a CCLove note

I wanted to wind the first half-year at my new organization down with a salute to my fabulous new CCL colleagues, whom I have come to know (and love) over the past months. I work among dedicated/creative individuals who take a heart-on-sleeve approach to pretty much everything they do, which fosters an excellent level of service and a close and supportive community of endeavor.

Thank you all for your energy, dedication, and up-for-it attitude: I am proud of the work that we do, as should we all be. This feeling extends into the student, faculty, and staff community of the Claremont Colleges, where I have felt welcomed/included/ challenged: taking stock, I couldn’t feel more at home.

the mobile shift: not exactly news

Now, down to project business. Mobile platforms and services have become one of the most handily bandied-about concepts in libraryland over the last few years, and for very good reason. Recent research from ECAR, PIL (pdf), and Pew (among others) documents a mobile shift in personal and academic connectivity, communication, and access among learners. My own research for the Council of Chief Librarians of California Community Colleges in 2011 examined in part the receptivity of participants to mobile library functionality, which resoundingly confirmed mobile trends. Figure 27  shows mobile library interest among smartphone/web-enabled mobile device owners, which represented 56% (N=1,453) of our five-campus survey population (CCL LTES Final Report, p. 36).

In all categories, a majority of respondents indicated they were very or fairly likely to use mobile library content, research, and support options from their device, significantly higher than other technology applications such as location-based services and social media (with the exception of a Facebook and YouTube). See Figure 26 (ibid., p 34).

the other mobile

While crucial to acknowledge growing patron demand for mobile access, it is also important to consider historic and more contemporary manifestations of mobile services, and the actionable attributes they share with the device trend (e.g., bookmobiles, Street Reference and other roving models, all of which call upon portability, flexibility, and a degree of informality).

One such example is the “Library on Wheels”, a recent slant on peripatetic librarianship that we’ve been experimenting with at CCL this term.

The brainchild of Science Librarian Sean Stone (pictured), what began as a no-frills vendor pushcart has been transformed into the cheapest branch library there ever was. Ringing in at about $2500 (with shipping) from a company called Big Top Carts, a semi-hefty initial purchase has provided a priceless answer to our relatively unique problem of providing outreach and research services to seven contiguous campuses. Several of the Claremont Colleges are quite distanced from the physical Library – Harvey Mudd and Pitzer in particular – making the cart an excellent means of reaching students and faculty on their own turf. (It also helps that we are in Southern California, making outdoor outreach a year-long possibility.)

cart staffing

Librarians typically take the cart to a given campus for a shift of 1-2 hours during peak student foot traffic times, e.g., lunch or between classes. On a typical outing, the Mobile Library is loaded with everything from a laptop to water to flyers to buttons to other branding/marketing materials to craft supplies to free gift books, plus extra swag and edibles at special events. It’s heavy but by no means impossible to maneuver, providing (imho) an excellent quad/glut workout on hills. Timing and placement of the forays are key, so we are building a custom Google Map of cart locations and spots for flyering, etc. on each of the Claremont campuses as we discover them.

number/nature/quality of interactions

The cart is so garishly eye-catching (whether stationary or in motion) that it’s almost impossible to walk past without at least consciously attempting to ignore. In the first four months of Mobile Library activity, we have logged well over of two thousand cart-based interactions, both in typical “shifts” on the campuses as well as over the course special events (outreach gold mines that I’ll describe in greater detail below).

With a combined FTE of around 6,000 at the Colleges, I read this as a relatively incredible achievement in terms of raw community penetration. Using the cart this term has facilitated an untold number of new user impressions, shared Library messages, learned faces, and new connections. Sean and Natalie Tagge, Instruction Services colleagues, Mobile Libray program managers, and the most frequent cart wranglers, report anything from between 15-50 interactions in a typical one or two-hour shift, staffed solo or with a partner. At a recent event outside the dining hall at Scripps College, my colleague Sara Lowe logged over 130 interactions in a single hour.

Invariably, interactions include significant reference or research-related queries. Ongoing transaction logs and statistics-tracking indicate that everything from friendly (or incredulous) interactions to informational queries to in-depth reference transactions with students/faculty/staff occur.

(service) personality shift

As Science Librarian, Sean in particular has observed that cart forays are an excellent way to build relationships with faculty and students who, though physically elusive, may be heavy digital users with important collection and service input. The Mobile Library provides a literal just-in-time resource, wherein students can stop by and ask a random question they may not have tracked us down for, but that materialized when the cart was spotted. These “drive-by’ interactions are infinitely more difficult to achieve when not pounding the pavement to the respective Colleges.

At the cart, my own service ethic changes: I have found that it is impossible to be passive. Not unlike a carnival barker, I find myself hollering, huckstering, beckoning, cajoling, and gesturing people over. Some approach out of curiosity, others out of recognition. At a desk, the atmosphere is far more internalized and quiet, more appropriate for a library but sometimes perpetuating the unapproachability complex that so many of us struggle with. In my experience, roving reference inside a library is sometimes met with incredulity – somehow, open-air approachability cuts down on the Library narc/hall monitor effect.

holiday/thematic shtick 

Themed forays and cart-wheeling to special campus events are proving particularly useful, and there are no end to holiday-related ideas. The presence of the cart is far more visible than a simple table setup, hence more effective at attracting attention and sustaining presence. When we collectively staffed the 5-college “Turf Dinner”, an orientation gathering of student organizations early in the term, we made contact with over four hundred (mostly first-year) students, handing out information/swag and making sure they left with a clear Library impression of accessibly quirky and involved approachability.

A Halloween cart event was hugely successful, rolling to the five undergraduate colleges and handing out candy, etc. on an open sign-up basis for all Library staff, many in full costume. Over the course of the day, we interacted with upwards of seven hundred students, also succeeding in serious staff bonding.

