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Picture it, a higher education institution, 2009. The sun is shining. It’s a warm summer day. Your iced coffee perspires on the desk in front of you. You are a faculty librarian participating in a workshop with other faculty members on outcomes-based assessment for teaching and learning. You’re excited to make the leap from routine library orientations to in-class assignments centered around information literacy concepts, which will help improve your instructional sessions and place students on the continuum towards mastery of information literacy concepts. Suddenly, the conversation turns to the topic of the learning outcome for information literacy.

“How is information literacy any different from critical thinking?”

“Couldn’t we just get rid of information literacy since it shares similar outcomes with critical thinking?”

Wait, what?!?

Immediately, your head starts reeling with the national standards of the Association of College and Research Libraries, various statewide initiatives that have mobilized to embed information literacy into k-12 and higher education curriculum, and individual faculty with whom you have worked with to cover these very same standards as part of their learning outcomes for their students.

As you witness this debate unfolding, you think to yourself, what is the difference between critical thinking and information literacy? Do they share some common characteristics? Is it possible for one to exist without the other?

How would you respond to this challenge, where there are shared outcomes among information literacy and critical thinking?

The goal of the assessment-based learning outcome is to identify one necessary skill, such as teamwork, critical thinking, or communication, the student will use on the job, in their daily lives, or in the next stage of their educational process. This learning outcome is then embedded in an assignment or throughout the curriculum, and a scoring rubric is devised to focus on increasing student competency in this skill. This rubric allows for a quantitative value to be given to completed assignments representative of the student’s application of the skill and helps place them on the competency continuum somewhere between a basic, on the low-end of the scale, and advanced, on the high-end, which provides a great opportunity to make sure students are “getting it.” This process also engages both instructors and students in a teaching and learning partnership. By emphasizing the mastery of key learning outcomes at your institution students will be prepared for a post-graduate workplace environment.

It is important to ask this question: Is it possible for critical thinking to take the place of information literacy in today’s digital information universe? In this post I’ll be looking at information literacy and critical thinking as components of assessment. How is critical thinking and information literacy intertwined in the assessment of student learning? What other types of literacies are required for today’s student? Why is information literacy critical to student learning?

Information literacy and critical thinking: An accidental marriage?

To begin, we should establish some common ground on the definition of information literacy. The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) outlines the major competency areas for the information literate individual:

• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s own knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally [[1]]

These standards outlined by ACRL have been integrated into evaluation rubrics used by instructional librarians across the nation in levels K-12 through higher education. While there is variation in the language and presentation used to express these competencies, information literacy assessment closely follows these standards. One such example of a higher education institution is McKendree University, which has its very own on-line, interactive information literacy rubric. [[2]] Developing and using a rubric for information literacy can help place an individual or group of students on the information literacy continuum, where a student may come into the instructional session scoring low, or beginning, and leave the instructional session scoring somewhere in the middle to high range, or mastering. Through this process, we can gauge a student’s mastery of information literacy concepts and measure the effects of the instructional session on student learning. It is important to remember that when students hear the word “assessment,” this naturally inspires a lot of fear. They are concerned about having to take a test, turn in a paper, or engage in some form of an academic assignment. While fear may be a reality for most students, it is equally important to remember that these evaluation rubrics are also an assessment of the instructional librarian. They are tools for improving both learning and teaching, and provide very useful metrics for identifying future teaching opportunities.

Similar to information literacy, critical thinking has its own set of competencies. One of the leading organizations in providing a foundation for the assessment of critical thinking, Foundation for Critical Thinking breaks this down into eight discrete elements:

• Generates purposes
• Raises questions
• Uses information
• Utilizes concepts
• Makes inferences
• Makes assumptions
• Generates implications
• Embodies a point of view [[3]]

Critical thinking, as its own unique form of assessment, aims to get students to distinguish between empirical and factual evidence by applying higher order thinking to their own mental processes of receiving, taking apart, and synthesizing information. In addition, students balance all of this with an awareness of their own subjective judgment. Assignments created with the learning outcome of critical thinking in mind strive to create a fair and balanced outcome and parallels similar skills that will be required for future practical application. In their article on the importance of this outcome for graduate and experienced nurses, Fero, et. al directly link critical thinking to patient safety: “Nurses must have the ability to recognize changes in patient condition, perform independent nursing interventions, anticipate orders and prioritize.” [[4]] Focusing on the critical thinking characteristics of “interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation,” Fero, et al., argue that using a critical thinking framework in nursing education will bear directly on the nurse in their post-graduate nursing experiences. [[5]] This study included an exercise that presented nursing students with videotaped scenarios in a clinical setting and then asked them to record, in writing, their identification of the problem and necessary action steps for the resolution. Even though this case study incorporates situations aimed to exercise the critical thinking skills of its student membership, there are points at which information literacy competencies come into play. This is a perfect example of an inherent collusion between critical thinking and information literacy, as the scenarios presented in these videotapes require evaluation of visual information and critical thinking, which will then lead to an understanding of the information needed to resolve these problems.

If professional disciplines, such as nursing, look to specific competencies for graduates entering the workforce, then educational institutions should meet this same need by embedding competencies in the curriculum. For example, Washington State University has codified critical thinking for its student and faculty membership, by creating an online Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric. It serves as an institution-wide foundation for learning assessment across disciplines. [[6]] Similar to the information literacy rubric, instructors use these templates as competency models, and modify existing critical thinking rubrics tailored to specific assignments. A class taught at WSU on investigations into the arts, manipulated the existing baseline of the Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric to achieve its own critical thinking outcome for its course. These malleable rubrics are very useful in standardizing learning outcomes and setting clear guidelines for students to follow. Presenting and following a scoring rubric with an assignment can also take a lot of the subjective evaluation out of assessment and point students toward clearly stated goals.

Until death us do part

Clearly, there is a shared relationship between information literacy and critical thinking. Critical thinking comes into play when getting students on the path to looking at information and using it judiciously in light of their topic. Library information instruction sessions have been following a trend which seeks to blend these two together, getting students to look at websites, articles, media items, and other online content with a critical eye toward evaluating these sources for credibility.

Library instruction incorporates brainstorming or concept mapping into sessions, providing students with a creative approach to generating a purpose for their assignment. Increasing numbers of instructional librarians also devote time to the evaluation of information, which ultimately takes students out of the pre-packaged box of research databases and into the frontier of the freely available information online. Ellie Collier in her post, In Praise of the Internet: Shifting Focus and Engaging Critical Thinking Skills, touches upon this very relationship existing between information literacy and critical thinking. She encourages instructional librarians everywhere, “to shift our primary focus away from teaching how to find information and towards engaging critical thinking skills.” [[7]] This does not mitigate the need for the information literacy competency, when in fact both of these competencies live in perfect harmony. Both critical thinking and information literacy work together in a partnership, each leaning on and supporting the other. Li Zhang points to this very relationship between these two competencies, stating:

An information literate student will be able to formulate research queries and create search strategies that reflect an understanding of information sources and their organization, analyze the data collected for value, and ultimately incorporate the data to solve problems. This literacy or competency goes beyond simply acquiring knowledge; it involves the process of critical thinking, which emphasizes reasoning, forming judgment about the evidence, and determining when new information must be generated. Since information literacy and critical thinking are so closely related, it is the job of librarians who are also educators to go beyond merely providing lectures, but strive to cultivate students’ thinking skills in order to equip them with necessary strategies to cope with complex problems. [[8]]

Working with students to foster a cohesive, give-and-take relationship between critical thinking and information literacy will reinforce their post-graduate skills. As Zhang suggests, engaging students in that grey area between information literacy and critical thinking will foster direct engagement with information, and help them make connections between their research needs and the information available to meet those needs. Specifically, Zhang focuses on the following: comparing and critiquing websites for credibility; encouraging students to come up with their own standards of evaluation; using specific search strategies for online and database searching; and ultimately focusing on transference of skills between web and database searching. If you are an instructional librarian who loves to get your students thinking and talking about information, then you already know it is impossible to draw a clear line between information literacy and critical thinking.

Opening up the relationship

Increasingly, information literacy has become a national concern, stemming from a rapidly changing information and technology landscape. This includes print and electronic content, photographs, videos, podcasts, blogs, government documents, corporate records, institutional archives, and information formats yet to be defined. The concern for information literacy has had a long history, punctuated by different modalities: media, technology, computer, and cultural literacy. [[9]] To this list could be added multimedia, digital, communications, and social media literacy. Information literacy’s best friend, ACRL, draws a clear line between information literacy and information technology, stating that “[information] technology skills enable an individual to use computers, software applications, databases, and other technologies to achieve a wide variety of academic, work-related, and personal goals.” [[10]] Similar to the shared relationship between critical thinking and information literacy, much of these alternate literacies can reinforce and provide added dimension to the information literacy competency and create critical skills for the 21st century student. As information rapidly changes in appearance and content, it is of import for information literacy to be a part of the conversation regarding other literacy modalities.

The landscape of information literacy is changing, and these 21st century skills will also change the way students access, evaluate, incorporate, and use information effectively. Perhaps now and in the future, writing research papers may not be the primary method of student assessment at every higher education institution, and may not always coincide with every institutions mission for its student membership; however, in an increasingly networked world the necessity for an information literacy learning outcome is paramount. Beyond equipping students to interact with and use technologies effectively, being able to navigate information-rich environments is critical.

Information literacy: All by myself…

The necessity for classroom embedded information literacy skills is unavoidable. When navigating different user groups (e.g., community college associations, library associations, local library councils, and national library associations) the feelings on the topic of information literacy is similar: “To be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” [[11]] Even as information literacy bears strong ties to critical thinking, it must be able to stand alone as its own competency, by holding its own and be given equal representation in the assessment of teaching and learning.

Higher education institutions have taken a stand on the importance of information literacy, emanating standards and guidelines for the information competent individual from state and local government. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) has made their stance on information literacy very clear:

Information literacy, which encompasses information fluency and information technology mastery, is critical to success in higher education and lifelong learning. Rapid and continual changes in technology and the proliferation of information resources present students with an abundance of information through a variety of vetted and unvetted formats. This wide variety of choices raises questions about the reliability, authenticity, and validity of content and poses challenges for students trying to evaluate, understand, and apply the information.  The Association of College and Research Libraries, in its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, notes that information literacy is considered a key outcome by several regional and discipline-specific accreditation bodies because of its close ties to students’ competency with evaluating, managing, and using information .… An important element of both teaching and learning in today’s information age is information literacy — the set of skills needed to find, access, retrieve, analyze, synthesize and use information effectively and ethically. [[12]]

As discussed, information and technology is changing, as is the terrain of teaching and learning in higher education. Among the current changes, peer-reviewed and trade journals are consistently moving to an online format, newspapers are scaling back print production to pursue an electronic future, mobile devices are being used to access and navigate online information environments, iPhone apps are being created daily from a variety of creators, blogs and wikis are rapidly being created by both individuals and large-scale organizations, and educational content is shifting to open source environments. Students encounter information in their daily lives when they drop by the supermarket to pick up groceries, when they sit down to watch television or stream media content on their computers, or when they engage in the task of media creation. First and foremost, this is all information.

Critical thinking and information literacy rubrics, as they are typically laid out, are very similar. However, critical thinking is rooted in developing a thought process that occurs around a variety of life skills related to interacting and engaging with information. Information literacy has a marked departure from critical thinking. This happens when educating students about the types and formats of information and technologies that exist, and getting them to think about information and technology concepts in the aggregate. For example, we might emphasize, this is word processing, not, this is Microsoft Word 2007. Or this is a search interface, not, this is a research database. Increasing information competency equips students with the skills to efficiently navigate and gather requisite information they will need in the workforce. Out in the “real world,” students are not likely to be presented with a Google search box during every work task. Instead they will be required to use a variety of search interfaces to get at the information they need to address the problem at hand, and be able to evaluate the credibility of those sources. They will need to be able to create workarounds when their information strategies fail them. They must be able to locate, gather, evaluate, synthesize, and responsibly use information. This process is markedly different from critical thinking, which often emphasizes thought processes around information, situations, interpersonal communication, project-based work, and other aspects.

Information comes in a variety of formats and is needed not only for writing research papers, creating presentations, but is a critical skill in dealing with day-to-day personal problems and issues. In an important study by Project Information Literacy (PIL) facilitated by the Information School at University of Washington, researchers found that students were frustrated equally when “conducting research, whether for course assignments or everyday life problems, [presenting] its own set of challenges that are usually exacerbated in digital environments. Challenges are often deep-seated frustrations tied to finding resources students know exist, somehow, somewhere, but are unable to access.” [[13]] One remedy can be found in a problem-based approach to the information gathering process, a process that can successfully be carried out through information literacy. By involving higher order thinking skills students see the connection between the skills they acquire in the educational setting and how they can be applied in their everyday lives. Guided instruction on how to navigate a complex information landscape would greatly improve a student’s ability to appropriately identify and navigate information, and better equip them to amass information if a definitive information gap is found. Developing information seeking strategies that meet real-life, everyday situations creates a natural bridge to workforce training, providing students with an invaluable set of skills similar to critical thinking, but independently valuable in its own right.

Rekindling the old flame

Library instruction sessions need to remain open to integrating critical thinking skills, as well as other learning outcomes and literacy modalities, in the k-12 and higher education setting. This practice can make information literacy relevant and test the mettle of this skill set in the educational environment. In the process of engaging students, we can find out what they think about information on a personal level as they interact with it in their daily lives. Once we push students to “figure it out,” begin to stir their creative and intellectual faculties, we can start moving the conversation forward. While information literacy and critical thinking share a contiguous and inseparable relationship, one cannot exist without the other. Without information literacy, students would find themselves equipped to think about situations and ideas, but incapable of recognizing and understanding the vast information network or how to access this network. Alternately, without critical thinking we would have vast amounts of information with no way to filter, gather, or synthesize this information.

It is also important for instructional librarians in an educational context to be involved in the development of an information literacy rubric. In the course of developing such a rubric, we can provide our instructional peers with a template for evaluating information literacy in their own classrooms, as well as our own. In addition, modifying existing rubrics at your institution can be an invaluable test of the impact of your teaching and show you if students are truly “getting it.” Such a venture might also help integrate you more into instruction and allow students and instructional peers to see you as more than just the cool librarian with the book cart.

Along with critical thinking, information literacy should be offered with the same frequency as other teaching and learning assessments in the educational institution. It touches every aspect of practical skills provided at higher education institutions: automotive core students use Mitchell 1® OnDemand™ to create estimates and look up information on various types of automobiles; allied health and nursing students use MedlinePlus® to locate current, reliable information on topics of health and wellness; psychology students use search interfaces to review current literature on mental health topics; and students find themselves using these information strategies out in the world without realizing it. Embedding information literacy into instruction with the same frequency as other outcomes-based assessments promotes an emerging population capable of working with various technologies, as well as an aptitude for finding the right information to meet a need in a timely and efficient manner. There is an everyday use for information literacy that would be lost if it were to disappear into or merge with critical thinking and obscure its importance by calling it anything other than information literacy.

A very special thank you to Emily Ford, Edward Sargent, Cheyenne Roduin, and Merinda Kaye Hensley for their invaluable insight and suggestions for this post.

[[1]] “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education.” Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), 2009. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm.
[[2]] McKendree University. “Information Literacy Rubric.” Information Literacy Rubric, n.d . http://www.mckendree.edu/academics/Information_Literacy_Rubric.aspx.
[[3]] Foundation for Critical Thinking. “Critical Thinking Model 1.” The Thinker’s Guide to Analytic Thinking, 2007. http://www.criticalthinking.org/CTmodel/CTmodel1.cfm#.
[[4]] Fero, Laura J., Catherine M. Witsberger, Susan W. Wesmiller, Thomas G. Zullo, and Leslie A. Hoffman. 2009. Critical thinking ability of new graduate and experienced nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing 65, no. 1 (January): 139–148, p. 140. doi:10.1111/j.1365–2648.2008.04834.x.
[[5]] Ibid., p. 141.
[[6]] Washington State University. “WSU’s Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric.” Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric, 2006. https://my.wsu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=177,276578&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL.
[[7]] Collier, Ellie. 2009. In Praise of the Internet: Shifting Focus and Engaging Critical Thinking Skills. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. January 7. http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/in-praise-of-the-internet-shifting-focus-and-engaging-critical-thinking-skills/.
[[8]] Zhang, Li. 2007. Promoting Critical Thinking, and Information Instruction in a Biochemistry Course. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship 51, no. 2 (Summer). http://www.istl.org/07-summer/refereed.html.
[[9]] Horton, Jr., Forest Woody. “Understanding Information Literacy: A Primer.” United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2007. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001570/157020E.pdf.
[[10]] Association of College & Research Libraries. 2000. Information Literacy and Information Technology. Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. January 18. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm#iltech.
[[11]] Association of College & Research Libraries. “Presidential Committee on Information Literacy: Final Report.” ACRL | Presidential Committee on Information Literacy, January 10, 1989. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.cfm.
[[12]] American Association of Community Colleges. 2008. AACC Position Statement on Information Literacy. American Association of Community Colleges: Position Statements. May 4. http://www.aacc.nche.edu/About/Positions/Pages/ps05052008.aspx.
[[13]] Head, Alison J., and Michael B. Eisenberg. “Finding Context: What Today’s College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age.” Seattle, WA: The Information School, University of Washington, February 4, 2009. http://projectinfolit.org/publications/.

Photo by Flickr user Nathan deGargoyle

Recently I was lucky enough to come across the publication of a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace in 2005 to a group of wide-eyed graduates from Kenyon College. While it’s difficult to sum up what one takes away from a four-year-degree, this particular rumination helps to qualify the value of a liberal arts education by hitting home a simple metaphor.

