Jennifer Smathers: Alright thanks everybody for joining us for the last August reopening panel discussion Sunni libraries focusing on reference and instruction today.
Jennifer Smathers: I'd like to thank all our panelists for agreeing to join. I'm Jennifer sathers in case you haven't heard me before, and each of the panelists are going to introduce themselves.
Jennifer Smathers: Take it away.
Theresa Zahor: Hello, I'm curious as a word from Farmingdale State College green the library head of reference and information voters.
Jennifer Smathers: Thanks, Tracy. Oh, sorry.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I am Brandon West and I'm the head of research construction services and senior Dennis ego.
Megan Benson: And Megan Benson. I'm the lead instruction and outreach librarian at SUNY Binghamton
Nicki Lerczak: My name is Nikki lawyers that got me Instructional Services Librarian at Genesis Community College.
Anjali: I am unruly person this summer, and I am the instructional technologies librarian at Monroe Community College.
Jennifer Smathers: Well, we have a slew of questions we're going to ask will ask initially two panelists and then we will open the floor to additional panelists to throw their two cents in the first question we have is, how are you staffing the reference desk methods, Teresa.
Theresa Zahor: I everybody. Um, yeah, we are stepping the reference desk differently. Um, this semester, of course, due to Kobe we're using a combination of in person reference and online.
Theresa Zahor: For staffing, we're working on our library director created a team. A and Team B scheduled. So four days in person, six days working remotely, at least for the first six weeks of the semester until we see how it goes.
Theresa Zahor: We are largely by far commuter school. So we've been working obviously remotely a reference since the closure. Now for this semester we are working both online and in person.
Theresa Zahor: So what we're doing is I'm still trading one reference schedule but it's combining the online reference coverage and the
Theresa Zahor: In person reference so reference librarian will come in staff, the reference desk for that day on agile, come on in the evening.
Theresa Zahor: The agile librarians will be covering the impersonal queries as well as the online to the in person library and is handling everything in person.
Theresa Zahor: And then so so we started with teammates. So then TV, by and large, would be the online coverage. So, and then we wrote it. So I'm not sure if I said it but four days in six days remotely. So that's what we're starting for this semester. And today's only day one, so we'll see how it goes.
Theresa Zahor: We are using our ask the librarian service for the online queue. And then in person is all our usual usual duties.
Jennifer Smathers: Thanks, Brandon.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Yeah, so at Geneseo. We haven't had a traditional reference desk in probably three or four years and we primarily the librarians in the research and production department do reference
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And in our office area. But as you've probably heard Sunni Geneseo doesn't have a library right now, or it's we have a we have a space but
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Our temporary library space is being built right now. And so we're our plan for this semester is to do reference completely online.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And so there's I, what I do is I schedule each librarian two blocks of times now the week so they get a two hour shift and a three hour shift and during that time they
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Cover chat and students can also schedule appointments with us during those times. And it's not really been too much of an issue where we get too overwhelmed with questions.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Particularly as we kind of retired the chat service for a while because it wasn't really being utilized and now we're just bringing it back. And so students are in faculty and staff were just slowly learning how to use chat again. And so, yeah, we're just working from home and
Brandon West (He/Him/His): That's pretty much it. And so when students want to make appointments with us. Though we one thing we did is spring shared just launched a free integration with live Cal in
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Zoom. And so now when students make appointments with us.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): One on one consultations with us through zoom or through live cow they automatically get sent a zoom link and we get the zoom link to that meeting as well. So we've kind of streamlined it a bit from last spring.
Jennifer Smathers: Sounds good. And we've got a follow up question. Um, how many reference librarians. Do you Teresa and Brandon have and are your online hours, different from your in person hours.
Theresa Zahor: Um, I can take that first we have normally seven full time librarians that will do reference duties. However, this semester we are down to librarians on on maternity leave.
Theresa Zahor: And one on produce well. So we're working basically with five plus our director. So that's how many we have. And yes, that's the coverage of all reference ours.
