Get Enlightened! A Few Notes from ELD Lightning Talks

At University of Michigan, engineering librarians partner with health and business librarians to train students on research tools. This allows them to make contacts across campus and develop a joint libguide. Assessment data showed students learning resources they needed to complete multidisciplinary project work. See their online research guide at http://guides.lib.umich.edu/heb.

Caroline Smith at U Las Vegas, Engineering & Architecture Library worked with faculty collaborators to develop a laboratory for educational media exploration. A 3D immersive environment will be created in one of their former study rooms. Students will be able to do software simulations in this space. Positive response from students already about this space. The room will double as a group study space.

Tom Volkening from Michigan State University experienced a sudden renovation project, so surveyed ASEE ELD and 13 of 15 libraries who responded retained the print engineering index. Most libraries put these indexes into off-site storage. MSU are  withdrawing 150 feet of print indexes due to redundancy with online subscription sources.

Eugene Barsky from University of British Columbia shared his info about mining life cycle in this region and symposia. They digitized and provided them free online via the UBC institutional repository. Usage is higher than expected, 5,000 per year. Next step is to work on other conference materials, such as Tailing and Mining Waste.

Jay Bhatt, Drexel, discussed his work with graduate students and teaching information skills. They found first year graduate students were not aware of the research databases within their field of study. Bhatt is working with 12 students, from under-represented populations to bridge them to Ph.D. They created series of six lectures ranging from literature review, current awareness, to citation management.  Delivering in-person through active learning. Assessment includes 2-3 page paper with references using citation management tools. They gave presentations and librarians provided feedback (see Bhatt’s SLA 2011 Poster presentation). Check out the Drexel online tutorials as well.

Amy Van Epps, Purdue University created a workshop “best practices in ethical writing” geared towards graduate students within a teaching course. Van Epps used Wiggins & McTighe's Understanding by Design as basis with “end in mind." Students created concept map with all of the pieces they wanted to teach then asked them to label need to know, good to know, or get familiar with to aid them to prioritize educational content. She tied in “plagiarism” education within this course, and help “ensure understanding” by differentiating between paraphrased, quoted sources.

David  Hubbard from Texas A&M University Libraries offers weekly office hours in the Chemistry building. He offers weekly topics often based on student/faculty questions, sometimes new features/updates, and sharing his own experiences with effective database use. This outreach endeavor serves also as educational opportunity for himself, since he needs to come up with 16 weekly topics. This information is added to the ChemE Librarian Blog and Twitter as a supplement his outreach efforts, and are geared towards graduate students and faculty.

Karen Vagts from Tufts University discussed her collaboration between the library and career development center. Building relationships with career staff can benefit the students, and staff can cross-promote their services.

Bob Schwartzwalder from Stanford discussed digitization of maps, as they are seeing a growing interest in maps and geospatial information. This project is at the “fusion of library’s and IT.” A rare map collection will be digitzed using their new map digitization faculty and a suite of services will be offered. 3D maps with fly-through, 2D maps with ability to compare, resize, and view various thematic views, also, geo-referencing maps in Google Earth.

Karen Andrews at UC Davis, worked with a professor to create small modules using Camtasia to help students learn library resources, such as using Web of Science or Avoiding Plagiarism.

Tracey Primich from Vanderbilt U enthusiastically shared her plan of attack when working with “the dreaded freshmen seminar” for the library-required session.  She gave it a new twist by calling it "Visual Display of Quantitative Information" and uses Edward Tufte’s book. Each assignment required the use of library resources. Had fun teaching students to “lie with data.”  Leveraged Tufte’s opinionated text to foster discussion with students. High student ratings ensued. Allowed Primich to build more interactions with School of Engineering.

Daureen Nesdill, Data Curation Librarian at U of Utah shared her knowledge of ELN or Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, which have been used in industry but not adopted widely within higher education. “This is the lab bench of the future.” The people-side, ELN allows for provenance, validation (date, time stamps, e-signatures), and sharing data with colleagues. Researchers who oversees labs can use this data from the ELN to take a bigger picture look at the researcher happening in his/her lab.
Librarians role? Well, we are already helping with data management plans, institutional repositories, and so on. We need to move back a stage to assist researchers at the grant and data generation phase.

Debbie Morrow at Grand Valley State University has an ABET visit coming up, so library came into the picture with ABET3, lifelong learning. The library had developed IL Core Competencies and worked with curriculum coordinator of engineering 220 course to embed information skills.

Najwa Hanel, from University of Southern California discussed her work with a large population of international students and collaborations with other departments on campus to ensure that these students succeed.