Wallace starts with a joke about fish. One looks to the other and says, “So, how’s the water?” The other fish replies, “What’s water?” The speech goes on to point out that a liberal arts education opens our eyes to the world around us by providing experiences that help us move beyond our assumptions. Situations and phenomena in our daily lives become more nuanced and complicated.

Helping students “see the water” is at the heart of the information literacy teaching that librarians-as-educators do. When I think globally about information literacy and what’s outlined by the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards, it seems we want students to open their eyes to the world of information. We want them to recognize that finding and using information isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Not so that they’ll shy away, but instead, graduate with the abilities and understandings they need to shed assumptions, ask questions, and navigate an ever-changing information landscape.

The individual goals and means of library instruction programs may vary, but some form of teaching happens at most academic libraries. Librarians’ teaching takes the form of hosting workshops, teaching courses, and being there for students when and where they need us, from reference desks to chat rooms. And our teaching efforts are driven by goals for student learning, with the hope that we can play an active role in graduating information literate students–eyes wide open in the fish bowl.

But this is a lot to accomplish in a never-ending stream of one-shot library workshops. At this collective realization a few years ago, the librarians at my library decided to face it head on. Not that we thought one-shots weren’t effective, just that we weren’t sure what they were accomplishing, exactly. Plus we were spending a lot of time teaching freshman how to find a book and an article and releasing them into the research paper abyss, and we wanted to consider other forms of teaching.

I know we’re not alone in grappling with this conundrum and I hope to hear how you and your library are working to address our shared challenge: how to design an instruction program that meets our learning goals for students.

A bit of background

To begin addressing the learning goals we had for students, we first looked to the first-year writing courses that streamed through the library, English 101 and English 102. As is most likely the case in academic libraries across the country, we had been actively trying to reach as many students with foundational information literacy know-how in their first years of academic work. No matter how tailored our instruction was to a given assignment, we still felt a bit like broken records; each workshop needed to cover the “basics” and we rarely got past the book-and-article routine. We were left unsure of the impact of our efforts. Like ducks in a pond, we appeared calm atop while our feet below paddled furiously to keep up.  So we began dreaming up our ideal instructional opportunity: a foundational information literacy course that gave students the time and space to meet the learning goals we set for them.

Though Boise State University’s library has been teaching a one-credit library research skills class for the past decade or so, it had yet to reach its potential. Titled University 106: Library research, it has historically been a self-paced course that has students complete a series of question-and-answer worksheets, for instance: “go to the Library of Congress Subject headings and find a narrower term for sports accidents.” More recently it has evolved into a project-based course where students continuously work towards several small or one more substantial culminating paper, bibliography or presentation.

In the past two years, we’ve thrown the course into perpetual beta, ever evolving the curriculum, and have been testing the waters by experimenting with how the course is taught: in-person, online, and as a themed course (for example, one semester we “themed” two courses by focusing on Business Resources and Diversity). We’ve also continuously expanded our offerings of Univ106 from one large section to 23 sections this spring semester, taught by 13 librarians.

The in-person sections of Univ106 typically meet once a week for an hour in one of the computer classrooms in the library. There is also variation in how the online sections are offered. We have one large stand-alone, self-paced course that is capped at 150 students and team-taught by two librarians. We host this online course through Blackboard, our campus course management system, in order to use the time-saving features such as automatic grading for quizzes. We also offer smaller sections online, capped at 25 students, that make use of a variety of tools, including wikis, blogs, Google Sites and Blackboard.

While all Univ106 courses share standard learning outcomes, librarians have free rein to design experiences, activities and assignments that map how students get there. This freedom has led to a lot of creativity and experimentation with teaching techniques–from active learning to building video tutorials. Here’s an example of a typical weekly assignment in the revamped University 106. A student is first asked to find a newspaper article that mentions research on their topic. As a next step, the student is asked to track down the original research article mentioned in the newspaper article. The student then answer a series of questions about the authorship, audience and kind of information they find in each article. This exercise would be supported with how-to instructional videos, step-by-step directions, and worksheets that scaffold the process. As an instructional team, Boise State librarians have shared with one another while developing their own course content. I’ve learned a great amount from my colleagues as we’ve rolled up our sleeves and mucked around in the messy art of teaching.

Student learning has been the focus throughout all of this experimentation. The first semester I taught Univ106 I had my 25 students work towards creating or editing a Wikipedia entry of their choice. They were to add significant content with the support of at least 10  information sources–their justified “top 10” resources on a topic. A lot of things went well that semester: students showed up for our hour of class each week, performed the research-related tasks I asked of them, and even seemed to get excited when it came time to edit Wikipedia live. But at the end of the semester I was left with a sinking hunch that students weren’t making connections between what they learned in Univ106 and the research they would need to do for future courses; a hunch I’ve yet to confirm, but about which I am still curious. We’ll get to more on assessment in a bit.

The problem was I spent much of that first semester fabricating a reason for my students to do academic research. By choosing Wikipedia as the genre for their final project, I’d tried to create a context that was meaningful for them (beyond, “because I said so”), but I still felt as if a majority of the students were a bit too complacent about the work. I was left wondering how to better tap into their innate curiosity; I wanted my students to have genuine questions, an authentic information need to satisfy. But was I asking too much? University 106 is a one-credit pass/fail class, after all. That’s a lot of enthusiasm and engagement to expect for one credit.

Pairing University 106 with English 102

Armed with a renewed enthusiasm for teaching, and with our eyes on the prize–laying a foundation of information literacy in the first years at Boise State –we looked to trends and best practices in the profession. Embedded librarianship has received a lot of interest in recent years, and seems to have had some success as a method of teaching information literacy skills to students at the point of need (Bowler & Street, 2008). The basic idea is to teach more than a one-time workshop in support of a project. Instead, the embedded librarian has an ongoing  instructional presence in a course or project-based situation, either online or in person through a series of tailored workshops. With embedded librarianship in mind, we embarked on a series of conversations with the First Year Writing Program to explore possibilities.

As in many academic libraries, our instruction program had for several years been targeting our teaching efforts towards English 102: Research Writing for a variety of reasons. As the course title indicates, the focus of course is to develop research-based writing abilities, and so is a good fit for library research instruction. Engl102 is also a course all students are required to take and usually take in their first year at Boise State, which opens to the door to the possibility of reaching most incoming students with meaningful information literacy instruction. So librarians set out to proactively explore how to partner with Engl102 faculty in the development of our instructional offerings so that we could identify and meet student needs.

Targeting collaborations with Engl102 also made sense because of existing partnerships with faculty in the First Year Writing Program. Thomas Peele, First Year Writing Program Assistant Director, had already been leading a curricular change to emphasize research (Peele & Phipps, 2007). Based on annual assessments of student work, the First Year Writing Program had identified students’ limited research skills as needing additional instruction. When I started at Boise State University I had assumed that building relationships with key campus partners would take years, but instead I was able to hit the ground running. Within a year of my arrival, we were already discussing possibilities for co-teaching courses or pairing English 102 with University 106 as co-requisites, and the more we talked, the more the doors kept opening wider. It’s been an instruction librarian’s dream come true; a collaboration and mutual goal to support student learning.

So, we’d found our match. The next step was to align the work librarians had been doing to redesign Univ106 with the instructional needs presented in Engl102.

PoWeR-up!

In spring 2009 Kim Leeder and I embarked on teaching four sections of linked Univ106/Engl102 courses, taking two each. Students co-enrolled in paired courses of Engl102 and Univ106. Of course, we needed to come up with a catchy way for students to recognize this new offering, and so it became Project Writing and Research (PoWeR). We pitched it to students as a combined four-credit experience that would strengthen their research-writing skills. University 106 would act as a research lab for writing assignments in English 102 and the curricula would align so that the courses would be mutually supportive at the day-to-day level. Kim and I met individually with our English faculty counterparts and designed a series of weekly activities and developed shared assignments that directly supported the research-based papers and projects students were working towards in Engl102.

Right away I felt a different level of engagement from my students. I didn’t have to spend as much time introducing the “why” for research; the context existed in the paper writing of English 102. I could instead spend more time helping students explore and refine a topic and make it interesting for themselves and their intended audience. Through their reflections and performance on assignments, it was clear students were seeing the applicability of the research side of things. I often received comments from a student who expressed in amazement that they were able to find articles for a biology assignment and other coursework. It was working! Students were becoming better researchers and beginning to understand how these skills could be applied beyond University 106.

Since then we’ve expanded PoWeR course offerings from 4 to 20 sections. This growth has been supported by a state funded grant aimed to integrate technology into teaching in higher education. We’ve spent the past fall leading a series of collaborative institutes in which librarians and English faculty worked together to build the combined English 102/University 106 curriculum and content. The institutes resulted in a series of University 106 modules of research instruction, including content, activities and assessment. The modules currently number 22 in all and cover topics from image and video searching to field research to crafting search terms. Librarians and English faculty also worked to create a combined course schedule in order to ensure the Univ106 modules directly supported the weekly writing and research expectations for Engl102.

This push towards offering 20 sections has been quite an effort for everyone involved. Collaborating closely with English faculty has made our course design that much richer and, well, more fun–certainly for us, and we hope for students as well.

Photo by Flickr user Nathan deGargoyle

But, did they really get it?

Assessment has been a key tool to aid our decision-making processes, from deciding on course offerings to how we deliver and design course content. It was clear early on that if we were to put intensive efforts towards Engl102 instruction, we needed to know if students were actually learning what we intended.

At the end of each semester we’ve collected portfolios of student work from PoWeR sections. The portfolios typically consist of final drafts of their major papers and a reflective letter in response to prompts on both their growth as a research and a writer. Librarians and English faculty developed a rubric to assess the quality of student work in terms of source variety, source appropriateness, citation use, and research strategies employed. The assessment of student work has proven to be an insightful lens into what they’re learning and what they’re not, and this has directly informed the development of course content. It’s also forced us to articulate what proficient research looks like.

The spring 2009 assessment made clear that PoWeR students were using a wider variety of higher quality sources in their work. They were also significantly more able to discuss their research strategies. Students in both PoWeR and non-PoWeR sections of English 102 struggled with citations. In response, we created an annotated bibliography assignment for use during the fall 2009 semester in order to provide formative feedback for students on citations prior to submitting a final draft. The upcoming portfolio assessment this spring will show us whether the added assignment improves student performance.

Course evaluations have also proven useful when considering course delivery and activities. Students made it clear the first semester we taught PoWeR that they would prefer a combined course schedule and course site. This seems like a logical consideration now, but it was reflective of librarians and English faculty still thinking of the courses as separate in that first semester. I think the steps we’ve taken in the last semester to build on our collaborative efforts with English faculty while growing the PoWeR program has helped to create a one-course experience for students.

Opportunities & challenges

Although I’m hopeful heading into the spring semester, I’m also aware of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

First and foremost teaching Univ106, in all of its many forms, has proven a wonderful opportunity for librarians to grow as educators. We have learned to see through the water along with our students, and will continue to learn how to teach in a way that students learn. It’s felt like a cultural shift in librarian identity; my colleagues and I have truly seen ourselves as responsible for students becoming information literate, and therefore had to fully embrace our role as campus educators. Having instructional partners in the English Department, and seeing our teaching from their perspective, has also positively influenced the way we see ourselves as educators.

But with the ultimate goal of reaching all incoming freshman, the task is a bit daunting with finite resources; good teaching takes time and effort. I’m not sure that we’ll ever be able to match Univ106 with all 70 sections of Engl102, but the challenge is there. We would need to develop a scaleable model of course design and delivery that doesn’t take us backwards when it comes to student learning.

Some librarians have expressed interest in matching a Univ106-like-course to key courses in their disciplines. This is a wonderful idea, one that would tier the library instruction program to reach our goal of graduating information literate students. But we can’t be everywhere and do everything, so our course offerings will need to grow and balance over time. The ultimate goal is to have the academic library remain at the heart of teaching and learning on campus to ensure our relevancy as an academic unit and support student success in meaningful ways.

As a next step, we’ll begin an assessment project this spring to follow Univ106 students into future courses and beyond. We’ll be curious to see if students are able to transfer the foundational information literacy skills into their upper division coursework. The hope is to be better informed about what research abilities they’re expected to have in future courses, and we’ll use this insight to inform our course learning outcomes. We’ll see if they’re in fact able to see the water.

Instruction librarians are faced with the challenge of how to design and deliver an instructional program that meets information literacy learning goals. I’d like to hear about the efforts librarians are making at your own institution to address the information literacy needs of your students. I look forward to learning from your comments.

• Bowler, M. & Street, K. (2008). Investigating the efficacy of embedment: Experiments in information literacy integration. Reference Services Review, 36(4), 439–449.
• Peele, T. & Phipps, G. (2007). Research instruction at the point of need: Information literacy and online tutorials. Computers and Composition.

I’d like to thank Ellie Dworak, Emily Ford, Kim Leeder, Ellie Collier and Derik Badman for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions for this post.  And a special thanks to Kim Leeder for offering the opportunity to reflect on our work.

During the last few frenzied weeks of the academic semester last month I came across an article I reviewed quickly and put aside, but which has lingered in the back of my mind despite the fact that I can’t seem to find it again. Essentially, as a I recall, the article addressed the manner in which academic (and school?) libraries are evolving more fully into social spaces for students, along the lines of a second student union or a glorified internet cafe. The article raised the question in my mind of whether libraries, if they continue to progress in this direction, will eventually just merge into the campus student union, which also provides computers, study spaces, and food options. Do we have a greater vision, a plan for where we’re going, or are we just rolling with the times?

I spent a lot of time last fall researching an annotated bibliography on the Learning Commons that caused me to reflect on some of the same questions. In 1985 Pat Molholt published an article in the Journal of Academic Librarianship titled “On Converging Paths” in which she suggested that libraries and computer labs were likely to merge into one. At this point we can say that she was partially correct, as the job description of a librarian now overlaps strongly in many ways with an information technology job description (I am not sure the reverse is true, however). As a reference librarian, I probably spend about the same amount of time helping students with research as I do helping them with technology. At many institutions the relationship between the library and IT department are very close, and they often reside in nearby office spaces, but I am not aware of any place where they have yet been merged.

The idea of combining libraries with information technology departments is scary to many, but also a very natural step. Many libraries have their own IT departments, or rely heavily on an organizational unit to build and update their website, keep online resources correctly linked and current, provide online reference services and technology support for patrons, and host multimedia content, among other things. If librarians were more highly trained in back-end technology, think of how much further we could take many of our instructional and service initiatives! If IT professionals were trained as librarians, the same would be true.

If you’re not familiar with the concept, the Learning Commons is the latest manifestation of the 1990’s Information Commons, which was a later manifestation of the 1980’s library computer lab. First we put computers in libraries and thought that was pretty cool. Later, libraries at some notable institutions such as The University of Iowa and The University of Arizona decided to integrate their computer labs more fully by expanding the labs, providing a greater variety of software and hardware, offering combined research and technology help desks, and building computer classrooms where online research skills could be taught. That was the Information Commons.

More recently, a number of universities are beginning to build on the Information Commons concept with the goal of a “seamless learning environment” in mind. The Learning Commons includes, in addition to the usual computer labs and classrooms, student services resources such as the writing center, career services, and residence life. In some cases these are physical facilities that combine several units, in other cases they are programmatic or service collaborations (If you’re interested in learning more about this, try Learning Commons: Evolution and Collaborative Essentials or any of the other recent books on the topic). Apparently, this is the next step in our evolution: it’s like creating the WalMart of libraries where students can do their one-stop shopping for everything college.

I think this is a really interesting direction, and I’m sure many of the Learning Commons will be (and continue to be) highly successful. The goal of the Learning Commons is to identify the ways students learn today and creative a responsive environment for them. But it makes me wonder what our libraries and our jobs as librarians will look like in the future if we continue to change in the direction of merging our buildings and services with everyone else’s buildings and services. Will we even call libraries “libraries” then, or will we have more elusive names such as “Integrated Services Building”? At the ISB you can grab a cup of coffee, research and write a paper, troubleshoot your registration problems, and sign up for the dorm room lottery. I wonder if it will be the same person who can help students with all those things.

And the most important question of all: do we know where we’re going?

What Makes a Library a Library?

As I wrestle with this question, I have found interesting a conversation taking place among public and school librarians about what makes a library a library.” Sarah Houghton-Jan began the discussion early in December on the subject of King County’s new “Express Library,” an unstaffed self-serve library branch. After 95 percent of local residents said they would prefer it, King County created a “mini-branch” where patrons can pick up holds, and the library system even threw in two computers for catalog searching and a small browsing collection. Can one even call this a library? Houghton-Jan is not sure:

It raises the question–-what makes a library a library? And not just because there aren’t live staff there. There is not a full browsing collection of materials, no internet-enabled computers, no wifi, no rooms to read or study in, no programs, etc.

From her comment we might extrapolate that what makes a library a library are the things she listed: librarians and staff, a large collection, computers and internet access, study space, and programs of some variety.  But a few days later, a set of video interviews published by Buffy Hamilton from Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, seem to disagree, at least from the teen perspective. These young people generally see the library as a place to both hang out with friends and get their work done. Out of the twelve students she interviewed (she notes eleven, but one video clip has two students), I was surprised to see that nearly half, or five students, cited “atmosphere” as what makes a library a library. What constitutes the library atmosphere was unclear.

I think the commonly cited quality among both groups of students — the library as a place to read, study, work, and/or do research — is informative, and obviously carries over into college students’ views of the library. For students of all ages, the library is a place to get out of the house or dorm room and get work done. For older students, there is some social value to the library as well. I appreciate Scott Bennett’s view of the library’s value in the modern higher educational institution:

The library is the only centralized location where new and emerging information technologies can be combined with traditional knowledge resources in a user-focused, service-rich environment that supports today’s social and educational patterns of learning, teaching, and research. Whereas the Internet has tended to isolate people, the library, as a physical place, has done just the opposite (p.3).

