We had our celebration for the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award on Monday. You can check out some of the pictures from the reception on Champlain College’s Facebook page. We got to celebrate with students, our student workers, the library staff, the faculty, the administration and even trustees. It was truly a community event which is exactly what library events should be.

Another really fun aspect of the party was a video that an alumni of our digital film-making program produced for us. It highlighted the importance of the award and some of the things that make our library great. But my favorite part of the video is at the end when my good friend Steve Wehmeyer, a professor in our Core Division, is talking about the work that librarians do. He says, “Whether they’re coming into the classroom doing creative info literacy sessions, or whether they’re helping us develop engaging activities for first-year students, I’ve really come to see librarians as our allies in education.”

I loved that phrase “allies in education.” That’s how we have to think of our work. We’re not just running a library and curating collections. We’re educators who are partnering with other educators to provide the types of environments, resources, curriculum and events that facilitate and empower learning.

Our library team is really dedicated to the work we do. We were all excited to win this award, but we also know that our work isn’t done. There is still a lot of room for growth and improvement. There is a lot that we can learn from other libraries who are also doing amazing things. If as Aristotle said, excellence is not an act but a habit, we have to continue our work and keep building on our successes. The work of an educator is never done.

The process of writing the application involved significant effort, but was very valuable. First, it was exceedingly collaborative. Multiple people wrote sections of the narrative. We also had an all staff meeting where we took time to think about how we meet the needs and serve the mission of the college. All of our staff’s voices were represented in the final application and this made the final application that much stronger.

Second, it was valuable to think of what value we provide to students, faculty, and staff and then prove it. Our thinking was closely related to the Value of Academic Libraries Report that came out last year. Instead of thinking of inputs (how many books we own, amount of funding, etc.) we thought about outputs (the impact that we make on faculty, staff, students, and ultimately the college as an institution). We had to give evidence of that impact. That evidence came in the form of both statistical data such as information literacy assessment data and Noel-Levitz data, but it was also anecdotal and included quotes and tweets like the one below directly related to academic success.

Hey, Paula @champlib, I got an A on the final paper you helped me with.;)THANK YOU!!!

— Megan Goodell (@megan_goodell) May 3, 2011

We were all ecstatic to have won the award, but even if we hadn’t I knew that we had a great team doing some special things together and a document that we could be proud of. We’re a “small but mighty” staff and we have a lot of fun in the work that we do together. Being able to articulate that in a way that proved our value to others and brought all of our staff’s voices together was extremely rewarding.

“In terms of librarianship then, what are the qualities that academic librarians today should possess to be successful in their careers and in serving their users? In the spirit of Franklin, these are a proposed list of virtues of next-gen librarians. Franklin used his virtues to grow as an individual. These virtues can be used as a tool to guide our self improvement as librarians in the 21st century, though they aren’t limited to that purpose. They can also be used by administrators to determine the qualities that they want in new hires, or by job seekers determining the culture of an institution. They can be used in evaluating managers or directors. The uses are myriad, but ultimately they are qualities that we should all strive for as next-gen librarians.”

If you have thoughts about any of the virtues or ones that should be added or removed, I’d love to hear them.

image from Susan Sharpless Smith on Flickr

ACRL 2011 wrapped up this past weekend and much like the last time I attended, it was a great conference. There was a lot of great content and ideas in the papers, panels, posters and Cyber Zed Sheds. There were also some excellent keynotes that challenged us to think outside of the echo chamber of the library world. But my favorite part of ACRL conferences are the people and the networking that goes on. I love connecting with smart, like-minded people who are thinking about the same problems that I am. I got a lot out of the conference and figured I would share a few of the ideas that got my mind buzzing:

Planned abandonment

One great session I attended was called When Interdependence Becomes Codependence: Knowing When and How to Let Go of Legacy Services by Katherine Furlong and Mary Evangeliste. I’ve thought a lot about the idea of dropping services, but this presentation really brought the idea home for me. Libraries often keep adding new services, but we rarely drop them. We need to examine services from time to time to see if they are still really best serving our users. The presentation drew from literature in the field of management and exhorted people to ask two big questions of their current services: “would we do this service again” and “is it still relevant?”

