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An Interview with Beth Warner, AD for Information Technology

As part of our residency, Brian and I have had the opportunity to meet with various functions, departments, and Associate Directors at OSUL in order to gain a greater understanding of the libraries as a whole.

This week, we sat down with Beth Warner, Associate Director for Information Technology. Under Warner’s direction, the Information Technology organization, though relatively small in staff size, has a large impact on the OSUL community through its support of the library website, content management system, catalog/ILS, and our intranet, in addition to a long list of special projects and collaborations.

During our meeting we asked Beth one question for the blog readers out there:

Question: If you had a magic wand that could resolve one issue in the next thirty minutes, what would it be?

Answer: “Our digital asset management strategy, specifically how do we manage digital asset storage. Do we use on-site storage, or do we use a cloud storage solution? How many copies do we retain? Do we have an archival copy and a working copy?

Digital asset management is not strictly an IT issue, it is a library issue. Digital assets are part of our collection, same as any book, so how do we manage our assets long term? By taking the same care and approach with our digital collections as we do with our physical collections.”

Thanks Beth for supporting our first blog interview and we hope to provide more interviews in the future.

Is there someone you would like us to interview? Is there a question you would like us to ask? Please feel free to write suggestions in the comments below!

Value Passed On

November 16, 2011 / leaf.7@osu.edu / Comments Off

Last week, the LA Times columnist wrote about the value of libraries in a news article entitled Librarian’s Words are Binding. Puns aside, it set off a flurry of comments, some of which contended the value of libraries. This is nothing new in LIS. As we struggle to assert our value in the community or campus, there are always those who see libraries as increasingly obsolete and wasteful. One comment questioned why K-12 schools should fund libraries over larger math classes or other core subjects. Another viewed libraries as a luxury akin to a game room. Information services groomed through the libraries (both public and academic) are continually undervalued (and publicly; watch this disparaging comment by Bill Mayer) despite years of advocacy and promotion.

I would argue that the value perceived by the public is in part a result of the experience users have in college. Typically, the library is realized as a useful place for study and academic research, but what in the academic library inspires students to lifelong use beyond its walls?

Resources for engaging OSU in an Open Access discussion

November 9, 2011 / Juleah Swanson / Comments Off

At last week’s faculty meeting, librarians discussed author rights in publications and explored the idea of an Open Access Resolution.

How in tune are our non-library faculty counterparts, or even graduate and undergraduate students, with their rights as creators/authors? How can we engage the rest of the OSU community in this discussion, one that impacts all of us?

Here are a few resources to start.

Are there any other resources that you use to inform others about Open Access and author/creator rights? Please share in the comments!

Copyright, Fair Use and Ownership Workshop

November 16th, 2011 10:00am–11:30am

Learning Collaboration Studio, Rm 060 Science and Engineering Library

Join Anne Gilliland of the Prior Health Sciences Copyright Management Office for a discussion on copyright, fair use and ownership. She will also introduce two new short videos on copyright basics that can be used when talking about copyright with classes or individuals.

( I attended this workshop and highly recommend it. Great audience participation and discussion from the OSU community)

https://registration.it.ohio-state.edu/node/415

Open Access Instructional Video

Only have 1 minute to spare to brush up on Open Access and Author/Creator rights? Here’s the video for you courtesy of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and McGill University Library

Open Access: Author Instructional Video

A completely silly take on the Open Access discussion

What happens when Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth II land on the Moon? They talk about Open Access, of course! Yes, find out how in this completely silly video.

Albert Einstein and the Queen discuss Open Access

Goals: Why are they so difficult to make and keep?

October 24, 2011 / Juleah Swanson / 1 Comment

Creative Commons angietorres http://www.flickr.com/photos/angietorres/4564135255/

There has been a lot of talk recently in libraries about the emphasis on setting professional and development goals.

Professional goals and development goals are not unlike goals in our personal lives. We have financial goals (saving for a vacation, a new home, a child’s education), fun goals (training for a race, learning something new), and the irksome New Year’s Resolutions (go to the gym, cook healthier foods, drink more water, floss). Sometimes we achieve our goals, and other times we decide that getting up at 5:30AM to go to the gym just isn’t something we want to do.