Theresa Zahor: We have, we have 745 in the morning physical library open today, till 11pm at night without jumps covering the evening Saturday ship. So we have right now we're working with our library director who is so graciously helped out with records.
Theresa Zahor: Our, our reference hours of all during those hours as well online and in person. So, so will type
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Yeah Geneseo or you have, including me sticks reference or restart what we call research instruction library. And so basically the same thing for our parents and instruction.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And we also have our head of access services that contribute to our reference help desk for two hours a week.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And that's it for like our primary general reference our Special Collections Library and does provide own hours for Special Collections referencing she gets a ton of questions for but that doesn't really go through
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Our route and normally if they come to me with a question. I just direct them to her and our hours are exactly the same as they were in person. And it's we
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Reduced our hours. A few years ago, because we've really had reduced staffing like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Three years ago, we had about eight people in my department. And now we're down to six. And so that makes a big difference. And we also used to have.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): librarians who were had other roles in the library contributing to reference, and that is something that's no longer happening. So our hours are 10am to 5pm monday through thursday and 10am to 2pm on Friday.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): On our website. We have an icon that
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Has little owl on it that says chat with us. And when we're logged off of chat. It just has to submit a question or ask a question.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And so the questions get answered in them are good to see the living answers. Q When we're not logged into the system.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And the other question we often get is, well, what if the student needs to make an appointment with you outside those hours. And basically if they just let us know. There's always usually somebody around the building.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Because a lot of our librarians work different hours on that we can usually get somebody to meet with a student later in the evening. If it's absolutely necessary.
Jennifer Smathers: Right, let's move on to the next major question.
Jennifer Smathers: How have you changed your approach to in class instruction Nikki.
Nicki Lerczak: Well, so I'm going to be contrary and start with what hasn't changed. What hasn't changed. Is my desire to be flexible.
Nicki Lerczak: And to try and address the needs of the faculty and the students. So since we starting from that approach that hasn't changed.
Nicki Lerczak: What has changed is that almost all of my classes, used to be group hands on synchronous searching in the library classroom and clearly that's not what we're doing anymore.
Nicki Lerczak: That's hard to do online. I tried to do a little bit of it in the spring to more or less disastrous results. I think there were a lot of shell shocked students bad Internet connections.
Nicki Lerczak: Just, you know, the host of trauma that went on in the spring. So I don't know how much of that I'm going to try again for the fall
Nicki Lerczak: What is more likely is that most of my in class is going to be
Nicki Lerczak: Me making a recording of here's, you know, the couple of resources, you should know about. Here's a couple of ways to go about searching them.
Nicki Lerczak: And then follow up Zoom's so I have instructors are like, Can you zoom into my class. Can you zoom in. So I'm going to give them the links to the videos which are on. We also have a
Nicki Lerczak: YouTube channel for urgency library. So we, you know, I could link it out there and they can go watch it and then if they have questions. So it's much more asynchronous than it used to be.
Nicki Lerczak: I'm also doing a lot more embedding in Blackboard. So I'm usually embedded in English. When I wanted English one or two to the sum total of about four or five classes a semester. And then in the spring. I was embedded in 16
Nicki Lerczak: And I assume that it will be similar if not worse, better, more for the fall
Nicki Lerczak: It's not all active I have modules that students can walk through and I can grade and some are more hands on some or less hands on.
Nicki Lerczak: So it's going to be a lot of creativity. There's that flexibility. Again, more discussion boards. So just, you know, creating subscribed boards so I don't have to check everything, every day, just have the email pop up and say there's a question.
Nicki Lerczak: What I will also be trying to do most of my classes when we were doing the group synchronous searching was me. I had an outline. I had an agenda. I knew what I wanted to demo.
Nicki Lerczak: But I you know I left room for discussion. I left room for student questions.
Nicki Lerczak: I'm finding myself a lot less tied to the what I feel I have to show you in a lot more open to the. What do you guys want to see what are your questions.
