback about how we can make ACRL-Oregon better – this organization is nothing without its members. You can reach me at acrlor@olaweb.org.
ACRL-Oregon is delighted to announce a new round of Professional Development Scholarship awards. Thanks to a matching-fund grant from the State Library of Oregon, ACRL-Oregon is able to offer up to $500 for each award for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. Applications are accepted at three points throughout the year (see below for specific deadlines); we are currently soliciting applications for the December 7 deadline. Applications will be reviewed within two weeks after the application deadline.How can the scholarship be used? The ACRL-Oregon Professional Development Scholarship may be used toward conferences, workshops, courses, seminars, or other learning opportunities (including e-learning opportunities) appropriate to the applicant. The funding priority is registration and transportation costs incurred by the applicant. For examples of how past recipients have used their awards, see these posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Serenity Ibsen, – Art Libraries Society of North America conference
Kim Olson-Charles, Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience conference
Maureen Flanagan Battistella, American Association for State and Local History conference, presentation on digital collections of local history
Kate Rubick, ACRL national conference, panel presentation on library-faculty teaching collaboration using BEAM
Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.Who is eligible?
All ACRL-Oregon members in good standing.
Preference will be given to applicants who have not previously received a Professional Development Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon.
Who is not eligible?Non ACRL-Oregon members.How will applications be evaluated?Please visit our FAQ page, which contains our evaluation rubrics and answers to frequently asked questions.How do I apply?Apply for the scholarship using this online form.Deadline:Applications will be accepted at three points throughout the 2017-2018 year:
The ACRL-Oregon Board is proud to award this year’s ACRL-Oregon Award for Excellence to the Oregon Association for School Libraries (OASL) Learning Goals project.
ACRL-OR President Meredith Farakas presenting the 2018 Award for Excellence to Pam Kessinger
In 2016, the Oregon Association of School Librarians Standards Committee was directed by the OASL Board to write Grade Level Learning Goals for each standard and indicator of the Oregon School Library Standards. The committee wrote Grade Level Learning Goals for grades K-14 tied to the Standards, but also connected to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and the Common Core Standards. The initial writing was completed in the spring of 2017. A rewrite based on extensive feedback and the development of supporting documents is in process.
The Grade Level Learning Goals not only outline the sequence of Information Literacy skills that should be taught in grades K-12, they also include what should be taught in grades 13-14 to accommodate the learning goals of high school students enrolled in dual credit or college prep classes. They provide a granular and easy-to-follow roadmap for teaching information literacy not only for school librarians and library technicians, but for K-12 teachers and lower-division college faculty. It scaffolds a student’s learning and development of information literacy skills throughout a student’s time in school.
ACRL-OR seeks to foster collaboration between academic librarians and school librarians. The role of school librarians is vitally important and is in many ways interrelated with the work of academic librarians and the students we all serve. Up to $1,000 is available per year for this scholarship. Applications will be reviewed at two points during the year–or until the money runs out.
How can the scholarship be used?
This funding opportunity covers any collaboration between at least one school librarian and at least one academic librarian that the applicant(s) can make a good case for. This includes, but is not limited to:
Sponsorship to attend, exhibit, or present at a relevant conference (OASL, regional conferences, or others)
Creation of programming, such as a conference, workshop, unconference, or pre-conference
Work on a collaborative research project
Something else we haven’t thought of!
For examples of past awards, see the following posts on the ACRL-Oregon blog:
Note: Professional Development Scholarships will not be awarded for ACRL-OR/WA Fall Conference attendance as this annual event has its own scholarships.
Who is eligible?
All Oregon academic and school librarians
Preference will be given to teams that include at least one ACRL-Oregon member in good standing
Preference will also be given to applicants who have not previously received a School/Academic Librarian Collaboration Scholarship from ACRL-Oregon
Who is not eligible?
Academic and school librarians outside of Oregon (unless part of a team of collaborators that includes at least one Oregon librarian).
How will applications be evaluated?
Reviewers will look for applications that:
Have at least one applicant who is a member of ACRL-Oregon
Demonstrate meaningful collaboration between school and academic librarians
Have the potential to favorably influence information literacy awareness/education in Oregon
Deadlines:
First round due November 16, 5:00pm
Second round deadline TBA if there is still scholarship funding to be awarded
This is a friendly reminder that registration for the ACRL-OR/WA Joint Fall Conference at Menucha is currently open and closes this Monday, October 1st!2018 Conference Mugs
The theme of this year’s conference is Reimagining Advocacy: Personal, Professional, and Political. The conference will focus on the full spectrum of advocacy work and how each of us can be better advocates when we work to influence decisions at any level. Attendees will leave the Conference with an elevator pitch and concrete plan to advocate for an issue important to them.