What makes goals difficult and why do we dread goal setting?

When goal setting does work, what successful stories do you have and how did you achieve your goal?

Please share your thoughts and success stories in the comments!

Ideas for Course Enhancement Grants

October 17, 2011 / leaf.7@osu.edu / Comments Off

As someone who helps support work done with these grants, this is probably not the most unbiased blog post you’ll find. However, I feel strongly about the potential these grants have for staff, librarians, teaching faculty, and students alike, and I’d like to offer ideas to those who find themselves wondering how they can best incorporate librarians into their class and curriculum. The evaluation criteria states:

The introduction of library materials and services will enhance the success of the course.
New or innovative use of library materials, a variety of formats, or information literacy instruction is included.
Potential for broad impact on students is possible. This might be indicated by high enrollment, pre-requisite status, frequent offering, multiple sections, discussion of how course material will be shared with colleagues, etc.
The proposal shows evidence of collaboration with a librarian.
Applicant is familiar with or willing to learn how to use appropriate technologies identified in the proposal.

What does this mean aside from offering an instructional session on resources or promoting ILL services? Here’s a short list of possibilities:

For any assignments that require research, offer to be a peer reviewer to make sure that those resources are still available and that what is being asked of students is clear in the language of an assignment.
Create a collaborative resource centered on students’ work (e.g. wiki for written papers, private YouTube channel for videos, etc.—technology is not limited to proprietary software)
Help develop an assignment that requires students to engage with a primary or secondary resource (Anne Fields has a fantastic list of sample assignments)
Assist faculty in visually-enhancing or updating their teaching materials
Partner with learning-technology specialists to add additional layers of engagement to the classroom

These are just a few ideas, and I would love to help you think of additional ones. But what unique ways have you engaged with faculty?

Recommended: At-Risk Simulation Training

October 10, 2011 / leaf.7@osu.edu / Comments Off

The University Center for the Advancement of Teaching (UCAT) teamed up with the Counseling & Consultation Center to provide an At-Risk Simulation Training to help faculty “identify and approach students in mental distress and, if necessary, refer them to our counseling.” The simulation is an animated game in which one plays the role of an imaginary professor who evaluates student profiles and engages in dialogue with five students. The conversations are dynamic; the player’s choices affect the students’ willingness to converse, reception to new ideas, and subsequent dialogue options. The purposes of these talks are to gauge the students’ mental state and persuade three out of the five to seek out counseling. The player is provided with subjective observations of the student (e.g. have they been sleeping a lot in class?), grades, and asked to reflect on personal biases before meeting with the student.

When I played the game (allot 45 minutes to 1 hour for completion), I found the simulation compelling. The imaginary professor’s prefaces were sometimes long-winded; however, the students’ responses seemed surprisingly accurate and left me feeling uncomfortable at times. That being said, their behaviors were fairly predictable if you violated best practices provided by the simulation. They would get defensive or insulting. Some students were somewhat respectful, and others tended to be reluctant to say anything. Some of these practices were:

Being supportive
Avoiding value judgments
Focusing on what’s observed
Maintaining boundaries—don’t step into the role of a counselor

The approaches that were recommended not only provided useful strategies to consider, but I felt that they also reinforced ethical issues that aren’t always articulated or easily forgotten. Something that was personally tempting for me was to try to be the students’ confidant. The human experience may be universal, but it’s probably best to leave more serious issues to a professional. Fortunately, if you did make a mistake, the simulation was forgiving and would let you restart a conversation if the student stormed out.

The other valuable component of the game was the reflective portion of the interactions. The player must make recommendations when a personal grievance is aired. Sometimes the professor doesn’t want to speak with a student if he has a grant proposal due. Other times, he sees a lot of himself or his son in a student and has to avoid treating his student as such. Also, since the profiles were mostly based on personal perceptions, the player is forced to filter out the actual traits that are warning signs instead of making unjustified assumptions (e.g. student wearing marijuana-friendly apparel).

