ALISE 2017

The study and practice of digital preservation is evolving, and as such professionals in this area of LIS are constantly educating people about their work. This occurs in LIS educational programs, but also professionally within the institutions where they work and for the public as people become desirous of preserving their digital lives: a large part of their daily work is educating people about what they do and why others should be doing it too. My work examines the implementation of digital preservation workflows in Europe and the US and investigates how digital preservation initiatives serve as sites of tension for multiple audiences in ways that impact work and engagement in memory institutions. Implicit in this are many communities who are affected by the privileged status afforded to digital work at institutions that have historically been repositories for analog materials.

Our presentation addresses the logistical challenges of teaching a complex digital publishing tool in a distance course and encourages instructors to think about selecting the right tools to make their course projects accessible to the public. Furthermore, the project’s focus on “diverse history” encourages students to see themselves and their community members as active agents who decide what stories we include and exclude in our histories.

ALISE/ProQuest Methodology Paper Competition 

ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition 

ALISE Research Award, 2016 Update 

Professional expertise is examined and defined by multiple communities: researchers, instructors in professional education programs, and professional associations, among others. In this study, we examined how expertise in reference and information service (RIS) is framed by professional associations in their published competency documents. Taking a discourse analysis approach, we analyzed how professional associations articulate and frame expertise, bringing to light values, priorities, and hidden arguments embedded in the discourses. As instructors in professional education programs, we use competency documents in our courses and to inform our program goals, but it is critical to fully interrogate these documents before presenting them to students. As researchers, we may use these documents as frameworks or instruments, or our research may be influenced by these documents in more subtle ways, as professionals embrace the language of expertise that has been communicated to them by their profession.

Volunteer-run libraries in the United Kingdom (UK) represent a situation where the language of ‘community engagement’ is being used, but the meaning of the concept is being subverted. This research provides insight into a situation where government agencies and local municipalities are using the concept of ‘community engagement’ as a cover for reduction of public services.

The library and information science (LIS) profession is currently navigating through a protracted period of change fueled by rapid technological innovation. The changing nature of information and its distribution and the growth of online education is correspondingly impacting community expectations for libraries. These societal changes require that LIS graduates are equipped with new workforce skills needed by employers (ALA, 2014). The evolving demand for workforce skills have often been a topic of discussion at ALISE, American Library Association (ALA), and other professional LIS conferences and meetings.

Many library and information science (LIS) programs offer a foundations course as part of the curriculum. Sometimes, however, both students and instructors struggle with the course; students because it is frequently perceived as the “intro” course that they must “get through” and instructors because it can be a very difficult course to teach as it must address many areas that are often not specific to one faculty member’s expertise. Common misperceptions by students include the idea that it is comprised of an unconnected mishmash of topics, contains nothing but theory and boring historical facts, and has no practical components or relevance to their future work. Given these negative perceptions and teaching difficulties it is not surprising that some programs have opted to do away with the course altogether. Yet, given the right circumstances, this course can go a long way to helping new students gain vital knowledge and understanding of, for what is for the vast majority of them, a completely new discipline. What is needed is a framework that helps instructors not only to frame the content in a way that makes it meaningful and relevant to students but also helps to further motivate learning by conveying the content in a compelling manner. The community of practice (CoP) learning framework can provide this much-needed guidance.

The University of Maryland Libraries has longstanding MLIS graduate student teacher program. Reaching as far back as 1999, MLIS students have carried more than 75% of the libraries’ general education information literacy instruction load. Despite its overall success, this program left much to be desired. On top of a heavy teaching load, graduate students hired into these hourly positions were provided low levels of training, often working in isolation separated from their peers and other librarians. The passive learning environment also impacted undergraduate students. As a result of the low-levels of teacher training, information literacy sessions were formatted as easy to deliver and skill-based lectures. Rather than the development of critical thinking and information literacy, undergraduate students were taught how to access specific materials and format citations. The graduate students leading the sessions were divorced from the teaching process, delivering instruction from a standardized script and slide-deck.

The proposed paper will provide a description of the fellowship program, rationale for its design, and address the challenges and opportunities of creating a partnership between an LIS program and an academic library. The speakers, who represent both the libraries and the iSchool, will provide a holistic overview of the design, implementation, and on-going maintenance of the fellowship. It will conclude by sharing the results from this program’s first three cohorts, including job placement rates for graduating fellows, feedback from participants, reflections from librarians and administrators on the process, and lessons learned from fellowship directors. At the end of the presentation/paper, attendees will have the information and materials needed to replicate a similar program at their home institutions, including a semester-by-semester breakdown of activities and readings, weekly discussion questions, peer teaching observation forms, workshop ideas, and teacher training tools.

What role can library and information science (LIS) education play in economic development and support small businesses while engaging with them in a specific regional community and cultural setting? This paper explores answers to the question by focusing on Tennessee and investigating how LIS educators can extend their social responsibility to the state’s small businesses and rural public libraries. Potential directions discussed within a research and grant context include curriculum design, classroom integration of appropriate small business information content areas based on the needs of small businesses and rural public libraries, and the training of rural library and information professionals to further small business service delivery and resource development. The paper also shares insights during the process of conceptual model development to toolkit blueprint design in action research for LIS educators to further community engagement between small businesses and rural public libraries in Tennessee. It is based on experiences during a planning grant entitled “The Role of Rural Public Libraries in Small Business Economic Development in the Appalachian Region: A Case Study of Tennessee” (PLSB-TN) that was recently awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Leadership Grants for Libraries (Research Category) (October 2014 – September 2016) to the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee (URL: http://scholar.cci.utk.edu/plsb-tn). PLSB-TN is serving as a pilot case study and assessment test-bed to expand strategies for the entire Appalachian region and other rural environments in the future.

