Conference Sneak Peek

KEYNOTES 

Future Proofing the 21th Century Library

Julie Mosbo Ballestro

Texas A&M University Libraries are strengthening their position as a national leader in higher education by focusing on its mission to support student success and research enterprise. A university-wide restructuring in 2021 created a 21st century service-based focus for the Libraries.  Over the last year and a half, library leadership has focused on recovery, growth, and innovation. As a result, the Libraries have implemented a new organizational structure, created team support opportunities, and deepened relationships with partners across campus. However, the work continues. Several initiatives are being planned to further our efforts. There is much to be excited about at Texas A&M University Libraries and I’m looking forward to sharing these exciting developments with attendees!

Enhancing Information Literacy: Leveraging ChatGPT to Support the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

Stan Skrabut, Ed.D.

Librarians play a vital role in promoting information literacy and empowering students and researchers to navigate the vast landscape of information effectively. In this session, we will explore how librarians can harness the power of ChatGPT, an AI language model, to support the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. We will delve into the art of crafting effective prompts and demonstrate practical examples of leveraging ChatGPT for each element of the framework. Join us to discover new possibilities for engaging and guiding users towards becoming information-literate individuals.

The examples and demonstrations provided in this session will showcase the potential of ChatGPT as a supportive tool but will also highlight the importance of critical thinking and human guidance in information literacy instruction.

PANEL SESSIONS

Professional Development: Why Bother?

Lisa Stafford, Dr. Elizabeth Jean Brumfield, Desmond London, La’Shel Gipson & Sabrina Frances

For an organization to be effective and able to deliver its intended outcomes, its workforce needs to be skilled, competent and confident. In addition, the nature of libraries, across all sectors, means that they are subject to continual change, especially in today’s digital information environment. Similarly, the political and economic environments in which libraries operate mean that we need to be flexible, agile and continually evolving. In order for a library to embrace change, its workforce must continually develop its professional and technical skills. It could be argued that the ability for a library to sustain through strategically aligning itself with its parent institution is reason enough to bother with training and development, but there are many other reasons for library and information professionals to engage in Continual Professional Development (CPD) and for library managers to invest in it.

Stop! Collaborate and Listen!

Jillian Eslami, Alex Mitchell, & Chance Medlin

Librarians are experienced with working with a variety of different user groups across campus. This panel will highlight different collaboration strategies and share their experience partnering with students, faculty, and staff across campus. This panel will consist of two first year experience librarians, one who focuses on instruction with faculty and staff and the other focuses on building relationships across campus through outreach, and a learning and student engagement librarian whose focus is on outreach and engagement with students. We have all had both successful and challenging collaborations, which have led to learning opportunities for everyone. Each group has varying needs, ideas, and levels of engagement when it comes to collaboration. We will explore strategies, expectations, needs, and best practices with examples of successful  and not so successful collaborations with each user group. In understanding the similarities and differences between groups, you can make the best game plan for growing, improving, and evolving partnerships. This panel will provide an opportunity to share, reflect, and discuss different perspectives and strategies in outreach. We encourage the audience to share their experiences and ask questions.

Addressing the DEI in the Room: Social Justice Efforts on a Texas Campus

Patricia Hernandez, Alexa Hight, & Dr. Rinki Suryavanshi

After two years of operation, the Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, or IDEA, Committee, has navigated what reasonable efforts look like as a small group of seven (7) operating in the library of a 12,000+ student higher education institution. With recent political discourse targeting diversity efforts and "woke culture", conversations about what our continued efforts look like now and in the future have come up frequently. We would like to open this discussion to the greater TAMUS community and encourage conversation that includes what we're doing now, what our aspirations are, and what is taking place on other campuses. It's time to address the DEI in the room and encourage the fact that no matter what you call it, it's here to stay for a reason.

