One more update

Hello, everyone! I know I said I was finished posting, but I know some MLIS students are just discovering this blog; thus I wanted to let you know one other update. In my last post, I told you that less than two weeks after completing my coursework I landed a temp position at Dickinson College. As luck would have it, no more than a month at Dickinson went by before I landed a permanent librarian position at Schuylkill Health School of Nursing in Pottsville, PA. Again, I got this job before my degree was officially conferred (October 1). I gave Dickinson my one month notice, and I started here on October 31.

This is an incredible position to have for many reasons, the biggest one being that I’m a library of one – I’m the only library employee – so I get to do everything. And I mean everything. All of my background, from coursework to practical work, is coming into play here and it’s just an amazing experience. There’s far too much to write here, but if you find me (Christina Steffy, and my page link is in my previous post) on LinkedIn, you can see what I’m doing.

In the midst of a crummy economy, I had two great jobs before my degree was conferred, but if you check out my LinkedIn page you will see that I worked my butt off to be able to do that. I didn’t just sit back and get a degree and expect that to be it. I also took advantage of every opportunity to visit and learn about libraries and to network, and I never backed down from a challenging experience. Through hard work, I stood out. I know all of you are capable of doing that now.

Good luck to you, regardless of whatever point you are at in your MLIS career.

-MsLibraryGoddess

Update on a job, publication, and scholarship

Hello, everyone! I know that an earlier post said this blog was over because it was the end of my MLIS journey, but I ended it a week before being interviewed for – and getting – a visiting research and instructional services librarian position at Dickinson College.  So I completed my MLIS and within two weeks had a job. I don’t even officially have my degree conferred yet. If you work hard and make yourself stand out, and if you’re willing to accept a less than ideal position at first, you can do it! I didn’t want to take a visiting position because it’s a one year appointment, but this is the perfect way to get my foot in the door. 100% of the people who have had this position at Dickinson have moved onto other things before the term was up.

Also, a paper I wrote on millennials for my HIB course was published in Learning and Media, the journal of the PA School Library Association, in the summer 2011. A portion of a report I did at Milelrsville will be in the fall 2011 PaLA Bulletin, too. So use those papers you write in class to turn them into professional publications.

And I fond out that I won a scholarship from PaLA. Back in July, I had mistakenly been told I did not receive it. And earlier this week I was pleasantly surprised to learn hat I did receive it.

I couldn’t ask for a better ending to my MLIS journey! Work hard, and if you want to learn more about me and keep up with what I’m doing, please find me on LinkedIn. http://www.linkedin.com/in/cjsteffy

-MsLibraryGoddess

The End of My Journey

It’s been an incredible year. Actually, I can’t even believe it’s already been a year. At this time, in 2010, I was preparing to begin at Rutgers and now I’m completing forms to receive my diploma in October 2011 (and anxiously awaiting the commencement ceremony in May 2012), and I’m searching for jobs. Summer session, my last semester at RU, ended on August 5 and I can’t believe what life has been like this last year.

I’m a different person than I was last year. I’ve grown and changed, and it’s been for the best. I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of accomplishing. I’ve learned what I have a passion for doing, and I’ve learned that things I thought I would love doing I don’t. Emotionally and mentally I’m different, stronger, in how I can handle the challenges life throws at me. Although I’ve stretched the limits of what I can handle, I’ve learned that I don’t want to continue to stretch the limits as far as I’ve had to during my graduate career. In addition to learning so much about myself professionally, I’ve learned a lot about myself personally as well. I’ve discovered things in my personal life that I didn’t think were important before now are important, and that’s mostly because I didn’t appreciate them as much before grad school, before my life centered on work and homework and almost nothing else. But despite that self centered focus, I haven’t lost sight of the fact that I have an amazing support system and I could not have achieved most of the things I’ve achieved in life without that support.

Also, the job search is still taking place. Something inside of me feels balanced, though. I understand that I’m on the right path, and that things will fall into place soon. And they won’t just fall into place because fate will put them there, but they will fall into place because I continue to work hard to make them fall into place.

Overall this last year of my life has been an incredible journey, one that I never doubted was right, even when I had days where I questioned why I chose this path. I’m a different person, but I love the person I’ve become. I’ve learned so much and I will continue to learn and to grow. So I bid adieu to this blog, which was meant to chronicle my journey in receiving my MLIS. My journey in life is far from over, but this portion of it is. Thank you for following me and encouraging me.

-MsLibraryGoddess

Goodbye, Millersville

This has been a week full of mixed emotions. I’m sad my internship is ending, but happy because that means that I’m one step closer to completing my MLIS. But just like every other week here, my last week was full of excitement and fun times.