Martin Wallace, University of Maine, offered a brief ACRL IL standards and STEM standards comparison. STEM 3 areas of emphasis:
1. Rapid pace of change within disciplines, need to maintain currency
2. STEM information pose challenges in identifying, evaluating, acquiring, and using information (varied formats, specialized software, etc)
3. Competencies extend beyond IL to software, simulations, etc. 

Why is this important? Mapping with ABET and helps us focus on these more specialized standards for assessment.

Julia Gelfand from UC Irvine discussed her numerous outreach venues and librarians' transitions to new roles. They support engineering societies on campus, connect with student groups and associations, engage students during National Engineering Week. They are now working with Engineers without Borders on campus. She leads journal reading groups for alumni. The “payoff not only in dollars but commitment.” Ask what you can do to extend your own library services.

Faculty/Librarian Liaison Relationships (your librarian is your friend, or the double-L value-add)

James Bradley Clarke, Miami University of Ohio – A Case of Vague Identities
At this point, I feel like I should be writing a mystery story. Clarke supports 1000 engineering students. The MU library provides 100% of first year engineering students with information literacy training. Academic librarians can have a vague identity on campus. He feels students and faculty may be confused by our roles on campus so he’s working to clarify the role and elucidate the vague identities. Some time way back in 1971, ACRL stated that academic librarians and professors are equal, should be paid the same, treated the same. So Clarke feels the role of liaison librarian is to have an aggressive outreach approach. Offering course guides, attending events, providing workshops, offering many communication venues for users. To get past the routine things librarians do Clarke writes articles about ABET and how the librarians can support the accreditation process. He also attends senior capstone events and informally comments about the projects and how they can be improved, which faculty welcome. The liaison relationship extends beyond the library. His outreach extends to attending campus ballgames and bringing his colleagues along.

Megan Sapp Nelson, Purdue University -  Question to Find Gaps and Concerns
Three librarians support thousands of engineering students. One of her goals is to extend the boundaries of the physical library with “outreach reference” locations along with other initiatives to get librarians more embedded on campus. She started with traditional meetings with faculty but quickly moved beyond to embed herself into Purdue’s teaching environment through involvement with engineering projects and community service. As a teaching faculty, she grades students work. Involvement in this way has helped develop rapport with other faculty and students. Nelson helped develop new curriculum for this program including early conceptual design for EPICs. Right now one of her value-added services is creation of a structured process for students when they come to her “with the best idea ever for an engineering project that no one in the world has ever thought of before.” Sound familiar? The research process she’s developing will guide students through literature searches for their design ideas. Nelson feels successful faculty relationships can be developed by asking them what problems they face. This approach can bring forward opportunities for librarians or integration of information skills into the curriculum. This led to teaching ethics to students and for another detailed example, see her ASEE 2010 paper on tying creativity with IL.

Karen Vagts, Tufts University - Infiltration with a marketing mindset
Vagts supports around a thousand School of Engineering students and faculty. Tufts program has many interdisciplinary aspects, with some faculty straddling management and engineering. Affiliated with Tisch Library and she also supports math and business. Tufts librarians are not tenure track. Faculty are not always aware of what librarians do. With a business background, she views her outreach efforts as a marketing issue and decided to penetrate the market by segmentation of her audience.  Due to interdisciplinary nature of the programs she target sub-groups based on interest areas (water, etc.) vs. by department. She has some success asking faculty to visit class for 10 minute to market the library and the assistance she can provide. There is no required information literacy instruction for engineering students at Tufts at this time. Focused areas for IL instruction are first year and capstone courses where research intensive courses are offered. She targets campus efforts for improving educational research and tries to become involve with development of new programs. Centers and research institutes including career development are other areas she has outreached to. Her communications range from emails, newsletters, and pushing resources out to target groups but “serendipitous meetings with faculty lead to great things.” Develop of individual relationships are most important in addition to successfully navigating the range of attitudes of faculty members.

Najwa Hanel, USC Libraries - Get out there and meet & greet
Hanel supports such a large number of students, faculty and research centers/institutes can be challenging but rewarding. She suggests going to faculty “to offer something, not ask for something.” They target department heads, all new faculty, and collaborate with other librarians to support across disciplines. One incentive for new faculty is a $500 for collection development (not serials). Hanel described in detail her methods of encountering faculty outside of the library. Participation on curriculum committees and new faculty orientation are essential activities for liaison librarians. Partnerships with faculty to support student learning is our reason for being there.

