8-12 Networking

How do we continue these conversations?

As in most things, time is limited and precious. Take advantage of the framework the NHSLMA provides to continue to engage with your colleagues. Look to participate in:

• sign up to participate in a regional group
• share or ask questions on Twitter with the #nhslma hashtag - include #tlchat to reach a wider audience
• sign up to write a blog post (new initiative - contact rachel.hopkins@sau57.org - if interested and/or have an idea)
• update your contact information in the NHSLMA directory (found on the main page of nhslma.org when you are logged in to the website)
• send a email to the listserv with something that worked well or a question that's got you stumped
• visit another library

Higher Education & Information Literacy

Guests from ACRL NE:

Karin Heffernan - Assistant Professor/Reference Instruction Librarian at SNHU

Melinda Malik - Head of Reference & Instructional Services at St. Anslem

Discussion/Talking Points

• SNHU Makerspace is amazing, they have everything and open to visits from high schools.

What high school students are lacking in preparation for college:

1. Inability to come up with their own topics and refine. Have been given too many writing prompts. But, some countered choice does not always mean investment and must examine the ultimate purpose of the project.
2. Our students need to go beyond the C.R.A.P. and other evaluation techniques as the rules are not always so cut and dry. Good resources exist online and even not so great resources and our students need to know to not only learn about the author but who might be funding the research and what bias exists. We live in a complicated information networked world. Make information literacy part of the curriculum, all faculty/teachers must be invested and teach this. St. Anselm's has made it part of their four college learning outcomes.

Resources -

• Project Information Literacy
• Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education - and toolkit published by ACRL

Library Administration

Advisory Boards? - no one in the group utilized advisory board but suggestions of polling, regular surveys, asking students to post ideas and provide feedback on whiteboards.

Library/Classroom Management -

• Kathy Pearce from Oyster River is going to try and project a noise meter to help understand and keep noise at a manageable level. Keep us posted Kathy!
• Another suggestion was to play music and tell students that if they can't hear it, they are probably too loud.
• Assign students jobs, i.e. here are the wipes to clean up after eating
• Zombie "library rules" slideshow (Rachel has requested permission to share)
• Ask "How can I help you?"
• Circulate and sit down with students and quietly discuss issues that are impacting library operations.
• Add a "why are you here" to the library sign-in sheet.
• Someone posed an issue with administrators that want to see a "quiet" library with students sitting in their seats. Suggestions posed talking to admin. and comparing library to a classroom -are they quiet, nope. Also, an idea was proposed to set-up stations for students to have activities to work on while they are in the library.