The Project.

It's time. I finally have what I think is a good draft of the project proposal. Thanks to help from a very thoughtful fellow scholar, and B.'s guidance, I've decided that I will be researching diversity issues in academic libraries and facilitating diversity issues for the library staff.

Over the coming semester I will be:
Finding an academic advisor for the independent project part of the project.
Contacting the Intercultural Center.
Doing research on issues and putting together a pamphlet.

Internship Project/Independent Study

With B.'s help, I have determined what I will be doing for my Internship Project/Independent Study. We are loosely calling it a Library Outreach Project. There are three parts to the project: first, I will be facilitating the library's participation in the University's yearly Global Fest, second, I will be working with the University's Intercultural Center to provide diversity training to the students and staff of the library, and third, I will be working with H. in Archives to have an Open Archives day for students. The project will take place over the Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 semesters. Over the summer, I will be writing proposals for each of the parts of my project (as well as the project overall), and I will be communicating with the Intercultural Center and the Library staff to set things in motion.

Archives Internship, Week 1

This week I began my archives internship with H. H. has been the archivist at RWU for nearly a year now and has generously agreed to let me help her in the archives and teach me what she knows.

H. is the first archivist for the RWU archives. Over the 50 years of RWU's existence, materials have been collected for the archives, but no official organizational or preservation efforts have been made. The RWU Archives contains materials from University offices and departments, the town of Bristol, and The Roger Williams Family Foundation.

Because H. is the first archivist, she is working with largely "artificial collections." Artificial collections are collections whose organization was secondary and is not a part of the collection itself. Therefore, H. must go through the process of surveying each and every item, and then creating a system of organization that will be best for the materials she has and the materials she will acquire in the future. As her intern, I will be helping her create the survey lists and creating a database for her to organize the information she collects so that it can be searchable for her and the public.

This week, H. gave me a tour of the archives and we surveyed an entire range. H. explained her methodology when going through each box, binder and folder. Then H. and I began brainstorming the structure of the database of the archives. We began by deciding what the database would do, and then we talked about what fields or information the database would contain.

Next week, I will be looking through the archives and determining which collection I might like to work on as a project once we finish surveying the shelves. In addition,I will be drawing up a structure for the archives database.

Breaking Down Barriers Conference Notes

Breaking Down Barriers to Serve our Diverse Communities, May 2007 - New York City, NY.

Session 1: How to Coordinate New Services @ your library: real-life successful cases
	Working with Teens on Detention, Vikki Terrile, Senior Librarian, Central Youth Wing, Brooklyn Public Library	Ms. Terrile gave a PowerPoint presentation on her experiences working with Teens in Detention at Brooklyn Public. Ms. Terrile coordinates a program that allows teens to visit the library, take out books, and have book discussions and writing workshops. The program started small and grew exponentially. Ms. Terrile advised everyone to challenge their assumptions about teens in detention, work closely with the detention facilities and to expect to be surprised. This was an inspirational presentation and you can tell Ms. Terrile finds it very rewarding!
	Serving Persons with Disabilities, Carrie Banks Supervising Librarian The Child's Place for Children with Special Needs, Brooklyn Public Library & Barbara Klipper, Youth Services Librarian, Stamford, CT	Ms. Klipper began with a description of how their collection for parents of and children with special needs was established. She did an internal and external scan for resources, wrote grants, arranged for the training of the staff (which was very well received). She recommended the periodical Exceptional Parent for every library who has or might have children with special needs. Carrie Banks, who was a great resource for Barbara Klipper, then talked about her facility in Brooklyn and issues libraries should be addressing. Both women made the point that services for people with disabilities often begin as separate services but the ultimate goal is to be integrated.
	Yoshio Kishi & Irene Yah Ling Sun Collection of Asian Americana: New Collection at NYU, by Dylan Yeats, Graduate Assistant in Archives, Asian/Pacific/American Institute, New York University.	Mr. Yeats talked about the scope and composition of the collection in the context of what he called "community oriented scholarship" He described how part of the collection was acquired from Yoshio Kishi, who was focused on collecting items in popular American culture relevant to Asian Americans. If the items from Kishi's collection were cataloged as most archives and monographs are, an important part of the collection--Kishi's ordering system--would be lost. He then discussed potential solutions and the plans of New York University for cataloging.
Session 2:Libraries Serving Mutli Ethnic Populations
	Donnell World Languages Collection and Its Services to the Ethic Groups Around the City, Hung-Yun Chang, Prinicpal Librarian, Donnell World Languages Collection, NYPL, and Songqian Lu, Information Technology Librarian, New York City College of Technology Library.	The Donnell World Languages Collection serves the language needs of the New York City community (rather than the needs of the researcher.) That is, they acquire books in many different languages, but not necessarily language studies books. They also hold programs to serve the many different cultures and ethnic groups in their area. These include cultural programs (movies, chorus, music, and dance) and educational programs (internet, office programs and English conversation)
	Putting the World Within Reach: Library Services to Multicultural Communities in Arlington VA, Mariele Aguilar, Librarian, Multicultural Services at Arlington Public Library.	The Multicultural Services Department at Arlington Public Library has many exciting programs for their growing immigrant population. These include family story hour, literacy groups, and a story hour television show. Ms. Aguilar is personally involved and literally goes out into the street and to bring to people to the library.
	Black Heritage Collection at Langston Hughes Library and Community Center by Andrew Jackson, Executive Director, Langston Hughes Library and Community Center and L. Banderman (?), Librarian and Curator, Black Heritage Collection, Queens Library.	Mr. Jackson talked about the history of the Langston Hughes Library and Community Center. The Langston Hughes Library began as a collaboration between the city and the community of Queens to create a library that would be run by the community and would act as a cultural space. Despite many skeptics, the library grew, and is very successful. Ms. Banderman described her work as curator, which includes grant writing, acquisitions, and programming.