Discussion

What do we do when requests for instruction surpass our ability to support them?  At Purdue there’s a move towards embedded librarians where instruction is delivered over multiple course sessions esp. in business school. Cross training with other librarians to help support instruction across disciplines. Develop supplemental workshops. Use online tutorials. Tap into local library school students. Hire graduate students from the discipline to teach orientations and do RefWorks sessions. At Queens they are discussing writing memorandum of understanding with departments to formalize the liaison program. At WPI, we have begun shifting staff roles in order to support our 50% increase in instruction sessions over the past 5 years.

Outreach to parents & students: some librarians are involved with summer orientation activities and have come up with creative ways to outreach to parents and students.

At MIT the librarians create a “new faculty toolkit” that helps library liaisons approach new faculty, talke with Angie Locknar for further details.

How do we reach senior faculty? Some mention through assistant in dealing with data sets and management of information. Another idea is to work with development and/or grants offices. 

So, are we Meeting the Needs of Engineering Faculty, Researchers, and Students?

We are working hard and certainly trying to by analyzing collections & surveying users to make sure we have the "best fit" resources and services for our campuses.

Using Engineering Theses and Dissertations to Inform Collection-Development Decisions, Especially In Civil Engineering
Patricia Kirkwood, University of Arkansas, performed an analysis of Master of Science and Ph.D. projects to determine the percentage of items cited held by the library. She found that 85.7% of serial articles referenced were available at the university library. However, they held only 45% of the referenced books/monographs. Another finding: 1/3 of the citations of the civil engineering citations were incomplete or incorrect. Opportunity for instruction here.

This study helped her determine what additional resources the library should be considering for their collections. Kirkwood was surprised by the results, for the 3 Ph.D. dissertations that were analyzed, 64% of cited sources were grey literature (technical reports, standards, other non traditionally published materials). For the 22 MS theses, 33% of the referenced items were journal articles.

Kirkwood has been able to use this data to change their government depository profile. She’s added state level documents, such as transportation department publications, and cataloged specialized web resources and added them to library web guides. Also, she’s reviewing non-traditional publishers that were referenced and teaching new tools such as TRIS (Transportation Information Research Service, U.S. Department of Transportation) and TRB, Transportation Research Board, of the National Academies.

See also:
Materials Used by Master's Students in Engineering and Implications for Collection Development: A Citation Analysis by Virginia Kay Williams and Christine Lea Fletcher, Mississippi State University

As well her Kirkwood's other 2009 paper:
ROUNDING UP THE COLLECTION: THE STORY OF TRAIL DIGITAL CONTENT COLLECTION (digitization of technical reports)

Library and Information Use Patterns by Engineering Faculty and Students
William Baer and Lisha Li, from Georgia Institute of Technology, conducted an online survey of Civil/Environmental and Mechanical Engineering students and faculty in order to determine their use of the library and information.
They found that the undergraduates come to the library at least once per week and for most faculty who responded, they visit at least once per month. Top reasons undergrads come to library: individual study, group study, check email, word processing.
For graduate students, top reasons are to access books and journals, followed by checking out books, individual study, attending class/seminar or use of printers.

Google effect: Baer and Li asked if “Google is sufficient” for their research needs and more undergrads agree with this statement, however graduate students tended to disagree. For use of information resources undergrads choose Google first, while grads report use of databases as their first choice for searching. Researchers asked students to choose “best databases.” They found that graduate students selected evenly choose both Web of Science and Compendex as their top choices followed by ScienceDirect then Google Scholar. Several other resources were included in their student, see their paper for additional details. The engineering faculty chose Compendex as their first stop for information.

Baer and Li asked students to report how well they feel they know the databases, ranging from expert to no-knowledge. Librarians will use this data to help create instruction for students, especially in areas the students are reporting “no-knowledge.” The training method preferred for both graduate and undergrad students is “online tutorials.”

Finally, researchers asked library users to comment on one thing they would like the library to improve, suggestions included to gain access to more ejournals, faster ILL, among others. Since the study they have implemented rapidILL document delivery service. Overall, more outreach is needed to promote library resources and services as well as training on various research tools.

Download their presentation (PPTX)

Changing Library Vendor Contracts: A Case Study in Acquiring Ebooks from an Online Book Vendor
Charlotte Erdmann, Purdue University, first described her mindset, to get the materials that best fit the users of Purdue library. She mentioned various research studies on ebook selection which can be found referenced in her paper. Erdmann analyzed usage data from ebook usage over multiple years in order to get the best selection for Purdue students and faculty.
Ebook advantages: convenience, full text searches, broader selection
Since March 2005, Purdue began bargaining for ebooks and initially chose, due to user preference, ProQuest Safari. With only two simultaneous users they had 1000s of turnaways so found funding to increase number of users. By the end of 2007, they went with a “slot plan” to purchase certain amount of titles, which Purdue staff base on the four most popular publishers that made sense to Purdue based on prior usage data. They also take faculty input on selections of titles.