Most recently, Natalie spearheaded mobile “Research Therapy” hours at each campus, providing last-minute support and sustenance to students during crunch-time, handing out free books, and accepting items as a mobile return system. Again, we reached over 300 across the campuses. At the wrong place at the wrong time, however, the numbers can be quite low – during a Research Therapy foray to the Claremont Graduate University (my first cart visit to that college) I only interacted with a handful of individuals over the space of an hour. That said, all engaged in long conversations, providing ready Library feedback, asking questions, and giving strategic insight about cart timing and placement.

triage & next steps

Aside from the fact that the plexi exoskeleton is in danger of chipping when you accidentally ram into something, the cart is working beautifully (that this is my only complaint speaks volumes). We recently held a Skillshare discussion in which we developed a daily cart outreach schedule to try on a more regular basis in Spring – Sean is developing a public Cart Calendar that will show hours and locations on a more permanent basis. Collective brainstorming produced simple ideas for improvement (such as a card rolodex on deck and a magnetic letterboard for changeable signage, among other small improvements). Eventually, we’re thinking of tagging the cart somehow and having it register on a dynamic location map – more on that in the future, I hope.

Final thought: Hats off to Sean, Natalie, Sara, and all others who have poured sweat and mashed toes into this experiment: big win for the home team.

Stay tuned to the next round of project curve, part seven: curriculum mapping, revisited/reflected.

Several are framed in my office, and I’ve watched so many new and seasoned librarians, faculty, and students grow misty-eyed (and saliva-mouthed) over them that it’s high time they were shared more widely. Last week I brought the batch to the Claremont Colleges Digital Library to get the ball rolling for an archival quality collection (many thanks to Gabriel Jaramillo for his generous digitization help). I’ll write a post on the instructional value and visual content (a design-minder’s dream – hand drawn!) of these images after the ideas have percolated, but in the meantime the set is linked at libraries past/present: peabody visual aids in flickr.

mopac, nopac.

Another impetus for digitizing the series is a talk I’m giving a talk this month at the University of Connecticut Libraries, called “Library as Indicator Species: Evolution, or Extinction?” My project is to explore the cultural, ideological, and social meaning of libraries at a liminal moment in their/our history, in order to address several questions: Are libraries as an institution in decline? Are our representative values persistent? Are we content, container, and/or concept?

I ask these questions because the social and fiscal context of information use continues to transform. Not only have  tectonic shifts in media and access method brought the very idea of the “traditional” library into question among many, our shared professional reality of consolidations, defunding, closures, and layoffs gives the topic true urgency. If these are our earthquakes, their aftershocks are ongoing and widely felt.

(d)evolution

From the late 19th to about the turn of the 21st century, libraries in “developed” counties were to a certain extent culturally reliable in the in the sense that they had become integral to the structure of many civic and educational institutions (e.g., municipalities, universities, grade schools, businesses). In the current context, this is no longer certain.

In “developing” countries, where libraries and other types of public learning spaces are often emergent, the discussion of library relevancy takes a completely different tone. In many regions, the establishment of new libraries (be they physical, digital, or both) is a dire need and a mark of privilege, important to nascent educational and social institutions and feasible only in areas of relative stability. I have a cousin who is a public health educator (Lauren Dunnington). She recently spent several years working on a project with her employer, I-Tech, to train medical librarians in Tanzania in fundamentals such as cataloging and classification, building professional community, and basic computing skills. These and other pop-up projects support critical knowledge infrastructure in areas where the type of library culture most North Americans have grown accustomed to (or taken for granted, or already miss) is being built from the ground up.

Which begs the question: what, exactly, does the catalog card (or disappearance thereof) tell us about a developed and digitizing information context, where we are prompted to ask new and difficult questions of and about libraries? The physical catalog has been dismantled for the most part, but mobile, social, and crowdsourced versions have developed in its place. Libraries continue to provide access and space to explore knowledge, virtual and analog, yet as open and closed digital resources grow and institutional resources dwindle, we are left fighting for self-determination.

shifting perception

A tension in the social/cultural perception of libraries has developed since the advent of the internet, and is is only intensifying with the rapid popular adoption of e-content. At every academic library I have worked, I have had as many conversations with faculty who lament the decline of the print journal as those who applaud it. Libraries are in constant flux, prompting some users to adapt their access strategies as others simply learn the “new” library as though it was the library that has always been.

How many of the knowledge areas described in the Peabody visuals are actually still relevant? Seventy years out, I find it fascinating that so much of my daily experience as a librarian and researcher is reflected in their content. While many of the tools the posters reference are outmoded, the extent to which their organizational strategies currently apply is a bit mindblowing. More importantly, beyond resources and strategies, I find that they represent the values upon which librarianship unarguably still pivots: information access and intellectual freedom.

memory construction

These are my beliefs about libraries, yet library perception is highly individualized. Values by no means transfer by rite or osmosis. Far more nuanced than buildings and websites, libraries are comprised of the experiences, memories, priorities, and needs of their users. Each of us builds a bibliographic history (or lack thereof) within ourselves, whether it is one of dread and evasion or love and solace. In turn, every library has a history and personality unto itself, forged by its surrounding community, collection, staff, and symbolic representation. To generalize about the relevance of libraries is as daunting a task as generalizing about the existence and meaning of any other group of individuals or institutions, who may hold characteristics in common but remain very much distinct.

Think about it – who was your first librarian? Can you remember a public or school library you went to before you were, say, ten? Many of us (librarian or no) have visceral memories of buildings, books, experiences, and individuals – I can rattle mine off at length, both positive and negative. These memories are not relegated to the internal or personal – huge amounts of scholarly and artistic output has idealized libraries over the centuries, adding to the collective memory of their meaning and makeup.

If libraries exist in the minds of individuals and the context of communities, we are filtered (and funded) through their respective/collective value systems. Prejudices, perceptions, and nostalgia follows and defines us, as important to challenge as to acknowledge and respect.

last(ing) bastion

To me, libraries might represent the pinnacle of an free intellectual democracy, while my cousin might think of them as a key tool in combating infant mortality. You might see the misappropriation of scarce public resources, whereas your partner might question the need for the institution if information is now free and ubiquitous.

In terms of external perceptions, this means that the radical changes occurring in many of our organizations and practices are perceived with great diversity, from a) unobserved and lost to the ether, b) resented departures from the “life of the mind”, c) welcome adjustments to a digital era, to d) nostalgic spasms of fiscal waste.

While all of these narratives are strong, I believe that the image of the library as a reliable, quiet bastion of bookdom has the most dogged cultural persistence. There is as much support in this perception as there is danger of obsolescence. We represent many things to people, but when we go about the process of changing, some of those representations begin to look and feel unfamiliar.

fixed dynamism

In my observation, library users tend to want and expect a consistent experience, and one that reflects their understanding of the purpose of the institution (free and unbiased access to materials,  information support, public space, warehouse of print journals, etc.). Patrons desire free and easy access to content and assistance, which librarians want nothing more than to provide. However, when our methods and media of provision shift, some are better served by change while others are not.