Image is important

Clinton Kelly talked about how to be stylish. But he also talked about why style counts. On a personal level, Kelly says that image is important because “how you dress tells the rest of the world how you expect to be treated.” This can also apply to the profession as a whole. The way we act and present ourselves will be how others treat us. If we are quiet or deferential we’ll be treated accordingly, but if we own our expertise as information professionals and assert that expertise, then students, faculty, and administrators will treat us as such.

Intentional Innovation

David Dahl, in his session Lightning in a Bottle: Managing Ideas to Spur Innovation, discussed innovation, but he didn’t use it as the buzzword that it is often used as these days. He talked about it as an intentional process as opposed to something that just happens. It’s something that can be fostered and recreated. We need to set aside time just for idea generation. He also said that there must be people who select and champion ideas or the ideas will never go anywhere. In addition, ideas come to us all the time, but if we don’t purposefully collect these ideas, we’ll lose them. Having a process and structure in place are necessary in order to consistently generate and implement useful new ideas.

There was so much awesome stuff going on it couldn’t all make it into this post, but there’s another great writeup over at Library Journal . Did you attend in person or virtually? What was an insight that you had?

image by Michael Parker on wikimedia commons

The ACRL national conference is upon us once again. If you’re going to the city of brotherly love, I’d like to invite you to come check out a panel that I am on with two amazing librarians. Carissa Tomlinson is an emerging technologies librarian at Towson University, and Catherine Johnson is an instruction and reference librarian at the University of Baltimore.

What: In the Spirit of Ben Franklin: 13 Virtues of Next Gen Librarians

Where: Philadelphia Convention Center, room 201 B/C

When: Thursday, March 31st at 10:30am

We’ll be talking about what a next-gen librarian is and what sort of virtues they should aspire to. But we won’t have the last word. In this interactive (hopefully really fun) session, we’re going to ask for your feedback and come up with other virtues together. Folks can participate in the conversation by using the Twitter hashtag #libvirtues. Here are just a couple example of virtues that we will be discussing:

Flexibility: Librarians can’t afford to be myopic or stubborn in this current environment. Things are constantly changing — not just technology but also things like publishing models. The Harper Collins fiasco is just one example. In order to be well positioned in the future and avoid becoming obsolete, next-gen librarians will need to have the ability to quickly adapt to all the changes going on around us.

Courage: Next-gen librarians are going to be folks who need to take risks. Inventing the future of librarianship won’t always be easy, and sometimes it may be scary. But in order to best serve our users, we are going to have to work on getting over the fear of failure and doing awesome things in spite of that fear.

Hopefully this peaks your interest and gets the wheels turning in your brain about what sort of qualities are necessary in the current era of librarianship. We’ll be asking audience members to propose their own virtues, so get thinking. See you in Philadelphia!

“I love customer service in libraries. I love improving our systems and services so they are more user-friendly. I love helping students with their research and answering their questions. But I don’t want to make things easy for students. If I did, I wouldn’t be giving them what they want: an education.”

Check out the full post at the ACRLog, and subscribe if you haven’t already.

In Zen Buddhism a sesshin is a period of intense practice of Zen and meditation that typically last 5-7 days. This reminded me a lot of my Immersion experience this weekend. In Zen you are trying to maintain the utmost concentration on your practice, and the same is true with Immersion. Teaching librarians have the opportunity to concentrate on nothing but teaching and learning for 4.5 days.

Normally life consists of rushing from one thing to the next with little sustained focus, but at Immersion we got to concentrate solely on teaching. Even during the informal, social parts of Immersion we were jokingly refering to “teachable moments,” and “what lesson did we learn here?”