The library as a place that counteracts the isolating nature of the internet is something I can get on board with. And again, it reinforces the idea of the library as an increasingly social venue.

The value of the library as place appears to be alive and well, but what kind of “place” are we talking about? It seems important that we retain the “atmosphere” the interviewed students cite, but first we need to know what that atmosphere is. If our libraries morph into something else by blending with other campus entities, the qualities students enjoy might disappear. On the other hand, perhaps those qualities are so central to the library that they will persist regardless.

Vision: Do We Have It?

Being a librarian these days sometimes feels like being a passenger on a fast-moving train. We sit inside, hoping there is someone in front running the show, or hoping at a minimum that another train won’t run us off the track. But we sit looking out the side windows without having any idea what may be coming along the road in front of us. Whether or not anyone’s in charge, it can be hard to tell. Lots of people have taken stabs at predicting the future of libraries, and I can’t say with any authority (until we get there!) whether they have it right. Will we be cultural centers, wholly special collections, digital repositories, absorbed into Google, or just plain out of business?

Out of curiosity I searched the last six years of the journal Library Administration & Management for articles with “future” in the title, and found only five. Two were a two-part article on the future of libraries by Bonnie A. Osif from 2008 that summarized the variety of perspectives about library futures as represented in the literature. I must admit to being surprised to not see something more visionary in this journal. Perhaps I am looking in the wrong place. But it seems to me, and I don’t mean to criticize any of our great library leaders, that most of the “vision” I see in the library field is just an expansion of what already exists. Building on our strengths is a great thing, but it is a different thing than having a vision towards which to build our future.

Who is our Henry Ford, our Steve Jobs? Who is leading us to a place where libraries will thrive and succeed in an uncertain future? Some may argue that we don’t need visionaries to lead us, but I disagree. Most of us work day to day with our heads down, just trying to get everything done. We need leaders who have the time and space to be constantly looking ahead, watching the clouds, and anticipating the storms and sunshine to come.

Looking Forward

I don’t have the answers — only a lot of questions. It seems to me that the first thing to ask is what we want libraries to be in the future. Or would it be better phrased to ask what our students want libraries to be in the future? Do we serve our students best if we turn libraries into learning centers combined with various other campus units? From my admittedly inexperienced perspective, and considering the state of the economy, I can see this road leading us towards a place of campus mergers. Putting our instinct for self-preservation aside, is an eventual merger of the library, IT department, and (potentially) other offices desirable? Students might love it, as it will avoid their being redirected multiple times to the office that “handles that,” but will it be the best way to serve their information needs?

Of course we must balance what we want for libraries with what is possible, considering the changes in technology and learning that are still happening. We can’t predict where learning theory may take us next, but I learned while at The University of Arizona that sitting around and waiting for the future to take us somewhere is an exercise in failure. Peter Drucker and other great management gurus encourage us to take control of our future by constantly assessing our successes and failures, experimenting with new innovations, and shedding those aspects of our work that don’t measure up.

I like to consider what our libraries would look like if we tore them all down, erased our memories, and rebuilt them from the ground up. No doubt we would focus first on what our patrons need and use. Not books, that’s for sure — forget about print. Computers and software, yes, but everything will have to be wireless so buy up those laptops. Online resources for sure, but reconfigured in simpler ways. We may still buy academic databases, but now that we’re cross-trained as IT specialists we’ll build our own search engines that cross all of our various information platforms seamlessly. Our buildings will be full of flexible social spaces that can be used for teaching, gaming, group work, and just hanging out with friends. We’re not going to design around the needs of computers anymore. We’ll share building space with the writing center, coffee shop, tutoring, business center, and maybe others. Perhaps we’ll be a big educational mall. WalLibrary. LibraryMart.

Overall, our libraries are innovative and ever seeking improvement, but let’s face it: we’re turtles among a race of hares when it comes to moving with the times. We grab onto new technologies eagerly, but don’t know what to do with them or how to use them effectively. We’re just starting to understand that assessment is important. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that as a whole we move too slowly. And while it may get us somewhere faster, riding along in somebody else’s train may or may not take us where we want to be.

I hear a little shrillness in the voices of many librarians who speak or write about the future. We argue with the world at large, insisting that not everything is available online, that libraries are not going out of business. We are insecure about our future and whether we’ll have jobs in ten or twenty years. I appreciate the optimism of those who are prepared to evolve with what comes, but I think that is missing the point a little bit. We should not just adapt to fit our changing present, but plan ahead and prepare and take the future by the throat saying, “Throw at me what surprises you will, I am ready for you!”

Who are our visionaries, who is leading this charge of libraries into the future? I’m really asking you, ItLwtLP reader, because I don’t know. I would love to hear about your vision and those you think visionary in the comments below. Perhaps if we put our heads together, we’ll start to see a little glimmer of what’s down the road for us.

Thanks to Ellie Collier, Emily Ford, and Tom Hillard for offering feedback on a draft of this post.

We thought the New Year would be a good time for us to get together and do another group post; what do we want for 2010? Comment on this post and tell us: What do you want for 2010 in your library, in libraries in gen eral, or in the profession?

Ellie

On a purely personal level, I’d like to get a fantastic response rate on the environmental scan my library will be performing this spring semester. On a broader level I’d love to see more libraries performing their own user studies and publicizing their results. For pie-in-the-sky I want catalogs magically fixed.

Emily

I’d love to see a radical expansion of Public Access Policies (like the NIH Public Access Policy) that are responsible to researchers, archivists, librarians, and the public. As a matter of fact, the Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently taking public comment regarding expansion of Public Access Policies. If we can give good feedback to inform the shape of future Public Access, then maybe we can have a Public Access model that works for everyone involved: researchers who want to disseminate their work, librarians who help people find that work, libraries that can consult on creating repositories, publishers that remain important in the peer-review model, and the public that funds the very research at stake.

Brett

I want to see some Amazon Libraries. To me, the idea seems so obvious I can’t believe it hasn’t yet happened: a full partnership between Amazon and a subset of public libraries–maybe a group of independent municipal libraries, or perhaps entire library systems.

The legal arrangements would take some doing, but I think it would be worth it for Amazon. FedEx purchased Kinko’s, and UPS purchased Mail Boxes Etc., in order to have a large, trusted network of brick-and-mortar retail outlets. Amazon could benefit from a similar arrangement by appealing to in-person, impulse, and last-minute shoppers, and it could also reduce its warehousing and last mile expenses. For example, it could begin offering free shipping on any purchase for customers willing to pick up their items at a local library, a common practice among retailers such as REI and Nordstrom. Amazon could then raise the minimum for free home delivery from its current limit of $25. I don’t think a new minimum of $50 or even $100 would be unreasonable–after all, if these customer want their purchases shipped for free all they have to do is visit their local public library.

As beneficial as this arrangement could be for Amazon, I think it could be even more of a boon to participating libraries:

• Amazon’s website is more usable than any library website I’ve ever seen;
• Library operations, especially our collection development activities, are inefficient and expensive–and we still don’t have useful predictive statistics, which can cause long waits for popular items and encourages us to rely heavily on ILL;
• Library cataloging is very good, but it’s frequently slow, and we almost always duplicate effort.

By partnering with Amazon, libraries could outsource many of these activities to an organization that is among the world leaders in each area. Amazon would manage its partner libraries’ technical infrastructure and material-related operations; in exchange, libraries would handle all in-person transactions and customer service. Depending on availability, cardholders would have the option to borrow or buy popular items–and could still rely on their libraries to offer reference services, training and programming, and other activities library users have come to expect. The cost savings for participating libraries, plus the revenue they could earn by selling some items instead of just lending them, would help these libraries become far more solvent.

The only obvious danger would be to privacy, but that could be handled by storing circulation records on-site and purging any personally identifying data before it is uploaded to Amazon. That is, assuming people want to maintain their anonymity. For those who don’t–that is, for those who want to use their Amazon login in place of a library card–they could enjoy Amazon’s tailored shopping experience at the library they know and love.

Hilary

Pie-in-the-sky for libraries in general:  I’d like to see augmented reality apps (demo using Layar) to be developed for use in libraries to expose collections and services.  The NCSU Libraries is nearly there with its WolfWalk application.

As a practical application for libraries in 2010, I hope to see the implementation of a more effective way to manage collections, especially licensed content like journals and databases, alongside things like usage patterns and return on investment analytics.  Keep an eye on the ambitious efforts from OCLC (have some spare time? check out this video presentation) and the OLE project to see who gets there first.

Related to the profession, I hope that SLA can recover from its name change initiative (identity crisis perhaps?) and continue to advocate for its members in an intentional, strategic, valued, and thoughtful way.  In an historic vote to change the name or keep the name, the process made members think about what it means to be a member of a professional organization — defining expectations, questioning SLA’s motivations — and it fractured the member pool soon after the organization reached its 100 year-old birthday.  SLA has been my professional organization of choice, and I hope that 2010 is a year of renewal and momentum in the right direction for SLA.

Kim

Well, since you asked… all I personally want for 2010 is to be granted tenure: magically, early, and without all the hassle! (Just kidding.)

Just as pie-in-the-sky, though, here’s my wish:

All I want for 2010 is a national referendum requiring that true research skills be taught as part of the K-12 school curriculum, including lessons on how to distinguish different types of online and print resources, how to find authoritative research, and how to be a critical information consumer. I would like to see students in my classes who understand that not all information is good information. I would also like to see colleges and universities embrace the national movement in research instruction (that I just invented) and apply it to the higher education curriculum so that all college students learn advanced research skills as they broaden and advance their educations. I would like to see us raise a new generation of information savvy American citizens who think critically about the information they receive as they move through our diverse, opinionated, and complex world.

If I may be granted a second wish, I wish for the American Library Association to find its way in reinventing itself as an association, and as a set of associations, that might better support and inspire librarians and libraries around the country.

Image from the National Archives and Records Administration Archival Research Catalog

Have you ever found yourself thinking: “I know I said yes to this, but now I wish I’d said no. That’s what I wanted to say in the first place”? Chances are you said yes because you were afraid to say no or you didn’t know how, or you don’t like saying no. If you were afraid to say no maybe you felt that you would be looked on as being difficult to work with, or that you would receive a poor job performance review. Maybe you feel that if you say no now, you won’t be asked again. Maybe you even feel guilty because if you can’t do a project then your co-worker will have to do it; or the project doesn’t get done at all. How do you say no? How can we frame “no” in a way that avoids negative consequences and enables us to be effective and healthy librarians?

Maintaining the right work/life balance can be tricky. For example, if your partner or child has an important event that conflicts with a meeting, what will you choose to attend? Some people might go to their meeting or show up late to her child’s piano recital or her partner’s awards ceremony. I have heard the phrase “rotating neglect” to describe these kinds of conflicts within work and personal lives. Essentially, we make choices to either neglect work or neglect ourselves and family. One of the ways we can counteract this is to begin by saying no to opportunities for service or projects that will upset the work/life balance we have.

The ability to say no to taking on a new project at work or another committee appointment is directly related to mental wellness and a healthy work/life balance. Many of us have a hard time saying no and can accumulate too much work and responsibility. The quandary remains that if you’re good at what you do you’ll be asked to take on projects and commitments. As a result the quality of our work and personal lives can suffer. In order to remain happy at work and in our personal lives, it is crucial that we find balance between them so that we feel mentally able to handle the tasks handed us at work, as well as the extracurricular activities in which we choose to engage. Service on national or local committees can be demanding and time intensive; frequently on time that is your own, and not our employer’s. In order to maintain balance, we need to learn how to say no. Say no when we cannot take on another commitment because our wellness is at stake. And that takes a tremendous amount of emotional intelligence, leadership, and let’s face it, guts.

William Ury’s The Power of a Positive No argues that a positive “no” is one that first affirms your values, then clearly says “no” to the current request, but ends with a possible yes to future positive work together. The construct Ury uses for this positive no is: “Yes! No. Yes?” For example, if you’re saying no to a colleague who asked if you would switch your late night reference shift, chances are you are saying “yes!” to spending time with your family, keeping your tickets to the big game, or your valued personal time. Following the “yes!” you must clearly communicate “no.” “No, John, I cannot take your shift.” The final “yes?” is a yes that is a proposition to an alternative to which you can both agree. An example of this might be, “I am spending tonight with my family. No, I cannot take your shift. Maybe in the future I’ll be able to.” While my example certainly does not do Ury’s book justice, it shows the construction of a positive no. A positive no is one that is intentional and thoughtful, and in the end, carries more meaning and demands more respect than a reactive “no” or a meek “yes.” Sometimes we just say yes because we fear the consequences, but if we can frame our “nos” positively as Ury suggests, we will find many of these fears ill-founded, and we will say no without feelings of guilt. Saying no in this positive way will feel good.

I recently remembered an act of self-advocacy displayed at a former job. When I was working as an elementary school library assistant, the principal asked if I would be interested in planning and hosting an after school book discussion group with students. My response is paraphrased as follows. “What a great idea. I think the kids could really benefit from something like this. I would not be able to do this on my free time. Can we work it out so that I may work more hours and be paid to do this?” You can see that my response follows the positive no construction. First, I say “yes!” affirming that I think the kids at the school could benefit from the program and I would enjoy doing it. Then I say “no” to doing the work as a volunteer. Finally, I say “yes?” to working on the project provided I get financially compensated. The principal and I were able to come to agreement and I started an after school book club for 4th and 5th graders.

“‘There are moments when people have to say No…and that No needs to be said with the same sincerity, the same honesty, and in the same tone of voice that people say Yes.”” Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as quoted by Ury, p. 132

Just as the quote above indicates, “nos” and “yeses” that are communicated without thought will be ineffective. Before you can effectively say no you have to know yourself. You have to know your values and strengths, and you have to know your professional and personal goals. You have to be a leader. How? Discover your values first. Try using Elizabeth Burnette’s outline that answers “How can you tap into your full leadership potential?” from a workshop she conducted at the NCSU libraries called Personal Leadership & Balancing Competing Priorities.

Personal Leadership & Balancing Competing Priorities
by Elizabeth S. Burnette

How can you tap into your full leadership potential?

1. Determine your values, personal vision, and leadership vision:

• Identify your values,
• Determine what’s incongruent between what you believe, what you say, and what you do,
• Accommodate changes to your values over time – they do change, and
• Address conflicts between values, career, and life.

2. Understand your leadership ability.

• This is the sum of your skills, energy, time, and focus at a point in time.
• Influence can impact your ability to lead well in the present.
• Present roles can impact your ability to lead in future roles.

3. Consider how leadership fits into your world:

• Periodically assess your goals and aspirations,
• Review your personal and professional agendas, and
• Analyze past leadership roles for lessons learned.

4. Strive for balance between leadership and the other parts of your life.

• Balance is not about perfection.
• Changing demands can create imbalances in your life.
• Be fluid and look to minimize clashes between life and leadership.

Mary Pergander discussed another technique last October in American Libraries. Take a mini-retreat to reflect on your priorities and values. (October 2008). Make an outline and while on your retreat reflect on what is important to you.

Some examples from the field

Because I was so curious about this topic I decided to informally ask my colleagues and peers how they approach saying no. I e-mailed librarians who I know and posed the following questions:

• How do you decide to say “yes” to a project/committee appointment, etc when you are asked to take on a task?
• Have you ever said “no” to taking on a project at work? If so, how did you decide to say no, and what were the key components of that decision?
• When you have said no at work, how have you communicated the “no”?
• Have you ever felt that saying “no” at work has resulted in negative outcomes? Please explain the nature of those outcomes (as you are comfortable).
• Have you ever wanted to say no but didn’t feel that you were able due to its ramifications? If so, please explain the situation (as you are comfortable) and its outcomes.

A total of 16 people responded. My favorite response is quoted below in its entirety.

“I apologize for not replying sooner. These past few weeks have been very busy for me both at work and at home. I’ve given your request some thought and I am sorry to say that I cannot participate in your informal information gathering. I know that lots of other librarians will be happy to share their experiences with you, and I hope you will think of me the next time something like this comes up.”

In addition to making my day, this is a thoughtful and well executed no. In the style of Ury’s positive “no” it affirms the “yes!” that his time is precious. It clearly states that the answer is no, and it opens the “yes?” to working together in the future.

Perhaps the most telling result of asking for this feedback was that of the 16 respondents, two (12.5%) pointed to their mental health having been compromised as a result of having said yes, when they really should have said no. Two people (12.5%) also point to having a career or job changed based on their decisions to say no. One said “no” to overwork and stress by deciding to change jobs. The other person’s no (to working on a new project) resulted in a poor performance review and later a hostile work environment when the person who originally asked for help became her boss! This eventually led to her finding a new job and in the long run, ended positively.

Another theme that appears in respondents’ answers is that saying yes or no depends on who is doing the asking. Several people noted that they can’t say no to their boss or the library director. Others noted that if the person who asks is someone they respect and admire they are more likely to say yes, noting that personal requests garner more attention. Sometimes you just aren’t able to say no without jeopardizing your job or your performance review.

What was surprising to me, although it shouldn’t be, is that several people mentioned difficulty with saying no in their first “librarian” job. “I learned through my experience at that first librarian job that you have to start saying no early on because once you’ve shown you can do the work, no one is going to take work away from you…When I came to my new job, I immediately started setting boundaries.”

Saying no can be political. For professionals who are in a position where they must attempt to get tenure, it can mean hindering their ability to either continue employment or attain tenure status. In these instances we are trapped in “not having a choice” to say no. It’s not a “yes” because you can’t resist the opportunity, but you fear the consequences of a “no.”

In his book Ury similarly discusses tough situations and advises you that you must always have a Plan B. A Plan B is not a compromise, rather it is a plan with which you feel comfortable and are able to execute if your “no” is not accepted. If your Plan B is to find a new job or even quit your current one, you must be prepared to take that step.