There is widespread desire for extended longevity, provided it coincides with healthy, youthful years (Donner, Fortney, Calimport, Pfleger, Shah, & Betts-LaCroix, 2016; Lang, Baltes, & Wagner, 2007). Socially responsible strategies promoting public encourage community engagement. A recent public/private partnership approach began as a National Geographic expedition to find the longest living cultures evolved into a recipe for living longer (Blue Zones, 2014; 2016). Blue Zones (BZs) project is an organized social movement in select American communities to replicate BZs healthy lifestyle principles and longevity. Three states (Hawaii, Iowa, and Oregon) and four communities in California, Florida, Minnesota, and Texas have committed to become a target BZ (Buettner, 2008; 2015). Aside from the BZ infrastructure, what is the role of the public library in community engagement and adoption of a healthy lifestyle in planned community health initiatives?

 

Government involvement in personal health issues has been met with resistance (Leonard, 2011; Mor, 2015; Palmer, 1999). The involvement of local government in the BZ initiative opens the door to criticism and speculation by community members (Leonor, 2015). Despite its governmentally funded status, public libraries are socially responsible to their communities for providing unbiased information, space for gathering, and a commitment to engaging citizens from all walks of the community. Collections alone pose problems as information overload poses challenges to community engagement in planned healthy communities. Services such as information sessions, project demonstrations, and subject-specific resources add to the information overload phenomenon. Lankes (2012) statement calls for building communities through libraries. Despite the increasing popularity of BZs in the research and practice of public health promotion and social policy, no research has been conducted by LIS scholars to examine the effect of information provision and use in the context of the five BZs, specifically as it relates to the role of the public library.

Examining the information interactions between public librarians and homeless library users, this study explores how public librarians create, navigate, and question their professional boundaries. Boundary work that examines issues in the professions has an enduring history in sociological theory. Boundary work is a social construct that has to do with constituting, negotiating, and breaking boundaries between abstract fields of knowledge. Gieryn (1983) came up with the term ‘boundary work’ when demarcating what constitutes science and non-science. In his 1983 article, Gieryn describes what science is, and what science is not. He uses descriptions of ‘science’ and ‘science as not-x or y’ to demonstrate the ways in which boundaries are created to delineate what a domain of knowledge is and is not. Gieryn (1983) further argues that threats to the professions are struggles over boundaries, which are often rooted in conflicting or evolving ideological issues.

This paper identifies, analyzes, and critiques three multimedia resources for learning about the foundations of Library and Information Science (LIS). Multimedia pedagogical strategies have many benefits. They overcome a long-standing reliance upon read-write learning; can be economically reused; are student-centered (allowing greater personal control); and extend seamlessly beyond classroom walls.

Our students need to develop an understanding of issues of culture, bias and equity at the same time that they learn technical skills, like programming. There are compelling ethical and practical reasons why information professionals have a responsibility to understand the organizations and communities in which we use programming skills (Forsgren & Humble, 2016; Sinclair, 2004; Wajcman, 2009; Wolske, Rhinesmith & Kumar, 2014). We don’t teach reference services, project management or cataloging isolated from their organizational and culture contexts, and we should similarly be teaching programming in its cultural context. Unfortunately there are few examples of courses that integrate these themes in a meaningful way. This reflects an ongoing challenge in LIS education to meaningfully engage curricula with issues of diversity, inclusion and equity.

A maker space is defined as a location where students and patrons can participate in active learning. They can create, play, questions, problem solve, and build (Preddy, 2013). Empirical research on makerspaces in libraries to date is ever-growing but still limited. The topic of makerspaces is still more commonly discussed in popular writing venues like magazines, trade publication, and blogs. Research on training, professional development, and coursework in makerspaces is higher in scarcity. While maker learning spaces continue to increase in libraries finding training opportunities problematic, project ideas difficult to locate, and peers with makerspaces hard to pinpoint.

In the United States there is still a considerable deficit in the reproductive health of poor women. This deficit manifests in many ways that negatively affect both women and their children. Despite the profound amount of literature detailing both the lack and the consequences of the disparity of reproductive healthcare suffered by low-income women, there exists a gap in the research deciphering the root cause.

Research suggests that a digital divide exists and that women of socioeconomic status are often at a disadvantage by the consequences of this divide. One repercussion of this chasm is a lack of adequate information; particularly of accurate and accessible reproductive health information which has been found to be related to poor reproductive health. This research will employ a quantitative approach by means of adapting a previously validated assessment tool of pregnancy-related information seeking behavior to gauge reproductive health information-seeking in low-income women.

Community engagement, with user communities and practitioner communities in particular, sits at the heart of designing library services, programs, and spaces to best meet the needs of specific communities (Scott 2011). To help libraries best meet the needs of their increasingly diverse communities, MLIS students need to emerge from their programs with an understanding of how to engage communities while utilizing best practices, as defined by relevant research, to create services of all kinds that meet the needs of these communities (Mehra & Robinson, 2009). Building on the work that information researchers are doing to examine the relationships between research and practice (Abbas et al., 2016), it is crucial for MLIS faculty and instructors to understand how to utilize a seamless partnership of research-based frameworks and effective practices to incorporate community engagement into a wide variety of MLIS courses.