Nicki Lerczak: Which would have made me nervous because I was like, No, I want them to see this and I want them to know what that's going to do
Nicki Lerczak: Now I'm much more you tell me and be prepared because, you know, there's always those absolutely silent classes where nobody has any questions, and everything's perfect so I'm prepared.
Nicki Lerczak: But I want to start with a lot more. How's it going, you know that much more counselor and then librarian. So that's my big changes.
Theresa Zahor: Teresa. Um, we have a change this semester, since we close the call that we had a bunch of courses schedule.
Theresa Zahor: Elaborate classes scheduled for the rest of the spring semester. Some of the faculty cancel because they were so overwhelmed. Just getting their stuff online several
Theresa Zahor: kept their classes scheduled. So we have some experience. And we did teach them online course as we normally do in person for the fall semester we take
Theresa Zahor: We have a request to library platform online and I scheduled them from there, we offer for rubbing three options in semester one synchronous set the date and time that would normally be an in person class all our classes are on the line.
Theresa Zahor: And the second one. So that synchronous, which is the majority of our request. The second option is asynchronous recording to have the 10th of the faculty, they can post it as an assignment.
Theresa Zahor: And the third is pretty new to us is asynchronous recording but follow up Q AMP a class, much like Nikki.
Theresa Zahor: Discuss so so it's it's interesting. We'll see how it goes. We do have a mix of all of our librarians. Now no matter what.
Theresa Zahor: Their specialty area or the department responsibilities are required to teach for attending classes.
Theresa Zahor: I'm teaching is a big part of the of our county here it's teaching skills service. So all the librarians, most of which have been hired in the past three years.
Theresa Zahor: I've been trained to teach. So now it's asking everyone to move online. And so, um, so we're doing that we're getting through.
Theresa Zahor: The process of Scheduling them, I am currently at the moment down from our number of scheduled classes compared to
Theresa Zahor: Normal fall semester. I'm attributing that at the moment to faculty still trying to figure everything out. I hope I don't have a REST requests next week.
Theresa Zahor: But I probably will. So that we'll see. But yes, we are trying to do that approach. Nikki as well, which is a little difficult, you know, a little scary at times, but we are teaching the classes as normal, you know, with our modules.
Theresa Zahor: You know, adhering to the information literacy framework, but we are being a little bit more open to the questions and we've had the whole gambit of situations, but technology.
Jennifer Smathers: I'm going to put Megan on the spot and ask her to also respond to this question.
Megan Benson: Sure. So we also have similar options that Theresa has been in specifically thinking through how I've changed my approach in class instruction, which I will be doing. I think I actually have to go in on Labor Day.
Megan Benson: And the active learning tools and things that I would do are now going to be much more technology based. So I'm going to be using tablets, a lot more
Megan Benson: Google Docs and trying to recreate those sort of group learning activities that I used to do and trying to recreate them in a technology platform habit or more polls and things of that nature. I also have bought
Megan Benson: A voice amplifier for my instruction colleagues to use if they are teaching in person in hopes that that could help.
Megan Benson: Folks who are hard of hearing. And since we don't want to be shouting in the times of coven and everybody gets a little foam cover for the microphone and
Megan Benson: I also have face shields as well. So we've taken some safety precautions and we're trying to recreate those you know group activities in a in another way, through technology.
Megan Benson: A voice amplifier model. I honestly don't know what we picked my technology person picked it I can look up to see what we bought and I can share it with Jennifer
Megan Benson: Later.