Stop Fanning the Flames of Burnout: Causes and Solutions to Burnout

Margaret Dawson, Michelle Shea, Victoria Eastes, Kelly Williams, & Sandra Desjardins

"The cost of employee burnout to organizations is significant. Burnout is associated with increased errors, high turnover, absenteeism, decreased productivity, and a decrease in the quality of patron services (Davis, 2021, p. 11). According to recent research, symptoms of burnout are common in academic librarians in the United States (Wood, 2020; Nardine, 2019). Conditions of burnout include “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy” (WHO, 2019). These symptoms undermine the academic librarians' personal wellbeing and their ability to engage with their work in a way that maximizes their positive impact. In today's work environment, employers are beginning to recognize the importance of job satisfaction and psychological well-being. The recent Great Resignation appears to have been motivated not by a lack of financial remuneration, but by “ethical, cultural, relational, and personal factors” (Kusior, 2022, p. 7). Certain workplace policies and characteristics are closely tied to burnout. Andrea Baer discusses the importance of agency for instructional librarians in her 2021 article. Paula Davis (2021) points to the need for psychological safety, autonomy, belonging, and feelings of competence. Library administration can use this research to create programs that encourage positive, engaging work environments. Today's evolving workplaces should consider adding innovative programs to increase academic librarians' job satisfaction and efficacy. The presenters want to highlight practices that combat burnout and lead to engaged employees. This presentation will provide an overview of characteristics that lead to burnout, practices and techniques that combat burnout, and narratives from practicing librarians and library staff on their experiences. Our ultimate goal is to provide information for creating a workplace environment where employees can thrive and produce the best possible outcomes for the organization. 

PRESENTATION SESSIONS

Building an Information Literacy Micro-Course Series in 6 Weeks

Lorin Flores, Emily Sartorius, & Trisha Hernandez

Faced with high demand for librarian-led library instruction and fewer teaching librarians, a team of 3 instruction librarians collaborated with First-Year faculty to create a series of information literacy micro-courses for use in University Seminar and freshman English Composition classes in Spring 2023. This microlearning approach was influenced by Tik-Tok and based on the themes of Entering the Scholarly Conversation and Developing the Research Mindset. Each micro-course contained instructional narrative, a short 3-5 minute video, and accompanying instructional activity for faculty use. From start to finish, the entire project was accomplished in 6 weeks. In this presentation we will talk about how we integrated curriculum mapping, storyboarding, script development, video production, website building, and assessment into our project plan as well as tools and planning.

Bridging the Digital Divide and Campus Silos: Student Laptops in the Library

Tim Arnold & Catherine Dean

In the spring of 2023, Texas A&M University – Texarkana’s Moss Library partnered with the Information Technology Department to expand short-term laptop access for students. By combining resources and expertise, the two departments facilitated improved access to laptops for students. Both departments offered laptops for student use, but neither was successfully meeting the needs of TAMUT students. The library’s collection was housed in a kiosk and was designated for in-library use only. The IT laptop collection was set for a limited one-week loan period, and with their competing duties, the department was struggling to efficiently keep up with demand. A combined service distributing laptops housed in the library leveraged the strengths of both teams and created an improved, centralized, and expanded service.  This presentation addresses several common themes for academic libraries: circulating nontraditional materials, collaboration with Information Technology, and student success. We hope that sharing our experiences will provide other institutions in the A&M system with ideas and encouragement and can start a discussion about how to approach these topics.

Development Support for FOLIO at Texas A&M University Libraries:  A One Year Check-In

James Creel & Jeremy Huff

At the start of January 2022, Texas A&M University Libraries went live with FOLIO for production library services, leaving aside the Voyager ILS that had been in production for 20+ years. Data migration from the legacy Voyager ILS to FOLIO was a large undertaking that evolved over the two years that TAMU was contributing to development leading up to the initial deployment.  The procedure had to continually adapt to a changing data model before the final migration. In terms of maintaining feature continuity, there are several main areas of concern.  The new public catalog was implemented using FOLIO's OAI-PMH data to populate VUFind.  Reporting is a major requirement for any ILS and satisfies fiscal, accreditation, and analysis needs -- our Voyager infrastructure provided dozens of reports, mostly in Perl and SQL, that needed re-implementation.  In addition, a new solution for spine-label printing was required, for which we adapted a tool originally provided by ExLibris for use with Alma.  Also, the MyLibrary and Get it for me Button needed to be updated to interact with FOLIO’s API. As luck would have it, our historic ILS transition coincided with significant organizational changes at Texas A&M and career changes among many TAMU Libraries faculty.  We will discuss our experience navigating this institutional transition at the same time as the FOLIO adoption.