While the simulation isn’t perfect, I would recommend it to anyone who interacts with students on a regular basis. The UCAT site states that there have been over 40 documented suicides at OSU in the past decade; how many could have been a preventative force in those peoples’ lives? The Ohio State University has purchased 500 licenses and over 275 faculty, GTAs, and staff have completed the training thus far. You can find the training here: http://ucat.osu.edu/at-risk.html

Have you taken At-Risk or similar training? What strategies would you consider when working with students or student workers?

About the Residents: 5 questions we asked each other

October 3, 2011 / Juleah Swanson / Comments Off

Before embarking on this ongoing conversation for the next two years, we thought we would take some time to share the “open and honest” side of ourselves.

We each decided to ask each other a few standard questions plus five unusual questions of the interviewers choosing. Enjoy!

NAME: Juleah Swanson

TITLE & DEPARTMENT: Electronic Resources and Access Librarian, Acquisitions

DEGREE & SCHOOL: Masters of Library and Information Science, University of Washington

UNDERGRAD: Women’s Studies, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME

HOBBY OR ACTIVITY: Hiking/walking in the Metro Parks

FAVORITE ELECTRONIC RESOURCE: Factiva because even though “it’s not user-friendly, you can find answers to difficult questions.”

1. What’s a dream of yours?

First person to land on Mars because (one reason at least) it’s hard to top Neil Armstrong, whom everyone knows!

2. What’s one book or movie that you would recommend and why?

The Cove is a documentary about dolphins that are killed, ultimately for no real reason. While it’s fairly one-sided and sad, it is eye opening. It’s also interesting in that it’s an amateur film and plays out like a thriller—these groups of activists plant hidden cameras and enter places illicitly to discover the truth.

3. On the show “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” James Lipton administers the Bernard Pivot questionnaire at the end of every show. One of the questions that I’d like to ask you is: “What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?”

Being in an environment that breeds innovation gives me the energy to be proactive and excited.

4. What’s the best local place you’ve eaten in Columbus so far?

Juniors Taco Truck on 5^th and Highland. They have tent you can sit in, and they also sell Mexican Cokes (the good bottled kind with real sugar –ed).

5. What advice would you have given yourself starting out in library school?

Pick a path for what you want to do, and get as much experience is you can. If it turns out to be wrong, do something else and repeat.

NAME: Brian Leaf

TITLE & DEPARTMENT: Instructional Design Librarian, Teaching and Learning

DEGREE & SCHOOL: Master of Science Library Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

UNDERGRAD: Linguistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

HOBBY OR ACTIVITY: Roller skating (no joke)

FAVORITE INSTRUCTOR: Mr. Vender, Percussion Instructor. He was a solid musician, level-headed and friendly.

1. If you were OSU Library Director Carol Diedrichs for a day, what would you do?

I would probably be a slave to my calendar. I have taken a look at Carol’s calendar and she has lots of meetings. I imagine there is a lot of paperwork too.

Oh, and I would take the current Residents out to a nice dinner 🙂

2. Where did you go on your last vacation?

Waikiki, Hawaii. It was wonderful. I learned how to play the ukulele and surf, went in a submarine, took a small plane to the Big Island to see the volcanoes, visited a macadamia nut farm, drank the best coffee, Kona coffee, and went to a luau at the Polynesian Cultural Center.

3. Since moving to Columbus and unpacking, have you discovered anything that you probably didn’t need to pack?

I wish I hadn’t brought as much stuff. I don’t know where to put it all. Right now I’m trying to sell some things. Bar stools and a microwave.

4. What is your favorite viral video?

Terry Tate Office Linebacker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzToNo7A-94

5. Given all the fields, opportunities, and professional choices out there today, why are you a librarian?

Information is global currency. Library and Information Science is a good platform for creating transformational changes that impact society. Changes such as ensuring better information to all people and for people to make better informed decisions, not just big ticket decisions.

