Spring 2017 CUS/ACRL-NJ Newsletter
#NJLA17 Programming Spotlight: College and University Section
By Adriana Mamay
The 2017 NJLA Conference is loaded with programs tailored to the needs and interests of college and university librarians. This year, the sessions sponsored and co-sponsored by the College and University Section are spread throughout the Conference, with a Preconference on Monday, four programs on Tuesday, and another seven on Wednesday for a total of 12 CUS programs! Click here to register and experience the full Conference for three days of Beyond the Box professional development, networking, and camaraderie.
Monday
- Preconference Library Workers Today: Strong Staff Equals Strong Service
- 1 PM - 4:30 PM
Tuesday
- Introverted Leadership: How Introversion Leads to Success
- 9 AM – 9:50 AM
- Step Out of the Information Literacy Assessment Box: Determining Library Impact on Student Learning Via a Longitudinal Study
- 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM
- Rutgers Book Showcase
- 3:10 PM – 4 PM
- Instructional Assessment Strategies at Your Library!
- 4:10 PM – 5 PM
Wednesday
- Helping the Dream: Supporting Undocumented Students and Patrons
- 9 AM – 9:50 AM
Narratives of Library Power: The Stories Library Shelves Tell
- 9 AM – 9:50 AM
- Building an e-Book Collection via Demand-Driven Acquisition
- 9 AM – 9:50 AM
- Having Your Voice Heard: Effectively Communicating Your Public Service
- 11:30 AM – 12:20 PM
CUS Luncheon: Local Contexts, National Demands: Navigating Standards in Academic Libraries featuring Emily Drabinski of LIU, Brooklyn
- 12:30 PM – 2:20 PM
- Beyond the Browser: A Jump-Start to Promoting Your Library’s e-Resources
- 2:30 PM – 3:20 PM
- CUS Awards Forum
3:40 PM – 4:30 PM
In addition to attending programs and the CUS Luncheon, join us to cheer on the winners of three NJLA CUS/ACRL-NJ awards at the NJLA Awards Reception. The recipients of the Distinguished Service Award, Research Award, and Technology Innovation Award will be announced at this free event on Tuesday evening from 6 PM to 8 PM. Refreshments will be served!
We can’t wait to see you in AC, Academics!
Adriana Mamay is a member of the 2016-2017 NJLA Conference Committee. She is a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Middlesex County College.
From the President
By Heather Dalal
The VALE Conference was a success! Our Keynote Speaker, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe commented about all the successful and positive projects completed by New Jersey librarians. In her presentation, she discussed the Value of Academic Libraries (link to exec summary) and how it has helped to communicate the impact between the library and a lot of measures like student success, enrollments, and future employment. The conference had a number of sessions tailored around the conference theme, Libraries as Agents of Change.This opened up discussions on how to empower our students to think critically about information and their roles in the information economy. Thank you to all who provided feedback on your Vale conference experience. Each year this feedback is used to make the following year’s conference better. Conference co-chair Amanda Piekart and ACRL-NJ/NJLA CUS President Elect Leslin Charles are already planning the 2018 conference. They will send a call for members of the conference committee to begin their work in the summer.
The NJLA Conference is just a few weeks away. We’ll be back at Harrah’s Conference Center and Resort. We are honored to host Emily Drabinski of Long Island University – Brooklyn. For the CUS Luncheon, she is presenting, “Local Contexts, National Demands: Navigating Standards in Academic Libraries”. She will address librarians’ need to produce metrics of success with and without the help of national standards. Professor Drabinski will also share how librarians play into the dominant narrative and how we might change that in a separate session Wednesday morning titled: “Narrative of Library Power: The Stories Library Shelves Tell.”
2017 Research Award Recipients
The Research Committee received several applications this year, and it was wonderful to read the varied topics being studied by New Jersey Librarians and Library scholars. It was truly a difficult choice to make, but the Research Committee members selected the two submissions below. Come hear them talk about their research during the College & University Section Awards held at the NJLA Conference on Wednesday, April 26th from 3:40pm to 4:30pm in Wildwood 6 & 7. We are looking forward to the Technology Award sharing the program with us.
Dr. Michelle Kowalsky & John Woodruff, both from Rowan University, for their book, Creating Inclusive Library Environments: A Planning Guide for Serving Patrons with Disabilities Abstract (from ALA Store).
Bonnie L. Fong , Minglu Wang, Krista White, and Roberta Tipton, all from Rutgers University, for their Journal of Academic Librarianship article, Assessing and Serving the Workshop Needs of Graduate Students.