In addition, you’ll hear from keynote speakers:
Loida Garcia-Febo, President of Information New Wave and current ALA President
Irene M. H. Herold, librarian of the college at the College of Wooster in Ohio and 2016-17 ACRL President
and lightening talk presenters discussing issues including:
OERs
collection development as a form of advocacy
advocating for libraries through pedagogy
working with student affairs
For more information about the conference or to get registered, visit our conference website: http://bit.ly/acrlpnw18
See you at Menucha!
ALA provides a helpful guide that outlines how college students are counted, whether they live on campus, live at home, or rent off-campus. Getting these facts out to students when census participation is being promoted (mid-March through April 2020) is a great way to help insure accurate information is widely available. More outreach materials that explain confidentiality and residency issues are also available.
Partnering with faculty, student groups, or community organizations to host informational events about the Census is also a great way to help promote participation. Along with Census promotional materials, information resources like the Counting for Dollars research provided George Washington Institute of Public Policy or the Hard to Count 2020 map from CUNY’s Center for Urban Research help provide data and context for why Census participation is so important.
Oregon-specific resources such as the Oregon 2020 Census Communications Toolkit and #WeCountOregon campaign offer promotional resources and messaging tailored specifically to Oregonians and those in hard-to-count communities throughout the state.
If you are looking for more promotion ideas or resources, see the State Library’s Census 2020 Resources for Oregon Libraries or Campus Compact’s 2020 Census hub. Aren’t finding what you’re looking for, or want to share a success story? Please let me know! Arlene Weible, arlene.weible@state.or.us or 503-378-5020.
At a grand opening event on January 22nd, student tutors, faculty, and staff were on hand to celebrate the new space. Interim President Tom Ries was in attendance, where he remarked on the importance of Concordia University supporting student writing.
Acting Dean of Libraries Nancy Hoover also gave remarks at the event, stating that the reorganization of Concordia’s college structure, which resulted in moving the Writing Center into the library, “created a wonderful opportunity, not only for the co-location of the vital student resources of Research and Writing, but also the formation of a deep collaboration of student focused support.” She also emphasized how the new Studio will “provide strong support for student choice, access, and success” as well as provide opportunities for the Writing Center to collaborate with librarians. Krista Reynolds, Head of Reference & Instruction, also emphasized the opportunities for collaboration. “I’m excited the librarians have the opportunity to join forces with writing services to serve students even more seamlessly and effectively than ever,” she said.
The Studio is meant to be an active learning space. “Studio pedagogy is a different framework for the process of how students learn to be better writers. It engages the process of research as well as the process of generating ideas, drafting, and revision,” Meg Roland, Undergraduate Writing Chair and Director of the Research and Writing Studio shared. “The Reference librarians are here to support the mutually informed process of researching, reading, evaluating, synthesizing, and drafting.” Roland says that the learning model for the Studio will incorporate practices found at other Northwest universities like Oregon State and Western Washington that have a studio-based learning model to support research and writing.
The Oregon State University Libraries and Press (OSULP) has been awarded the ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award for 2019 for their Undergraduate Research and Writing Studio. Opened in 2017, the Studio provides a place for undergraduate students to work on writing projects and receive assistance with writing and research from trained peers. The Studio is a collaboration between the Writing Center and the OSULP. The implementation and ongoing steering team includes Writing Center and OSULP staff, including: Dennis Bennett, Chris Ervin, and Vanessa Petroj from the Writing Center and Anne-Marie Deitering, Beth Filar Williams, Uta Hussong-Christian, Hannah Gascho Rempel and Jane Nichols from the library.
The award includes recognition in the C&RL News, a plaque, and $3000.
ACRL-OR was able to ask a few questions of the team. Their answers are provided below (ACRL also published a short interview).
Our heartiest congratulations to OSULP and to the implementation team on this prestigious award. Read on for some of their comments.