Innovation with Accessibility Policy Institute Report

September 26, 2011 / leaf.7@osu.edu / Comments Off

Event Title: Innovation with Accessibility Policy Institute
Date: Monday, July 26^th, 2011
Location: Michael E. Moritz College of Law

I attended this all day event in which speakers from educational, legal, and non-profit sector discussed “procuring, developing and implementing innovative enterprise & learning technologies with ADA requirements” with a particular focus on the web. As a dilettante in web development and interface design, I found this to be a useful session. I see accessibility is a close cousin of what’s known in web coding circles as “markup validation” (essentially a spell check for the language used to code websites).Making sure one’s site is validated improves accessibility, though it doesn’t solve all problems. As an administrator of web content who typically stays on top of validation, I haven’t always considered accessibility explicitly.

But what does it mean to be accessible? Daniel Goldstein, a legal expert and champion for accessibility, roughly stated that it means everybody should have “equivalent ease of access” to information. For instance, this means that a screen reader should be able to accurately represent information through text-to-speech or other means for those who are unable to view or read something in its native format. A typical restrictive practice are scanned texts that faculty might post for his or her class. If it’s purely an image, a screen reader would not be able to interpret it in any meaningful way. The National Federation of the Blink provides a list of accessible practices for the web, but some include:

Links — Sufficient information is provided for the user to determine the purpose of the link (e.g., link text can be read by the screen access software to tell the user what the link will do).
Charts — Screen access software can extract meaningful information from charts (e.g., a text description of information conveyed via a pie chart is easily available).
Check Boxes and Radio Buttons — Text information about the purpose of checkboxes and radio buttons is easily available to screen access software, enabling the blind computer user to know what is being checked or unchecked.²

One of the overarching themes was that obstacles toward accessibility typically does not lie in the technology—it’s with the culture and administration. Faculty and decision-makers do not always have a clear understanding of why it’s necessary (even though it’s the law regardless of the make up of your class) and making it happen on a large university campus is difficult. However, Jonathan Lazar of Towson University in Maryland gave an overview of how it might be accomplished as well as an arsenal of selling points–some of which were in response to barriers that current disability service workers encounter when trying to build consensus. Here’s a small sampling:

Do a campus audit and actually test technologies (instead of just asking) being used and bring it to the attention of top administration. It’s not just about disability services.
Remind faculty that it’s not about restricting academic freedom. It’s about increasing access to information.
Create incentives and penalties as well as a clear timeline for training and implementation.
Provide clear language in RFPs and software contracts to require accessible features.

This was just a brief overview, but it had me thinking about a lot of other aspects of the university campus that accessibility could feed into. One of the recommendations given was that accessibility be lumped as a part of a larger solution or into a more widely accepted practice like universal design.

Thinking a little loftier but worth thinking about, I can see that there might be implications here for other things, such as faculty training. Providing accessible materials for students requires technical skills. The burden cannot be on disability services. It needs to happen at the point of creation. If accessibility training is a mandatory practice, there is an opportunity to create a learning course that also incorporates pedagogical instruction and a more unified campus.

What other impacts could a push towards a more accessible campus have?

refresh : a place for the ohio state university libraries community to refresh

September 20, 2011 / Juleah Swanson / Comments Off

We envision this blog to serve as a forum that welcomes, cultivates and celebrates the differences and contributions of the OSUL community as well as highlights the value of the OSUL Mary P Key Diversity Residency locally & nationally.

Our vision is that this will be a place where:

there is open & honest dialogue
new ideas are refresh mission and vision shared & celebrated
diverse perspectives from the OSUL community will be considered

We encourage you to be more than just a reader and to participate in our blog by adding comments and your own perspective, and we hope to hear from you soon!

-Juleah Swanson & Brian Leaf

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Mary P. Key Diversity Residents

Page 2 of 2

An Interview with Beth Warner, AD for Information Technology

Value Passed On

Resources for engaging OSU in an Open Access discussion

Goals: Why are they so difficult to make and keep?

Ideas for Course Enhancement Grants

Recommended: At-Risk Simulation Training

About the Residents: 5 questions we asked each other

Innovation with Accessibility Policy Institute Report

refresh : a place for the ohio state university libraries community to refresh

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