A Community of OER Practice: The Intermountain Open Pedagogy Education Network (iOPEN)

Open Education Resource (OER) work requires an engaged community to be successful. This community can be leveraged to share expertise and experiences that can make local OER efforts more effective and successful. iOPEN started as a series of informal virtual conversations that has evolved into a regional practitioner community that plans OER strategy, advocates for statewide change, shares funding opportunities, and co-presents their research. This poster will share how iOPEN became a community of practice and suggest strategies to create your own OER community of practice

Assessing the Strategic Credibility of Special Collections

Presented at 2012 AAAS Pacific Division Meeting - Library Symposium.In this time of often precarious funding at many colleges and universities, any case that can be made to illustrate how a department strategically fits into the overall university mission is not only worth merit, but an essential survival technique. This “strategic credibility” within the university is a vital form of currency in determining institution-wide resources prioritization, collaboration opportunities between organizational units, and overall direction of departments. This presentation provides a case study of academic special collections in the Northwest and examines the methods these departments use to demonstrate value to the university. This presentation considers how well do special collections align their efforts toward a university’s strategic goals or mission, as well as what efforts they undertake to maintain credibility within the larger institutional context. Outcomes of this presentation include a potential methodology for all library departments to assess their “strategic credibility” and suggestions on how to communicate this value to the library and within the university as a whole.Keywords: special collections, website, academic libraries, mission statements, strategic credibility, archive

Assessing the Strategic Credibility of Special Collections and Archives

Poster presented at 2012 ACRL Oregon/Washington joint conference held at Menucha.This time of often precarious funding at many colleges and universities, any case that can be made to illustrate how a department strategically fits into the overall university mission is not only worth merit, but an essential survival technique. This “strategic credibility” within the university is a vital form of currency in determining institution-wide resources prioritization, collaboration opportunities between organizational units, and overall direction of departments. This poster provides a case study of academic special collections in the Northwest and examines the methods these departments use to demonstrate value to the university. This poster considers how well do special collections align their efforts toward a university’s strategic goals or mission, as well as what efforts they undertake to maintain credibility within the larger institutional context. Outcomes of this poster include a potential methodology for all library departments to assess their “strategic credibility” and suggestions on how to communicate this value to the library and within the university as a whole.Keywords: special collections, archives, strategic credibilit

What Can OER Advocates Learn From the Traditional Faculty Textbook Adoption Experience?

Previous research has demonstrated the positive impacts that Open Educational Resources (OER) can have on student retention and learning, but these connections may not be compelling enough to persuade faculty to adopt OER resources in lieu of traditional textbooks and materials. What are OER advocates missing? What could OER advocates do better or differently? To be successful with OER, it is important to understand not only what OER are replicating or replacing in the classroom, but also understand the whole faculty experience around textbook adoption. How do faculty hear about textbooks? How do vendors communicate to faculty? What are faculty expectations when interacting with new textbooks? This poster reports on a campus survey of faculty and their experiences and expectations regarding textbooks adoption. The results of the survey suggest some lessons OER advocates can learn from when interacting with faculty about textbook selection options such as OER

What's the Story, Morning Glory? A Content Analysis of Land-Grant Universities Libraries Assessment and Fact Pages

Poster given at 2012 Library Assessment Conference - Charlottesville, Virginia. Poster earned Judge's Choice award in Organizational Performance poster categoryThis poster reports on a content analysis of Land-Grant university library assessment web pages and fact pages. Publicizing and sharing library assessment efforts is an important part of the equation of demonstrating library impact. What stories do these websites tell about library assessment efforts? What methods are used to convey this information to the public and stakeholders? What can libraries learn from other assessment websites to help showcase their assessment programs? Presentation attendees will learn how libraries are leveraging their web presences to make a difference on their campuses, as well as other practical techniques to maximize their own impact. Let your assessment stories be heard!Keywords: library impact, library assessment, library data, library website

You’re Doing More Than You Think: Acknowledging the Small Victories in Assessing Digital Literacy Instruction