Paradoxically, libraries are at once fixed and dynamic by nature. As our collections, structures, strategies, and staff evolve constantly to reflect the needs and resources of our communities, they do so based on an unchanging commitment to access and discovery. From the user perspective, I observe that this dynamism has long been obscured by an oversimplified end product: content. Both the principle and process of the library life cycle have been hidden from the public for decades by design, acquisition and description and redefinition occurring under wraps and behind closed doors, poorly communicated and seldomly vetted. In other words, the what of libraries stands in the way of our why and how.

As this why and how is called into question, our changing impact on the collective experience merits careful consideration. Are libraries doing the work to foster future memories, enthusiasts, and advocates? Are we creating irreplaceable and unique experiences, or has the cultural context changed to the degree that these experiences are being had elsewhere? These questions are well worth exploring, and present interesting challenges on the path to relevancy and redefinition.

depth perception

In my opinion, those of us who help define libraries should keep one creative eye on the future and one reflective eye on artifacts like the Peabody posters. Service innovations, new roles and collaborations, contributions to the digital transition, physical and digital facility redesigns, participatory media projects, and process redefinitions such as patron-driven acquisitions are not enough. It is critical to communicate the why, how, and what of new library iterations with equivalent urgency, and connect them to the unique cultural role and principle of libraries past and future.

The more I look at these images, the more clearly I observe that not only have core library values remained true through tectonic shifts, they have shaped the shifts themselves. As we open and adapt practice and process to the user, we should always remember (and relentlessly remind) that, in addition to materials, it is individual experiences and irreplaceable principles that make libraries libraries. This cumulative advocacy will ensure that our organizations are understood, shaped, and perceived as of enduring value to the collective social memory.

I’ve been working with the Council of Chief Librarians of California Community Colleges (CCLCCC) to develop a coordinated online user study strategy that could feasibly scale to all 112 community colleges in California. The trial run of this survey occurred in February of 2011, and involved five colleges throughout the state (East Los Angeles College, Merced College, Mendocino College, Mission College, & Santa Barbara City College). A total of 3,168 students attempted the LTES survey at an 80% completion rate and a 12% rate of return based on total full time enrollment (25,625 at the combined campuses).

The Student Library and Technology Engagement Survey was designed to address the following goals:

• Understand local users. Examine the library, information, communication, and academic technology characteristics of California community college (CCC) students.
• Track technology trends. Chart the use of emerging media platforms and communication tools by CCC students.
• Support learning needs. Determine the library’s role in the personal learning environments of CCC students, and identify how to respond more strategically to academic/information needs.
• Prioritize and refine services. Evaluate and adapt traditional and tech-based library services based on user insight.
• Foster cohesion. Provide a common user research strategy for CCC libraries.

Each school sampled their populations via different methods (all-student email v. social media, etc.) in order to test rates of return and data quality. This differentiated research design limits the generalizability of pilot findings, but sheds significant light on survey promotional strategies and the insights that can be inferred from varying sampling methods.

The final project report summarizes the research strategy and initial findings of the CCC Student Library & Technology Engagement Survey, and includes an open access sharealike questionnaire template for non-CCL member institutions to adapt and use in their own contexts:

key findings

Survey results provide insight into the connections between library and technology perceptions, use, and receptivity to emerging library platforms (mobile, social, etc.) at each pilot campus:

Library Engagement
• Student populations interacted frequently with their physical and digital campus libraries (though significantly more so with brick-and-mortar facilities), and tended to access information resources for research purposes at varied points during the semester based on assignment-related information need.
• “Library as place” was a central theme among participants, who consistently expressed the desire for longer hours, larger facilities, and more resources.
• Respondents frequently cited the quiet, clean atmosphere of campus library facilities as conducive to academic productivity, often in contrast to their home environments.
• Participants rated their information search abilities in an open web context significantly higher than their library research abilities.
• Students who had participated in library instruction reported more positive library perceptions and higher levels of library use and awareness than those who had not.
• Students accessed course readings using an array of web, commercial, library-provided, and informal methods.
• Open-ended comments conveyed a widespread perception of library value as well as a positive reaction to the survey project itself, which can be interpreted as creating ancillary outreach/awareness effects for participating campuses.

Technology Engagement
• Participants owned and used a wide variety of technology devices, web tools, and social media sites, but also expressed a lack of awareness and/or interest in some technology platforms relative to others.
• Participants reflected an ongoing trend toward reliance on mobile devices such as smartphones, which they applied to diverse academic and personal uses.
• Students valued their technology skill development at community college.
• Information technology use was perceived as a positive factor in learning, academic productivity, and collaboration.
• Social and multimedia platforms were often used in the context of coursework.
• Many participants reported challenges affording necessary academic technologies.

Library Technology Receptivity
• Participants demonstrated interest in library services delivered via social media platforms. Among the available options, respondents were most receptive to services offered via Facebook and YouTube.
• Respondents indicated high levels of interest in library services delivered via mobile platforms, but expressed greater receptivity to some types of mobile library functionality over others (e.g., hours, overdue notices, and renewal features rated higher than “ask a librarian” options).

additional background

This effort arose from an acknowledgement that, at a time of widespread transition and resource scarcity in higher education, robust inquiry is needed at the campus level to understand the diversity of user needs and characteristics. If known, these factors can facilitate a streamlined library and academic technology framework that supports student learning through evidence-based practice.

In coordination with the CCL Executive Board, myself and a working group consisting of pilot participant library directors, including Tim Karas of Mission College (Chair), John Koetzner of Mendocino College, Kenley Neufeld of Santa Barbara City College, Choonhee Rhim of East Los Angeles Community College, and Susan Walsh of Merced College, developed and administered the study between Fall of 2010 and Spring of 2011.

