Several months ago in the CLIC consortium Reference Community of Interest group, of which I am a part of, I asked what our local library school, the College of St. Catherine’s, was doing in keeping up with what is happening in academic libraries. I thought it would be interesting if our group would have a discussion with students and some faculty and have a dialogue with our group and any other librarians who wanted to be a part of it. As a graduate of that program in 1998, I kept thinking about what classes or advising I wish I would have had and what would have better prepared me for our profession. For those of you who do not know, the College of St. Catherine’s program is actually through Dominican University in Illinois. Dominican actually is the name on the degree. However, St. Catherine’s is going to be going through the accreditation process in the next several months and hopefully will be “on their own” in 2009.

On Wednesday, we had that discussion. I give total credit for some of my fellow librarians for taking the ball and running with it. We met at the College of St. Catherine’s and took over a meeting room. We had two student/recent grads and two faculty members each give a 5 minute presentation as to some of their reflections on the school and what they want more of. Then we had a question/answer back and forth discussion. As St. Kates is moving towards a stand alone library program, they are obviously concerned and are discussing new and revised curriculum for the program. The faculty were very interested in our input and what we saw as “needed”, especially for academic librarians. And that brings up a great point. I think a lot of new students start the program without any idea of the differences in types of libraries: public, special or academic. Personally, I just wanted to be a “Reference Librarian” and did not really care what type of library it was in.

The program still has four core classes that everyone must take: Introduction to LIS, Organization of Knowledge, Reference & Online Service, and a Management class, which makes up 12 credits. Students are also required to take 24 more credits or eight elective classes. The program takes on average, about two years to complete. The two students who presented finished the program, one finished in two and the other finished in one and a half. Now, that is all fine and dandy, but as most graduates form the program will remember or recognize, is that there are a lot of classes that are only offered once every alternating year OR On Demand as Need Arises (yes, that is how it is spelled out in the syllabus). What that means, is that you may have only one opportunity while in the program to take a specific class. You can only hope that it is not interfering with other classes or your job schedule. St. Kates have added faculty, full-time and adjunct in preparation for accreditation, so I would imagine that some classes will be offered more.

Now, what do I wish I would have had offered in terms of classes? A library user instruction (or BI) class, which is now offered, an instructional design class, and a class that was more about collection development as a whole instead of a “Reference in the Social Sciences or Humanities.” Since the Internet was still new when I graduated, there was no discussion in our reference classes about providing reference to distance or online patrons.

Listening to the faculty I was pleasantly surprised that they are at least aware of the need for students, especially those interested in academic libraries, to have more discussion on academic related topics: working with faculty, understanding university organizations, etc…. They do have the library instruction class I mentioned above, but personally, that should be required or strongly suggested for those with an interest in academic librarians. And that brings up another problem. The only other required classes for students, are those for students who want to get into School Library Media. I feel that if you have an interest in academic libraries, that the school require or advisors strongly suggest a track more befitting our area. The program also has a practicum, which they are considering making a requirement. I would like this to be required regardless of what type of library you would like to work in. It was not uncommon when I graduated for library students to go through and finish the library program without any real library experience. Or at least something more than being a circ worker or page. I was glad by the student presentations to hear that they were getting actual reference experience in the St. Kates library and that even one of them had done a BI for one of the St. Kates’ freshman classes. But this was probably from their own initiative. Not every student gets that type of opportunity but it is one that I strongly suggest that be made to all library students regardless of area of expertise.

I am trying to get the links and presentations to put here. Maybe I will add some more when they arrive.

Winter will just not let go of us. Obviously I am excited for the warmer weather, but also that I can go biking more. Not just biking to work, but for much longer rides as well. This last Sunday I participated in the annual Lakevill Ironman ride. They have a 30, 62 (more like 63.3), and a 100 mile route. My previous longest ride was a 34 mile ride so I decided to challenge myself with the 62 mile route. I started the ride with a couple friends, who then split off to the 100 mile route. So, for 95% of the ride I did on my own. The weather was rather chilly in the first leg (28 miles), pretty much heading West and South. I was well layered, but the breeze/wind was somewhat annoying on the hills, which the first leg had plenty of. At around 23 miles I did have to stop and take off my head mask and just put on the skull cap (underneath my helmet of course) due to I was getting warm and a little nauseous. Had a couple fig bars and a good swig of water and moved on. At the first stop, an American Legion Hall, they had quite a spread of food and drink for riders. I had a small cup of coffee, a bit of water, several orange slices, a blueberry muffin and pocketed some sports bars for further into the ride. The next leg was 18 miles and went East, so I had the wind at my back now. This leg was also more flat and there were no steep hills to climb. Unfortunately, this leg of road was also filled with potholes and bumps, which made for an interesting leg. Regardless, I had a nice cadence at around 17-19 mph. At the second and last stop, which was in Northfield, Minnesota, they were serving small bowls of pasta along side the boxes of fruit and candy. I also had some wheat bread, which I have to find out which baker made them. The third and final leg was a pretty much a straight shot North leaving Northfield and going through some more farm country.. The wind was not direct, but had picked up over the previous legs and was annoying at times. The first part of this leg was quite nice, but as in most things, the closer you get to the “finish line” the longer it takes. LOL. It was quite interesting to bike that far and alone. With no one to talk to, or to switch pace setting with, it is a great exercise in mental discipline to maintain a good work rate and not get disheartened. AND not get bored. Since this is the start of the season, it was a good chance to work out some of the usual “early season” stiffness and to toughen up the butt. I sometimes usually have bad pains with my Trapezius (neck muscle) due to riding very stiff and not relaxed. I forced myself to be in a relaxed position and continually “stretched” it while I was looking at the scenery. At the end of the ride I did not have a problem with it whatsoever. I do have to say that about 15 minutes after the ride I started to come down hard, i.e., very weak and a little sore. When I got home I made sure I kept busy walking around and did not sit or lie down. This definitely helped my recovery. For the next day, my knees , lower left back and right calf were a bit sore, but not enough to keep me off my feet.

