ACRL 2011: Distance Librarianship

I attended ACRL 2011 in Philly last week, and besides enjoying an authentic philly cheese steak (okay okay, I opted for provolone instead of Cheez Whiz - can you blame me?), I learned a lot. Reaching distance students was a pretty big conference focus, and I attended several presentations on the topic.

The best and most relevant to me was Fostering Library as Place for Distance Students: Best Practices from Two Universities (PowerPoint), presented by Heidi Steiner, Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University and Beth Filar-Williams, Coordinator of Library Services for Distance Education at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Some points from the presentation:

• Virtual reference is much harder than face-to-face. You end up making a lot of assumptions, and there are often miscommunications.
• ACRL provides Standards for Distance Learning Library Services
• Students need access to library resources and course management from a distance
• At Norwich, every distance program has its own specific library webpage - to create a place for those students
• Resources available from a distance are important. This includes e-journals, databases, e-books, Films on Demand, and ILLiad for for seamless ILL transactions. Both libraries will mail books to student; one pays return postage, one does not.
• For distance students, it is especially important to be available at their point of need - through IM, plenty of research/subject guides, tutorials on how to use the resources, and more.
• For instruction, both institutions use a lot of tutorials. They have experimented with synchronous options. One recommends Elluminate vOffice. You have to pay for it, but it's only one room, so it's a lesser license than regular Elluminate. EventBrite was recommended for setting up instruction - it allows people to register for an event and also automatically sends reminder emails. Being embedded in course management discussion boards is another option.
• The presenters also discussed the importance of "Being Real" - making distance students realize there are humans staffing IM reference, not robots. They also mentioned including video clips of librarians introducing themselves on their websites/subject guides.
• Join.me was recommended for sharing your computer screen with a student. They said it is incredibly easy to use - all you do is send the student a URL. And it's free!
  
• Two other technology tools they use are free scheduling software tools: tungle.me and Jiffle. I'm definitely going to have to look into some of these!

I also attended a shorter panel session called Going the Distance: A Closer Look at Uniting with Remote Users. From that, I took away the importance of informing distance students about the services the library offers, the need to offer training on the resources, and the importance of determining if the resources and services are perceived as adequate by the distance students.

Some other distance learning notes from poster sessions:

• Some libraries use Skype to talk to distance students
• Screenr - does screencasting, but it has to be done all in one go (no editing!) and there is a time limit (maybe 5 minutes?).
• Librarians at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse evaluated several free web-conferencing tools. Information is on a LibGuide they created specifically for this topic.

Overall, a lot of info, a lot of ideas, and A LOT of cool tools to explore!

Good things come from surveys

The graduate students were surveyed at my institution a while ago about their general college experience. Included on this questionnaire were two questions: one about things they really disliked/would change, and one about things they really liked. I don't know the exact wording, but that is the gist of it.

Even though they weren't specifically asked about the library, we still had about 20 comments (all but one in the negative category). Certain disciplines felt that we do not have nearly enough resources for them. This is a common complaint, and it's only partially true. Yes, as a small institution with an FTE somewhere in the range of 1300-1600 (I hear varying numbers, interestingly) we cannot afford more full text access, especially in this economy. However, we do have more than they think we do. They just don't know how to find it. My boss used this as an opportunity to suggest that we really need to get in to see these students. We met with a few of them once, and they were so grateful to know how to find the resources. If only we had more opportunities.

We did also receive one positive comment coupled with a suggestion. The student said that he/she loved studying in the library, but wished we had comfy chairs on the second floor, which is both our only quiet study floor and our only floor without comfy furniture! So, on Friday, one of my coworkers and I took two chairs from the main floor and moved them up to the second floor. We found two tables and put each chair and table combo in a separate location. We assume that since it is quiet study, students will study alone. However, I plan to keep on eye on whether or not these chairs are used. I'm up on the floor a lot anyway because I'm shifting books.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to spruce up the place. I recently went went around and redid many of our signs, which included consolidating and taking down unnecessary ones (libraries have far too many signs!). This even included bugging IT to let me finally take down their No Food or Drink policy in the computer labs since they never enforce this. I also talked with a few of my coworkers about sprucing up our Individual Study Rooms with vases or pictures taken by the library staff. Not only does the latter add color, it also allows students to get some insight into the staff and our travels. Plus, I like to garage sale, and it would be easy enough to pick up frames and reimburse myself out of fine money. Before I do this, of course, I'll make sure everyone is on board. But it sounds like it could be fun.

Any other easy ideas for sprucing up the library?

Slip'n'Slide @ your Library

Attention Case Alumni (i.e. about half my regular readers - it just occurred to me how many of you are Case grads!)

There's a great Google video of some students having fun with a Slip'n'Slide at the Kelvin Smith Library. There seems to be a great deal about the setup, so if you want to just skip to the part where they are slipping and sliding in the library, jump to about 13:30 of the 18 or so minute long clip.

And please, please comment if you ever had the opportunity to participate in something similar. :)

The Library of the Future

This YouTube video, Transformation Lab - Prototyping the Future, is a very interesting look at some possibilities for the library of the future. Some of it seems a bit extreme and maybe more public library-ish, but it really gets at the idea of Library as Place, which seems to be discussed more and more these days.

I gave an informal survey to students where one of the questions asked what we can do to make their library experience better. I received suggestions that included: background music, more comfy couches, quieter work areas, allow food, wireless, best-sellers and pleasure reading, more computers, art throughout building, better computer chairs, "more help", and more signs.

Overall, it seems to be a lot about the library environment and less about library services. I'm looking into best-sellers, more comfy furniture is in our future, wireless is a campus-wide goal (I believe), and snack food will hopefully be allowed soon.

For further reading on this topic, there's a good article called "How to Evaluate Your Library's Physical Environment."

Not that desperate for a new library...

I would absolutely adore a new library building. However, I don't think this would be it.