If you have questions about this study or its open access questionnaire template, please visit www.cclccc.org/contact.html or contact me at charbooth at gmail.

copyright & citation information

This report is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Booth, C. (2011). California Community College Student Library & Technology Engagement Survey: 2011 Pilot, Final Report. Sacramento, CA: Council of Chief Librarians of California Community Colleges, available from http://www.cclccc.org/.

repurposing and social making

A brief aside before I get to the templates. When you start turning out diy marketing materials, it definitely behooves to always consider how you can 1) take one product and remake it in another venue (aka design recycling) and 2) make the making itself an engaging community-of-practice activity  (e.g., we’re holding pressing parties at orientation and other times of dire need).

Here are a few examples of 1), or how we’re starting to rework the original love your library concept into other materials and forums (and much thanks to Alex Chappell for the awesome button photo, Natalie Tagge for the Illustrator work and maker party action, and Sheree Fu for busting out the stickers):

drop-in workshop flyer

libguides box

multipurpose sticker

button press templates

Ever since I posted about the button press, I’ve been getting requests from other maker librarians for template trades. Without further ado, here are several downloadable button designs. All I ask is that if you use any of these and it works out for you, consider sending the following my way in one forum or another:

a)    a pic of the final product in action

b)    a descriptive comment on this post, and/or

c)    a template design of your own in return (I’ll spread the word if you like by adding yours to this post or SlideShare or linking to its location).

specs

All of these are made for a 1’’ button press and circle cutter (I haven’t tried them in a larger system, although they would likely scale up fine) and are creative commons sharealike for non-commercial purposes. When you print on 8.5×11 paper, don’t “fit to printable area” as a setting (it will scale the designs down by a few percentage points: not the end of the world but noticeably smaller during the cutting phase). Advanced makers: please charbooth at gmail me if you’re interested in the .ai files.

Some of the templates are pre-heartstamped and colored for those time-pressed among you, while others are blank: you can customize by printing on fancy paper and stamping your own designs or take a finished template and run. The last and simplest template can be imported into InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, etc. and used to build new buttons from scratch.

Happy making, and love your library.

I’ll do this in two stages. Today’s post focuses on concept maps writ large, software options, and several mapping strategies we’re exploring at the Claremont Colleges Library. Soon, I’ll follow with a description of a pilot project a colleague and I are currently undertaking, which uses curriculum maps and an IL rubric to embed library instruction throughout the core course series of the cross-colleges Environmental Analysis program.

First:

a gross oversimplification of the mapping process

Concept mapping is often used interchangeably with ‘mind mapping’, two of the most intuitive, personalisable, and lowest barrier to entry visualization methods I have encountered. Anchored in the depiction of related ideas, mapping a concept is as easily achieved via whiteboard or paper as with one of countless available software options. It can be applied toward as many ends as one finds productive, and the mapping process is simplicity itself:

a) select a purpose/outcome, e.g. gross oversimplification of concept mapping for blog post

b) identify a central idea or “node”, e.g., best breakfast ever

c) branch additional topics off the central node (e.g, bacon, chilaquiles, etc.)

d) and add sub-topics to these ad infinitum according to desired level of detail (click on images to enlarge).

creative utility

The more I engage with visual concept mapping strategies, the more useful personal and organizational purposes I discover. Concept maps can be applied as an interesting/effective communication and collaboration tool, applicable to presentations, outreach, and teaching as well as small-group or solo brainstorming, planning, strategic thinking, and non-linear documentation.

Once you grasp the method and applications, contextual visualization opportunities begin to present themselves readily. Moreover, they start to supplant or provide alternative approaches to traditional text-based workflows. For example, at a recent staff training on concept mapping, I asked participants what they could imagine mapping that might make their life or work easier. These are a few of the suggestions I received:

• an instruction outline that could double as a classroom activity
• data production/publication sources throughout the Colleges
• a map of frequently-consulted administrative contacts
• a half-marathon preparation plan
• the framework for a website redesign
• faculty contacts and research areas map
• technical services processes

By the end of the hour-long training (and regardless of prior experience) participants had made considerable headway toward building drafts of each of these maps, and most expressed interest in revising and refining them in the near future.

cartographic context(s)

I’ve run on about the complexity of my organization before, but, for this post, touching again on the topic is instrumental. The Claremont Colleges are unique: a consortium of seven contiguous but independent institutions (five liberal arts colleges and two graduate schools), each with its own personality and array of majors, departments, and academic support programs (some institution-specific, others coordinated cross-colleges). One library mothership serves them all, which, needless to say, ups the complexity ante for all of our initiatives.

As a (relatively) recent hire going about the process of understanding this context, I found that my usual approach to organizational learning had been factored exponentially. If my purpose as Instruction Services Manager was to determine how to integrate relevant library and research instruction through the intricate curricular maze presented by a seven-college system, rather than developing a single strategy I had to consider the needs and realities of multiple, intertwined institutions.

It was instantly apparent that scanning across seven websites and piecing together bits of information about contacts from colleagues would be an inefficient learning strategy, so in my first month on the job I scrambled for non-linear methods of documentation.  I wanted an alternative approach that would allow me to, in essence, plot and understand the programs, academic support units, courses, contacts, etc. that existed across the Colleges, in order to strategize solutions that arched over all or focused on particular areas of need. That my institutional topography thwarted one-dimensional information gathering led me to the discovery that it could be visualized (rather beautifully: bonus) through concept and curriculum mapping.

mindomo mapping

After trialing several platforms, I chose to manage Claremont’s mapping project using Mindomo, a freemium web-based product with a straightforward Flash interface and an impressive range of features and functionality, including web and desktop/offline editing, sharing, collaboration, customization, interactive web publication, multiple format exporting and importing, multimedia linking and document uploading, annotation, and accessible HTML versions of published maps.

Mindomo has its quirks – chief among these are the mobile and accessibility challenges presented by the Flash interface – but I have found workarounds for all irritations and roadblocks thus far through a) the trusty undo-redo, b) exploring product functionality, and/or c) reaching out to a responsive support team (which is, incidentally, highly precious doing team-building activities on Facebook).

Mindomo provides for different levels of engagement – free for light users through a basic account (three maps) and more robust use through “premium” version, which allows the sort of centralized administrative capability I sought for an institutional project: a “mothership” account with which staff can share their maps for purposes of centralized management, archiving, format backups, and best practices communication.