Digital and information literacies instruction is truly a daunting and multi-faceted undertaking. Many librarians have begun to scale back what can effectively be accomplished in a one-shot bibliographic session due to time constraints. Instead, some instructors have started to focus more deeply on teaching toward just a few information literacy skills (such as Evaluation) that can be accomplished in the limited timeframe available. This is definitely a sensible approach. However, while the focus is often on broader information literacy outcomes, there are many smaller digital literacy competences addressed during typical library instruction such as computer navigation and hardware skills. These foundational skills are the building blocks of lifelong digital and information literacies. This presentation will re-emphasize these essential competencies and tie them into the overall information literacy mission of librarianship. The objective of the presentation is to acknowledge all the meaningful smaller learning outcomes library instructors teach that may have an impact on student success. Library educators are doing more than you realize. Let’s document, assess, and celebrate these accomplishments. This presentation will include an assessment rubric and lesson plan ideas.Presented at 2012 Oregon Information Literacy Summit and Information Literacy Advisory Group of Oregon (ILAGO)

A Pathway to Professional Success: A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Poster Sessions in Library and Information Studies for MLIS Students and New Librarians

This article is a step-by-step plan for creating a display at a library conference poster session. A poster session is a series of posters from different researchers displayed in a venue at a library conference, similar in concept to a science fair. Each poster explains the results of a research project or shares practical information about a library service. This article takes the reader all the way from brainstorming an idea for a poster to presenting the poster and expanding it into an article. For LIS students, participating in poster sessions is a great way to become involved at library conferences and connect with colleagues in the profession. New librarians who have publishing requirements as part of their scholarly activities should also view poster sessions as a step towards publishing an article-and a step towards succeeding in their performance reviews or earning tenure. Most importantly, poster sessions help everyone in the LIS field exchange ideas so that they can improve the services they offer to patrons. This article is focused on helping LIS students and new librarians with the poster process, but we also hope it will help experienced librarians who have never done a poster and perhaps provide a tip or two for those who are already experienced at creating a poster

Experiments and Experiences in Liaison Activities: Lessons from New Librarians in Integrating Technology, Face-to-Face, and Follow-Up

As is the case in many university libraries, Albertsons Library at Boise State University, has hired many new librarians to replace retiring librarians. These newer librarians, typically with less than 3 years\u27 academic library experience, are actively engaged in meeting the opportunities and challenges of subject liaison responsibilities using innovative Web-based tools. This article addresses liaison experiences with faculty-directed blogs, personalized faculty research pages, a wiki-based liaison manual, and the use of LibraryThing as a collection development tool. An overview of these efforts confirms that new technologies are only as good as the face-to-face communication and the follow-up that accompany their implementation. Much of the content in this article was presented at the 2007 and 2008 Acquisitions Institute conferences at Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood, Oregon

Assessing Value from the Digital Collection End-User: The Western Writers Series Digital Experience

Presented at 2012 AAAS Pacific Division Meeting - Library Symposium.How end-users and stakeholders value a digital collection is one of the most compelling questions in library assessment.This presentation reports on a series of interviews with stakeholders and potential end-users of the digital collection “Western Writers Series Digital Editions.” These interviews were undertaken to determine in what ways these digital humanities materials might be used by scholars and incorporated into their research process. Interview participants were identified through scholarly citations and works cited lists. The outcomes of these interviews are supplemented by additional interviews with the editors of the original print editions of the Western Writers Series, as well as the librarians who host the materials. This holistic view of the multiple stakeholders involved in a library’s digital collection presents a more refined picture of how such resources may be valued by end-users.Keywords: digital collections, humanities, western writers series, librarie

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While libraries are using increasingly sophisticated metrics to determine electronic resources’ usefulness, impact and cost effectiveness, much of this data reflects past usage. More nuanced information is still needed to guide collection managers’ decisions about which content to purchase, borrow or deselect. To fill this gap, librarians at OSU Libraries and Press and Ohio State University Libraries are testing the utility of a pop-up survey to gather patron feedback at their point of use. By building an open-source application that inserts a survey between a citation and the full-text, librarians are better positioned to capture users’ real-time reasons for selecting a given resource. Usage data can then be linked to qualitative information through questions such as whether the resource is being used for research or teaching; whether the user considers the journal core to their project; or even, if the resource is being used in class or with a student. Inspired by MINES for Libraries® this application was created to provide significantly more meaningful findings than usage alone. We will discuss how the application works, whether users respond to a pop-up survey as expected and other preliminary findings. With participants, we will foster a discussion about its usefulness to libraries