The final theme I noted is that there are major differences between saying no at work and saying no to joining another ALA committee (or something similar). One of my colleagues said precisely because ALA commitments are not part of her job expectations, she is very picky about what she does do. In order to say yes to an appointment she must feel passionately about that particular service or task.

Let’s talk praxis. How do you do it?

“Saying No is essential in life. Every living cell has a membrane that allows certain needed nutrients to pass through and repels others. Every living organism needs such boundaries to protect itself. To survive and thrive, every human being and every organization need to be able to say No to anything that threatens their safety, dignity, and integrity.” The Power of a Positive No p. 125

So what are some tactics that we can use to decide if we’re going to give a yes or no answer? The following are synthesized suggestions by respondents; and even some of their direct suggestions.

• Review your workload with your supervisor and come upon mutual agreement to whether your answer will be a “yes” or “no” can be helpful both in the way you frame your response, but also in alleviating any political ramifications or consequences your “no” may cause.
• Think about whether the project is of value to you, your job, or your patrons. Also consider whether it’s a task about which you are passionate, something that will be a lot of fun to do, or add to your skills set.
• Consider who is doing the asking. Think about whether the person asking is asking for a favor or a personal request.
• Always weigh whether or not you have the time. One respondent offered a calculation you could use to figure your time commitment at work. “…keeping a calculation of your standard work week responsibilities in time-consumption (i.e. weeding=2hours/per/week, desk time=15 hours/per/week, etc.) Once you have that worked out, you’ll know if you can afford another X-amount of hours to dedicate to the project.”
• Decide whether you think you will have something to contribute to the project/committee.
• Weigh the consequences. If you are going to say “yes” to this project you might have to say “no” to something else. Figure out which is more important to you.
• Discuss the issue with your friends, partner and family. If your commitments will affect them you should consult them. Chances are you will get some good advice.
• If saying no, always recommend someone else who might be good at that position or would have interest in serving. (Share the love!)

Let’s face it, sometimes even after answering all of these questions we have to say no. But if we’ve thoughtfully examined our values and the situation at hand, chances are we can communicate our “no” positively, intentionally, and with respect. Several respondents forwarded examples of how to say no. See the one quoted below (names have been changed to protect the innocent).

Hi Sue,

Seeing that you have a nice group of interested people and feeling like I’ve jumped on a few too many projects for this spring, I’d like to respectfully bow out of the Second Life group. You’re welcome to keep me on the email list for input, but I’d rather not commit to regular meetings and additional training.

Thanks,
Sam

It’s not just a positive “no,” it’s also an intentional and thoughtful “yes.”

Image from the National Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion Archival Research Catalog

As I end this article I want to stress that while I have concentrated on the “no,” by learning to frame and understand our “nos,” we are also learning how to understand and frame our “yes.” We should approach situations, opportunities and the whole of our work with thoughtfulness and intent. Thoughtful yeses and thoughtful nos will be more respected by your colleagues and carry more meaning. Moreover, you will feel better in your work and personal life when you can strike the balance, and say your “nos” without fear and guilt, but with a positive affirmation of your values.

If we can start balancing our work and personal lives and integrate positive “nos” when we need them, we’ll be healthier and happier librarians

Now it’s time to hear from readers. How do decide on your yes and on your no? How do you say it? Have you had to say no to preserve your wellness?

Further Reading

• Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
• Hernon, P., & Rossiter, N. (2006). Emotional intelligence: Which traits are most prized? College & Research Libraries, 67(3), 260–275.
• Kreitz, P. (2009). Leadership and emotional intelligence: A study of university library directors and their senior management teams. College & Research Libraries, 70(6), 531–554.
• MacMillan, K. (2005). Generating goodwill: Turning no into yes. American Libraries, 36(10), 48–49.
• Pergander, M. (2008). Retreat! retreat! American Libraries, 39(9), 69.
• Promis, P. (2008). Are employers asking for the right competencies? A case for emotional intelligence. Library Administration & Management, 22(1), 24–30.
• Richter, L. (2006). Emotional intelligence at work: An interview with Daniel Goleman.(1), 24–28.
• Schachter, D. (2005). Work and personal life balance. Information Outlook, 9(10), 10–11.
• Schachter, D. (2009). Developing and applying emotional intelligence. Information Outlook, 13(5), 49–50.
• Ury, W. (2007). The power of a positive no: How to say no and still get to yes. New York: Bantam Books.

Thank Yous

A heartfelt thank you to Elizabeth Burnette and Katherine O’Clair for providing thoughtful feedback on this post. Additional thanks to my colleague Laura Zeigen and Lead Pipers Ellie Collier, Derik Badman, Brett Bonfield, and Hilary Davis for their editorial comments.

Double Octuple Newspaper Web Perfecting Press, 1903

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a little over a year old now. We published our first article on October 8, 2008, and we’ve now published thirty-five in all, along with five group posts. By most measures, we’re still a new publication, but we’ve also been pretty successful. About 2,250 people subscribe to our feed, we were one of the LISNews blogs to read in 2009, we’re indexed in LISTA, and many of our favorite writers and librarians have contributed articles or read drafts of our work, mentioned us on their blogs, left comments, or encouraged us in person.

In this article, I do my best to explain why we think we’ve been able to reach people. Although it’s hard to avoid talking about ourselves in an article that describes our experience writing, editing, and publishing In the Library with the Lead Pipe, our motivation is to encourage our readers to produce their own experiments, not to encourage them to adopt our model. When we created In the Library with the Lead Pipe, we had to figure out a lot of things for ourselves. Because we love reading good writing about libraries, we’re sharing what we know in the hope of bringing more good library writing into the world.

Assemble a Team

Treadwell’s Wooden-Frame Bed and Power Press, 1822

Writing, at least writing that’s intended for publication, is an odd mix of the solitary and the social. You spend time alone, reading and thinking, working through your ideas and trying to present them in a way that resonates for other people. And then you share a draft of your work, ideally with someone you trust, and that person edits your text, refines it, makes suggestions, helps bring out the best in you. Our writing is only as good as our relationship with our readers, both the editors who help us turn our drafts into publications and the readers who spend time with our thoughts after they’ve been published, just as you’re doing now.

We publish most of our work at In the Library with the Lead Pipe over solo bylines, but all of our posts are group efforts. We usually bounce ideas off of each other before we get heavily involved in any research, and we rely on each other’s differing perspectives and skill sets as we refine our articles and prepare them for publication. We divide the tasks involved in keeping a blog/journal on schedule and have learned together what’s involved in this kind of undertaking. There are probably more small compromises involved for us than there are for people who publish solo, but none of us compromise on the things we care most about, such as open access and productive collaboration. We all feel comfortable disagreeing with the group and suggesting alternatives, and we all value unanimity when possible (or absolutely necessary), but are fine with simple majorities most of the time. We also enjoy co-authoring group posts, such as “What Not to Do When Applying for Library Jobs,” because they allow us to collaborate even more fully than we can in our solo posts, enabling us to include multiple perspectives in a single article.

The team behind In the Library with the Lead Pipe was assembled at the 2008 ALA Annual in Anaheim. Over lunch, Kim Leeder and I were talking about how much we would miss being first-year academic library bloggers at ACRLog. She was also eager to create an outlet for the enthusiastic, creative, and occasionally revolutionary voices she had been hearing as a participant in the 2008 ALA Emerging Leaders program. Kim suggested that we put together a group of librarians and start our own publication. Our goal was to find other people who seemed likely to bring out the best in each other, like the groups who publish ACRLog, Library Garden, and Pop Goes the Library.

Kim had worked with Emily Ford on an ALA Emerging Leaders project. I had worked with their fellow Emerging Leaders Derik Badman at Temple University and Ellie Collier on an ACRL panel. Being a North Carolina State University Libraries fanboy, I approached Andrew Pace for a recommendation from NCSU and he encouraged us to recruit Hilary Davis. It’s frightening to ask people to commit to a new project that may take up a lot of their time, especially when you don’t know them well, but know enough to know how busy they are. Fortunately, everyone agreed almost immediately even though we knew we were entering an area of the publication market that often seems saturated.

Find Your Niche

Modern Delivery Van for Grocers, Druggists, Etc.

As Walt Crawford has documented, at any given point there are approximately 500 active, fairly widely read library blogs. Additionally, there are dozens of non-blog library publications, such as Public Libraries or Library Resources & Technical Services. The world certainly didn’t need another new library publication last year any more than it needs one this year, but we figured we would be all right if we created the kind of publication that would hold our interest as readers. What librarian isn’t always on the look out for a good new read?

Our initial idea, our elevator speech, was simple: “We want to be the NPR or New Yorker of library blogs. We want to combine the intellectual rigor of an academic publication with the readability of The New Yorker or the storytelling of NPR.” This was a huge improvement over my initial attempt to get this idea across, which I’d written about in a piece for ACRLog with embarrassing results. The useful thing about mentioning NPR and The New Yorker is the mystique they carry. NPR is known for its personalities, its tendency to make you care about topics you don’t find intrinsically interesting, and its driveway moments—its ability to make you sit in your car and listen to the end of the story even after you’ve reached your destination. The New Yorker is known for its writers—even people who, like Garrison Keillor, have written for The New Yorker, write novels in which they fantasize about writing for The New Yorker—and also for its credibility: no one takes copyediting and fact-checking more seriously. If we can make In the Library with the Lead Pipe into a publication people look forward to reading and good writers want to write for, if we can be compelling and accurate, we’ll be happy with what we’ve created.

Our elevator speech itself, though compelling enough for our needs, wasn’t strictly accurate. Publications like Library Journal and American Libraries probably have more in common with NPR or The New Yorker than we ever will, but our intention is different from theirs. For one thing, like the stories on NPR and the articles in The New Yorker, we want our posts to be as compelling for people in other fields as they are for librarians. I regularly read articles or listen to podcasts by people discussing economics, philosophy, medicine, and software start-ups, in part because I’ve developed an interest in these topics, but mostly because I like how they think; I consistently get ideas from these writers and broadcasters that apply directly to my library work. What these publications have in common is, like Meredith Farkas’s Information Wants To Be Free and Wayne Bivens-Tatum’s Academic Librarian, they take on broad ideas that benefit from being explored at length. I can imagine economists, philosophers, medical practitioners, and start-up founders developing an interest in libraries, and those who do would probably enjoy learning about our field by reading Meredith’s and Wayne’s long form posts. For us, writing long form posts—limiting ourselves exclusively to articles and essays whose lengths vary between about 2,000 and 5,000 words—made sense because we thought it could broaden our appeal.

Long form work also lends itself to intellectual rigor. We were inspired by open access journals like Evidence Based Librarianship, First Monday, and especially The Code4Lib Journal, whose modified peer-review model we further modified. In our version of peer review, each piece is read before publication by at least one external reviewer and at least one Lead Piper. We encourage writers to choose reviewers with high standards, people who will reject substandard or unclear ideas or phrases. I think of our process as being more like a thesis review committee than like blind review, especially because we’ve never had a completed article rejected. From a scholarly publishing perspective, it feels a bit more like a compressed thesis/dissertation process.

Initially, we propose ideas to each other. Some ideas are rejected before they’re turned into articles, others are encouraged. After writing what we believe are polished drafts, we share our articles with outside reviewers. Sophie Brookover could have scuttled my review of her book; she didn’t, but she did make significant changes to portions of it, as did Meredith Farkas, my other outside reader for that piece. I got the same sort of editorial guidance from Tim Spalding and Aaron Swartz, who agreed to read my second piece. Either one of them could have objected strongly enough to elements of my article that the entire thing would have had to be rewritten or abandoned, and both made important suggestions the led to significant modifications. After incorporating ideas from our external reviewers, we show our revised drafts to each other. Again, in most cases this leads to significant changes to our articles before they’re published.

A key element in our philosophy is that articles which offer criticisms also offer constructive solutions. That first part is important to us—we place a high value on identifying problems in the status quo, we intentionally try to shake things up a bit, and we’re comfortable with a bit of irreverence and humor—but we won’t publish any critiques that aren’t accompanied by what we consider a useful solution. Thus, our name: In the Library with the Lead Pipe, which was inspired by the game, Clue, as was our tagline, “The murder victim? Your library assumptions. Suspects? It could have been any of us.”

The peer review process isn’t limited just to the Lead Pipe team: like ACRLog, which gave me an opportunity to post an article as a guest author before I was brought on board as a first-year blogger, we encourage people to submit their work for consideration, and also make it a point to recruit articles by people whose work we know and like. Having guest authors lets us cover areas we care about but don’t have the expertise to write about on our own, and it gives us a chance to work with a broader range of writers and include other perspectives. It also gives our guests a platform without requiring them to take on the editorial and other responsibilities required to keep In the Library with the Lead Pipe on course. Guest authors still need to recruit external and internal reviewers, they still need to learn their way around our publishing platform, and they are required to submit a short bio along with their article. The idea is that submitting an article shouldn’t be any harder or easier for our guests than it is for us.

In finding our niche and developing our processes, we did our best to find the things we liked and admired in other publications, and we adapted them to suit our skills and personalities. I don’t think the world needs another In the Library with the Lead Pipe, but I’d love to read a new publication whose writers go through a similar process of picking and choosing their favorite elements from the publications they enjoy reading.

Build a Sound Foundation

Accurate Measurements are Essential to Correct Time Keeping

I recently read an interesting explanation of the request that Van Halen included in its legendary backstage concert rider: “M & M’s (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).” According to The Smoking Gun:

While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M’s were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance—lighting, staging, security, ticketing–may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.

I think the same idea applies to publications. There’s no direct correspondence between good writing and either registering your own domain name or creating a unique layout, but at this point I almost always skip past writers who haven’t bothered to take control of their identity. Purchasing a domain, such as inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org is simple, and you can own one for less than $10 per year. It’s a good idea to register your domain with an ICANN-accredited registrar: I recommend Namecheap or Gandi.

Registering a domain is not the same as self-hosting your publishing software. All of the interesting hosted platforms allow you to associate your own domain with their servers. However, even though Google’s Blogger, WordPress.com, Tumblr, and Posterous are reliable, usable, and free, I still recommend that you sign up for a web host and run your own software. Again, it’s about making your site better for your users and, though there’s an initial learning curve, you’re able to get a lot more done with a lot less hassle.

Selecting a web host can seem daunting because there are thousands to choose from and most appear to be fairly indistinguishable from one another. My recommendation would be to go with an inexpensive plan from Blue Host, DreamHost, NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, or A Small Orange, four of the hosts featured in Lifehacker’s January 2009 survey of the Most Popular Reliable and Affordable Web Hosts, or with LISHost. This is a somewhat larger commitment than registering a domain. There’s more involved, and the price will vary between approximately $25 and $120 per year, depending on your needs. I feel strongly that your time, and your readers’ time, is more than worth it.

One of the primary advantages of using a web host is that it gives you control over the software you run on your website. For us, the decision to use WordPress to publish In the Library with the Lead Pipe was an easy one. We were already familiar with it, it’s stable, it’s regularly updated and easy to upgrade, and it’s very good at reducing spam. It also has an extensive range of sophisticated plugins; though we actively weed any we aren’t using, we currently depend on twenty-nine plugins to help us present information, manage our data, and collect statistics. That last part, statistical measurement, is especially important: while Google’s Analytics and FeedBurner can be useful, it’s nice not to be reliant on third-party vendors for something so important. We’ve used Analytics from the beginning, but we’ve chosen not to use FeedBurner to measure our feed statistics. Instead, we use WordPress plugins Feed Statistics and StatPress Reloaded. Neither plugin has been updated in a while, but both still seem to be working fine.

WordPress also made it fairly simple for Derik to create a unique website design. By modifying an existing template and adding in his art, Derik gave us some of the best staging in online library publishing. When you visit a website for the first time and see original art, it immediately signals to you that the site’s creators care about your experience.

Six Librarians, drawing by Derik Badman

Go to Your Audience

Sectional View of a Telephone Building: A Typical American Central Office Building, Showing the Efficient Arrangement of the Various Departments

In addition to making sure our site’s appearance made our content more appealing, we wanted to make sure our site’s content license was appealing as well. We wanted a license that was permissive enough to make our content as usable as possible, but we didn’t want it to be so permissive that it would be hard for us to attract guest authors: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 seems to strike the right balance. As a measure of thanks for Creative Commons for creating this license, any royalties we make as part of our arrangement with EBSCO to appear in LISTA, though likely to be modest, will go directly to Creative Commons. Our license and modified peer review policy also qualify us as open access, which helped us get a nice boost in readership early on when Peter Suber’s SPARC Open Access Newsletter linked to us.

The other decision we made early on that’s helped us was the choice to apply for an ISSN. Unlike ISBNs, which cost about $125 for one and $275 for a block of ten, you can request an ISSN for free and you can start the application process before you publish your first issue. An ISSN is the major requirement for appearing in indexes, which was one of our goals. We aren’t going to change our policies in any major ways in order to get indexed—we’re happy with our version of peer review, and we don’t plan to divide our content into volumes and issues—but we still want people searching for articles in academic databases, such as those offered by H.W. Wilson or ProQuest, to find our articles in their search results.