Someday Never Comes: How to Use Authority to Combat Imposter Syndrome

Mark McKnight

I plan to describe Imposter Syndrome. I will share stories from my own life when I suffered from Imposter Syndrome. Then I will describe what authority is and how we can use it to combat Imposter Syndrome. From there, I will talk about how people who have been in the profession for a while can use conversation as a way to honor the experiences of their new colleagues. I also plan to show how new librarians can think about engaging in conversation.

Student Success, Plagiarism, AI-ChatGPT and Contract Cheating:  Building a Culture of Collaboration between Librarians, Faculty and Academic Affairs

Kimberly Michelle Gay

This workshop will showcase the committed effort to academic integrity in higher education and share new research and best practices for collaborative models in addressing student success across the spectrum of innovative curriculum instructional design technology on plagiarism and contract cheating. With a focus on building a culture of collaboration between librarians, faculty, and academic affairs, this workshop will also outline the best practices in developing an Academic Integrity Library Course that supports the participant's institutional academic integrity policy; and, it will explore and tackles student success, from plagiarism challenges to library resources and services and contract cheating endeavors. The International Center for Academic Integrity defines academic integrity as a commitment to five fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility. The scope of the problem is academic dishonesty is rampant; students often do not view what they do as cheating. According to the journal Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, contract cheating is the purchasing of custom-made university assignments to submit them. Websites providing contract cheating services often claim this form of cheating is undetectable, and no published research has examined this claim (Dawson and Sutherland-Smith, 2018).

Going for Every Dime We Can Find

Lisa Stafford & Genaro Medrano

Does your library feel underfunded and/or understaffed? Is your library able to help the community and university as much as you’d like to? If not, it might be time to start considering applying for some grants! Grants can turn the administrative view of the library glow a cost center into a revenue-generating partner. How do you start? How are grants found? How do you write a proposal? What happens if you’re accepted? There are so many questions with unclear answers, making the first steps feel shrouded in mystery. For many, without a mentor, it can be challenging to gain experience in grant management and writing. This presentation is geared toward those in this position. It will cover the perspective of a first-time grant writer Genaro Medrano who is trying to start the grant engine at his library. Exploring the questions and difficulties in taking the first steps. Then, many of those answers and so much more will be explored with Lisa Stafford, a very experienced grant manager. She will share her perspectives on both successful grants and what she learned from bouncing back from misses.

Be the Game Changer: Strategies for Alleviating Library Anxiety for College Students through Outreach and Engagement

Bryant Moore

Library anxiety is common among college students, especially first-year students. This form of anxiety can cause students to feel intimidated, embarrassed, and overwhelmed by libraries and librarians. This presentation will focus on effective outreach and engagement strategies that librarians can use to create a welcoming and supportive environment for college students. The presentation will begin by defining library anxiety and its impact on student success.  The presenter will share evidence of their expertise on the subject by discussing their experience working with first-year college students and the strategies they have found to be effective in reducing library anxiety. Attendees will also be introduced to some qualitative research tools used by library professionals to measure library anxiety.

Push & Pull: Pushing the Library Out to Pull Patrons In

Jennifer Jordan

The goal of this presentation is to show how the library can support students and faculty in multiple ways– academically, socially, and emotionally. This presentation will explain methods to showcase the strengths of the library not only as an academic resource but also as a welcoming, comfortable space to study, learn, and collaborate. Emphasis will be placed on a variety of events that can be planned and hosted within the library and also planned by the library to be held elsewhere on campus. Librarians’ involvement in other campus outreach programs will also be discussed as a way to connect the library to the greater campus community. The presentation will also discuss the importance of measuring outreach program impact by developing goals, defining measurable outcomes, and evaluating them. Brainstorming and discussion among the participants will be encouraged so that everyone can listen to and hopefully pick up successful strategies to promote their libraries as a vital campus resource.

What We Wish We Knew: Two Instruction Librarians’ Journey from One Shots to an  Information Literacy Credit Course in 4 Weeks

Amanda Melchor & Bailey Smith

The presentation will cover our experience as new instructors with no training or preparation in creating and teaching a credit course. We will share how we created our first online course using a prior skeletal course shell, assessed existing modules for continuing course potential, and determined what other topics the course needed. We will share our successes, failures, how we assessed our and our students’ performances, readjusted to the physical classroom, and continue to adjust and amend our teaching practices and assessments to better serve our students and grow as effective instructors.