At sesshin there is also a significant amount of discomfort that occurs. Your legs and body can get very sore from doing extended sitting meditation, you can get completely exhausted doing all night meditation, and even get hit from monks using a flat wooden stick called a keisaku.

Now our amazing faculty members weren’t whacking us with sticks, but there is a certain amount of pain and dismofort at Immersion too. You can get really tired (I took a nap under my desk like George Constanza). You are required to prepare and deliver a short speech in front of your peers, which can make people very nervous. And you are constantly challenged in different types of less than confortable learning activities such as elevator pitches, skits, and even an addition of battledecks this year. But in both Zen and Immersion this discomfort is to serve a higher purpose. Getting out of your confort zone helps you improve and become a more successful person and teacher.

Finally in Zen there is sometimes an elightenment experience that occurs after all the intense practice and concentration and Immersion is similar. We discussed ”Aha!” moments, and I know I had a couple of those. I also heard several people saying (me included) that there were points later in the week when things started to all come together. Different pieces like assessment and learning styles began to make sense as a more coherent whole and we could see information literacy in a new light.

I do feel that I am more info lit enlightened and I’d recommend ACRL Immersion to librarian who has to do teaching in the classroom. It wasn’t all work. We had time to go out and blow of some steam too. I also made a lot of new friendships. It might not be for everyone but it is a great program if you’re serious about information literacy and want to push yourself to become better.

My drawing of a lesson from Parker Palmer

I’m at ACRL Immersion this week which is fortunately in lovely Burlington, VT at Champlain College. It is overwhelming and I’m meeting tons of people and getting tons of information. I’m actually squeezing this post in between dinner and yoga. I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experience so far though and share things I’ve found helpful for immersion and my career.

• Take time to reflect – That’s what I’m doing right now. Here at Immersion I try to squeeze in precious minutes to reflect on what I learned and what it means to me. But this should be done at work to. Reflect on what you’re doing. Take a step back and look at the big picture. Take time to just think and not necessarily be creating something. Have your students in class reflect too. That’s where ideas can be born and meaning can be found.
• Real experts don’t sit at a desk, they talk to people in the world – I got this from a great video we watched about the design company IDEO. You can theorize all you want, but the real information is out in the world. We make assumptions about students all the time, but rarely examine them or ask their opinions. I know I want to take more time talking to students about assumptions or just observing people when I get back.
• The people you surround yourself with make a difference – Immersion is tons of work and it’s easy to get tired and less engaged. But the people here are a self selected group. They’re people who wanted to come to improve their teaching. The other Immersionites are engaged, participating, or even asking me questions. They push me when I’m tired and help make me better. If you surround yourself with engaged, curious, dynamic people it helps you to be better and improve.
• Stay passionate, keep things fresh – Burnout happens. I’ve only just celebrated my second year of librarianship, but over time things can get stale and you can become burned out. You need to work on keeping your passion alive. Keep your teaching or your job fresh. Try new ideas often. Try out some different technology or slides in the classroom. Experiment and be willing to fail.

There is tons more I’ve taken in still have three more days. I highly recommend Immersion to anyone though. And for people who have attended or are currently attending I’d love to hear other things you’ve taken away or advice you might have.

The 2009 ACRL New England Chapter conference was entitled Are you being served? Customer satisfaction and library service. I believe this theme of customer service  is becoming increasingly important, not only in libraries but in business as well.

The morning worskshop I attended was presented by Sara Laughlin, and it was called Tools for Understanding Your Customers. It was a hands on workshop in which the participants learned different ways to find out information about who their customers are and what they want. She broke down market research into six approaches:

• Survey
• Existing Data (yours and others’)
• Interview
• Focus Group
• Observation
• Comments/complaints

We were able to look at these approaches in depth and recognize the pros and cons of each. Understanding your patrons is key to serving them well. Libraries need to use marketing tools just like other businesses so they can know and tailor their service to their patrons.