An upcoming beta release appears at first glance to address several of my minor gripes, and, as should be familiar to any startup web app user, while I am knocking wood that Mindomo survives and thrives I am also regularly exporting maps in PDF, image, and spreadsheet formats for purposes of preservation. One of the aspects of Mindomo I appreciate is the web-based interface (the desktop app is a bit frustrating), but popular desktop mapping tools include FreeMind and XMind on the freeside, while Visio or Inspiration are popular desktop on the paid end.

collaborative visualization

Across multiple access and collaboration avenues, concept mapping lends itself to individual long-range documentation and planning efforts such as charting past instruction to tracking outreach to academic support units (click Mindomo interface image above for detail), as well as dynamic, in-the-moment public applications like brainstorming and group discussion capture.

This final example points to a map created during a series of organization-wide visioning talks for the future of core Claremont Colleges Library services. My colleague and co-facilitator, Natalie Tagge (whom, I should mention, recently revealed to me that she trained as a trick rider in her youth: amazing) and I used Mindomo to structure, record, and share our discussion, which focused on educational initiatives. If you explore the web version of this map, you’ll find image documentation, uploaded documents (agenda and evaluation), and our captured discursive thread, which was shared with participants live via projection and URL as well as through an emailed link after the event.

curriculum mapping

Among the most powerful uses of this visualization method I have found is curriculum mapping. Curriculum mapping is a long-established process of plotting the core sequence and possible variations of subjects/concepts/courses/skills available to a learner in a particular context. Imagine understanding at a glance the potential paths and/or courses available to an English or Chemistry major at any two or four-year institution, as defined by the dynamic local interplay of faculty, course availability, outcomes, and requirements. For example…

Curriculum mapping is a window of insight into the student and faculty experience, and a method of understanding the combinations and recombinations of subjects and courses offered and not offered, required and not required, that lead learners from general prerequisites to a degree in hand. No two curricula are the same, and every potential path varies by institution. Perceiving the breadth of possibilities and tracks of specialization is the purpose of this exercise.

In libraries, mapping curriculum and other academic structures/relationships can be useful on many levels. The approach allows instruction/outreach/embedded librarians to understand where their research skills and information literacy efforts are best directed across the curriculum, provides liaisons and others involved in collection development with the ability to identify subject specialties and areas of developing research need. Digital publication and archives-oriented individuals can capture institutional contexts at moments in time in order to present changing institutional structure. Administration can gather and demonstrate a holistic perspective on the academic breadth and trajectories of an organization in order to apportion resources accordingly.

mapping strategies

Many curriculum mapping projects I have seen are laid out in a linear or grid format similar to a rubric. “Mapping” in this sense is better described as  “charting”, which lacks a visual component but acknowledges the core practice of identifying span and sequence of a major or disciplinary area. Dynamic products such as Mindomo facilitate what I believe is a far more intuitive and representative form of mapping, a literal mapping of curriculum through visual means, which allows for the identification of tracks, layers, facets, and connections too complex for unilateral rendering.

At the Claremont Colleges Library, we follow a “traditional” liaison model that matches subject librarians to one or more disciplines. In our seven–college environment, this translates to one librarian working with, for example, five psychology departments, seven math departments, four gender and women’s studies degree tracks, and/or a joint science program shared by three colleges. Each major has its a foundational core and path that may or may not be offered jointly. Classes are commonly cross listed and requirements are liberally distributed, meaning that most upper-level courses are likely to feature not only a crop of non-majors, but cross-college pollination as well.

Myself and a few pilot adopters began using curriculum mapping as a means to contend with this complex liaison landscape and develop strategic insight into our disciplinary areas toward the beginning of the summer. In so doing, I hoped for broader workflow and strategy insight that would lead us toward a larger  goal of engaging all of our subject liaison colleagues in mapping their respective departments in order to identify where instructional and collection development efforts could be best directed. Moreover, I hoped to equip them with objects (maps and rubrics) that can be repurposed for a unique approach to faculty outreach.

Our pilot mapping strategies have varied in detail and complexity and grown increasingly sophisticated. Take, for example, two early maps developed by my colleague, Science Librarian (and mapping genius) Sean Stone.

The above, which I would describe as a course map, is a simple listing of introductory, archived, and upper level classes offered through the Geology Department at Pomona College. Each class is linked to its catalog description, and departmental learning goals are also identified. By comparison, the below map, better described as a degree map, identifies the tracks, respective course sequences, and requirements available to Pomona Geology majors and minors.

Another, more complex example. The below depicts a detail from a larger degree requirements map created by another colleague and excellent mapster (and sharp dresser, might I add), Gender/Women’s Studies and Art History Librarian Alex Chappell.

Alex is actively applying her mapping work toward faculty collaboration on a curriculum committee:

I had a meeting with Chris Guzaitis, Asst. Prof. of Gender and Women’s Studies (GWS) at Scripps College, ostensibly about how well our library collections meet the needs of the new queer studies track in the GWS major at Scripps. But I had just been working on my maps of the Requirements for a GWS major at the 5Cs and of the GWS/GFS curriculum at the 5Cs so wanted to show them to her. I began by explaining the pilot project to map the curriculum and then to use the maps as a way to locate opportunities for research instruction. I told her that we know that we are not consistently reaching the students in their middle years which leaves them ill-prepared for their senior thesis, and that we are trying to remedy this in a programmatic way. She was very enthusiastic about the maps, especially the map showing the GWS/GFS courses and cross-listed courses at the 5Cs. She thought the map would be useful for students, suggesting that it be included in the Intercollegiate Women’s Studies website, and that it could be useful for faculty when advocating for additional faculty or when curriculum planning. And the map was a useful tool in our conversation, since we could see all of the courses offered in her department, and talk about which ones have a research component and which ones would likely be made up largely of GWS majors.

mapping processes

Maps such as these are built by triangulating information from course catalogs, departmental websites, and direct communication with faculty, neatly forcing the creator to dig into the details of a given department up to their elbows. By far, this is the most immersive approach I have discovered to organizational and disciplinary learning. If maps are to be kept current and representative they must be reviewed and revised on a regular basis (we’re recommending versioned yearly maps), another insight upkeep strategy that follows from thorough outreach and curriculum mapping.