I found it surprisingly difficult to figure out the relevant indexes’ collection policies or what we needed to do in order to submit our work for consideration. Here’s a short guide for others who might want to go this route. I recognize that it seems mundane, but a guide like this one would have saved me ten or twenty hours and a great deal of frustration:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). We felt that we met DOAJ’s selection criteria, so we submitted our application online on December 9, 2008. The next day, we received a very nice rejection note from a reviewer in Sweden who had been a subscriber nearly from day one. As she explained, “For a journal to be included in DOAJ, the content of each issue, have to be at least 1/3 original research. Translated into blog publishing, I would say that means one issue = one month. So if you publish four posts in one month, at least two have to be original research… We are a bit traditional in the sense that we typically expect scholarly journals to have an abstract, a purpose of the paper clearly stated, references etc etc. Please do suggest the journal again if you feel that the content has shifted in this direction.”
• ERIC. We realized this was a stretch, but we felt we were close enough to meeting ERIC’s criteria that we emailed our information to ericpub@csc.com on December 9, 2008. We received a nice confirmation on December 15, 2008 from a Content Development Assistant, but haven’t heard anything since.
• Google Scholar. When we first submitted In the Library for Google Scholar’s consideration, the process involved sending an email to scholar-publisher@google.com, which we did, but we never received a response. The process has since been updated and a new request was submitted on November 22, 2009.
• Informed Librarian (subscription required). We submitted our request to be included in Informed Librarian on December 26, 2008, were notified of our acceptance on January 7, 2009, and received a note on June 4, 2009 that coverage had commenced.
• INSPEC (subscription required). We couldn’t find information on INSPEC’s website regarding submission contacts or collection policies, so we sent a message to its publishing contact on December 9, 2008. The message wasn’t confirmed and we have never been contacted by INSPEC.
• ISI (subscription required). Another stretch, but we thought people searching the Social Sciences Citation Index might find value in our work. After reading ISI’s guidelines (In six short paragraphs, we get the following friendly reminder four times: “A journal that is rejected for any reason (including timeliness) cannot be reevaluated for 2 years… Please do not resubmit a journal for evaluation if it has been rejected within the last 2 years. A reevaluation cannot be initiated until 2 years after the date of the rejection… If the journal is publishing on time and has not been rejected within the last 2 years, the evaluation will be initiated with the receipt of the first issue.”) and receiving the advice from a friend at Thomson to “make sure you use old fashioned snail mail in addition to submitting using the online form,” we decided to hold off for a bit.
• Library Literature (subscription required). We submitted our request to be included in Library Literature on December 9, 2008 and the next day we got a very nice request for more information from a contact with Library Literature’s publisher, H.W. Wilson. We responded immediately, and wrote back again on August 24, 2009 to let our contact know that our work would soon be appearing in one of its competitors’ databases, but we have not heard back from them since we received their initial response.
• LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts (subscription required). We initially submitted our request for inclusion on December 9, 2008. At the time, a person’s name was listed and we emailed our request directly to her, but never received a response. ProQuest has since modified its process, so we resubmitted our request on November 22, 2009.
• LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) (free version available at libraryresearch.com). We wrote to EBSCO’s Director of Content Licensing on December 9, 2008, got a confirmation on December 10, 2008, and have nothing but good things to say about Paige Larkin, the EBSCO Publishing representative who has shepherded us through the process. She knows her stuff, she’s patient and responsive, and she’s done a wonderful job of addressing our concerns.
• Ulrich’s (subscription required). We emailed the Microsoft Word version of the submission form found on the Ulrich’s website to them on December 9, 2008 and were informed less than a week later that we had been added to their database.
• WorldCat (subscription version available). We asked a few catalogers at OCLC libraries to include us in their catalogs, but no one has ever stepped forward to receive credit for having cataloged us, and the citation itself doesn’t indicate which library chose to include us in its collection. Whoever you are, thank you for giving us a presence in WorldCat.

We also submitted our work to several other resources that aren’t specifically dedicated to scholarly research, including search engines Google, Yahoo!, MSN (now Bing), and Ask (all via the Google XML Sitemaps WordPress plugin, as well as Alexa and Technorati; DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory; library-centric search engines LibWorm and LISZen, and librarian-created indexes Librarians’ Internet Index, Internet Public Library, and LISWiki; and we requested an article at Wikipedia. There’s no reason not to submit your work to these resources. Depending on your goals, it may make sense to pursue them even more actively than we did.

Be Fearless

The First Missile: The Cave Man of prehistoric times unconsciously invented arms and ammunition

It’s time-consuming to submit forms, edit wikis, or send email messages to people you’ve never met or can’t identify. It’s a lot more challenging, at least if you fear rejection, to send a personal message to people you’ve met professionally asking them to read your publication, review a draft of an article before it’s published, or submit a guest article. Of all the tasks I’ve taken on as part of In the Library, that’s probably my least favorite, but we all do it and it’s worked: getting other people involved has made our writing better and helped us develop an audience.

It’s tempting to start naming names and giving thanks to the people who have helped us, but that would likely come off as showing a lack of humility and may also encourage even more unsolicited email than these folks deal with already. Still, it would be almost deceitful not to mention the two writers whose links to our work put us on the map.

I wrote to LISNews’s Blake Carver the day before we went live. His response, “Hurray, just what the world needed, a new blog ;-) I’ll take a look tomorrow.” He did, and he linked to us, and that resulted in the lion’s share of our incoming traffic the first couple of weeks (an effect not limited just to new blogs; the well established Pegasus Librarian recently experienced a similar spike in traffic after a link from LISNews). Three months later, Blake included us in his list of “10 Library Blogs to Read in 2009,” which resulted in our second highest traffic and subscription increase ever. So far, more people reach us from LISNews than from any other authored website.

Our biggest leap happened the first time Jessamyn West gave us a write up on her blog, librarian.net, on December 9, 2008. We got another big subscription increase when she linked to Ross Singer’s guest post back in August.

Detail from our Google Analytics traffic analysis

Detail from Google Analytics: Traffic spiked the first time Jessamyn West linked to us

Experiment

The Laboratory

We haven’t yet found a substitute for spending twenty-five or more hours writing and editing what some of us still think of as a blog post, but we recognize that’s only half the assignment: we need to keep looking for more ways to ensure that posts reach people. We’ve had some success with Twitter and Facebook, and considerably less success with Lead Pipe News, our attempt to create a Proggit/Hacker News/Stack Overflow for the library community.

We’ve also experimented with deadlines. We thought it made sense to publish weekly, but found that our writing was suffering, we were struggling to manage our time, and many of our readers couldn’t keep up with our output—our articles regularly exceed 5,000 words, plus our average post generates fourteen comments. So we scaled back to every other week and things seem to be better for all concerned.

This is one of the ways we differ from most blogs: as a rule, bloggers don’t seem to publish at specific intervals, while traditional print publications (or publications produced by publishers who are grounded in print-based models), generally distribute their work on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly schedule. I’m not sure that either model is better, but publishing every other Wednesday works well for us. Publishing online allows us to edit up to the last minute when we need to, either because our personal schedule necessitates it or information we’re discussing in the article is changing, and our regular publication schedule enables us to plan our own articles and line up guest authors several months in advance.

In addition to deadlines, we’ve experimented with our internal communication. At first, we started with a wiki, a private Google Group, and a series of chats on Meebo: the Google Group has been our mainstay, while the chats and wiki, though initially useful, proved less important once we got up and running. What we haven’t needed to do is meet face-to-face or via phone. Scheduling meetings is hard because, for the most part, we don’t live anywhere near each other or even share a time zone: Emily’s in Oregon, Kim’s in Idaho, Ellie’s in Texas, Hilary’s in North Carolina, Derik’s in Pennsylvania, and I’m in New Jersey. We’ve also grown to rely on Google Docs, both as an archive and as a way to collaborate asynchronously.

Virtual participation is a huge and somewhat divisive topic in the field, and I often find myself wanting to argue both sides. It can be helpful to get together in person—In the Library started, in part, because many of us attended the same meeting—but, in our experience, almost all of our work gets done virtually. Granted, we’re a small and non-hierarchical group with a fairly simple focus, we’re making our own rules, and we’re beholden only to our readers, reviewers, and each other. But it isn’t because of technophilia or any other ideology that we’ve arrived at our working style. We’re simply trying to do something people value, devoting as much of ourselves to this work as we can without throwing the rest of our lives out of balance. I don’t know exactly what conclusions others will draw from this, but my hope is that I’ll be able to bring what I’ve learned from In the Library to the other committees on which I serve. It‘s rewarding to work so happily and productively on something as successful as In the Library. I’d like to share that experience with others.

All images except for Derik Badman’s drawing of the In the Library with the Lead Pipe team and the screen captures of our statistics are from The Standard reference work: for the home, school and library, Volume 8, edited by Harold Melvin Stanford and published in 1921 by the Standard Education Society. An original of this work, part of the collection at Columbia University, was digitized on June 9, 2009. I downloaded these images from Google Scholar.

Thanks to Derik Badman, Blake Carver, Ellie Collier, Hilary Davis, and Jodi Schneider for commenting on a working draft of this arti­cle, and to Hilary Davis, Emily Ford, and Kim Leeder for help­ing me with its final version.

Treemap of mammals courtesy of Flickr user Arenamontanus

Introduction

I’m a slave to spreadsheets. Trying to decide between a stacked column bar chart and a 3-D area chart is par for the course in my work. Microsoft Excel© is great for many practical needs, but it doesn’t always support the need to create simple, compelling and interactive graphical data visualizations that are critical for libraries to best express value, communicate trends, and test assumptions about library services and collections. Data visualization is the study of strategies and methods for conveying information, as captured by data, in an efficient, functional way that leads to insights about a process or system. Good data visualization can drive home a point quickly and have lingering impact. Data visualizations can help you see something that you hadn’t noticed before. These days, libraries can’t afford to not be wise and impactful with the data that is collected and conveyed about patrons, services and collections. Many libraries are reporting declines in reference desk queries against the backdrop of massive surges in use of computers and other tech-related services. Most libraries are undergoing comprehensive reviews of journal and database usage (among other metrics) with the aim to cut collections to comply with shrinking budgets. To express these kinds of trends, to seek support, or to simply try to assess library collections and services, many libraries fall back on the use of tables with a few pie charts and bar graphs thrown in for added measure. When I started having conversations with my library colleagues about data visualization tools and techniques, I was humbled by what I didn’t know and embarrassed that I hadn’t heard about, much less tested, some of the data visualization tools that are surfacing. So, I decided to start exploring what I’ve been missing while hiding behind the ubiquity of Microsoft Excel© graphs and charts. In this post, I present some examples using a few popular data visualization tools and I give an overview of some inspirational guides for creating compelling data graphics that may help you better express your own library metrics. First, let’s explore a little further why data visualization matters for libraries.

Library data in context

Libraries serve users at the reference desk, circulation desk, and special collections centers. Library staff engage with constituents through committees and working groups, at the library security gate, and through online chat. Librarians attempt to expose valuable services and collections via library catalogs, carefully-crafted subject guides, during bibliographic instruction sessions, and via long lists of databases and online journals. Libraries assess usage and patrons needs via web statistics, gate counts, circulation transactions, LibQual surveys, usage statistics, and feedback forums. Why do we measure these experiences? To show value for money or time and to understand the uptake of our collections and services. Library value has been a popular topic since at least the 1930s and libraries have gotten better at showing return on investment (ROI). We’re not completely there yet, as the recent $1,000,000 IMLS sponsorship of “Lib-value” grant suggests. Libraries are pretty adept at measuring lots of different kinds of interactions, so how can we be so bad at demonstrating our worth and making our point? What if part of our problem in demonstrating value lies in how we attempt to showcase library value? Libraries also want to make good, sound decisions in the context of their user communities. Libraries collect a lot of data that encompass complex networks about how users navigate through online resources, which subjects circulate the most or the least, which resources are requested via interlibrary loan, visitation patterns over periods of time, reference queries, and usage statistics of online journals and databases. Making sense of these complex networks of use and need isn’t easy. But the relationships between use and need patterns can help libraries make hard decisions (say, about which journals to cut) and creative decisions to improve user experiences, outreach, achieve efficiencies, and enhance alignment with organizational goals.

Not another library ROI article, please!

Relax, this isn’t another post about how calculate library ROI nor is it about how to collect data that show library worth. This post is an exploration of visualization techniques that can help libraries make a compelling case to stakeholders and get insight about how data visualization can help libraries make more informed decisions. Disclaimers: I’m not an expert on visualization techniques; I’m part of the slew of librarians who need to know how to better illustrate what we do and learn how to better allocate resources. Visualization strategies have made their debut at library conferences already (e.g., 2009 Computers in Libraries; 2008 Computers in Libraries; 2009 NASIG Conference). However, I haven’t seen a groundswell of examples indicating that libraries have taken these strategies and these conference presentations to heart. What I have experienced is a few really good ideas popping up in conversations with colleagues about how to make the case for libraries in simple, compelling, visual ways. I want to share what I’ve learned so far in my exploration and open the door to some more good ideas.

Data needs to be “humanized”

During various conversations about how to represent library collections and expenditures data, one of my very smart colleagues, Cory Lown, introduced me to the work of John Tukey and Edward Tufte. Cory explained that Tufte’s aim is to encourage the use of as much data as possible (“to clarify, add detail”) and to use visualization techniques that “fit” the data.

“Often bar charts and pie charts (which tend to have low data to ink density) obscure more nuanced and interesting data. It’s not just about new and interesting tools, but matching the data to the right visualization so we can make use of data we have.” (Lown, 2009, pers. comm.)

This isn’t a trivial process by any means due to the uniqueness of each set of data due to variation in methods for collection, data clean-up, analysis and so on. But, according to Tufte’s principles, focusing on giving as much attention to the data in a chart, graph or image (aka “maximizing the data-ink ratio”) while reducing the “fluff” (aka “chartjunk”) (e.g., chart borders, text legends, background fill, decorations) can aid in getting the point across.

In the spirit of the work of Tukey and Tufte, a recent book, aptly named Beautiful Data (2009, edited by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher) brings together a great compilation of data visualization, data handling and data sense-making strategies. In one chapter, Nathan Yau, also author of a terrific blog called FlowingData (to which I’ll refer a little later in this post), describes the development of a simple, user-friendly tool to track and measure what he calls “personal data” (e.g., eating, sleeping, travel habits). Yau is interested in creating tools for people to distill their personal data into stories that can help them understand patterns about their personal habits and eventually help relate people to the bigger picture about their impact on their environment and vice versa. This concept of creating a way for a person to relate to the bigger picture through data is an important lesson for libraries.

“Data has to be presented in a way that is relate-able; it has to be humanized.  Oftentimes we get caught up in statistical charts and graphs, which are extremely useful, but at the same time we want to engage users so that they stay interested…Users should understand that the data is about them and reflect the choices they make in their daily lives.” (Yau, 2009)

All of those interactions with patrons that libraries collect and track — circulations, journal usage statistics, cost/use metrics, etc. — are about the patron. However, most of the metrics that libraries present to make the case to patrons, aren’t presented in a way that relates the patron to the data. An example: Academic libraries spend a lot of money on journals. In fact, the NCSU Libraries spent around $6 million on journals during 2008–2009, but how many of our patrons know that when they download a journal article that it’s paid for by the NCSU Libraries? That $6 million dollars doesn’t necessarily “translate” to a user when they download an article. We tell them how many articles were downloaded, but is there a better way to make the connection between the user and the cost of resources? For the most part, library metrics aren’t good at telling stories that keep our users interested and help them inform the choices that they make. We are in need of some great ideas and examples from the field.

Simple data visualization tools

While several other visualization tools exist, I want to focus on three of the most popular tools and demonstrate what is possible using a few datasets that I’ve created using the kind of library metrics that you might be dealing with in your own library. After trying a few different types of library metric datasets in Google Gadgets for spreadsheets, ManyEyes and Swivel, my favorites are Google Gadgets and ManyEyes because of their ease of use and diversity of visualization styles.

Google Gadgets: First, I have to give props to Cory Lown for making me aware of Google Gadgets for spreadsheets. It’s really quite simple to use. If you have a Google account (e.g., Gmail), then you can use Google Gadgets. Log into your Google account, choose Google Documents, Create New Spreadsheet, then add your data (just as you would in Excel). Once your data is ready, go to the Insert menu and choose Gadget. As of the time of this writing, there are over 35 different visualizations you can choose from: everything from the standard bar charts to motion graphs to piles of money. The upside: You can experiment with the different visualizations and pick one that fits the point that you’re trying to make or the audience that you’re trying to reach. You can share your visualizations with a simple URL that you plug into an email, or into your website or blog. The downside: You don’t have a lot of control over font size or positioning of elements on the charts.

Google Gadget Motion Charts are excellent for showing change in values over time. They are the primary visualization mode for sites like GapMinder to illustrate changes in global issues over time. Below is an example using data that I collected from the data from the Association of Research Libraries on research library expenditures plotted against university expenditures spanning from 1982 through 2006. Try the motion chart with the default variables, then try changing them. You’re welcome to access the dataset itself to create your own data visualization.

ManyEyes: As part of the agreement to use ManyEyes with your own data, any data you upload is made publicly and freely available for others to use. After signing up with an email address, the process is easy and straightforward. You can be up and running with several visualizations of your data within a few minutes and you can share your visualizations with links in emails, or embed them in your website or blog. The upside: the choice of visualizations is pretty extensive: Word Tree, Phrase Net, Wordle, Tag Cloud, Bar Chart, Block Histogram, Bubble Chart, Network Diagram, Scatterplot, Matrix Chart, Treemap for Comparisons, Treemap, Pie Chart, Country Map, US County Map, World Map, Stock Graph, Line Graph, Stack Graph. The downside: if you want to compare more than two variables, you have limited options. The example that I’ve included here is data that I collected on the publication and citation patterns of NCSU scholars. Researchers at an academic university will almost always have more citation activity than publication activity in a journal. But just how much more? This visualization illustrates the scale of citations for journals in which NCSU scholars publish 0 times, 2 times, 3 times, on up to 41 times. Try the visualization below and experiment with the dataset to create other ManyEyes visualizations.