LIGHTNING ROUNDS

There’s 1A in Library: Collaborating with Rural Schools to Increase Student Opportunities

Bruce Wardlow

In the spring of 2023, Cornette Library hosted 50 junior and senior high school students from Claude High School, a local 1A high school, as a pilot program to build relationships not just between the university library and the school library, but between West Texas A&M University and those local students. These students received library instruction, the opportunity to use University library resources, a free lunch, and a campus tour. This pilot program involved multiple University departments, and the teacher was given the opportunity to check books out for classroom use.

The Challenges & Opportunities of Special Collections and Archives in Academic Libraries

Beth T. Kilmarx

There are a number of challenges facing special collections in academic libraries, some are old, recurring issues and some are new concerns brought about by COVID or changes in the higher education landscape. The list of challenges can be seemingly endless from backlogs, digitization, reparative cataloging, to security barriers, food and drink, the use of volunteers, and the teaching with primary sources, to what to do when visitors arrive accompanied with non-service animals or how to demonstrate the value of their collections  These issues are not just impacting academic special collections  but also private and public cultural memory institutions throughout the world.  In the course of my talk, I will discuss how libraries have transformed themselves as a result of the changing landscape in academia, and the impact these transformations have had on special collections and archives. Special Collections have been quite adaptive when faced with challenges, and have turned these challenges into opportunities,  and are often the hidden trendsetters helping to change the academic landscape.  In this presentation, I will discuss the challenges faced by Cushing Library and how it  has created opportunities, opportunities that can be realized by other special collections units in the A&M system.

Are You A Fraud? Identifying and Addressing Imposter Syndrome in TAMUS System Libraries

Victor Contreras

The session is a quick tutorial on how to identify the signs and symptoms of imposter syndrome in the workplace, and how this issue directly affects TAMU system library staff, faculty, and patrons. This presentation is designed to be informal and easy to digest and focused on TAMU librarians' experiences specifically. Some specific experiences highlighted will be how imposter syndrome affects new, incoming TAMU members. This will require attendees to think back on their own experiences while also accepting that their colleagues likely feel the same way. Additionally, there will be discussion on how imposter syndrome amongst TAMU library staff directly impacts students and faculty. Due to time constraints, attendees will not be required or prompted to share their experiences out loud, and the goal of the presentation is more to raise awareness of an issue rather than provide a public forum or a thorough report on a topic.

One Year In: A Glimpse into the TAMUS Library Support Squad Mentorship Program

Jennifer Anderson & Patricia Hernandez

How the mentorship program got started, Feedback collected from the first-year participants, and Subsequent improvements that are in the works. The presentation is focused on the progress that the mentorship program has made to break down silos and facilitate discussions between mentors and mentees within the Texas A&M University System.

DISCUSSION SESSION

Diversity Matters

Chance Medlin

DEI efforts are under attack at institutional and state levels across the nation, yet this work can be extremely important in our communities.  I think it is important to continue having conversations about how we are continuing our efforts.  I would love to share things that are happening here, but also hear from participants across the system to see how diversity work is changing on their campuses.

Closing the Gaps: Interlibrary Loan Collaboration within the TAMU System

Carissa Piñón & Gregg Griffith

Interlibrary Loan departments continue to address closing the gaps in services, access, and technology. Cooperation and collaboration remain the hallmark of successful ILL departments. Sharing networks will continue to expand as collections and user demands grow. Through discussion and collaborative problem solving, attendees can share and/or assist others with their own departments ‘closing the gap” initiatives. The best network the affiliated TAMUS libraries are a member of, is itself. By fostering initiatives through collaborative organization of all the TAMUS libraries, libraries could potentially foster stronger, more efficient, borrowing and lending practices to the benefit of all. In doing so, we can place more information into the hands of TAMUS students, faculty, and staff. It is our hope to facilitate discussion towards ‘closing the gap’ of TAMUS cooperation.

Note:  Discussion rooms are meant to be collaborative.  Please come with comments and ideas to share for the listed topic.  Group participation will drive most of the conversation, although the moderator will have a few pre-selected questions to get the ball rolling.