Undergraduate Education Abroad in Community Settings: Pedagogical Opportunities for Librarians

As undergraduate possibilities for study and service abroad increase and develop strategically to address local community needs in settings in the Global South, there is greater opportunity for academic librarians to contribute expertise in supporting and facilitating student learning and engagement with research and information concepts and processes. Education abroad experiences are considered high-impact educational practices and, as such, provide excellent vantage points from which to consider contextualizing engagement with the expanded construct of information literacy as described in ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Utilizing a case study of a pilot project, this chapter focuses on initial work to incorporate critical information literacy concepts into international applied learning settings. The setting for this case study is the Monteverde Institute (MVI) in Costa Rica, a Costa Rican non-profit organization that provides a teaching and learning setting and essential infrastructure for North American education abroad programs

Think Locally, Act Globally: Understanding Home Institution Library Engagement among Study-Abroad Students

This study focuses on developing an understanding of U.S. study-abroad students’ knowledge and confidence levels in using their home institution libraries from abroad. Data from a questionnaire survey administered to students at the time of active engagement in ten different study-abroad programs in Costa Rica are presented; the data reveal relative uncertainty by the students about the possibilities of interfacing with their home institution libraries while abroad. Further consideration of this distinct user group is warranted, and the article includes data-driven recommendations for better serving our study-abroad students

HIP (High Impact Practice) Librarianship in the Costa Rican Cloud Forest

High impact educational practices focus on experiential learning through service learning and community-based learning opportunities, internships, undergraduate research, education abroad experiences, and more. The proposed interactive session focuses on librarian and library school student internship work done over the course of ten years in an international applied learning setting in Monteverde, Costa Rica. This work has encompassed a range of topics to be addressed at the colloquium, including: work with community partners such as the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and the local public health clinic to facilitate access to and dissemination of locally based research studies; library interns’ facilitation of access to locally-based research conducted under the auspices of the Monteverde Institute; Adrienne’s recent internship experience creating a digital exhibit for the Monteverde Institute and the local community; Laurie’s more recent teaching experiences and direct involvement with course pedagogy at the Monteverde Institute, engaging students and faculty in discussions of critical information literacy concepts surrounding unequal access to and production of research from an experiential Latin American perspective. Adrienne will address the experience of being an LIS graduate student intern in an international community setting, including the challenges and learning experiences involved in working in a very different environment of limited resources. Laurie will focus on how engaging with the Framework of Information Literacy has facilitated discussion of information social justice issues at the Monteverde Institute. Both Laurie and Adrienne will reflect on the experience of working together in this unique, community-based high impact educational setting in the Global South. The session will include scenario-based directed reflective discussions and consider the merits and challenges of HIP librarianship

Rethinking Information Literacy in a Globalized World

As a profession, librarians have an important and unique role to play in higher education in producing information literate students equipped to be successful in a complex, twenty-first century global society. It is our contention that our guiding professional information literacy definitions and standards need to be reconsidered in order to remain relevant within the global learning context. Our preliminary conclusion is that the predominantly skills-based approach facilitated by the current ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, is not sufficient to facilitate teaching of twenty-first century deep information literacy, which we feel encompasses additional content-based engagement with the social, cultural, economic and political contexts of information access, retrieval, use, and creation. Within the global education context, the ways we may engage with such an expanded notion of information literacy and the challenges associated with this, are discussed

Deepening Ties Between the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and the University of Vermont

Building relationships between university libraries The umbrella affiliation agreement between the University of Vermont and PUCP, in effect since 2010, initially focused on the subject areas of biomedical technology and instrumentation. However, as relationships on the two campuses were built and strengthened, other collaborative opportunities beyond the original focus emerged, including with Engineering, Public Administration, and the Libraries. Kathia Hanza, director of PUCP Libraries, expressed interest in facilitating our return in March 2016, to focus on development of library research guides as a mechanism to present library resources in contextually meaningful ways. When we did return in March, it was with a sense of familiarity and connection that allowed us to launch into more focused dialog and work . The extent of the work that PUCP librarians had already done on their library guide development in a relatively short period of time was extremely impressive. PUCP Libraries have recently launched their thematic subject guides, which are prominently featured on their library home page

At Home and Abroad: The Multiple Values of LIS Student Internships

Through this presentation, I will advocate for expanded use of graduate-student LIS interns both within our local organizations as well as abroad. I will discuss the multiple values of utilizing interns, from the vantage point of successfully utilizing graduate-student interns to build digital library collections in Monteverde, Costa Rica

Forging New Library Connections Between Vermont and Peru

Researchers at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont (UVM) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, Peru (PUCP) have built extended collaborative relationships based on an umbrella affiliation agreement between the two institutions. Originally centered on health technology and instrumentation, the relationship soon expanded to include partnerships in science and engineering, public administration and, most recently, in library collaboration. In September 2015, three of us from the UVM Libraries travelled to PUCP for a week to strengthen library connections between our universities. In order to understand the PUCP research context and the role of librarians at the university, people spent several intensive days collaborating with librarians and staff. At the end of the week, we had forged new connections with our colleagues in Peru, and had learned about both the similarities and differences in issues that the as academic librarians face in our daily work

Creating Collections Through Collaboration: An Innovative Digital Library Project in Monteverde, Costa Rica

The proposed presentation will focus on a successful cross-cultural and cross-institutional collaborative model, involving four institutions, that was developed to create digital library collections of research-based information generated in the Monteverde Zone in Costa Rica. Addressing a need for the Monteverde community to have easy access to locally-produced research-based information, the digital collections contain unpublished research documents produced by area international study programs focusing on local sustainable community development, community health, and tropical ecology. Each summer, since 2008, LIS graduate student interns from Syracuse University have spent 5-6 weeks on site at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica, working to create these collections. For the interns, who have all been concurrently pursuing an Advanced Certificate in Digital Librarianship, it has been a unique opportunity to apply the principles and practice of digital librarianship on a grassroots level, within the larger context of understanding information issues and challenges in the Global South. In so doing, the projects have contributed to greater information access and equity on both a local and global scale, and for all involved, it has been a transformational educational experience

How We Met Our Data Librarian: Designing, Recruiting, and Implementing a New Position

Strategic support for a range of data management needs has emerged as a campus-level priority at UVM, as at many other colleges and universities. In Spring 2017, the UVM Libraries reconfigured the vacant position of “Science Librarian” as “Science and Data Librarian” with new responsibilities for supporting data management. This presentation will describe a case study of how the UVM Libraries aligned these responsibilities with campus needs and initiatives; what we learned about data librarianship from the recruitment process; and the opportunities for an incoming librarian shaping the course of new library services