Swivel: With Swivel, you have a choice to let the data that you upload be freely available to others or to keep your data private. If you choose to keep your data private, be prepared to commit to a fee of $12/month. For most of us who use Excel to prepare data for upload into a tool like Swivel, an Excel toolbar is available from the Swivel Confectionary. The upside: You have a little more control over things like font size and font face (compared to Google Gadgets for spreadsheets); it’s just as easy to share data and visualizations (email or embedding in websites or blogs); and if you want your audience to be able to interact with your charts, Swivel makes that a trivial process. The downside: The choice of graphs is limited (Bar, Line, Area, Stacked Bar, Stacked Area, Scatter, and Pie) and the site isn’t very responsive with larger sets of data (e.g., I tested it with a dataset of over 1900 rows and it had trouble switching between different types of graphs). In this example, I’ve uploaded a small dataset of usage of the major types of digital collections provided by the NCSU Libraries. Try interacting with the pie chart and download the dataset if you want to use it to experiment with your own visualizations (you’ll need to create an account before you can do much with the data in Swivel).

Visualization inspiration

There are some excellent resources that help provide some insight into what is considered good and bad data visualization practices. These sites are filled with examples of interesting data visualizations to inspire your own work and in some cases (e.g., GapMinder) also offer datasets with which to experiment.

FlowingData: The FlowingData blog is one of the most compelling, idea-filled blogs I’ve come across — ever. Authored by Nathan Yau (UCLA PHD student in statistics focusing on data visualization), this blog highlights great examples of how to make a compelling point with data and visual creativity. FlowingData offers a great deal, but I want to point out 5 specific
visualization categories:

• Statistical Visualization — strategies for visualizing different types of statistics
• Infographics — examples of aesthetically pleasing and intellectually captivating modes for presenting data in graphical format
• Mapping — examples of data mapped to geographic representations
• Artistic Visualization — examples of data as art
• Network Visualization — examples of visualizations showing networks or relationships between entities

Not only does Yau collocate examples of how to display data to different audiences, but he also provides thoughtful analysis about why a visualization is effective (or not) and what could be improved about it.

Visualization ad

Infosthetics: Authored by Andrew Vande Moere (faculty member of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney in Australia), Infosthetics acts much like the FlowingData blog, but tends to focus more on data as art. There’s overlap between Infosthetics and FlowingData, but you’ll find a slightly different perspective in Infosthetics — one that deals with data visualization from the design and interaction approach.

Visual Complexity: Manuel Lima uses the Visual Complexity blog to bring together examples and ideas around the study of the visualization of complex networks such as data from library systems, the social web, biological systems, and transportation patterns.

3D Dewey Data Visualization

GapMinder: GapMinder is an organization that runs a website for displaying trends in global issues such as poverty plotted against inequality indices or oil consumption plotted against oil production. Its main visualizations are based on Google Motion Charts, and have been featured in the famous TED Talks.

Information Dashboards: Information dashboards are user interfaces that serve the need of providing critical information at a glance. A book aptly named Information Dashboard Design (2006, by Stephen Few) promises to teach readers how to use graphs discriminately to enhance communication. Some excellent examples of information dashboards that might fit in library contexts are the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) Dashboard (thanks to Adrienne Lai for sharing this site with me) and the Sprint Now Dashboard.

Indianapolis Museum of Art Dashboard

The IMA Dashboard presents simple, compelling data in a graphically aesthetic way. It tells a visitor things like how many plants are in the gardens, how many visitors are at the IMA, how much energy is being consumed by the IMA, and the number of active memberships. Each widget window leads to a little more information about the IMA, drawing the visitor in to learn more without overwhelming him/her with too many options or underwhelming with too few avenues to explore. The Sprint Now Dashboard, on the other hand, creates a slightly different experience. There’s a lot going on that isn’t necessarily relevant here — from the creepy voice-over to the number of eggs being produced or the number of people stuck in elevators — but the concept of surfacing this kind of real-time information is compelling.

The possibilities in libraries for these kinds of information dashboards are obvious. An external audience might find it helpful to know which books are being checked out (similar to Seattle Public Library display of circulating materials), real-time locations of available computers, how many journal articles are being downloaded, how many e-books are being read, the number of devices (e.g., laptops, ipods, Kindles) that are checked out, the latest articles by your campus researchers, upcoming community events, and maybe even an ROI metric on the value of library services and collections per tuition dollar (or tax dollar) per hour. Tack on a catalog search box, real-time webcam views of the coffee shop wait line and the Info Commons, and you’ve got a mode for making a case for the value of library services and collections while providing real-time information all in one view.

An internal audience of library staff and decision makers might find it helpful to see in a dashboard view the “health” of the library budget, cost/use metrics based on circulation data or electronic journal or e-book usage statistics, hourly gate counts, keywords searched in the catalog, cataloging activity, and a current snapshot of the composition and use of the collection broken down by format or by material type plotted against community demographics (e.g., number of full-text journal downloads per graduate student in the Chemical Engineering Department) among other things. Other than the Seattle Public Library, I am not aware of any libraries presenting this kind of (more or less) real-time, dynamic information dashboard to the public, but I suspect that any data displayed for public consumption would require that personally-identifying information be excluded.

Final thoughts

The ultimate goal of libraries is to help patrons make smart decisions about the information they use and create. As an extension of that goal, Jason Casden, one of the reviewers of this article noted that data visualization techniques should be adopted to be part of a library’s organizational culture for assessment and justification to not only best serve patrons, but also to help guide the allocation of limited resources. Investing in ways to leverage the data that libraries collect to show value, communicate trends, and test assumptions about library services and collections is part of the solution for making the library be all about the patron. Try out some of the visualization tools and sample datasets used in this post or share your own data visualization creations via the Comments.

Learn more

• Few, Stephen. 2006. Information Dashboard Design: the effective visual communication of data.
• Fichter, Darlene. 2008. “Data Visualizations.” Presented at Computers in Libraries 2008 Conference.
• Fichter, Darlene and Jeff Wisniewski. “Harnessing New Data Visualization Tools: Say It Visually.” Presentation at Computers in Libraries 2009 Conference
• Kurt, Lisa and Will Kurt. 2009. “Making Usage Data Understandable with Visual Representation.” Presented at the North American Serials Interest Group 2009 Conference.
• Legrady, George. 2005. “Making Visible the Invisible: Seattle Library Data Flow Visualization.” Presented at International Cultural Heritage Meeting 2005.
• Seattle Public Library Data Visualization: “Making the Visible Invisible.”
• Segaran, Toby and Jeff Hammerbacher. 2009. Beautiful Data: the stories behind elegant data solutions.
• Tenopir, Carol. 2009. “Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment of Academic Libraries (Lib-Value).” IMLS Awards 3-Year Grant.
• Tufte, Edward. Statistician and author of data visualization books such as “Beautiful Evidence,” “Envisioning Information,” and “Visual Display of Quantitative Information.”
• Tukey, John. Statistician and author of Exploratory Data Analysis (1977).

Thanks

Thanks to the people who’ve opened my eyes to the possibilities and who reviewed this post and offered valuable feedback: Cory Lown, Jason Casden, Brett Bonfield, and Kim Leeder.

Wordle cloud of participants’ goals

Setting the Stage

Last fall, as a part of the Texas Library Association’s “Transforming” initiative, my library held its own transforming retreat. Austin Community College (ACC) Library Services has gone through a hiring spurt recently, adding 10 new full time librarians in just the last three years. This retreat brought together all 23 of us from across our seven campuses. We were told to bring any and all wild creative ideas. As is so often the case, we also brought some fairly practical ones. One of these was a request for training on how to teach. This came both from new librarians with no formal training in instruction and from veteran librarians who were interested in learning the current theories and best practices.

As a result, during the Spring semester of this year our dean, Dr. Julie Todaro, called a group of us together to begin planning an immersive teaching training program, aimed primarily at the newer librarians to get them comfortable and up to speed. After the initial brainstorming session (which was comprised mostly of the newest hires), a smaller group (with a higher ratio of more seasoned librarians) was designated as the planning team. This included three members of our Teaching Team, our Public Relations Facilitator and myself (as the representative from the Staff Development Team).

This post will walk you through our process in the hopes that you will find both inspiration and information to help you create your own training programs.

Getting the Team Together

The first step was assembling the planning team. While I wasn’t a part of this process, I can tell you some of the obvious considerations.

Do you have staff with relevant experience or expertise? Two members of our planning team had been through ACRL’s Immersion Program.

Does your library already have teams or committees that focus on certain areas? At ACC we are one library spread across seven campuses and (with a few exceptions) all of us hold the title Reference Librarian. Rather than having titled positions in charge of the various aspects of daily library life, each librarian is a member of at least one cross campus team. I am co-chair of the Staff Development Team, which is charged with identifying professional development needs and providing access to appropriate training. Our Teaching Team focuses on information literacy instruction. In addition to coordinating study guides and interaction with faculty, one of its many charges is to identify relevant information literacy training and development curriculum and coordinate librarians’ participation in these opportunities. Our PR Facilitator was also included in the planning team. Her initial inclusion was based on her past participation in the ACRL Immersion program, but as I’ll discuss later, it was incredibly beneficial to have someone who was able to contribute experience in marketing and event planning.

Planning and Decision Making

We started with some of the basics already assigned to us. For example, you will need to consider what you want your focus to be. We concentrated on pedagogy and theory. This was to be a grounding in the current understanding of teaching and learning and accompanying best practices. This was not the place for discussing our library’s programs and practices (although we did design a follow up forum for exactly that purpose). You will need to determine who should participate. Ideas that floated around in our discussions included: making it completely voluntary, requiring applications, and making it mandatory for everyone. Ours was open to all librarians but mandatory for the librarians who had been with the college for less than 5 years. For us, that turned out to be 12 participants plus two facilitators whose professional experience varied by decades – a good mix!

With our focus and audience selected, the team met to begin brainstorming, breaking down topics and creating timelines. We contacted colleagues at other institutions to find out if they had done anything similar and what their process had been. We read through syllabi and handouts from workshops, seminars and new faculty orientations.

We debated how much time we should devote to the program and settled on two days. We felt one day wasn’t enough time to cover everything we wanted to, but more than two days would be difficult for staffing and scheduling. We also struggled with when to hold the training. We had originally thought early August would be a good and relatively slow time, but realized some librarians would be off contract. However, if we postponed until the fall semester it would have a large effect on reference desk coverage. My campus, for example, had all three of our full time librarians in the required attendance category. Based on those two factors, we decided that the first week of the librarians’ return from summer session, which is also the week before classes start for the fall semester, although not perfect, would be the best possible time available to us and allow the most librarians the chance to participate.

Our next decision point was where to hold the camp. We considered our state library association’s facilities, our business center’s training rooms, and campus activity rooms. A high priority was that the atmosphere should evoke a feeling of being ‘away from the library’ so as to encourage the immersion experience. My vote went to my favorite faculty lounge, the one with the wood panel walls, comfy chairs and great views. As a much more welcoming place to spend our time, this is where we ended up.

Presenter AJ Johnson

Moving from logistics into content, one thing that emerged fairly early was the idea of a culminating activity. We felt that it is important to provide an opportunity for the participants to immediately practice the skills they had learned. After various iterations we settled on a five minute presentation with an assigned topic. We brainstormed a list of typical class assignments. At the first day’s lunch break, the librarians would select their assignment out of a hat and a number from a second hat to provide the presentation order. They were welcome to draw again, trade, or modify their assignment if they didn’t like it. We prepared more topics than there were attendees to facilitate swapping. The idea was to give a starting point to make it easier, not to tie them down. They would have two hours at the end of the first day to prepare their presentation. They could work alone or in groups and we would provide computers. There would be an extended lunch/work session on the second day to incorporate what they’d learned that morning after which they would give a five minute presentation as though the rest of us were students and that was our assignment. They needed to address at least two learning styles (one was written on the assignment, the other was their choice) and decide what assessment they would use (they didn’t have to actually create or administer the assessment). The idea was to give participants a chance to practice designing an active learning exercise while considering a variety of learning styles and then share that exercise with the group.

We also knew we wanted to assign some readings for people to go through before camp in order to get everyone on the same page and to spark conversation. We ended up selecting a few chapters from What the Best College Teachers Do, a book that had been handed out at recent ACC faculty orientations, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough. We also agreed that it would be worthwhile to have everyone read through the ACRL definition of information literacy as well as an alternate definition, both of which were emailed to participants prior to camp. We recommended participants join ACRL’s information literacy instruction list serv [ili-l], but didn’t require it.

Wordle cloud of participants’ teaching strengths

The ReBoot schedule that we settled on included several opportunities for sharing perspectives, getting to know each other, and defining our context. To facilitate this we designed a pre-camp survey with a variety of ends in mind: to help us in planning, to get the participants thinking about teaching and learning and to create our icebreaker activity. To help in our planning we asked the participants about their prior teaching experience. To help get them geared up for camp we asked the participants  to describe their teaching philosophy and to set a camp goal for themselves. We also asked them to describe their strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and to share some of their favorite analogies to use when teaching. To create our icebreakers we turned the strengths and weaknesses into Wordle clouds and posted the analogies around the room on large pads of paper for comment. After the icebreaker the facilitators (Melinda Townsel and Red Wassenich, with 18 and 25 years at ACC, respectively) welcomed everyone, went over the schedule, the definitions of information literacy and the pre-survey responses.

Ellie Collier leads a discussion on campus differences

We felt it was important to begin by focusing on what we know about the students we would be teaching. Our dean, Dr. Julie Todaro, presented an overview of ACC’s student population. We also watched some quick informal videos created by one of our facilitators, Melinda Townsel, asking ACC students about their own research methods and a short documentary, Private Universe, which deals with the concepts we (wrongfully) assume students already know and explains how teaching methods can create those misconceptions. Red Wassenich, our other facilitator went over some recent ACC information literacy assessment results and I led a discussion about campus differences with participants giving a summary of their campus population. For example, my campus has a higher proportion of students in English as a Second Language and developmental courses coming in to the library as well as a noticeable number of students who don’t have computers at home.

The bulk of the camp focused on cognitive development, active learning, learning theory, learning styles, and assessment. We considered having the participants break up into groups, research the topics ahead of time and present to each other. We also brainstormed people and groups we thought might be willing and able to present on these topics. This included psychology and education faculty, trainers in the college’s professional development department as well as fellow librarians at neighboring institutions. In the end, we were lucky enough to have a great number of incredibly talented librarians in the Austin area that were highly knowledgeable in the topics we wanted to cover and specifically how they apply to academic libraries. We also invited Dorothy Martinez, an ACC faculty member who teaches developmental reading and teacher training.

Which brings us to another issue: budget. We were not given an explicit budget, but were given some guidelines. For example, we were told it would be very hard to justify any food expenses, but we could provide a copy of the “textbook” to all attendees. We wanted to keep the group together through the lunch break to ensure continuity and allow for more sharing of ideas and strategies but didn’t feel comfortable asking everyone to bring their own lunch both days. We debated a number of options, including doing a pot luck or providing pizza and asking everyone to chip in $5. In the end, our generous dean personally covered the lunch expenses as well as breakfast treats for the two days. A note from the PR Facilitator: Don’t underestimate the time it will take to make lunch arrangements! Do a pre-event survey two weeks out, giving a few choices for box lunches (first day) and pizza toppings the second day. Make decisions on the aggregate results for pizzas with veggies only or some with meat. If at all possible, find vendors that deliver.

Speakers are another potential expense. Our speakers were all able to attend as part of their regular work duties, but funding would have been a consideration if we had gone with our initial learning styles idea, which included the respected but proprietary Kolb inventory ($125 for 10 surveys plus the travel cost of a trained analyst). By choosing a free learning styles inventory we were able to invite our speakers to have lunch with us and provide them with a small thank you gift (we chose travel mugs with a positive teacher message from Positive Promotions). Using local presenters provided much more than budget relief. A number of them stayed to see each other’s presentations and participate in discussion. It provided a wonderful connection between each of our institutions and inspired plans to collaborate more often.

Participants Barbara Jorge, Adrian Erb, Molly Dahlstrom, Linda Clement and Steve Self

An issue that came up later in the process was that of partial participation. We had a few librarians that were interested in attending just for one or two topics, or wanted to come to all of it, but didn’t want to give the presentation at the end. We felt strongly that a fundamental part of the camp was that it was an immersion, where participants interact and collaborate intensely. I also felt that it would send a negative message to say that those who have been here longer get special treatment and don’t have to fully participate. In promoting the training camp we had tried hard to communicate that we truly wanted a mix of ‘new to ACC’ librarians and veterans and that the presentation would be a wonderful opportunity for them to immediately practice what they had learned. We reassured the reluctant presenters that it would be a non-threatening environment with no grades or formal evaluation. Ultimately, however, everyone who expressed reservations about fully participating chose not to attend.

What’s in a Name?

One of the many important contributions of our PR Facilitator was her explanation of the importance of a name for the training — in her words “a hook to hang everything from.” We threw out tons of options and debated their relative merits. We were particularly interested in making this a collaborative and participatory endeavor that would be equally stimulating for experienced and green librarians alike. Our final choice “[RE]BOOT CAMP: Share some. Learn more. Teach Better.” set the theme of learning as a group for the rest of our promotion. Our flyer, which included our dean’s face merged with a pointing Uncle Sam, listed who had been drafted and encouraged veterans to re-enlist. One of the facilitators even wore fatigues.

Practice What You Preach

Actions speak louder than words. The fact that all of our presenters used excellent pedagogy, including starting their presentations by stating their learning objectives, speaking to different learning styles, and using active learning, solidified those strategies far more than just having been instructed on their importance. A number of participants mentioned this aspect in particular in their evaluations. Not only was the content valuable, we had role models for teaching excellence.

Since one of our focus areas was assessment, we made sure that we offered both the pre-camp survey and an opportunity for the participants to assess the camp. The Teaching Team and Staff Development Team will use those results to help structure future trainings.