From the New Engineering Librarians Perspective: Collaborations & Online Tutorials

Collaboration with faculty: What they don’t teach you in library school

Sarah Jane Dooley presented various strategies for connecting with faculty, from the perspective of a new librarian. Dooley suggests getting to know department faculty, familiarize yourself with subject area and specialties of faculty, as well as discipline specific resources and publishers. It’s important to consider varying interpersonal and communication strategies of the faculty you are working with. Don’t pass on any opportunity to attend social events on campus. This is great way to network with other faculty and meet future collaborators. Librarians must create their own opportunities to network by being visible on campus, taking every opportunity as it presents itself using both online and offline approaches.

Dooley recommends that the workplace should develop documentation for new librarians and be good role models. A mentoring program for new staff could help. Library School’s could include more education on best practices for networking outside the profession. In working with faculty, she suggests that technology presents interesting opportunities to collaborate, even allowing faculty to use libguides themselves and use of facebook for promotion. Contact Sara Jane Dooley at sdooley@dal.ca and for a copy of her handout which including the above strategies and more as well as a bibliography.

Continuing Library Instruction via Online Tutorials
Megan Tomeo, Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines
Challenge: Librarians don’t get enough contact with students in order to help them develop their research skills.

Solution: Mini-grant from university to build online tutorials which are delivered through partnerships with a sophomore-level course (a continuation of their existing first year level instruction modules which CSM talked about at last year’s ASEE Annual Conference). Also, they collaborated with the senior level capstone sections.

Benefits: No space or face-time needed for virtual learning. Can be designed while at reference desk where they have installed Captivate to create the tutorials. CSM librarians created many modules with similar look and each incorporated at least one competency from CSM and integrated quizzes. In the future, they hope to enhance the tutorials with more interactivity.

Assessment: Tomeo administered a three-part survey, one portion was a self-assessment of student learning. The pre-survey was administered to help staff understand student recall from the first year research instruction. A post-survey later assessed learning within the sophomore/junior year. They used a control group and these students took the surveys but were not directed to use the online tutorials. Survey return rate was 52% but less than 30 pre- and post-pairs were ultimately useful for analyzing the pre- and post survey results.

Results: Test group improved scores by 13% but control group had a slight negative change. Tomeo feels the tutorials are impacting learning in a positive way. In 2007, at University of Washington, Whang, et al. study on evaluating student bibliographies could be another approach, but in the future she hopes to consider if given consent by students involved.
To view the tutorials connect to http://library.mines.edu/reference/epics251/
After August 1, 2009: Library.mines.edu > Services > Library Instruction > Online Tutorials
Another point to ponder: students commented that they preferred the 50 minute session in-person with the librarians vs. the online tutorials.

Teaming with Possibilities: Working Together to Engage with Engineering Faculty and Students
Janet Fransen and Jon Jeffryes, Engineering Libraries, University of Minnesota
Fransen and Jeffryes both support hundreds of faculty in the school of engineering and more than 3000 students.

Overview of three engagement strategies:
1. Marketing
a. Have a web presence: they create a page for each librarian, news for each area (mechanical, biomedical) and uses flickr to find interesting photos/images to include.
b. Use social media: they created a twitter account (umsciref), they also suggest you search twitter for your library’s name to get the pulse, if any. They created a facebook page and import their twitter feed into fb, they have also used fb ads to promote their page.
c. Measure results: they use bit.ly (cool and seemingly useful URL shortener) when they post URLs do they can collect data on number of clicks on the links you create (they created a spreadsheet using bit.ly API to grab click stats)
d. Be present: visiting seminars on campus, etc.

2. Instruction
a. Course-based live: They work with senior level engineering courses and since there are more than 100 students they are looking into team teaching
b. Library workshop series: EndNote, Zotero, Engineering: find better information faster, etc. check their web site for more. They have also started recording and posting screen captures as a supplement. They are often team-taught and can create a dynamic atmosphere. They use Moodle pages for workshops and this can be a time saver for staff. Users can refer back to these pages for instruction and future self-help.
c. Course-based online: Jon built 90 unique course pages for each class (without asking first!) and this worked well for him.
d. Tutorials: they created one on patents

3. Scholarly Communication & Institutional Repository (UDC)
a. Posted professor’s papers and they provide the faculty member with statistics on downloads
b. IR gives librarians an opportunity to get out and talk with faculty and by viewing their publication listed they can determine whether or not they are a good candidate for including papers within their digital repository.