I spent the bulk of this week tying up loose ends on projects and finally getting the screencasts recorded. I’m amazed at how long they took to record, how much work goes into creating a five minute screencast. Lexis Nexis is especially challenging to condense into a five minute screencast. I also attempted to put captions on them that can be turned on and off so that we can have the screencasts meet ADA compliance. The captions worked on the version uploaded to screencast.com, which is the version that can be embedded in the D2L courses, but it’s not yet working for YouTube. Here are links to the YouTube versions of the screencasts.

Finding Supreme Court Opinions in Lexis Nexis

Citing Supreme Court Opinions in Lexis Nexis

Finding and Citing Law Reviews in Lexis Nexis

In addition to working on the tutorials, I have also had a taste of what it’s like to balance work with professional development as I have been working to turn the 12 page social media report into a 2,000 word article. The editor of It’s Academic got back to me with article edits, so I worked on that as well. And my site supervisor is already working to implement some of the best practices I suggested in my report.

I also handled virtual reference shifts, and was able to observe a one on one meeting my supervisor had with a student. Now I have officially been a part of all forms of reference services offered here – reference desk, by appointment, virtual, and phone. I found myself paying attention to the reference interview skills and noticing how my supervisor interacted with the student, helping her feel comfortable and relating to her not just on the assignment but also on a more personal level as they talked about classes in general. And I realized that my supervisor wasn’t just helping the student with research, but also with other aspects of the assigned paper. Here’s another reason why information literacy is so critical. When you must make major changes to your paper, you may have to do more research. Also, when you critically examine your research you may find other directions your paper can go in. If only everyone could see how librarians don’t just stop at helping students find resources, but they also help them understand research and resources in the context of their assignments and they help them integrate their resources.

Finally, my week ended with a presentation to the library faculty, staff, and student workers about my internship experience. I’m glad I was able to tell them everything I did here, and to express my appreciation for them giving me all of the opportunities they gave me. And it was rewarding to hear how grateful they were for my work and my time, and how excited they are about my future projects and accomplishments. They really made me feel like I was a full fledged library employee, a colleague they enjoyed working with and learning from, and I have enjoyed every minute of my experience here. I met some wonderful people that I wish I could continue to work with.

Goodbye, Millersville.

-MsLibraryGoddess

The Move

This was the week; the week our office was officially moved out of Ganser Library and into McComsey Hall. Needless to say that made for a very interesting Tuesday as we had to work around things being moved out of our office, and it made for an even more interesting remainder of the week for me because my computer was not hooked up to the network and that put a bit of a wrench in my plans.

But let me start from the beginning of the week…

Although I was not at my internship on Monday, I taught my English composition class that day and it happened to be the day I gave them an information literacy session. While I used this lesson last semester when I taught and believe it was effective, I critically evaluated it and decided to teach it closer to the way I taught the session at Millersville the other week. I also think I need to focus more on the facets rather than some advanced search features. In addition to evaluating my teaching, I was getting used to the new ProQuest interface. I have mixed feelings about it even though I know it’s made to be more like the discovery interfaces I examined in my information retrieval class, which should make searching easier. But that’s too complicated to get into in this blog post. So my internship is already helping my professional development.

Then on Tuesday, while working around the moves taking place, I worked more on my social media report, attended a renovation meeting, and my site supervisor informally met with another professor in one of her subject areas so I got the chance to see some outreach in action as they talked about new projects the department is working on and she offered the library’s assistance.

Thursday and Friday really saw the wrench in my plans. My plans were to be in the office both days and, because my site supervisor is at ALA, I would be able to record my tutorials and to finish up my social media report. Well, my computer was hooked up Wednesday but it wasn’t hooked up to the network and so I had no internet access. That means I couldn’t access the database I needed to access. I thought that I could get a laptop, but then realized that my login doesn’t work for the wireless network and so I still wouldn’t have been able to access the database. My site supervisor and I agreed that I could work from home and get the tutorials done because then I would have access to the Internet. Unfortunately my login wasn’t working for me to access the databases off campus either. So I will record the tutorials in two weeks, when I’m back on campus, and just do it when my site supervisor is at a meeting or I will stay late to get it done. So rather than working on the tutorials, I finished up the report and researched and created QR codes. I honestly didn’t believe the social media report would take so much time to complete. It turned into a much bigger project than expected because there’s so much research on social media, so to develop a best practices for academic libraries that are already engaging in outreach and want to improve was simply more work than expected. I also felt added pressure because this report will be used to help the library improve its social media use, and because it will be adapted for PaLA’s It’s Academic. So this isn’t just a project to keep me busy, it’s something that is going to be useful and I’m the only person working on it. In addition to working on the report, I suggested the library use QR codes in the new, temporary library so patrons can easily find out what services are available, renovation information, and how to contact the librarians across campus. My site supervisor was happy about this suggestion because she was looking for the right time to use QR codes and thinks this is the perfect opportunity. I also had fun finally downloading a QR code reader for my phone and playing with it and the creation of the codes.