Jennifer Smathers: Yeah, I'll be happy to share that, too. When the recording comes out, we'll put that up as a comment or no, um, so the next question we have is, where do the HTML information literacy guidelines standards frameworks fit into your changes, Brandon.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Yeah, so I would say, not a lot, even though we're teaching online and it's a different form of instruction or not. We haven't really abandoned the standards and guidelines and frameworks that we already incorporate into our
Brandon West (He/Him/His): lesson planning and
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Just teaching in general at Tennessee. We don't like strictly follow like the standards or any frameworks to a tee, but what we do prior most standardized part of our instruction program is for MTD 105 which is like our entry.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Entry level composition course all the students take and then that we came up with three goals for the program, which are evaluate or locate information evaluate information and integrate information.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And under that under each of those we have like two or three different objectives and that are ranging from being more skill based to being a little bit more conceptual in nature because we are trying to fold in more of the framework. But the biggest thing is
Brandon West (He/Him/His): It's just we're having to figuring out, like, okay, we have to scale back. And so I feel like in terms of like when we work with faculty on the framework.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): That usually involves more collaboration and being maybe a little bit more embedded, whether that's like two sessions instead of one or maybe even three
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And that's a lot harder to do in an online environment. And so we're just trying to focus on what is it that they really need for this class and just trying to make the best of it.
Jennifer Smathers: Anjali you actually work a lot in the online environment. How would you answer this question.
Anjali: Yeah, so I think that the way that we use the Israel framework in the online environment. We're trying to make it kind of mirror how we use it in the face to face environment, which I think also for us is a work in progress or work in progress.
Anjali: But we've been working on revising our learning outcomes over the past semester and the summer to reflect the framework. So what we've actually like about
Anjali: The three of us were sort of charged with
Anjali: Revising this. We just finished like last week. So we have sent it to our library director and then we're going to be sharing it with the rest of librarians, but what we ended up doing was basically going through each of the frames and identifying
Anjali: The, the, you know,
Anjali: The things that sort of like spoke to what we see that we do practically whenever we're teaching. So, and then we sort of are trying to create a we've created. So basically like
Anjali: Three forward facing faculty facing learning outcomes per frame and then within that we actually created a bunch of
Anjali: Learning outcomes that are going to be maybe more library and facing so that we can not present like an overwhelming number of learning outcomes to faculty. We're only really presenting
Anjali: Three per frame, but we also can kind of get at the details of how we're actually going to teach those concepts.
Anjali: So that's where we're at with that. I guess we'll have to see how it works. Practically this coming semester.
Anjali: We also have been using those learning outcomes for the tutorials that we are using the students so
Anjali: I'm probably talk about that a little bit later.
Jennifer Smathers: What trends are you seeing and reference and instruction so far back to you, Megan.
Megan Benson: Sir, so I think we have seen a decrease in reference. And I think that this is part of a larger trend so like yes coven happened, but I think we were also seeing a decrease in reference
Megan Benson: Transactions or interactions before coven so I think it's just part of a bigger picture. And in terms of instruction. I also
Megan Benson: I personally feel that I have less instruction this semester than I have in the past, but I also think that is because I'm offering all of these asynchronous options. So it's, it's kind of a weird feeling that I don't have
Megan Benson: All these different instruction request, but it's because I've given them all these other options. And I think that that actually works well with faculty because it allows for some flexibility and it allows the faculty to sort of
Megan Benson: Engage with it in a way that maybe they haven't before. And in fact, I think that in terms of Binghamton specifically our instruction. I think my it's going to be much more
Megan Benson: Effective because I've created this asynchronous tutorial link wizard, which I got from another Sunni librarian, so shout out to Holly. Cool. And so I think it's actually going to be much more effective. But generally speaking, I think that there's a decrease in in reference
Megan Benson: And we'll see how that plays out. Maybe a good thing. I may not be a good thing.
Jennifer Smathers: Is collaboration a Trekkie thank
Megan Benson: You. I think so. I think that
Megan Benson: One of the things that I'm seeing are that faculty did not know some of the things that we offered some of the services and support that we offer it. And so I do think collaboration is
Megan Benson: becoming much more of a thing. I've had lots of requests this semester for subject guides and our core specific guide. So, um,
Megan Benson: It's kind of
Megan Benson: Like referencing instruction might be down but my asynchronous stuff is up.
