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. 

Outreach and Beyond: New Roles/Relationships for Librarians

Summer Engineering Experience for Girls (SEE): An Evolving Hands-On Role for the Engineering Librarian - Donna Beck, G. Berard, Bo Baker, and Nancy George


Lesley Farmer, a librarian, wrote Teen Girls and Technology: What’s the Problem and Where’s the Solution, a book highly recommended by Donna Beck. All parents, teachers, librarians have a role in changing the stereotypes that are created about engineers and scientists. Gender Inclusive Engineering Education is another recently published book that is recommended.

Beck shared her experiences and involvement with SEE (Summer Engineering Experience) a 2-week program provided for ~22 middle school girls at Carnegie Mellon University each year. A research component is provided by CMU librarians. Topics cover a broad range of energy research. Librarians used AccessScience and their energy quiz. Compared a library research databases to FBI fingerprint database and steps to library research, but their teaching with the young woman has evolved over the past few years. The following year they worked more on defining a lesson plan and hands-on activities. Third year librarians were included in planning activities for SEE and librarians were participating in 3 sessions and helped to mentor the students. They provided citation help (bibme/knightcite), creating their PowerPoint slides, and it was an enhanced experience for all.

Tips:

• Purchase women and engineering books

• Express willingness to contribute to outreach programs

• Be compatible with program and its evolution

• Help inspire middle schools to consider engineering as a career choice

Academic Librarians' Roles in Attracting & Recruiting Students to Their University - Nevenka Zdravkovska, Jim Miller, and Bob Kackley

Jim Miller, from University of Maryland Libraries described how librarians work with K-12 students and the potential for librarian involvement in university recruitment efforts. Over the past year ~22 sessions were offered to area high school and home schooled students, so they have a lot of interaction with HS students. He found there is not much research on libraries playing role on recruitment. UM recruitment efforts include:

• Maryland day

• Special collections state-wide history day

• Performing Arts Library assists home schooled students and music lessons

• Academic Achievement (TRIO) involvement – UM Librarians assist provisionally accepted minorities

• Various summer activities with special groups

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Library partners with many of UM outreach programs such as ESTEEM, Project Lead the Way, among others. They instruct PLTW Inventor’s campers on patent searching. Student teams find hovercraft patents (good example for getting students to use classification searches). See ASEE First Bell for daily examples on how universities are doing K-12 outreach.

Creating an Outreach Event with e-Resource Providers - Pauline Melgoza

Science/Engineering Library held an event in fall 2009. They held an outreach fair in their engineering building lobby. Over 500 researchers and students attended.

Melgoza suggested we partner with database vendors to market the event, train and also provide financial support. Texas A&M requested items from vendors posters, training guides, giveaways for students and raffle prizes to draw people in and ask vendors to come and staff a table. Some vendors sponsored competition or drawing (Knovel Challenge & IEEE regional student paper contest are two examples). Some vendors will help fund food or provide financial support. Melgoza selected top use database vendors as well as some that have low use but should have higher use. This fall they are considering doing web-conferencing. With curtains around the IEEE section, Melgoza felt this created a mystique that enticed students to check the area out (they could also smell food).

Planning Tips

• contact vendors a couple months in advance

• talk with peers for ideas

• consider location, location, location (captive audience in engineering building but took more coordination)

• check university policies and keep administration in the loop (some university’s cannot do vendors fairs due to conflict of interest)

• If you get materials from vendor, but no vendor, train library assistants to staff tables

• prizes are a big draw for students, also food; incorporate survey with raffle entry

• if you cannot plan a larger event, one librarian mentioned success with inviting one vendor and setting up demo’s in different locations on campus

• Count attendees & take photos to share

• Tie in with faculty: one librarian mentioned that a faculty member asked students to attend with specific questions