We hope that you will come out and hear about their research at the College & University Section Awards!
VALE 2017 by the numbers
- 288 Registrations
- 7 Rutgers library student volunteers
- 15 Poster Sessions
- 22 Breakout sessions
- Featured speaker: Lisa Hinchliffe
The Eighteenth Annual VALE / ACRL-NJ / NJLA CUS Users’ Conference was held on Friday, January 6, 2017 at the Busch Campus Center, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. The theme was “Libraries as Agents of Change.” We had a full, excellent program of 22 breakout and 15 poster sessions on a variety of topics ranging from augmented reality and linked data, acquisitions, discovery, marketing and outreach, library spaces, library instruction and information literacy.
In response to attendee feedback from previous years, the VALE Conference Committee changed the schedule of the day’s events. This year, instead of having the lightning talks during lunch we grouped them together as breakout sessions. This new conference schedule generated a lot of comments on the conference evaluation form with an overwhelming amount of positive responses.
Our featured speaker was Lisa Hinchliffe, Professor/Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Lisa served as the 2010-2011 President of the Association of College and Research Libraries, which launched the Value of Academic Libraries Initiative during her presidency. In her VALE presentation, titled “Evidence-Based Advocacy Through a Value Framework”, she provided inspiration on how academic libraries can demonstrate their value through engagement, innovation and advocacy.
All of the conference presentation materials that we received are available here: http://tinyurl.com/m77osnw
Among the materials available are:
- Links to poster session posters
- Presentation materials from most of the breakout sessions
Next year’s conference date has been confirmed for Friday, January 5, 2018 at the same location. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year’s conference!
Amanda Piekart is a Co-Chair of the VALE Users' Conference Planning Committee. She is also the Information Literacy Instructional Designer at Berkeley College.
ACRL 2017 Recap
By Bonnie Lafazan
I was one of approximately two dozen NJ academic librarians that attended, and one of at least ten NJ librarians who presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2017 Conference held in Baltimore, MD, March 22-25, 2017. According to ALA, attendance for ACRL 2017 was the highest ever at 3499 face-to-face attendees and more than 246 virtual attendees.
Some of the trending themes at the conference included library support and advocacy, diversity and social justice, open access and information literacy. There were over 500 diverse sessions to choose from including three distinguished keynote speakers- Information Designer David McCandless discussed how to lead power and change via visualization tools and resources; Author Roxanne Gay who spoke about diversity and social change and Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden who closed out the conference celebrating the value of all libraries and librarians. Each keynote speaker inspired me in different ways, whether it was to be more visual for bigger impact, how I can better use my own voice and how as librarians we must never give up our fight.
Like most of my ACRL-NJ / NJLA CUS colleagues, I came back feeling awed by the work of academic librarians across the nation and empowered to contribute more to my college, our libraries and our community of NJ academic librarians. I recently spoke with Kate Hossain, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Bergen Community College who came back from the conference feeling both sympathetic and energized. “The sessions I attended demonstrated how so many librarians are struggling to do more with less – less money, less time, less personnel, less space, . . I think we face a lot of the same issues in New Jersey. But I also saw librarians being the ones driving projects on campus having big impacts! “
Bonnie Lafazan is the Director of the Woodbridge Campus for Berkeley College Libraries, and is the incoming ACRL-NJ / NJLA CUS Vice President / President Elect.
Announcements
Drew University
Mr. Brian Shetler has been appointed Head of Special Collections, Archives and Methodist Librarian. Brian will direct the Department of Special Collections and University Archives and will lead Library Services for the General Commission on Archives and History for the United Methodist Church. Brian has a B.A. in English Literature from American University and a M.L.I.S. from Simmons College. He is a PhD candidate in History and Culture at Drew's Caspersen School of Graduate Studies. His dissertation is titled, "Presenting Chaucer to the Reader: The Canterbury Tales from Caxton to Kelmscott, 1477-1896." Brian has worked in several special collections libraries and archives including: The Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Boston Public Library, and the Conjuring Arts Research Center in Manhattan.
Dr. Jesse Mann, Theological Librarian, published “Histories of the Council of Basel,” in: A Companion to the Council of Basel, ed. Michiel Decaluwe, Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson, Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, 74 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 50-72. He also published "Reading the Bible in the 15th-Century: The Case of Juan de Segovia," Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 43, no. 1 (2017): 115-34.