Jennifer Smathers: So anybody else want to jump in and comment on
That
Nicki Lerczak: I had noticed an increase in collaboration. What I've got now are much more effectively going
Nicki Lerczak: Hey, do you want to zoom in and how else can we work together, could you help out with this other part. So they seem a lot more interested in and looking for outside help.
Nicki Lerczak: With what they're doing and the class. I think this semester is just such a you know headspace change for everyone that everyone's looking at their classes and going, how else can I do this, and it's nice to know that library is one of the places they're looking doing that.
Theresa Zahor: With respect to reference. We have an increase in our online methods and that's directly attributable to most of the classes being held online the semester are today.
Theresa Zahor: Is our first day of the library fully open so we'll see how that plays out for the in person.
Theresa Zahor: And as far as instruction. We'll see. We are scheduling mostly synchronous and several of the other like making separate the same recordings, which probably will affect change here, I think.
Theresa Zahor: A little bit more collaborative collaboration with faculty. Um, but I think that's common I think it's coming. But it's not here yet for us.
Jennifer Smathers: Anyone else
Jennifer Smathers: Okay, we can move on to the next question, and I am checking chats been pretty quiet. That's okay. Are you making learning objects videos like guides etc that can be shared outside your own library Megan mentioned something earlier Anjali
Anjali: Yeah, so the major one that we've been working on is our information literacy literacy digital badging program, which is basically a set of tutorials that students can complete one at a time. If they want, sort of like bite sized information literacy
Anjali: Lessons and as they create them, they get badges and those badges kind of add up in Blackboard. So the whole thing is built in Blackboard.
Anjali: And as they complete them. They sort of add up and they get higher level badges. So this is actually something that I've been working on for like a couple of years, but
Anjali: The timing is sort of worked out because just as we were all going home in the spring we were kind of launching and piloting this and it's really been a good way to bridge some of that gap between what we can do, face to face, and what we can do online so
Anjali: I was thinking I could just actually show
Anjali: Show it to you.
Jennifer Smathers: Your greatest screen share
Anjali: Yeah. Cool. Okay.
Jennifer Smathers: While you're doing that, we've got a comment from County. Connie holberg excuse me, we have a five part information literacy tutorial adapted from the framework.
Jennifer Smathers: Made in live wizard. These can be made used for generic instruction, you're making custom live wizard tutorials for specific classes and have students do hands on before the library visits with the class and zoom or collaborate. Thanks for sharing that honey.
Anjali: Sorry I appear to have closed.
Anjali: Oh, I'm just sharing the wrong thing.
Jennifer Smathers: Yeah, it's easy to do.
Jennifer Smathers: So if you stop your share, you should be able to reshare. There you go. Yeah, right.
Okay.
Anjali: Um, so, as I said, it's a Blackboard course. It's all in Blackboard and we would be able to we can share out the if people want to see it. We can share out the blackboard shell.
Anjali: So students come in and they can go into the
Anjali: There's three different missions that they can go on and when they earn all three missions, they get this adventure badge inquisitive explorer adventure badge eventually we're going to have
Anjali: Three different badges, so there will also be a badge on evaluation and a badge on basically scholarship was conversation is kind of the topic, but um
Anjali: They can go in and say, like, okay, strategic searcher they want to do that mission and then they have a set of challenges.
Anjali: So, this one has five different challenges. So what is research, what is my question. That's like topic selection.
Anjali: How do I ask my question is keywords and filters. Where do I search is sort of like, well, it's self explanatory. Where do I search. And then, when am I done is kind of talking about gathering of right resources from different areas.
Anjali: So I can, I can show just a little bit of one of the videos.
Anjali: Want to show the whole
Jennifer Smathers: Time, it's good.
Anjali: Okay, great. I'll show this one.
Anjali: Have you ever thought there's nothing on my topic. Well, it's possible. That's true. But before I switch topics.
