Crafting Identity, Collaboration, and Relevance for Academic Librarians Using Communities of Practice

Faculty/librarian collaboration is vital for librarians to remain integral to the academy. We now have an opportunity to change how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by faculty and administrators. There are viable solutions for expanding the role of the librarian in ways that could lead to better faculty partnerships. First, librarians must be grounded in a shared purpose and professional identity and establish a contextual framework for our own professional ‘boundaries.’ We cannot create an intersection with the knowledge and experience of others if we do not have an understanding of our own frame. Interviews and investigation of the professional literature led to a re-discovery of communities of practice. Communities of practice (CoPs) are promising tools for librarians because they can be used to develop and sustain professional identity. Once the shared purpose and practice is identified, CoPs can facilitate collaboration between librarians and faculty and develop partnerships that will increase understanding, create meaningful connections and improve perception. Communities of practice build professional empathy, and this empathetic understanding is the essence of alignment. Once our services are aligned with the needs and expectations of our users, we will become more relevant and valuable to our institutions

Going Vertical Together: An Interdisciplinary Infusion of Information Literacy with Research Writing in the Disciplines

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Information Has Value Webcast - The Utility of Social Media for Teaching Information Literacy

How to use inquiry-based learning techniques to teach the information literacy threshold concept Information Has Value to students in a science for non-majors biology course. The presenters also discussed the design, implementation, and assessment of a scalable lesson plan that addresses concepts and skills within the Information Has Value frame

Kill the One-Shot: Using a Collaboration Rubric to Liberate the Librarian-Instructor Partnership

Subject faculty sometimes put information literacy into a box when they ask a librarian to give “the library talk.” On the librarian’s end, this unimaginative request translates into a traditional one-shot, often focused on point-and-click skills training rather than building deeper IL competency. The authors developed a collaboration rubric to liberate librarians from this deadlock. This rubric document uses 9 lenses to focus the librarian-instructor collaboration on relevant sub-categories that show a variety of instruction modes. Some of these lenses include assignment design, the timing of instruction, librarians’ visibility in virtual class spaces, and librarians’ involvement in assessment. The rubric breaks each lens down into varying levels of collaboration, from None to Minimal, Healthy and Superlative. For example, the “Teaching Time” lens provides a range of options, such as scheduling the session when the instructor will be out of town (Minimal) to scheduling it at students’ precise point of need (Superlative). During the poster session, the authors will describe their successes with using this collaboration rubric on their campus. One observed outcome is that using the tool forces some negotiation between the librarian and instructor, thereby facilitating richer dialog and doing away with a simple, one-directional “request.” Librarians gain strategic agency as they co-design an instruction model that works best for the librarians, the instructors and the student

Realistic Role Play

The panel will discuss various levels and approaches to role playing within the classroom setting. Panelists include Pete Sedrak (Information Technology), Amy Atchison (Political Science), Kevin Ostoyich (History), and Nora Belzowski (Library Services)