Dr. Christopher J. Anderson, Associate Dean of Libraries published two book chapters, “A Journey into Theological Librarianship,” in Cristina Artenie, ed. Specialists: Passions and Careers (Montreal, Quebec: Universitas Press, 2017) and “Welcome to The Drew Vault: Educating Students through College Radio,” in Gregory Adamo and Allan DiBiase, eds. College Media: Learning in Action (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2017).
Dr. Christopher J. Anderson, Associate Dean of Libraries, and Cassie Brand, Methodist Library Associate and Special Collections Cataloger co-authored a book chapter “Out of the Vault: Engaging Students in Experiential Learning through Special Collections and Archives,” in Peter McDonnell, ed. The Experiential Library: Transforming Academic and Research Libraries through the Power of Experiential Learning (Oxford, UK: Chandos Publishing, 2016).
Dr. Richard Mikulski, Government Documents and Reference Librarian, has joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of New Librarianship.
Mercer County Community College
Angela Camack, a librarian at Mercer County Community College, has had two editorials published in 'Choice' magazine. The first, 'Playing Triple-A Ball with Faculty: Advocacy, Access and Authority in Librarian-Faculty Relationships' appeared in the January 2017 issue and 'Resources and Techniques for Building a Bridge to College Research' appeared in the March 2017 issue.
Stockton University
Kerry Chang FitzGibbon, Periodicals Librarian, and Jianrong Wang, Head Cataloger at Stockton Library have published an article in the peer reviewed journal, Technical Services Quarterly. “In the Spotlight: Technical Services Professionals in Assessment” was originally a poster session presentation at the 2016 ALA Conference at Orlando, Florida. The presenters were invited to convert the poster session into an article for publication in Technical Services Quarterly.
Abstract: Assessment has become a necessity for academic libraries. Public services librarians do participate in assessment activities; however, technical services professionals who play a role in library-wide assessments are not widely reported. Although the line between public services and technical services has been blurred, the functions of technical services still exist and remain indispensable. Therefore, it is essential for technical services librarians to contribute to assessment, offering their insights to enhance their library services and demonstrate its value. This case study highlights technical services professionals' roles in library-wide assessments which can be replicated in small to medium-sized libraries.
Chang-FitzGibbon, K, & Wang, J. (2017). In the Spotlight: Technical Services Professionals in Library--Wide Assessment. Technical Services Quarterly, 34(2), 157-173.
To read more, visit: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2017.1286845
William Paterson University
Annamarie Klose-Hrubes joined the Cheng Library faculty in February 2017 as the Digital Initiatives Librarian, which is a new position in the library. Annamarie holds a B.F.A. in Film & Television from New York University and an M.L.I.S. from Rutgers University. Her areas of specialization include digitization, metadata, digital archives and libraries and institutional repositories.
Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian at Cheng Library has been appointed by the NJ State Library to serve on the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Advisory Council.
David Cupo, Electronic Resources Metadata Specialist Librarian and Hao Zeng, Systems Specialist Librarian, presented “Library Hacks: Reuse, Repurpose, and Remix” on February 10 at the SUNYLA Midwinter Online Conference. Hao is co-presenting “Hacking VuFind Combined Search” with Ray Schwartz, Head of Library Information Systems, at the Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) Developers Day in May.
NJ Librarians @ ACRL
NJ Librarians had a good showing at the ACRL 2017 Conference held March 22-25 in Baltimore, MD. In addition to Eric Jeitner's poster (see "Stockton Librarian's..." article for picture), librarians from Berkley College and Montclair State University were involved with posters and panels. Some former NJ colleagues presented, too!
Jessica Kiebler, Director White Plains and Bonnie Lafazan, Director Woodbridge from Berkeley College presented "Build Your Own Technology Toolkit: Charting a Path to Create More Successful Outreach" at the 2017 ACRL Conference in Baltimore, MD.
“The New Reference Librarian” Workshop
By Katie Cohen
After migrating from VALE to ACRL-NJ / NJLA CUS last year, the Reference Services Committee has regrouped and held a successful workshop on Thursday, April 6th. “The New Reference Librarian,” was held at Rutgers University’s Alexander Library and was co-sponsored by SCARLA. It consisted of five lightning talks and six round table discussions.