Through much trial and error, Sean and I have arrived at a hybrid version of the degree and course map that also identifies ancillary aspects of a major or department, such as student organizations, faculty, study abroad opportunities, and so forth. Combining several aspects of curriculum mapping into a single document leverages the depth of layering and multifunctionality that the approach can provide, thus cutting down on the proliferation of maps and presenting a more integrated view of a given disciplinary landscape. We have made this available as a shared template to our colleagues, not as a prescriptive requirement but a reliable structure that follows color, metadata, and annotation conventions and suggests potential angles of approach that provide a rounded and comprehensive perspective.

next up: curriculum mapping case study (environmental analysis)

We’ve begun training our colleagues in the process and rationale of curriculum mapping as a means of building insight, starting conversations with faculty, and identifying strategic areas in which to direct our efforts. Thus far excellent progress has been made, and my eventual goal is to collaboratively, as an organization, develop a series of disciplinary cross-colleges maps that are published and updated yearly as a unique resource provided by the Library (an entity with a uniquely holistic perspective on the seven institutions, and invested in clear understanding of all of their needs, community members, and academic offerings).

In the soon-to-materialize part two of mapping (concept to curriculum), I’ll explore an ongoing curriculum mapping and integration project Sean and I are developing with faculty in the five-college Environmental Analysis program.

In a nutshell, we have

1 mapped the EA curriculum

2 identified high-impact core courses that would give us the opportunity to offer tiered and scaffolded research and information skills instruction to EA majors

3 developed an IL competencies rubric and instruction plan for these courses:

4 presented our map, rubric, and proposed strategy to EA faculty

5 refined it based on their feedback, and

6 are currently in the planning stages for providing instruction to each course this Fall (EA 10, 20, 30, and Thesis).

This strategy, we hope, will provide a tested/proven two-fisted (map and rubric) approach and templates that will scale up to other liaisons and subject areas.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

The previous installment of my orienting-to-Claremont series outlined an assignment design rubric a colleague and I adapted for faculty collaboration; this post describes the creation of the ProfDevLib, a local staff professional development library.

My goals for establishing this diminutive collection were five-fold:

a) create a shared cache of learning/productivity materials,
b) highlight local librarian publications,
c) provide fodder for an all-staff reading group,
d) identify strong contributions to the professional literature,

and, last but not least,

e) finally put LibraryThing to good use in my own practice.

The idea for an informal professional development collection came from my recent days at UC Berkeley; Moffitt Library featured an oft-consulted staff library near my office cubicile. The collection at Cal focused on academic librarianship, assessment, research, instruction, web development, etc., and was tremendously useful to have close at hand. I usually had between four and six things signed out at any given time – materials circulated from a clipboard, and our department admin assistant would periodically hunt down offenders (such as myself) who kept items for an unseemly duration.

I wanted to create the same type of resource at Claremont, with a few embellishments (catalog discoverability, formal location code, a LibraryThing profile, staff purchase request form, new acquisitions feed, reading discussion group, etc.). Armed with a generous budget and blessing from my director, I determined a location and circulation strategy, sought staff suggestions and bought the first round of fifty-odd items, requested a non-circ location code (HON PROF DEV), forwarded materials to our tech services unit for cataloging processing, requested a Blais featured list and new items RSS feed, built the LibraryThing profile, made up a few signs using our library typeface template, enlisted the help of my awesome new colleague Natalie Tagge to determine a reading group strategy and transition a few items from the circulating collection, and, finally, scheduled an unveiling with food/fanfare. All told, about $1500 and a month of low-intensity doings.

In the interest of recycling good copy, I’ll end with the wrap-up message I sent out after the unveiling event:

Thanks to all who came to watch the – literal – unveiling of the ProfDevLib from under a plaid blanket this morning (especially Adam, who provided a bagpipe serenade, and Natalie, who supplied fruit salad). For those jealous folks who didn’t make it, you can take items out of the collection anytime. More details on the ProfDevLib’s location and circulation “procedure” follows below the photos, info that will also be listed in the Resources area of the Library Staff Sakai site. Also, stay tuned for our reading group!

ProfDevLib items: http://tinyurl.com/cclprofdevlib.

ProfDevLib details:

The collection is located near Marsha and Mauricio in Iris North (signs point the way). It’s available for anyone to use, and its items are arranged in call-number order.The ProfDevLib will operate on an informal sign-out system via clipboard, but for discoverability purposes items are cataloged as non-circulating in Blais with the location code HON PROF DEV. Call number labels reflect this new location, and are also marked with a handy red dot to discourage you from sticking them in a book return.

Please keep the suggestions coming at http://tinyurl.com/profdevlibpurchase. *If you’ve authored or contributed a chapter to a book, I want to include it!*

Our CCL ProfDevLib profile on LibraryThing lists all titles with reader descriptions, rss feeds, ratings, and links to previews in Google Books:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/claremontlibprofdev

We have a ProfDevLib Featured List in Blais:

http://blais.claremont.edu/ftlist

Reading Discussion Group:

Thanks to a suggestion at the Educational Initiatives discussion this week, we’re starting a monthly discussion group featuring selections from the ProfDevLib. You’ll soon be seeing an invitation to the first event, where we’ll read and discuss:

Long, D. (2011). Embedded right where the students live : a librarian in the residence halls. In C. Kvenild & K. Calkins (Eds.), Embedded librarians: Moving beyond one-shot instruction. (199-209) Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.

Items are now circulating and five additional purchase suggestions have come in since the unveiling, all of which is a nice early indication of use/interest. A final goal is to “encourage” (e.g., target) individuals who suggest purchases to select excerpts and lead the discussion group from time to time. What remains to be seen, obviously, is how much productive use the ProfDevLib actually gets, and whether the approach needs to be tweaked in any direction. In all, a seriously fun project.

Until the next installment, when I’ll introduce you to project curve, part four: faculty swag bags.

Packing for conferences is all about wise shoe choices, so I’m including a triptych of the four to five pairs that I’ll be bringing to New Orleans. Flips and boots are the other likely suspects.

To each its own function: topsiders for whatever, oxfords for presenting, disgusting Toms for running/spelunking.

To see the oxfords in action, you can catch me Friday the 24th at 9:30  keynoting the RUSA Preconference Strange Bedfellows: IT and Reference Collaborations to Enhance User Experiences, Sunday the 26th at 4 at the EQUACC Progress Panel, and hopefully (if I can swing it), at The Right to Read: Increasing Information Access for People with Print Disabilities Panel on Sunday the 26th from 1:30-3:30.

Happy conferencing, and don’t be afraid of heat/humidity: it’s a beautiful combination.