Despite the mix up in plans, this week was rather productive. I can’t believe I only have one more week in my internship. Next week my site supervisor is off so I am also not on campus, and then my last week is the first week of July. This has been an incredible experience and I can’t believe it’s soon coming to an end.

-MsLibraryGoddess

Social_media_research[1]

Remember, Patrons Must Access This Information

When I was shadowing the cataloging librarian today, she told me she likes doing reference occasionally so that she’s reminded that patrons must access this information. That’s the reason we’re here, for patrons to access information, but it’s so easy to forget that when you don’t do reference assistance with patrons. It’s so easy for those of us who work with the information every day to understand it, but it’s not so easy for people to understand how to use it if they don’t deal with it every day. So while this may seem like a simple concept to grasp, it’s actually very easy to forget.

In addition to learning that bit of information, I also learned about MARC Edit and got to see cataloging in action. It was wonderful to see this rather than just learning about it, and it make me realize it’s an even more difficult specialization than I thought; and I didn’t think it was easy. If you like learning new things, it’s fun. But you have to be incredibly patient and meticulous. I will say what I’ve said many times before, “God bless the catalogers.”

Other than shadowing, I finished up the bulk of the work that I’m doing for the Author Talk and I got to meet the science librarian from Muhlenberg College. I was invited to visit her, and I learned about Subject Plus, which is an open access version of LibGuides. Learning little things like that – tips, tricks, and programs – are some of the best things I’m learning in this internship.

We also went over to the Student Memorial Center (SMC) to check out the newly renovated space and to learn about how the library can better communicate with student organizations.

I can’t believe my internship is over on July 8, and there’s another week off at the end of June. It’s really going by fast, and I’m knocking out one project at a time. Now that the projects are coming to an end, the fact that the internship is coming to an end is hitting me. I can’t believe it. It’s definitely going by too fast.

-MsLibraryGoddess

File attached: Photo of Gemma and her book

Information Literacy, Academic Freedom, and the Library as a Service

On Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to be able to observe and teach part of a one shot information literacy instruction session with the science librarian. This was a great learning experience, especially since I met with the librarian on Tuesday to help her plan the session. I’ve never had to do any real prep work for an information literacy session before, so that was just as valuable as the teaching itself. Sure I’ve prepped for teaching my own classes, and I’ve prepped for the technology bootcamp at Rutgers when I taught students how to navigate the library website, but this was different. This was actually looking at assignments the students had, tailoring an information session about a database to the assignment, and anticipating what the instructor might want the students to know.

I did the database demo, which I began by asking how the students would search for the sample topic. I wasn’t sure how that would work out because I was allowing the students to navigate the session, but things worked out. I thought I would be nervous to get up and teach, but I’m an instructor and I know the database interface being used. My biggest fear was not understanding psychology as well as some of the students, and that’s something I will learn to deal with as I do more information literacy. I don’t have to know anything in depth about the topic to help people search. I’m teaching them how to do research, not doing the research for them in the situations I’m in, so perhaps not having that great knowledge of the topic is helpful. It’s like the debate over whether or not it’s useful to have a JD when you’re a law librarian. Some firms prefer the librarians don’t so that the librarians aren’t tempted to give legal advice because, even if you have a JD, when you’re a law librarian you cannot give legal advice.

After teaching the students how to use the database, we stuck around for the rest of the class to help people with research. It was rewarding to see the students using the techniques I taught them, and to be able to answer their questions as they were trying to apply the techniques to their own topics. During this extra time, though, the librarian and I had a conversation about information literacy in the curriculum and standardized information literacy sessions.

Librarians are always trying to get information literacy integrated into the curriculum and specifically integrated into courses so students get the information literacy at the time the need it. It’s no easy task when you work for an institution that prides itself on academic freedom. Academic freedom is a wonderful thing because it allows the professors and instructors to teach the way they want to teach. I wish I had a bit more academic freedom in my current adjunct position, but I see the benefits of at least having some standardization, some consistency, so you are assured that everyone is giving students the basic tools they need for more advanced work. Information literacy at those institutions is the same – the librarians have the academic freedom to teach information sessions how they want to teach. And the other professors don’t even have to have library sessions for their students. So trying to force people to integrate information literacy, and then to force there to be some kind of consistency among the information literacy sessions, is no easy task. The library being viewed as a service that’s something there to use or not to use rather than the library being viewed as a teaching partner can impact how well attempts at integrating information literacy into the curriculum are received.

So yesterday wasn’t just a valuable learning experience because I got to teach. It was also valuable because of thinking about the library and information literacy in the larger context of the university.

-MsLibraryGoddess