During the lightning talks, Berkeley College’s Dina Meky asked us to question how social media posts can be reference resources. Next, attendees were treated to talks that presented multiple perspectives on the same topic. Business reference was discussed by both Cara Berg of William Paterson University, and Christy Goodnight of Stockton University; however, the presentations complimented each other by covering different databases and reference tools. Attendees learned about virtual reference options from two different speakers. Michelle Ehrenpreis of Felician University informed the audience about “Virtual Reference via Adobe Connect,” while Audrey B. Welber of Princeton University discussed the benefits of using Skype to connect with patrons. The topic of virtual reference was further discussed in terms of a hybrid student population in a round table led by Joe Louderback of DeVry University.
Concerned about privacy? Try Opera
By Sharon Whitfield
The most recent legislation regarding Internet Service Providers (ISP) selling your data has me a little more concerned about online privacy. While most of my technology colleagues are scrambling to setup Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), I’m thinking about installing Opera. Opera is a browser based VPN that is completely free. Using a web browser VPN:
- Replace your IP address with a virtual IP address
- Access content behind a firewall
- Hide browsing content
Here’s how you do it:
- Simply install either Opera for Windows or Mac (http://www.opera.com/download).
- Click on the Opera menu and navigate to Preferences or Settings
- Navigate to the Privacy & Security, click on the “Block ads and surf the web up to three times faster” box to enable the block ads feature.
- Find the VPN header and click on the Enable VPN feature.
- You should now see “VPN” in the URL bar.
When you see VPN in the URL bar, Opera is encrypting all data from your web browser so that your ISP will not be able to sell your data.
Sharon Whitfield is the Emerging Technologies Librarian at Cooper Medical School of Rown University.
News from SCARLA
By Katrina Zwaaf and Kristen Matteucci
The 2017 spring semester brought a change in leadership for The Student College, Academic, and Research Library Association (SCARLA) at Rutgers University’s School of Communication and Information. When former SCARLA president, Diana Floegel, graduated in December 2016, Katrina Zwaaf and Kristen Matteucci stepped into the position as Co-Presidents. Returning SCARLA officers include Treasurer Emma Fasano and Webmaster Dana Eckstein. Dr. Marie L. Radford also continues to serve as Faculty Advisor.
SCARLA Co-Presidents Katrina Zwaaf (left) and Kristen Matteucci (right).
SCARLA exists to promote students’ understanding of academic librarianship by organizing speakers, events, and trips. To that end, our spring 2017 semester has featured various speakers who have touched on topics ranging from research and publishing to job interviews and tenure. In February, we heard from Stephanie Mikitish, who recently accepted a position at Rutgers University Libraries as the new User Engagement and Assessment Librarian at John Cotton Dana Library in Newark. Together with our sister student organization, the Library and Information Science Student Association (LISSA), we hosted Kayo Denda, Women’s Studies librarian and head of the Margery Somers Foster Center at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library in March. We were eager to hear from Ms. Denda about the work that earned her the ACRL’s Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Career Achievement Award!
NY Academic Librarians Advocate for Access to Publicly Funded Research
By Michelle Young, NYLA-ASLS President
Jeremy Johannesen, NYLA Executive Director
Kelsey Milner, NYLA-ASLS Communications Committee
The New York Library Association (NYLA)--founded in 1890 by Melvil Dewey-- is the nation’s oldest state library association. The New York Library Association’s Academic and Special Libraries Chapter (NYLA-ASLS) is one of several state-level organizations dedicated to the work of academic and special librarianship.
One of the many legislative efforts NYLA is working on is New York Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Legislation (TAPFR). This legislation requires that any New York State (NYS) funded research published in peer‐reviewed journals is made available online by the state agencies that underwrite the research. This bill would bring NYS in line with the federal standards employed by the National Institute of Health and the State of California. Currently, when publicly-funded research is published in peer-reviewed journals, libraries must expend public dollars for public and scholarly access. The impact of this bill would eliminate an area of double taxation by making taxpayer-funded scholarly research available after one year. Currently, private companies force libraries to expend tax dollars for access to research that has already been publicly-funded. This standard would follow the federal model and would allow for access not only by taxpayers, but would lend necessary support to academic libraries who need research materials, particularly when subscriptions are cancelled due to inadequate financial resources.
Meet the Assessment Committee
Last issue, we introduced you to NJLA CUS/ACRL-NJ's committees in order to help you decide how to become involved with our organization. Now we're announcing our newest addition- the Assessment Committee! If you have not yet found the right committee for you, keep reading to see if this is the one.
Assessment Committee
The Assessment Committee aims to promote discussion and information-sharing among ACRL-NJ and NJLA member libraries on the topics of assessment, evaluation, and statistics collection/analysis. It also seeks to identify best practices in quantitative and qualitative assessment methodologies for libraries, as well as fostering professional development among its members and among the library community at large through developed programs and events.