Provide Recognition

Another consideration stressed by our PR Facilitator is the importance of thanking both your presenters and your participants for their contributions and of providing a few moments to recognize each other. Each of our presenters was thanked in front of the group and given a small gift. At the end of the camp we had a very casual graduation ceremony. Each participant had his or her name called and was given a small gift (the same travel mug that the presenters were given) as well as their certificate signed by the planning team and the dean. In keeping with the boot camp theme the certificates (with a ‘Stars and Stripes’ motif in a cover with embossed gold stars) were awarded to “Eagle Squad” and “Falcon Squad” members depending on whether they had been with ACC for more or less than five years.

Facilitator Red Wassenich and participant Steve Self

Keeping the Momentum

It was very important for me personally to ensure that the excitement we created at camp not quickly fade away as we disbursed back to our separate campuses. On our evaluation form we asked, “What can we do within ACC Library Services to foster and maintain the ideas/tips/techniques we learned at camp?” We received excellent feedback and as a result we now have scheduled monthly discussion forums that provide an opportunity for our librarians as well as other library staff to come together to discuss procedures, best practices, tips and tricks, etc. We have brainstormed and voted on topics (not all teaching related) and I was thrilled to see our first forum, which focused on collection development, was impressively well attended. Future forum topics include presentation skills, electronic resources, and our college’s student success initiative.

Loose Ends and Final Thoughts

I’d like to close by sharing some overall suggestions and reflections.

Have a Plan B. You can’t plan for every possible curve ball, but thinking of as many as possible ahead of time, and how you might address them, can alleviate a lot of stress. We had two last minute issues come up with our location. The first, a previously unannounced fire drill set to happen about an hour into the program, ended up being rescheduled before we even decided how we would handle it. The second, the unforeseen closing of the library due to A/C maintenance, meant that we no longer had access to the computers and printers we had planned to use to have the participants fill out and score their learning styles questionnaires. This news came after we had already scheduled lunch arrangements with vendors close to our chosen location. After a minor panic, the planning team decided we could work around this by using the faculty computer center and the library laptops rather than move to a new location.

Be sympathetic. Remember to extend the same courtesy to your colleagues that you do to your students. I am forever grateful to my reference instructor for ingraining in me the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of the reference interview. I happen to be very comfortable speaking in public, to large groups or small, to friends or strangers, however, the presentation aspect of the camp was a looming issue for a number of our librarians. The idea of teaching to their peers was quite unnerving to some. I failed to give that issue due respect. It might have been better to provide the librarians with the full details of the assignment earlier in the process, to listen more sympathetically to their fears, and to respond with more empathy. Another approach might be to provide a session on overcoming presentation anxiety prior to the camp, or making that topic a part of the camp.

Make time for reflective writing throughout the process. Include guiding questions such as, “How will you use this in your next instruction session?” or “Why is this important?” Some of our presenters did this, and my notes and retention from their sections are far superior to the other sections where I either chose to just listen and rely on the handouts, or scribbled furious notes which have since lost their context.

Specifically focus on getting one-shot instruction sessions right. Talk about working with faculty, especially those with no assignment or bad assignments, to create a valuable library experience. Spend time discussing how much to realistically cover in one session. Emphasize strategies for helping students get the basics. Our cognitive development section touched on this when our presenter pointed out that most of the ACRL information literacy standards are well above the developmental level of most of our entering students and it was a real eye opener.

Plan follow-up standalone workshops open to all staff. Some examples we thought of include: using LibGuides as teaching tools for individual classes, profiles of community college students, presentation skills, and scheduling video taping or observations of teaching sessions.

Your turn

Have you planned or participated in something similar at your institution? What did you do differently? How did it work out? What would you like to get out of this kind of program? Share your successes and frustrations in the comments.

[RE]Boot Camp Resources

• Schedule (.doc)
• Invitation (Google Doc)
• Pre Camp Survey (Google Form)
• Information Literacy Definitions (.doc)
• Learning Styles Inventory (website)
• Presentation Prompt (.pptx)
• Post Camp Evaluation (Google Form)
• Completion Certificate (.png)
• Textbook: Bain, Ken. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge: Harvard, 2004.

Many of our participants commented on how impressed they were with the presenters, so I’d like to also give many thanks to: A.J. Johnson (University of Texas at Austin), Barbara Jorge (Austin Community College), Liane Luckman (Texas State University), Dorothy Martinez (Austin Community College), Meghan Sitar (University of Texas at Austin), and Dr. Julie Todaro (Austin Community College) and to our planning team: Barbara Jorge, Pam Spooner, Melinda Townsel and Red Wassenich.

samsungtv 009 / http://www.flickr.com/photos/ousby/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

When we try to adapt our instructional strategies to a new medium, however, the challenge begins anew. Teaching in the classroom is not the same as teaching through a course management system (such as Blackboard), and teaching on Blackboard is different than teaching through video. All of these technologies tax our already minimal knowledge of instructional theory, and the results can turn out to be rather ineffective.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have made students watch far too many dull, lengthy screencast videos in the effort to help them learn about research. And I’ve seen many similar videos around on YouTube and on other library websites. Our intentions are always good – to educate, to equip students with research skills – but the tools we produce could be better. Recently my colleagues and I have begun a project to train ourselves in the pedagogy and technology of how to make effective video tutorials. I’d like to share some of what we’ve learned so far. It has all been new to me, and I hope that others may benefit from our efforts.

A couple of disclaimers: first, I don’t claim to be an expert in video creation or educational pedagogy. My knowledge is still nascent. Second, I don’t advocate video for video’s sake: be sure a video tutorial is the right medium for your intended goals before jumping into the recording process. When you want to teach a certain skill or idea, start by asking: how can I best get this information across? Sometimes it will be video, but other times a step-by-step text description can be simpler and more effective. Although as librarians we’re always eager to embrace the new technologies, it’s helpful to remember that the “old” technologies have their strengths as well. Tasks that involve basic, step-by-step instructions may be better presented as text on a webpage (or–gasp!–handout) that will be easier for students to follow as they complete the steps in another browser window. On the other hand, those that involve navigation through various, complex online interfaces may need video be clear. Sometimes it’s best to provide information in both formats to provide for different learning styles.

Some pedagogical context

Two well-known educational psychologists, Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno, have written extensively on the cognitive implications of multimedia learning. Most notable of their writings for our purposes is a 2003 article in Educational Psychologist entitled, “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.” The gist of the article is that the human brain’s ability to process information is divided into two channels, the verbal and the visual. And no matter what our multi-tasking Millennials would have us believe, the brain can process only a limited amount of information from each channel at any given moment.

Here’s what the cognitive process looks like according to Mayer and Moreno. Information comes in through those two “channels” of our ears and eyes. From everything we take in through our immediate, sensory memory, we select certain words and pictures that are processed to our working, or short-term, memory. At that point we begin making sense out of those pieces: aligning the images and sounds, organizing them into meaning, and most importantly, connecting the results with our prior knowledge in a way that will be added to our long-term memory. All of these steps are important, but perhaps most critical here is what happens between the sensory memory absorbing information and the working memory organizing it: selection. That’s the point where details will be lost unless we are careful to provide the most essential information as clearly and simply as possible, to ease the selection process along.

So our students need to go through several steps to make meaning out of what we teach them: first, by paying attention; second, by making sense out of it; and third, by applying it to what they already know about the topic. As a result, educators using multimedia need to be thoughtful about the amount of information we’re providing through video and audio channels, and the pace at which we’re providing the information, to ensure that we’re giving students enough time to process it in ways that make sense to them. If we provide too much information at once, we cause cognitive overload, at which point our students shut down, lose interest, or otherwise simply stop learning.

When beginning a new video tutorial, the most critical elements are the most basic ones: (i) identifying the audience, (ii) determining the goal or goals, and (ii) breaking down the task into its most basic elements. It’s always helpful to state the video’s goals at the start of a tutorial, and restate them again at the end to reinforce the message. The clearer the message of a video, the less cognitive load it will require from students who are trying to make sense out of it, and the more brainpower they will have left to process and internalize the skills being taught. All of this needs to be taken into account to achieve the goal of meaningful learning, which Mayer and Moreno define as “deep understanding of the material, which includes attending to important aspects of the presented material, mentally organizing it into a coherent cognitive structure, and integrating it with relevant existing knowledge.”

Principles of multimedia learning

So how do we take advantage of cognitive theory to create meaningful learning through video tutorials? The key is to carefully review every element we add to a video to determine whether it is adding to or detracting from the viewer’s experience. To help us with this, Moreno and Mayer offer a series of principles on how people process multimedia, and in the article I mentioned above, make nine recommendations for multimedia instruction based on those principles (these were nicely encapsulated by Ross Perkins, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Boise State University, in a workshop he provided for myself and my colleagues):

1. Split Attention Principle: Students learn better when instruction material does not require them to split their attention between multiple sources of mutually referring information.
2. Modality Principle: Students learn better when the verbal information is presented auditorily as speech rather than visually as on-screen text both for concurrent and sequential presentations.
3. Redundancy Principle: Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration, and text if the visual information is provided simultaneously to the verbal information.
4. Spatial Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when on-screen text and visual materials are physically integrated rather than separated.
5. Temporal Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when verbal and visual materials are temporally synchronized rather than separated in time.
6. Coherence Principle: Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included in multimedia explanations.

As recommendations based on these principles, Mayer and Moreno suggest:

• using narration without on-screen text to remove the need for students to read and listen to text at the same time (called “off-loading”);
• allowing short breaks, or pauses, between sections of a presentation (called “segmenting”);
• starting off the presentation with lessons about any terms or concepts that are new and important to what they will learn in the video (called “pretraining”);
• leaving out any unnecessary audio or visual elements (called “weeding”);
• using arrows, highlighting, or other cues to the viewer as a means of clarifying important points or confusing images (called “signaling”);
• ensuring that on-screen text and images that rely on each other are shown physically close together (called “aligning”);
• removing visual elements that are duplicated by narration or graphics (called “eliminating redundancy”);
• maintaining a close match between narration and visual elements shown in the video (called “synchronizing”); and
• when possible, considering the particular audience of a video and matching the presentation style to their learning style(s).

For instance, consider videos that include both verbal narration and on-screen text. Providing such duplicative information is likely to bog down a student by requiring them to process the same information twice, using both verbal and visual channels. Meanwhile, if the narration and on-screen text is being shown simultaneously with a screencast or other video element, it is likely that the student will not be able to process this third piece at all. Instead, using verbal narration with a screencast will probably be more effective at keeping the student’s cognitive load manageable. Similarly, when using a screencast of a library homepage, keep in mind that the large number of images and links on an average page can also cause overload. It’s easy to add a large arrow or call-out identifying the particular link you want students to see, and it will significantly reduce the cognitive demands of the shot. Mayer and Moreno’s oeuvre includes much more guidance on these issues, as does a 2006 article by Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit in College & Research Libraries.

Planning for video instruction

With busy lives and jobs, many of us choose to create video tutorials on the fly simply by transferring strategies used at the reference desk or one-shot instruction. Honestly, we do it every day at the desk, right, so how hard can it be to simply record the same information? Well, it is harder than one might think when considering both pedagogical and cognitive implications. It’s important to begin with a plan; a breakdown of exactly what the goal(s) of the video will be, how the goal(s) will be achieved, and what exact steps must be shown in the video without any unnecessary or distracting elements.

Storyboarding is perhaps one of the most underestimated but most critical parts of the process of creating an instructional video. This is the same approach used by filmmakers to plan out scenes, props, and actors required in every different part of a movie. Storyboarding does not have to be complicated or high art, it can simply be a listing of what will happen in each scene, in full detail. It requires us to walk through every second of the video in advance to make sure it is doing what we want it do. Storyboards can be sketched out on paper or digitally but should incorporate whatever will be taking place on the screen visually, the full script that a narrator will speak, and an indication of any additional sound or graphical elements (such as call-outs) that may be included. I’ve just started using PowerPoint as a storyboarding tool — putting visual elements in the slide section, and audio in the notes — and fellow Leadpiper Derik suggests post-it notes as a quick and easy method. Storyboards help in planning a video so that it can be created in a way that reduces cognitive load for students, while also allowing us to budget our time more efficiently in the creation process.

Storyboards / http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgc/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Of course, those new clips can only be integrated if our method of organizing video files and completed tutorials is clear. It’s easy to let the long list of video clip, screen shot and screencast files flow into a variety of folders without keeping track of them. However, when those files are carefully tracked and identified (by filename) on the storyboard, and then all of the raw production files archived together for future reference, maintenance and updating suddenly becomes far easier and far less time consuming.

The software

Many of the best videos incorporate a mix of screencasting (or screen recording), live video from a camera, and slide clips. In some cases they may also include extra sound effects or supplemental audio tracks. This can get complicated when working with so many different types of files. And, not surprisingly, there is no perfect, easy-to-use software package for video tutorial creation. Camtasia Studio from TechSmith is generally considered to be the standard for true video and audio editing. Camtasia is one of the few programs that accepts a wide variety of audio and video formats, and makes it possible to edit and integrate them in sophisticated ways. On the downside it is expensive and takes time to learn; after using it for over a year I am just starting to feel competent in the software. Camtasia is available for a 30-day trial, and TechSmith provides a number of high-quality (wouldn’t they have to be?) video tutorials on how to use the software.

In addition to Camtasia, there are a number of simpler, free programs that make some of the same functions possible. For screencasting only, TechSmith also provides a program called Jing that is far simpler and more user-friendly than Camtasia, so that can be a great place to start for those new to video creation. ScreenToaster is a similar program, but unlike Jing it’s web-based so does not require installation. Unfortunately, neither Jing (free version) nor ScreenToaster offer much in the way of editing options, nor do they provide screencasting files that can be integrated with other video clips. When working just with live video from a webcam or video camera, the simplest editing options are the default PC and Mac programs: Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. Both can be useful and make it easier to get started, but they also have more limited options than Camtasia. For audio editing alone, Audacity is a free program that many use for creating sound clips, sound effects, and podcasts.

The settings used during video creation can have a big impact on the quality of the results. For the best quality, experts recommend that the resolution of the video recording should be as close as possible to the final product. For instance, YouTube’s standard video resolution is 640 pixels by 480 pixels, so recording should take place at that image size. We’ve all seen screencast videos that recorded the individual’s entire screen at a resolution such as 1280x720, produced the video at the same size, and then uploaded the video to YouTube, only to see the video size compressed to a degraded and unreadable result. Recording at such a high resolution would, however, be appropriate for YouTube’s High Definition video, which uses 1280x720 as the standard. Recording size can be changed within the video recording software or camera settings, or for screencasting the entire screen resolution can be changed to fit the desired result. It’s important, too, to be consistent in recording size when using video from several sources (screencast, webcam, video camera, etc.). Overall, video should be both recorded and produced at whatever size is needed for the platform where it will be viewed in the end.

Conclusion

In general, all of the recommendations from cognitive theory indicate that the simpler the video, the better. The challenge is to balance this simplicity with our other needs: to cover complex material, to cater to various learning styles, to be accessible to hearing impaired students, to work within our often-limited video editing skills, and even to be entertaining. Instruction through multimedia is highly challenging, often frustrating, and extremely time-consuming, but when done well it can have a dramatic impact upon student learning.

For example, let’s look at a couple of great examples of videos that are both engaging and reflect awareness of the pedagogical and cognitive considerations described above. I’ll start off with a video from Common Craft, a great example of simplicity in action:

Common Craft videos are excellent at breaking down an idea or task into its simplest elements and presenting them clearly and concisely without audio or visual distractions. They do all this in mere minutes while maintaining a level of humor and entertainment throughout to keep viewers interested.

Or how about this one? The University of Texas at Arlington has started a series of “Librarian vs. Stereotype” videos that are engaging and informative while still getting their message across:

Notice the simple white background; the creators of this video omitted any distractions or visual elements other than the people on the screen. And it works! Our educational psychologist friends might have recommended against the background music as a non-essential element that adds to viewers’ cognitive load, but otherwise this is a terrific instructional video.

Now it’s your turn: What are your favorite examples of high quality instruction videos? What have been your experiences in trying to create videos for teaching? The comments below are open for your thoughts, links, and experiences.

Many thanks to Lead Pipers Ellie Collier and Derik Badman, as well as my Boise colleagues Memo Cordova and Ellie Dworak, for providing valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

Want to learn more? Here are a few places to start:

• Ganster, L. A., & Walsh, T. R. (2008). Enhancing Library Instruction to Undergraduates: Incorporating Online Tutorials into the Curriculum. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 15(3), 314–333.
• Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43–52.
• Oud, J. (2009). Guidelines for effective online instruction using multimedia screencasts. Reference Services Review, 37(2), 164–177.
• Tempelman-Kluit, N. (2006). Multimedia Learning Theories and Online Instruction. College & Research Libraries, 67(4), 364–9.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is pleased to welcome another guest author, Jean Costello! Jean is a technical project manager for a prominent STM publisher. She is a passionate supporter of public libraries and blogs regularly as The Radical Patron.

2009 may be an inflection point for public libraries. This year, the deepest recession in U.S. history accelerated their financial trajectory. Following nearly a decade of level or eroding budgets,¹ libraries across America were threatened with closure due to lack of funds. Some have closed and most are operating with dramatically reduced budgets. The recession has also increased usage, with citizens flocking to their local libraries to access computers for job search, participate in recreational activities and borrow popular books and DVDs. As the economy improves, the public may remember the value delivered by their public libraries and restore funding. Even if this happens, I believe funding will be insufficient to maintain the viability of our public libraries in the absence of new service offerings, service delivery methods and funding mechanisms.