I’ll also be at a ACRL Immersion Faculty retreat on Thursday, the Mover/Shaker lunch on Friday, the IS Soiree, a bunch of discussions and panels (will tweet enroute) and am making my way to many committee meetings (including the LITA Accessibility Interest Group on Monday morning). Last but not least, there is no way I’m missing Dan Savage, Molly Shannon or Siva Vaidhyanathan.

The wheel in question is a very well-designed and useful Research Guidance Rubric (RGR), created by a pair of librarians at Grand Valley State University, Pete Coco and Hazel McClure. This rubric presents a practical, faculty-focused approach to addressing the increasingly well-documented problem of poorly designed research assignments (see Project Information Literacy’s report, Assigning Inquiry: How Handouts for Research Assignments Guide Today’s College Students (PDF) and the frustration they create for students (and librarians, by extension).

the rgr at gvsu

My colleague Alex Chappell attended LOEX 2011 and was impressed by Pete and Hazel’s work as presented in their session, “Rigging for Rigor: Guiding Classroom Faculty Towards Richer Research Assignments with the Research Guidance Rubric.” A program description from the LOEX 2011 site:

Proceeding from Project Information Literacy’s recent report documenting student needs being left unmet by many research assignment prompts, two librarians developed a tool for faculty to self-assess their assignment prompts. The Research Guidance Rubric (RGR) functions both as a self-evaluation tool for faculty and as a “conversation-starter” between the disciplinary expertise of professors and the information literacy expertise of liaison librarians. We’ll discuss assignment collaborations as we plumb the questions that premise the RGR: what makes a collaboration successful and how can librarian-created tools move the conversation on research assignments toward better student outcomes?

Parts 1 and 2 of their preso are available via YouTube.

Pete explained to me that one of their goals of presenting at LOEX was to “get the RGR into the hands of other librarians for their use and local adaptation… All we ask is 1) attribution, 2) a web link to our original with any adaptations and 3) that you keep us posted on your experience with it.” He and Hazel have “plans to create a companion document for students and a web version that includes examples for users as well as boilerplate text for some of the elements of an assignment prompt… We’ve begun collaborating with our own writing center on the RGR and it seems like an avenue rich with opportunity. Hazel and I both come to librarianship from the writing classroom, so its always nice to see our work resonating with those folks.”

Finally, from Pete: “We really appreciate your advocacy for the tool and, more broadly, the sort of librarianship it envisions.” Hear hear: a librarianship built on shared solutions and local customization.

modifying the rgr

On hearing Alex’s recommendation, I reviewed the RGR and found it to be a tool that could be put to immediate (read: last-minute) use in a faculty planning seminar related to library instruction in Critical Inquiry ID1, the common first-year interdisciplinary course requirement at Pomona College. When asked if my colleague Gale Burrow and I could modify the RGR with attribution and expand it to include potential librarian/faculty collaboration scenarios based on a course and its assignment outcomes, Pete and Hazel not only generously (and quickly) agreed, they supplied a .doc version of the RGR to aid in our 11th-hour remixing project.

ID1 has long had a collaborative (and highly individualized: all syllabi/assignments are unique) library component that often consisted of one-shot sessions and some individual librarian/student appointments, but the Library now finds itself operating with increased instructor capacity (three new teaching-focused librarians) and in the process of developing new e-learning tools and research support avenues. We therefore wanted to use our time with Pomona faculty (one hour) to advocate for a more collaborative and customized approach to library engagement in ID1, supported by well-articulated and scaffolded research assignment prompts with clear outcomes and applicable library instruction strategies. Here is our modified “Research Assignment Design” (RAD) rubric:

We embedded the RAD rubric in our faculty presentation and distributed it in print as a takeaway, using the document primarily as a platform for engaging faculty in a discussion about effective research assignment design and low, medium, and high-intensity librarian collaboration scenarios in the context of ID1.

The strategy and rubric were well-received and relatively successful within the context of the faculty workshop, but our sense is that ongoing revisions to Pete and Hazel’s original are still needed on our end: we changed the RGR to make it align with a different desired outcome (suggesting collaboration methods as well as assignment design guidance), and still have work to do to facilitate said outcome. We plan to continue tweaking RAD to include concrete librarian collaboration scenarios that help faculty imagine beyond the one-shot concept.

When using the rubric as a faculty presentation engagement tool in the future, it struck Gale and I that we should devote more time to exploring its design and applications rather than covering it glancingly, and/or use it to engage faculty in discussions about library collaboration and assignment design at the individual level. Finally, we’re going to suggest the RAD rubric as a resource to teaching librarians at our own ID1 library instructor retreat later in the summer, and will post it to our own website when it’s in a more ship shape and in a version universalized to all of the Claremont Colleges.

Stay tuned for project curve, part three: profdevlib.

As librarians and users, we constantly encounter digital discovery interfaces and collections, but we don’t necessarily interact with the individuals who make them happen. This contributes to a widespread lack of insight into what these operations actually require. Who are the people behind the products? How do they work? When the human element is missing, interfaces can seem inscrutable.

The more I communicated with HathiTrust, the more I realized that they are a surprisingly small group of library-minded folks doing a herculean job not only participating in mass digitization projects with Google and the Internet Archive, but building a new, large-scale digital library with its own features and services. Enter the inspiration for this follow-up interview: to correct my (and others’) misperceptions about this important and emerging librarians’ digital library.

Among other things, Paul and Heather demystify aspects of large-scale collaborative digitization, and describe HathiTrust’s already enormous holdings (here rendered graphically by LJ):

The inspiration for this interview came from the realization that, while I might use digital collections often, I really didn’t understand the work it took to create and maintain them. I had unwittingly developed misperceptions about their quality and functionality.

Misperception correction is a familiar activity for most of us. Think about it: how often have you countered policy claims, re-explained misunderstood services, or, say, stopped a tour guide before they finish telling a group of prospective students that the library provides free year-round soft-serve?

It is impossible to blame the user for getting it wrong from time to time. Patrons don’t have the monopoly on misperception. Uber-specialization, departmental divide syndrome (otherwise known as the silo effect), and inadequate cross-training creates a climate of mutual un-awareness among colleagues and institutions. The digital transition provides an additional learning curve. As products, service models, and access methods develop, it’s easy to lose our bead on the things we don’t “own” (tech-focused or not).