The annual business meeting followed lunch at which I was recognized for being awarded the ACRL National Conference Scholarship. This scholarship allowed  me to attend both this conference and the ACRL National Conference in Seattle, for which I am truly grateful.

The afternoon consisted of a plenary session in which all the people who attended different sessions brought their findings and questions together to share with the group. They also used Twitter to enhance the session and projected tweets onto the big screen, which I thought was an excellent addition to the discussion.

I found Anne Washburne‘s insights to be the most helpful. She said that “people are forgetting how to be nice to each other.” Customer service is about treating people with kindness. But this also applies in your workplace. She stated that anyone can be a change agent, just by owning their work environment and being positive. This means not going into work making excuses and complaining but coming in purposefully everyday and realizing that everyday you can make a change. I know I was a little inspired.

The conference wrapped up with a social hour which I thought was very beneficial. I was able to meet a lot of different people from around New England who are doing some pretty cool things. I also may have volunteered for helping to get a stronger ACRL-NEC presence in Northern New England. I know that even in the Burlington area we have five colleges and we do not collaborate as much as we should. I would like to see a stronger cohesion and simply more conversation among us simply because I think we can learn a lot from each other and it would allow all of us to serve our customers better.

I have found Twitter to be really useful for conferences in terms of both networking as well as a perpetual awareness tool. By searching for the #acrl2009 tag on Twitter Search I was able to see what other people were thinking and doing in the conference. I could even see the thoughts of people who were in the same room as me attending the same presentation and have a discussion twenty chairs away without being disruptive. I can see why Twitter is growing so fast.

The all conference reception held at the EMP/SFM. There was a lot of awesome music paraphernalia as well as enough sci-fi and robot artifacts to keep any geek drooling. But there were also massive amounts of librarians dancing. I know from my grad school experience at UW-Madison that librarians are not afraid to do max partying, but I wasn’t sure if it was a universal certainty. It clearly is. Librarians are people too. Despite the stereotypes, they like to have a few drinks, cut loose, and dance just like everyone else (albeit in a slightly dorkier way).

Sunday morning I attended a panel session on User Experience called If Fish Markets Can Do It So Can We hosted by Steven Bell, Brian Matthews, and Valeda Dent Goodman. I think it opened my eyes a bit. Libraries are often too focused on their stuff (books, databases, etc.) and not the user experience. Sure we have lots of stuff, but if it is difficult or annoying to use, people are just going to use Google instead. We’re not just selling our stuff, we‘re selling the experience. In a lot of cases the experience is the product.

Coffee beans are dirt cheap, but Starbucks charges three bucks for a cup of coffee. The coffee itself doesn’t cost that much. Starbucks is adding value by selling the experience (hip music, nice atmosphere, etc.). I hope to think about this more in the future and ask myself: what is the experience of our users and how can we improve it?

The final conference event was the closing keynote speaker Ira Glass. Once again, I had never heard of him (I feel like I live under a rock), and once again I was astonished. I love finding out new things and hearing new people’s ideas.

Glass was an excellent choice to close the conference. His format was similar to his radio show where he would inter-mix him talking with segments that he has done and offering the audience insights. The overall theme was about storytelling. Glass discussed how stories have action and then a little nugget of insight, repeating over and over. It also has to feel like it is going somewhere. It doesn’t matter where, just somewhere. This is what builds suspense and makes for good narrative. This is what Glass does on his show.

I think this idea of being a good storyteller is important to many different people, not just radio hosts and journalists. Facts make sense if laid out in a rational way, but if couched in an interesting story, they become more memorable and the audience develops a better emotional connection to them. Telling a good story can help you sell ideas or teach students. It is an extremely beneficial skill to have and I hope to work on my own storytelling ability.

I listened to the This American Life podcast on the plane and have likely found another piece of information with which to overload myself. I look forward to collecting together all that I have gained from this conference whether it’s new ideas, new contacts, or fresh perspectives and begin using them to improve both myself and Champlain College.