The philosophical and material underpinnings of our public library system are solid, however its organizational structure of wholly independent entities funded primarily by local taxes, developed in the mid-nineteenth century,² is ill-equipped to compete with 21st century companies that provide more focused service offerings. Google, Amazon, and others will remain clear winners in terms of information findability and convenience for the general public. In the community realm, social media companies have disrupted our assumptions, understanding and behavior and their influence will grow without the availability of viable alternatives. And long term success in the entertainment or social service sectors seems tenuous given the array of commercial and government entities competing to support these needs.

So is there light at the end of this tunnel?

Circumstances are starting to favor change. The economic crisis has prompted many Americans to re-evaluate and modify their consumption habits.³ Perhaps for the first time, some may find value in sharing rather than owning resources. The Wall Street bailouts of 2008/2009, and this year’s debate over healthcare reform, have foregrounded a national dialogue about the role of private companies and government agencies in American life. For public libraries, a multi-year funding crisis, news of academic institutions replacing their libraries with other facilities⁴ and a growing interest in mixed-use libraries⁵ may make the pain of doing nothing greater than the pain of doing something. This is a prerequisite for most organizational change. More importantly, the maturation of key digital technologies enables libraries to deliver new and existing services more efficiently on a large scale.

The right change

America desperately needs an institution dedicated solely to the public good, that serves all its citizens equitably, promotes genuine community and fosters a healthy, integrated sense of recreation and self-improvement. Our libraries have done this magnificently for over a hundred years, through good times and bad, in the largest cities and the most rural communities. It’s one of the reasons library service offerings have remained constant for decades and funding secure for even longer.

I believe we do not need to remake our public libraries; we simply need to shore them up. As we envision change, it seems important to preserve the local autonomy and authenticity that have collectively made these institutions a national treasure. The right change would bolster libraries’ ability to leverage digital technology while increasing use of their physical facilities and surrounding amenities. It would also be advantageous to attract more users with high-end needs, for they would likely spur new service development and be able to deliver more financial and political support than traditional constituencies.

In my view, the public broadcasting model is a good way to meet these goals. Imagine a single, non-profit entity positioned to attract major funding and provide technology solutions far better than any municipal organization or system can do on its own. Imagine freeing countless public librarians and volunteers from rudimentary tasks to give them more time to collaborate on activities that inform, inspire, and entertain. Imagine libraries providing trusted information and facilitating meaningful dialogues across America. Imagine extending the work of passionate, outstanding librarians beyond their local libraries. A National Public Library (NPL) Corporation to augment the existing public library system would make this possible.

(Note: As a patron, I can speak to the public-facing aspects of this idea. I’d be interested in comments from library professionals about how the NPL might offer benefits for optimizing library operations, professional development, etc.)

NPL purpose and funding

Like its counterparts in radio and television, the NPL would syndicate high-quality programming to independent libraries across the country. Programming in this context would include content as well as digital technology for operations or direct patron services. The NPL would also provide consultation and coordination for fundraising activities.

Like the public broadcasters, NPL would derive funding from multiple sources including the federal government, charitable donations from corporate sponsors and fees from member libraries. Public libraries are nodes in a national system and it is appropriate that our federal tax dollars support it. Corporate and foundation funding, with appropriate governance to counter undue influence from large donors, is a valid funding source. Through their fees, member libraries would gain access to rich content and services and also secure a stakeholder position in the NPL.

Programming; digital technology

Through my work as a library volunteer and advocate, I observe the significant amount of time library staff and volunteers devote to functions that can be optimized through technology. While technological awareness is generally high, people appear thoroughly overwhelmed by the plethora of digital tools and techniques available to them. As a result, even basic tasks such as maintaining lists of supporters who serve on boards and committees, make financial contributions and volunteer can be challenging. Devising communication strategies amidst multiple, dynamic mediums including email, websites, blogs, and Facebook can also be daunting. Many of the library meetings I’ve attended have been as much about contact administration as about new programs or initiatives.

In terms of patron services, I use a few libraries in Massachusetts that seem to be on-par with their peers nationwide. Despite my esteem and strong support for them, my honest rating for convenience and ease-of-doing business would be about a B– or C. As someone who is employed full-time and needs access outside traditional business hours, is comfortable using internet services, and has other options for accessing information and entertainment, I find my public libraries are not keeping pace with service levels from other providers.

Within the libraries, information and service are readily available at the front desk. Outside the library, it is more difficult to come by, or impossible, due to limited hours of operation. Some libraries require that I phone or visit to seek staff assistance for straightforward transactions like renewing materials and reserving meeting rooms and museum passes. Each seems to use a different method of posting events on their websites and few let me search for programs or register online. It’s easy to overlook or miss out on some good library programming as a result. None has an integrated electronic newsletter to keep me updated on library news, programs, and new material acquisitions. Information about volunteering and making financial donations is also fragmented; giving to my library is not as convenient as it is with other organizations.

Here are a few online applications the NPL could rapidly make available to deliver better online services and save staff time as well:

• A calendar to enable the public to search for events, add events to their personal calendars, and receive email alerts about programs they have registered for or that meet their interests.
• A reservation system for meeting rooms, museum passes, etc.
• A volunteer management system to make it easy for people to browse and search for opportunities and sign up to work.
• A secure payment system so people could make one-time or recurring monetary donations to their library.
• A contact management system for libraries and friends groups to identify and contact members, donors, etc.
• An email marketing tool to craft rich, targeted electronic communications to libraries’ multiple constituencies.
• A survey tool to enable libraries to query users directly about satisfaction with existing services and interest in new services.
• Mobile applications for these services.

The benefits of a single entity that develops robust, integrated solutions for these common functions and makes them available to every library are significant. In addition to administrative efficiencies, a standard application suite would save time for library staff who must now evaluate the myriad options for delivering these services, figure out how to implement and support them, process purchase orders and maintain licenses for commercial applications, manage multiple admin accounts, and write training documentation. It is an enormous amount of work, particular for smaller libraries without dedicated technical staff.

Properly designed and implemented, patrons could receive more information from their libraries and securely process transactions online. One advantage of a uniform application suite is that users would likely promote the services in casual conversation or show others how to use them, as they do now when speaking of Netflix or other popular online services. My experience is that this does not happen today because services differ so widely from one municipal system to another.

Patron privacy protection is another advantage. Today, many libraries use free or low-cost commercial services on their websites because they do not have the resources to develop or host their own solutions. These services open patrons to unwanted advertising or require that they trade their digital privacy in order to use them. It would be a great public service if libraries uniformly deployed open, non-commercial products that deliver outstanding service and protect patron privacy.

It would also benefit the public and libraries if these solutions could be shared by other municipal agencies. The public would receive more convenient, consolidated access to their local governments and have their library to thank for it. Libraries might find agencies that currently compete with them for local funding becoming allies if they were using modules of the library’s information system to manage some of their administrative functions.

As a technology professional, I know solutions for the functionality listed above have matured to the point where integration and deployment by professional software developers would be reasonably straightforward. The NPL could make wise use of existing open source software and cloud computing to reduce cost and lead time for delivering web applications to its members. I am also confident that robust solutions for online access to patron accounts and library catalogs could be developed better through the efforts of an organization staffed and focused on the challenge than the tapestry of public and private organizations currently working to develop solutions.

Programming; content

Given the competition from commercial information and entertainment companies, I think a successful strategy for public libraries is to augment existing services with those that commercial firms cannot or will not deliver. NPL can provide enormous value in this area by syndicating the talent and contributions of public librarians throughout the country. A few ideas:

1. Online subject communities. The NPL could deploy an online community module to facilitate engagement around subject specialties. These communities would feature curated content (something like CurrentCites for the public) and moderated group discussions by an individual librarian or small team of librarians. For a given subject, curators could surface and contextualize the most high-quality, trusted material on a particular subject to people who joined the community. They could initiate and moderate interesting forum discussions by asking perceptive questions and referring participants to other user comments or relevant content. Part of the moderation would involve modeling organized thinking, clear and concise writing, and decorum—qualities that are sorely lacking in social media today. (Recent coverage and commentary on John Wilbank’s keynote at the Society of Scholarly Publishers conference is a fine example of the potential for quality online discussion.) The list of subjects is vast, as librarians know, and who better to help the public explore them?
2. Collaboration with public broadcasters. PBS and NPR collaborate to provide outstanding content. The Forum Network, which works with public stations and community partners to provide “a diverse range of perspectives on both local and global issues to audiences around the world” is one example. Adding the NPL to this collaboration would strengthen each organization.
3. Hidden Gems book and film reviews. It is increasingly difficult for good creative works to see the light of day. Consolidation in the publishing, television ‚and film industries have diminished product quality; executives no longer feel confident or empowered to take chances on promising but unproven works. Instead, they promote formulaic and derivative works they believe will feed the bottom line.⁶ Additionally, the loss of independent booksellers and movie houses means that good works receive less exposure. Impartial reviewers with access to publisher catalogs, a mission to find “hidden gems,” and a large national audience might help stem the tide of mediocrity. Many library websites have links to recommended reading lists and reviews from publishers, personalities and ordinary book lovers. Publishing NPL content instead would have these advantages:
   • It would reinforce the library “brand” rather than providing free advertising for others.
   • It would reduce broken links and links to lists that haven’t been maintained. This may seem like a small thing, but in this day and age these really damage an organization’s credibility.
   • It would reinforce the library’s role of guiding users to trusted sources. The public trusts librarians and a well-organized reading list created by librarians would garner attention and respect. (Nancy Pearl hasn’t done too badly, after all). Most people understand that blurbs on book jackets and movie trailers are marketing pieces rather than genuine endorsements. Some may also realize that people manipulate the online ratings systems as a way to market their products.⁷ Librarians do not face pressure to push product and can offer thoughtful, unbiased opinions about good works of fiction and non-fiction. The reviews would be more valuable if reader comments and questions were moderated and engaged.
4. An online survival series. For this feature, librarians could research, curate, edit, and present information on up to five important topics, with one topic covered each day of the week. Here again, engagement with reader comments, questions, and content suggestions would enhance this series. Suggested topics include:
   • Information Overload—Digital technology has opened the info floodgates and everyone I know is overwhelmed by the flow. This column would be dedicated to strategies and tools for finding the information you want and filtering out the rest.
   • Commercial Search Services and Online Social Networks—Google, Facebook, and other services offer enormous benefits and can serve the public good, although we continually need reminders of their primary motivations to seek and maximize profit.⁸ Librarians are well-qualified to provide much-needed public education about the nuances and implications of information organization, storage, and retrieval.
   • Trusted Sources—In 2007, the New York Times reported on “self-interested Wikipedia edits” by corporations and government agencies.⁹ This Spring, Elsevier was exposed for publishing six fake medical journals.¹⁰ In late August, the Washington Post’s ombudsman highlighted the paper’s penchant for covering the politics rather than the substance of healthcare reform.¹¹ A recent survey reports that 63% of Americans believe news stories are often inaccurate.¹² We’ve got a rough-and-tumble infosphere on our hands and the public needs help finding and vetting information sources. Librarians can help.
   • Digital Privacy—people are generally not aware of the vast amount of data collected and stored about them. Industry and our elected officials prefer to keep this topic opaque. Libraries can serve the public good by enhancing the ALA Privacy Revolution and regularly presenting information about it.
5. Public library spotlight. Public libraries have a rich collective history and most have equally compelling individual histories. Many are architecturally beautiful, interesting, and significant. All are reflections of their community. Given this richness and the sheer number of them, I’m surprised public libraries have not been the subject of more artistic and non-fiction works. Showcasing these fabulous institutions would be a great gift to present and future generations.

Fundraising consultation and coordination

Professionals at NPR and PBS have devised a range of techniques for garnering financial support from people who use their services. Public libraries would benefit from the expertise of professional fundraisers rather than relying on the part-time efforts of inexperienced librarians, staff, and volunteers. The public broadcasters have crafted campaigns that seamlessly promote the central organization and independent local affiliates. The same could be done for public libraries.

The NPL fundraising staff could craft messages that explain the need for funding over and above tax revenue. They could help public libraries articulate value beyond their existing user base. Fundraising consultants could also help establish best practices for involving and promoting local businesses in fundraising campaigns.

The NPL could also help transform corporate and foundation funding of public libraries. Having a central library organization to receive contributions would be good for donors and libraries. It would be a visible and efficient way for donors to demonstrate support for valued services to a significant number of people. It would also liberate librarians from chasing targeted small-dollar grants so they could focus on adding more direct value for the public. Small grants spread across multiple municipalities, that carry significant administration costs for donor and library, could be replaced with large grants to the NPL. The loss of the small grants would likely be offset by the fundraising consultation and coordination libraries would receive as part of their NPL membership fees. Large donations would support programming to provide more sustainable benefit to a greater number of libraries. The increased impact and efficiency would benefit all parties.

New local services

The services listed above will make local library websites more valuable to their communities. Better utilities for calendaring, reservations, volunteer management, etc. will drive some increase in visitation, however new programs and services will be required to maintain the high usage libraries are currently experiencing. The hope is that efficiencies achieved by implementing NPL developed systems and fundraising support would free time for other initiatives that benefit their local communities.

Library staff and volunteers are best suited to develop programs for their communities; however NPL content and services might provide program ideas or help drive participation. A tie-in with content from public broadcasters, for example, might drive visitation. Libraries could host regular “Hidden Gems” movie nights to provide access to films that don’t typically benefit from a wide release. Or they might host local subject-based clubs to personally discuss or collaboratively research topics from the online communities. Computer classes could be structured around the “Information Overload” series. Or the library might become the locus for civic action around public issues like digital privacy that libraries have brought to public attention.

Another area where libraries can add unique and outstanding value is by publishing quality information about local issues. This service was provided during a period in the early 20th century described by library historian Lowell Martin as the “Innovative Years.” He writes that “libraries would pull together the facts about an issue—an upcoming election, a public figure, a catastrophe—and reproduce the material for the convenience of curious citizens”.¹³ Interestingly, Martin credits new technology (the telephone) and the pressure of limited budgets with making library service more reactive. Nearly a hundred years later, these factors may have re-established the need for proactive library services. As with the online features, rich user engagement is a critical success factor. My town election/library/school dream provides further ideas for elements of this form of engagement.

In conclusion

Public broadcasting is but one example of how organizations provide information services to leverage efficiencies and strengthen the viability of local enterprises. Many private and public sector firms have adopted it. Visit most realtor websites, for example, and you’ll find content, databases, and utilities provided by a central organization. College alumni and other membership organizations use companies like Harris Connect for tools to “create bonds that increase participation, membership and support.”

An inflection point is a mathematical term to denote a point where a curve reverses direction. I believe a confluence of social, economic, political, and technological developments lays a foundation for a change in outlook for public libraries. A narrative of obsolescence can become one of rejuvenation and reaffirmation of their mission to provide a record of knowledge, support self-education, and provide wholesome recreation.¹⁴ A National Public Library Corporation could promote the ideal of equal access to information by helping ensure that the smallest and poorest communities have access to many of the same resources as the largest and most affluent. It can help make the Library 2.0 vision a reality. It could also add dimension to the concept of a “third place” by strengthening librarians’ role in the Commons through influence in the development of “a set of [information] resources or resource systems, the communities that use them, and the social practices and property regimes for managing the resources.“¹⁵

In their existing form, I believe public libraries supported by a National Public Library Corporation are uniquely positioned to help Americans live richer personal and public lives. Their mission is noble and broad. Their staffs are dedicated and highly educated. They are geographically interspersed, with a strong culture of resource sharing and collaboration already in place. During their early “Innovative Years,” public libraries were trusted institutions of culture and knowledge at a time when information was scarce. An overabundance of information may usher in a second wave of innovation. Let us hope the library community can take advantage of the opportunity.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Brett Bonfield for his support and guidance on this article. Thanks also to Kent Anderson for thought-provoking reflections in the Scholarly Kitchen blog as well as for sharing his thoughts on public libraries with me.

References

¹ OCLC. (2008). From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America. and Agosto, D.E. (2008). Alternative funding for public libraries: Trends, sources, and the heated arguments that surround it. In E. Abels & D.A. Nitecky (Eds.), Influence of Funding on Advances in Librarianship. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group.

² Bostwick, A.E. (1910). The American Public Library. NY: D. Appleton & Co. 1910.

³Dewan, S. (2009, March 10).
One U.S. recession casualty: Conspicuous consumption. The New York Times.

⁴ Abel, D. (2009, September 4). Welcome to the library. Say goodbye to the books. Boston Globe. and Kelly, J. (2009, July 28). Franklin High library undergoes transformation. Milford Daily News.

⁵ Carlson, S. (2009, September 14). Is It a Library? A Student Center? The Athenaeum Opens at Goucher College. Chronicle of Higher Education and Oder, N. (2009, August 4). Milwaukee Begins to “Rethink Libraries for the 21st Century”; Mixed-use facilities are part of the blueprint; community meetings are ongoing. Library Journal.

⁶ Fisher, M. (2009, July 9). Give Struggling Authors a Chance. The Atlantic. and (2009, January 3). Blockbuster or Bust: Why struggling publishers will keep placing outrageous bids on new books. Wall Street Journal.

⁷ Davis, P. (2009, August 5). Gaming the Rating System. The Scholarly Kitchen.

⁸ Waller, V. (2009, September 7). The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information. First Monday 14(9).

⁹ Hafner, K. (2007, August 19). Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits. The New York Times.

¹⁰ Grant, B. (2009, May 7). Elsevier published 6 fake journals. The Scientist.

¹¹ Alexander, A. (2009, August 30). A Missing Ingredient in Health-Care Coverage. The Washington Post.

¹² Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. (2009, September 13). Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low.

¹³ Martin, L. (1998). Enrichment: A History of the Public Library in the United States in the Twentieth Century. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press: p 51.

¹⁴ Ibid, p13.

¹⁵ Helfrich, S. and Haas, J. (2009) The Commons: A New Narrative for Our Times. In Helfrich, S. (Ed.) Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons. Berlin: oekom Verlag.