Where Do You Get Your Juice?

As I prepared for this year’s ARLIS/NA conference in Indianapolis, the familiar feeling of excitement began to build as I thought about the idea of connecting with colleagues, sharing ideas and expanding my understanding of what it means to be a librarian. This year will be my fourth ARLIS/NA conference. My first was in 2006 in Banff, Canada. At that time I was still in library school and was nervous to be around all the professionals. I understood that I was new on the scene and needed to spend my time observing, and taking notes on who, what and how. I sort of felt like I was in a foreign country; still learning the language. Is there really that much of a difference between academic libraries and art & design school libraries to require separate division groups? What’s so difficult about outreach to faculty and departments? How do the Director and Circulation affect my role as a librarian? Four years later, I have a much better understanding of the differences and the challenges and the consequences. I’ve been a real librarian for two years and I am amazed and even inspired by how much I’ve learned.

Each year that I attend the ARLIS conference I meet and connect with more people. I learn who shares my interests, who would be a reliable partner for session moderation or panel session, who knows what ropes and who needs me to show them my ropes. It’s a great source of juice to power me through the year, but I find that I often need a bump here and there to keep me motivated until I see these colleagues again the next conference. Staying connected to colleagues and sharing and brainstorming ideas with them I think is so vital to my success as a librarian. During our ADSL Division discussion this year we also discussed ways to stay connected. This blog was one way we thought would help keep us juiced during the year. Outside of the ARLIS community, I also read the ACRLog and belong to the ili-l@ala.org listserv. What are some of the ways you all stay juiced during the year?

Meet your other Moderator for 2008/2009

Hello to all ADSL division members,

Along with Jill Luedke, I will be co-moderating this year’s ADSL division meeting in Indianapolis. I am currently the Assistant Director for Access Services at the Haas Arts Library at Yale University.  I have only been in this position since last August, so you may better remember me as the Associate Library Director at The School of Visual Arts in New York. I have attended ADSL Division meetings since 2003 and look forward to seeing all of you again in Indianapolis.

Holly Hatheway

Screen Recording Technology

I have been experimenting with a software that allows me to create screencasts. I can record my screen actions, narrate and even video myself while demonstrating how to use various library technologies. Screen recording software also allows for lecture capturing, all of which can be easily uploaded to a website, LibGuide or emailed to faculty and students. The software I have been experimenting with is called ScreenFlow. Others include Adobe Captivate, Camptasia. I’ve just found out about some free online screen recording software. Some of these are: Screencast-O-Matic, ScreenToaster, Skoffer,. Reviews about these online screencasting software here.

As for learning the software, I would say that a small amount of tech savviness is necessary, but most importantly is that you understand the capabilities of the software and be curious and enthusiastic to learn how to harness those capabilities. I am cetainly on the low end of the tech savvy scale, but I knew that screen capturing software would give me the freedom to create everything from a short tutorial on “How to Renew Library Materials Online” to full library instruction sessions for distance learning classes. Our Digital Libraries Department used Adobe Captivate to create a dynamic tutorial introducing our new online catalog. Below I used ScreenFlow to create a very simple rough draft mock up (note: this is not my final product) tutorial on “How to Renew Books Online“.

Meet Your Moderator for 2009/2010

Hello. I am one of your moderators for the 09/10 year along with Holly Hatheway. I am a new librarian and have worked as a Reference and Instructional Librarian at the Adam & Sophie Gimbel Design Library at The New School in New York for two years. I am one of two Reference and Instructional librarians for that library, which supports the curriculum of Parsons The New School for Design. I have a dual masters degree from Pratt Institute in Art History and Library Science. This will be my fourth ARLIS/NA conference. I have also served on the Membership Committee for two years.

As always, I am excited to reconnect with everyone at the conference as well as meet new professionals. I look forward to sharing ideas with everyone in Indianapolis and reading your ideas on this blog.

 

Cheers,

Jill E. Luedke

Instruction Exercise for International Students

In this post, I thought I would share some of my experiments with creative instruction. I am a very green librarian (just one and a half years in the profession) and I’ve been practicing what I like to call “fearless creativity” with my outreach and instruction. I thought this blog would be a good place to share those ideas with other ADSL professionals and hopefully spur some dialogue and maybe even collaboration on other helpful approaches to instruction and outreach.

Since the article published in Urban Library Journal was written, I expanded on the button idea for an instructional project.

The Project

Every summer I teach four (one each day of the week) library instruction sessions to a group of students who are part of a program called SOPIS (Summer Orientation for Parsons International Students). SOPIS is an intensive summer program for international students that combines English language skills with a design project. Students who successfully complete this program will be accepted as full-time Parsons students in the Fall. Therefore, these students have a short amount of time to be successful: they work hard and ask a lot of questions.

This was my second summer to teach these students, and I decided to up the ante on the hands-on project I planned for them. My first summer with this program was much more challenging since I had been on the job for just about two months. I use this group of students as my test group for innovative projects for a couple of reasons: the time of year (summer) affords me a little more time to spend preparing new and often time consuming projects, and the four classes allows me to conduct a small case-study for the project.