Update, 4/18/07

I currently have a few projects in the air!

Report on Instruction Internship

B. has asked that I create a report on this semester's activities. I am currently working on compiling my notes and reading more about the topic of library instruction.

Planning my independent study

I have begun research for my independent project. In addition to finding websites, books and articles with information relevant to diversity and libraries, I have also begun interviewing members of diversity related organizations on campus. I hope to create a well-thought out proposal to give to B., the dean, and whichever organization I end up collaborating with.

eportfolio update

My eportfolio is almost done! Unfortunately, the University only gives us 450 KB ( I've written sentences that were larger than 400KB!) for our websites, so the ridiculous amount of PDFS I wanted to use will have to find another home or be converted to images and HTML. I should really just buy webspace from laughingsquid, I just need to come up with a domain name.

Library Instruction, Round Two.

Today I watched one section of an anthropology class and taught the other. I created the lesson plan for the two sections. Nothing went as planned; in hindsight, I really should have offered to instruct the class with more freshmen and sophomores rather than the class with upperclassmen. The class with freshmen and sophomores were forgiving and engaged. The class I taught just wanted to go home and-more importantly- go on spring break.

I feel like I'm starting to get the beginnings of teaching voice, but that I'm still too casual. I'm still on the level of peer rather than instructor. I've also got too much of my retail training in me. Teaching is about conveying information whethere the recipient enjoys it or not. In retail, it's all about pleasing the customer. Although I suppose either way, you don't want to turn off your audience entirely.

I forgot to tell them certain things, so I was glad Barbara was there to swoop in and make things clearer. There's really no consistent category of information that I forgot. In one case it was defining my terms, in another case it was a larger concept they needed to keep in mind. I think I was nervous and I think I needed to think through the lesson plan more and further in advance to be as thorough as possible.

B. says I'm better when I talk randomly than when I'm trying to remember stuff. I'm sure, eventually, I will get a better hold on all of this and be able to go with the flow like she does.Teaching is really a kind of performance; a ritual act. Once one knows the lines and understands the concepts, one can truly convey the meaning behind them with convincing sincerity.

My next class is on the 23rd. I'll be planning and teaching another Speech class with V.

Problem Based Learning.

On Thursday, I sat in on B.'s class where she used Problem Based Learning. She had let me be a part of the planning stages. First she studied the assignment and identified the task at hand. Then she created goals and objectives for the class. After that, she researched which databases and books would be most helpful. I also accompanied her while she visited the classes

Because the point of PBL is to get students to use what they already know to learn what they need to learn, the teacher can't do alot of lecturing and hand-holding, which is the traditional approach to teaching. In PBL, the teacher acts as a guiding force. They are the authority, they use socratic methods, they are commanding, guiding and challenging. Unfortunately, in PBL it is very easy for the teacher to become demeaning, condescending, obscure, and bullying.

A teacher engaged in PBL has to be very attuned to the state of the students and how to draw out their knowledge. This class wasn't terribly responsive (I don't blame them, it was 8:00 in the morning). B. did alot of looking at the list of students and calling on people by name. I don't think that's what I would have done, but it's better than the "Hey-you" approach.

What I like about PBL is that it really emphasizes that research is individual but involves learning from others.

First Library Instruction Session

Today I co-taught two sessions of library instruction with V. The classes were Speech classes, so the research they needed to was fairly general. V. and I took turns demonstrating the databases. I demonstrated ASP and Lexis Nexis.

V. and I also planned the sessions together. We started by looking at plans other librarians had made for the course, and then we discussed what structure the course should take. We based it on a handout B. made a year ago for another Speech class. We decided that because the students would have their topics already, we would not need to show them how to narrow their focus. We decided to show them good general resources to help them with the requirements of the assignment.

I think it went well. V. wished that we had made the class a little more interactive, and I agree with that. What I found interesting was that no one looked particularly interested or engaged, but when we sent them to use the sources, they had obviously absorbed what we told them!

I would like to work on my presentation techinque. I think I need to rehearse more before the classes. I would also like to work on my rapport with the students. For example, before class I happily greeted everyone, but when they started eating or talking while V. or I was talking, I went into my authoritarian-antishoplifter mode back from when I was in retail. It was effective, but I think I lost some of them as a result. I suppose, like in management, we're not there to be their friends, we're there to educate.