Having done the ride, I have accomplished one step in a future goal…completing a century (100 miles) by the end of the biking season. I do have another staged ride in another week and I would not mind doing another 60. We shall see.

Oh, for other bikers out there, these web sites may be of interest.

Map my ride

& for those who like to journal

The Bike Journal

Hamline University has decided to realign our undergraduate education department with our Graduate School of Education. Tentative launch date is July 1st. I knew this was going to be coming down the turnpike, but not that soon. What is going to happen? Not really sure as not a whole lot has been laid out yet. Kind of like a “details to follow”, just this time, quite a few details. As the liaison to GSE, I will probably be working closely with our undergrad ED liaison and I am sure our GSE Library Taskforce will grow with membership…and probably get a new name. I am not sure how big a change it will be for the library, but I can see certain things maybe being a bit easier. The children’s curriculum lab and literature collection is actually “property” of the undergraduate department and this has been a problem in terms of how it is staffed and the actual collection development. GSE and our MFA (writing for children and young adults) programs have long wanted to contribute more and have more say into this area of the “library”. Where we, as librarians, have had very little say into this. We have had better conversations about this over the last few months and even before the realignment discussion came to pass. Now, I would imagine that we will have more fruitful discussions about the lab. I do not want to talk about the “ownership” of the lab, as I think this is still a somewhat contentious and political issue. Other things we will need to take care of? I would imagine over the next few years and with the development of new curriculum, that the library’s funding allocation for the school will change. Will this mean more money or more headaches? I am not sure yet. Also, will this mean new programs within the school that I will have to help develop? And the biggie? How will my and my colleagues teaching schedule change? Anyway, big things a happening at the university.

Veronika was born March 3rd, 2008

22 inches long and 9 pounds 13.5 ounces.

First off, where have I been? Well, besides being obscenely busy at the library, my wife is officially 39 weeks pregnant, which means I have been getting prepared as much as humanely possible for the newest member of our family.

Back on topic, our university has just subscribed to RefWorks. For those of you familiar with the product will know that they actually have quite a few good tutorials/screencasts on how to use their product. However, to keep my Captivate “chops” working, I decided to create a brief intro tutorial to the product and put our library brand on it and give it a bit more context.

Side note, I find that in teaching RefWorks to my students they don’t really get it, until you show them how it can create a bibliography. Then the ooohs and awws usually occur. However, that is probably a subject for another day, but it does make me think that RefWorks is the ultimate slippery slope product we have. You want to show students how to add references: manually or by exporting from a database. That’s not bad, but I also feel the need to show them how to organize their references and how to create a bibliography or use Write-n-Cite. And those features are somewhat out of our jurisdiction and more for the Writing Center. BUT, obviously the more you show them, the better they will understand it and use it. And this goes back to my Captivate tutorial.

My first instinct, for the tutorial was to try and show as much as possible, going against my own favorable theory on shorter tutorials. This was also my first try in integrating Power Point slides into the screencast.

Here is the first demo

Now, I passed this tutorial on to a few of my colleagues to get their input. This helped, because there were a few on staff who had absolutely no experience in using the product and it seemed to be a good way to measure the utility of the tutorial. Unfortunately, what followed forced me to rethink and then redo the tutorial. My colleagues were not interested in having us show them all the features, but how a student could one, sign up for an account and then two, export a reference from a database. In a sense, they just wanted something to get them started and show how this product interacts with other library products. So, that is what I did.

Here is the second demo

And even though I want to tell/promote more of RefWorks, I do think the first tutorial is not only a bit too long, I was also not too happy with some of my graphic choices, such as the color of the text boxes and such.

One more thing of note that I might try again, is using questions like “How do I do this or that?” to frame instruction on a particular feature. But, like all of my tutorial, in a few months I will think I need to redo them in some way.