On April 5th, Emilio Estavez’s film, ‘The Public’ had its official theatrical release –although at this time the only listing I can find is for the Bijou in Lincoln City. The film was originally screened multiple times last year, including at the June 2018 ALA meeting, and again at ALA Midwinter in Seattle this year. If you’re one of the few in the library sphere who hasn’t at least heard of the film, ‘The Public’ is a dramatic story centered around a group of homeless patrons who, in an act of civil disobedience, refuse to leave the public library at closing time during a brutal Winter storm because it is their only place of refuge. From my understanding, the film had a mostly positive reception in 2018; especially among those in the library profession. Estavez also did a PSA on the importance of libraries to modern societies and communities, which you can currently find on the ALA site.
If you’re interest in learning more about providing services to homeless, or in-need patrons, I recommend ‘The Librarian’s Guide to Homelessness’. Many academic libraries are also community-serving and it helps to be familiar with local and state resources in the immediate area. For example, Polk County has put together a Community Resource Guide which is quite comprehensive and I have used on multiple occasions to direct individual toward necessity resources such as food bank and access to clothing. Your county or city likely has one as well; we keep a physical copy on hand at the main desk and print out a new copy when we give it away.
Interested in meeting other fantastic academic librarians and serving the academic library community in Oregon? Is there someone you know that would be a shining addition to the ACRL-OR Board? Here is an opportunity to get involved! The ACRL-OR Board is looking for candidates to run in our upcoming spring elections.
Academic librarians spend most of their time working with faculty and students to promote library services. With all the attention these groups require, it is easy to overlook campus support staff as potential users of library resources and advocates for library services. Staff providing student and financial services, grounds or building maintenance, administrative support, or food service may not be obvious library users, but you might be surprised about their information needs and the resources you might have to help them.
LearningExpress Library is a resource provided to Oregon libraries by the Statewide Database Licensing Program. It provides standardized test preparation materials, career and employment resources, computer and other skill building tutorials. In many ways, this resource has something for everyone, and this point was brought home to me at a training session the State Library provided at a community college campus. Hoping to boost attendance at the session, the local librarian sent out an invitation to all campus staff. While it was not surprising to see staff from the student services office attend the training, we were delighted to see general administrative staff and maintenance staff also show up.
Student services staff were interested in career placement and assessment tools available, and well as skill building tutorial available in math, reading, grammar and writing for the students they worked with. The administrative staff member was looking for resources to help her daughter study for the SAT and was also excited to see the job search tools available through Job and Career Accelerator. The maintenance staff member was looking for opportunities for self-improvement and was thrilled to see tutorials for Excel and Adobe Photoshop. It’s a librarian’s dream to get resources into the hands of users when they need them, and this session really inspired me to think about the value of LearningExpress Library as tool for outreach beyond the usual library user groups.
If campus staff feel that the library is welcoming source of information and support in their own lives, they are certainly more likely to spread the word to the faculty and students they interact with every day. Consider cultivating these untapped library champions as part of your outreach strategy.
Please contact Arlene Weible to arrange a training session for your campus.
Arlene Weible
Electronic Services Consultant
State Library of Oregon
I’ve lived in Oregon for close to eight years and really hope that it will be my forever home. Prior to coming to PCC in 2014, I worked at the Portland State University Library and before that I worked at a small private university in rural Vermont. I received my MLIS from Florida State University in 2004. I live with my fantastic husband and nine-year-old son (who I’m pleased has become an avid reader like his mother). Last year my son’s team won his school’s Oregon Battle of the Books and went on to Regionals! Coaching his team to victory was one of my proudest accomplishments, and so fun for a non-athletic person who is not likely to coach anything else. The best books I’ve read so far this year are There There and The Bright Hour (which are both heartbreaking, sorry!).
Prior to joining the ACRL-Oregon Board, I was a member and then Chair of the OLA Membership Committee where I helped start and administer the OLA Mentoring Program. Getting involved in OLA service when I moved to Oregon helped me get to know so many inspiring librarians throughout the state and I can’t recommend that path enough to other library staff or people new to the area or the profession.
In addition to the things ACRL-Oregon always does for its membership, the thing I came into this role most passionate about was creating ways for Oregon academic library staff to learn from each other without having to travel or pay to attend a conference. We’ll be piloting our online professional development offerings this winter and we hope you’ll participate and share your feedback.
I’m so thrilled to be a member of the Oregon academic library community and am proud to have been elected into this role. Please do get in touch if you have any feedback about how we can make ACRL-Oregon better – this organization is nothing without its members. You can reach me at acrlor@olaweb.org.