In this climate of constant change, we are all candidates for misperception correction. It is important to recognize that there will be moments when prevailing assumptions about a particular tool, technology, or subject are simply incorrect. These are important learning opportunities, chances to gain new perspective on issues you thought you knew.

Several stereotypical (yet accurate) generalizations: librarians are nerds, librarians like crafts, and librarians tend to have lots of interesting maps, books, magazines, covers, and other ephemera lying around, some of it waiting to be weeded, discarded, and/or recycled.

I have long loved makerism and diy marketing, and have been itching to try an idea I first observed at the downtown San Francisco Public Library. At SFPL, they make buttons and magnets out of what I assume are their graphics-heavy discards (dictionaries, magazines, etc.) and sell them for a few bucks apiece in their small library store. Many libraries order promotional pins from retailers, which is great, but actually procuring the press itself can be a much more powerful/versatile investment.

use 1: maker breaks

Week one at Claremont I asked my director, John McDonald, if I could buy a button machine for projects of this nature. True to form, his response was “totally.” In all, this purchase consisted of a button press, a circle cutter (very necessary), and 1000 pin components. The buttons/machine can be used for any number of things, from one-time outreach to ongoing library marketing. Approximate total cost, $400, and I bought the 1” maker from American Button Machines (fast service, hardy materials).

I put a call-out to my coworkers to comb their offices and donate craft fodder in the form of any and all printed discards, maps, mags, etc. they could find lying around on a booktruck outside of my office (now stacked with all sorts of oddness.) I’ve also been digging through the recycling, copying images from art books, etc., and scouting garage sales for crappy dictionaries, 1970s chemistry textbooks, etc. that are in dire need of repurposing.

Each semester during finals crunch and our 24-hour staffing period, Honnold/Mudd Library puts on an event called Study Breaks, where, for five or six nights, we feed the throngs of students camped out in the library pizza, sandwiches, fruit, and caffeine to fuel their desperate rush to semester’s end. It is a much-appreciated service, and definitely diverting to staff (haggard toilers can become increasingly punchy during periods of “rest.”)

I thought, why not try and provide a cognitive break in addition to a sustenance break? I found a local craft store where I bought a couple of inexpensive stamps (heart, arrow, etc.), ink, and fancy paper, whipped out and printed a quick few custom button designs using Illustrator (“love your library” and “good luck” with a horseshoe) the night of the event, rolled it all downstairs, and set up the press, discards, and templates on a table in the Study Breaks room with a minimalist (i.e., totally ugly: time crunch) sign.

Initially, there was a bit of confusion about what the table was there for. I stood around pressing the love your library buttons (see a how-to video made with the help of my colleague Alex Chappell, which is also embedded near of this post, for a demo). Some students would take a pre-made pin and thank me, many wandered off eating with a promise to  come back in a few. If and when they did return, I’d show them how to use the machine, punch, and point out all the imaging materials they could choose from. Once they got the point that they could make something personal out of any graphic they wanted, they generally started to freak out a little and go after it wholeheartedly.

Before long, each night the table was 6-10 people deep, comparing ideas, asking for advice, elbowing each other out of the way, and making awesome pins out of interesting bits of pictures from their own perspectives. It was an excellent way to get to know my new student community, teach a crafty skill, and afford them a small amount of cerebral release before they returned to the grindstone. As one student confided, “thanks, this was what I needed – it was like an actual break.” It also, I hope, gave them a different perspective on the types of things that librarians can do, and provided me with an important opportunity to introduce myself as an individual (not just in front of a classroom or behind a desk).

I’m planning a series of Maker Breaks, hopefully branching into silkscreening, laminating, stampmaking, fabric arts, etc. Toward this end I’ve been polling my colleagues to get a bead on their diy skillset and hope to involve them in similar forays into maker productivity.

Next up is a staff-focused button Maker Break at our off-campus Records Center. Thanks to my colleagues Bonnie Tijerina and Jason Price, we will also be pressing waffles.

use 2: out-of-the-blue, customized moxie

One of my best initial moments at Claremont was the first evening I used the button press at Maker Breaks. I was testing the equipment on a map discard (maps make the best pins, in my opinion) and noticed a student outside my office that looked extremely mentally/physically dug in to a pile of physics books. On a whim I made him a map-based pin that looked like it might be his style (and matched his shirt) and handed it over randomly. He was extremely stoked and surprised: it was like dispensing drive-by moxie. I did this a few of times with the more desperate looking students (sometimes just with a good luck pin) and it always went over well.

use 3: circulate the press

So much student interest was shown in the button press that I’m figuring out how best to put the system on short-term reserve (e.g., drill it onto a board, slap a bar code on it, and suss out how to handle dispensing the four components that make up the finished pin). Once available, it will be excellent to market to student organizations, small on-campus businesses, and assorted activists. Case in point, I hope to take the press to the Queer Resource Center to have a pin-designing/pressing Maker Break with them in Fall semester… many possibilities on this front.

use 4: elbow grease marketing

After handing out love your library pins to my colleagues, faculty, and students, it’s seriously gratifying to notice them floating around on shirts and bags in the course of a day, and I think the fact that they are obviously handmade (e.g., a little busted, each one different) adds a nice touch. They were one of the items included in another last-minute project that went over very well, new faculty swag bags, which I’ll write about in another installment.

The best part about engaging people collectively (students, coworkers, whomever) with the press in a Maker Break exchange is that you can essentially a) trick them into creating library marketing materials while b) teaching them a new skill and c) giving a second life to items that would otherwise be on the scrap head. Win-win-win.

use 5: library as maker lab

I think that in general libraries are perfectly suited to this type of productive laboratory approach (a point also observed by Seth Godin in a recent, somewhat inexplicably controversial post). I have larger hopes (shared by another colleague, Sheree Fu) of making Honnold/Mudd more of a maker space in and of itself, whether by creating a dedicated lab with diy tools/craft fodder that students can use for projects and inspiration, setting up stations with different maker/doer possibilities around the building, or perhaps tool libraries, bike repair stations, etc. that could help users figure out how to do functional and interesting things. I have heard tell of similar experimentation out in libraryland, and would love to know more about successful approaches to this kind of thing. Other Maker Break suggestions?

Stay tuned for project curve, part two: assignment design rubric.