After I showed the students how to use the online resources including our OPAC, I wanted an exercise that required them to use written and oral skills, in order for them to work on their English. Since I was only allotted an hour for the instruction session, I knew I needed the create a project that was simple, useful and quick. Each class received a button card that looked like this:

The image used to make the button came from the book mentioned in the middle of the card. In the lower right-hand corner of the card are a list of possible keywords to use when searching this book in the OPAC. The students were given a piece of paper with these instructions:

What To Do With Your Button Card?

• Your card has information about a book. Your card also has a list of Keywords that relate to that book.
• Using one or more of the Keywords in the list, find another book in BobCat.

• After you find another book in BobCat, write down the Title, Author and Call Number of that book on the back of your card.

• Now locate the new book in the stacks and bring it back to the group.

• Be prepared to say something about your book. (Why did you choose it? Was it easy/difficult to find? Were there other books nearby that looked interesting?)

• Now you have information for two books that relate to your class projects!

I also verbally explained the exercise to the class.

The Result:

Unfortunately, time only permitted one class to actually participate in this exercise. The exercise only takes about 10 minutes, but miscommunication meant I was not informed until after the fact that I only had 50 minutes with the students. At any rate, the section that allowed time for the exercise was the section with the lowest English speaking ability. Most of the students tried to find the book on the card, rather than search for a different book using the given search terms.

What I Learned:

If I did this exercise again, I would read the instructions to the students rather than just explain in my own words. Despite my efforts, many students still seemed confused about what to do. Since English is not their first language, reading the instructions to them would allow them to read and follow along. I also may just have them search for the one book and not have them use keywords. That seemed to be where most of the confusion happened.

If anyone has thoughts for next summer’s project, I’d love to hear them!

The Creative Library

The current issue of Urban Library Journal is about the creative endeavors of librarians. The articles in the issue discuss innovated services and programs librarians are implementing in their libraries today. My colleague (Sarah Laleman Ward) and I wrote an article titled “It All Started with a Button” for the “Reports from the Field” section about some of our practical and inexpensive creative marketing and outreach ventures. The article begins with a discussion about how we’ve utilized the “buttons” in our library, and then elaborates on other creative marketing and outreach techniques we’ve used. Take a look.

Hello!

I am the Readers’ Services Librarian at RISD. Reference, Instruction, and Circulation keeps me busy! Since coming to RISD in 2004, I have been researching RISD’s dazzle camouflage collection. Currently I am working on a dazzle exhibition and symposium for February 2009. Before coming to RISD, I was the Library Director at the Corcoran Library in Washington, DC.

Looking forward to Denver!

Claudia Covert

A & D School Librarians giving presentations at ARLIS/NA 08

May 3, Saturday, 2:00pm – 3:30pm

Scalable Digital Projects: How to Get Started with a Small Digital Project

Claudia Covert, Readers’ Services Librarian, Fleet Library at RISD

Ellen Petraits, Reference Librarian, Fleet Library at RISD

May 4, Sunday, 11:00am – 12:30pm

Digital Asset Management in Transition

Sue Maberry, Director of the Library and Instructional Technology, Otis College of Art and Design

11:00am – 12:30pm

Managing the Collective Collection

Annette Haines, Art & Design Field Librarian, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

2:00pm – 3:30pm

Beyond the Traditional Archive: Preservation and Access through the Digital Repository

Annette Haines, Art & Design Field Librarian, University of Michigan

4:00pm – 5:30pm

Icon or Enclosure? The Architecture of the Denver Art Museum

Alan Michelson, Head, Architecture and Urban Planning Library, University of Washington, Seattle

May 5, Monday, 10:15am – 11:45am

No Doubt About It, Fashion Is an Art: Fashion Research

Greta Earnest, Assistant Director, Gladys Marcus Library, Fashion Institute of Technology.

Erin Elliott, Librarian, Sotheby’s Institute of Art – New York.

More information on presentations

Please let us know if we have left anyone out!

Person Erin Elliott

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Welcome to the Art and Design School Library Division Blog!

Laura and I will be posting an agenda soon. What topics would you like to discuss at the our meeting (Saturday, May 3 3:45-4:45 in the Longs Peak room)?

A little bit about me…

Greetings fellow ADSL colleagues!

A recent transplant from Michigan to Chicago via Boston, I am the Digital Resources Librarian at the Harrington College of Design. Currently, I am managing a migration to Voyager from Horizon. Once that is finished, I will be refocusing my energies on the challenge of finding digital image resources for a for-profit institution and implementing Web 2.0 technologies. Previously, I was at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where I was given the opportunity to attend my first Arlis/NA conference and really get a sense of how awesome it is to be part of the ADSL. Before that, I was at the University of Michigan Fine Arts Library where I started learning the ins and outs of being an art librarian.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Denver!

-laura (Co-Moderator 2008-2009)