In recent years, assessment has become a valuable and relied upon element of library success. Whether they are analyzing quantitative statistics of service desk transactions, or utilizing qualitative user feedback and anecdotes to implement changes in services, librarians have always turned to assessment practices to gauge the growth and success of their institutions. The Assessment Committee aims to be an environment in which these topics can be discussed and appreciated in a collegial manner.
The Assessment Committee began as a special interest group within the VALE NJ organization. It migrated to ACRL-NJ/NJLA in January of this year. As a fledgling committee, it is only just starting out on its journey with the organization. Please consider joining the group if the abovementioned topics are of interest!
For more information on the committee or to join as a member, contact the committee chair: Eric Jeitner, User Experience Librarian at Stockton University at eric.jeitner@stockton.edu.
From the Newsletter Archives
While perusing the Spring 1997 Newsletter, look for familiar names among the executive board members and committee chairs. Warning: reading about CD-ROMs and Netscape will produce flashbacks of dial-up modem noises.
Library Partnerships: Working Together for Student Success
By Katherine McGivern
What began as a discussion between librarians at Bergen Community College about ways to better understand how high school students interact with their school libraries and how academic librarians might become involved, turned into a program where high school librarians visited Bergen to learn from one of the leading researchers in the field of school library engagement.
With a grant from the New Jersey Council of County Colleges, the Sidney Silverman Library at Bergen Community College hosted a half-day workshop for local high school librarians in December 2016. Invited guest speaker Dr. Ross J. Todd, professor and chair of the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Director of the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries, engaged the group of about 25 librarians in a discussion about library practices that encourage student inquiry.
Stockton Librarians Writing and Researching About Those Quiet Spaces in Our Libraries
By Christy Goodnight
Here at Stockton, we’ve been talking about silence a lot. In fact, Eric Jeitner, Assessment Librarian, and Christy Goodnight, Outreach Librarian, published a book chapter entitled Sending Out an SOS: Being Mindful of Students’ Need for Quiet Study Spaces which came out this past January. This chapter is in the book The Future of Library Space and is part of the series Advances in Library Administration and Organization published by Emerald Publishing and can be found here: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S0732-067120160000036010.
The idea for this book chapter came out of comments we received on our last LibQual survey from many students that requested more quiet study space. We expanded the quiet study zones in the library to encompass almost half of the main floor as well as the entire upper and lower floors. The fact that it was the students requesting this change made us realize that we had to essentially “go back to our roots” by re-introducing quiet into the library.
Following this publication, we then each had students come to us because he or she felt the quiet study areas were too quiet! This input from students is what prompted our research project in which we made maps of the main library quiet study spaces, broke those spaces into zones or sections, and introduced a white noise machine into quiet study section A at the beginning of the Fall semester last year and have been moving it around since then. We are still collecting data on this project at this time and plan to complete data collection by the end of the Spring semester. Then we plan on compiling the data to see what our complete results are and whether or not students are drawn to the white noise in the quiet study areas or if it, in fact, repels them.
At the recent ACRL conference in Baltimore, Eric presented our poster entitled “From the Doldrums to a Flutter of Wind: Reassessing the Sound of Silence in the Library.” This poster explained the recent study we are doing involving low-level, ambient “white noise” sound zones and the data collected up to that point. We were able to show when comparing the same early weeks of Fall and Spring semesters, that students were more likely to choose a seat in the section of the first floor that contained the ambient noise generator than they were to sit in the section which was silent.
In fact, our data shows that over the course of the Fall 2016 semester, students were on average 10.2% more likely to sit in Section A where the generator was located. Conversely, during the Spring 2017 semester, students were on average 5.1% more likely to sit in Section B where the generator was located then. Section AB, the middle ground on the main floor between sections A and B where one could not hear the noise generator from either zones A or B, had no significant change from one timeframe to the other. Therefore, at this point in our study, evidence indicates that a higher concentration of students are more likely to sit in the library study areas that have low-level ambient noise available in them. We do plan on publishing our findings once our study is complete.
Christy Goodnight is the Outreach Librarian at Richard E. Bjork Library at Stockton University.
Editors
The CUS/ACRL-NJ Newsletter is edited by Joan Dalrymple, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Bergen Community College and Katie Maricic Cohen, Interlibrary Loan, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Editors Joan Dalrymple and Katie Cohen pose for a picture during the Summer 2015 Marketing and Communications Committee Meeting at Monmouth University Library.