Anjali: Make sure you're speaking to the computer in a language. It understands your five tips you need to know to speak computer first use keywords search tools thinking words not sentences. Some, like Google.
Anjali: Are getting better at understanding sentences. But in general, you'll get better results. If you use keywords are the most important meaning words in your sentence. Think of it like talking to an extremely smart baby.
Anjali: You wouldn't say excuse me, baby. Would you like a toy, you're more likely to say baby want toy.
Anjali: Or example. My research question is what should we do about feral cats on college campuses, the keywords in that sentence are feral cats.
Anjali: And college campuses soul search feral cats college campuses. I don't need commas in fact punctuation might confuse the computer. It looks funny to us, but the computer gets it second.
Anjali: use quotation marks for phrases, sometimes when I'm searching for a phrase like bro cats.
Anjali: I'll get results for each of the words separately, but not for the whole phrase the solution in this situation is to add quotation marks that searches for the word as a phrase.
Anjali: Instead of his individual words if I'm not getting many results for a phrase in quotation marks, though I might be limiting the search too much and it might be better to take out the quotation marks. For example, if I searched for college campus and poets.
Anjali: Almost online sources they use the word college or the word campus but not the whole phrase together.
Anjali: Okay, I'll stop it there but you kind of get an idea of how the videos look and then once they have finished watching that video. They can go in and do a challenge, which asks them.
Anjali: To apply what they learned
Anjali: You know so and we tried to make them really practical. So what should you type in the search box. If you want to get information on this research question and then also have some kind of a
Anjali: Critical Thinking element to it. So we've asked them to come up with a research question and then they translate that research question into keywords. So this is pretty short. It usually takes students about
Anjali: 10 to 15 minutes to do each challenge. I'm just going to get out of here.
Anjali: And that's our longest the strategic searcher one is the longest
Anjali: The longest mission library navigator, for instance, is just really this is what we're using with her.
Anjali: Like this is we're using instead of a sort of like introduction to the library classes. So what is an academic library and how do I find a book. And that's, that's pretty much it. So,
Anjali: Yeah, this is what we've been doing
Jennifer Smathers: We've got a comment from Holly Helen Ross very clear and useful. So yeah, I think we should be sharing out your information on this. It looks fantastic. Great work.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): That video you showed us
Anjali: The videos. Yeah, we can even share the challenges to
Jennifer Smathers: Yeah, that's, that's a collaboration trend. I'm seeing to I think the city libraries are getting better at sharing bits and pieces with each other.
Jennifer Smathers: I Teresa, you were going to comment some more. I'm going to go ahead and put the question back up unless Teresa, did you want to go ahead and share your screen.
Theresa Zahor: Yes, um,
Theresa Zahor: Yeah, I'll share my screen. Let's see.
Theresa Zahor: Okay. Hopefully you're seeing this now.
Theresa Zahor: Where I am is Farmingdale W. The main Farmingdale page. These are open pages and that if you search library you began to our library homepage.
Theresa Zahor: If you look, scroll down a little, what we've been doing is creating library health videos. These are open access to all our students all our faculty
Theresa Zahor: They were originally created to enhance our idol classes. Then we wound up using them in reference now faculty are incorporating into their classes at Blackboard. So these are all
Theresa Zahor: Accessible by everyone. And we have the standard getting started with research database searching selecting keywords or finding results.
Theresa Zahor: We use these in our in person classes, but they have proven themselves to be extremely valuable in our online classes now that we're teaching online when play the videos from the students remotely and they love it.
Theresa Zahor: avoiding plagiarism is new for us and accepted Greenlee spaces and services. We have to redo now because of all the coven situation, but we'll work on that.
Theresa Zahor: We have them LA, both in terms. We're excited, how to format the paper APA sorry APA
Theresa Zahor: We've also just recently completed or by libraries completed the seven APA seventh edition we needed that we have lots of requests from my health sciences.
Theresa Zahor: Division for all those courses to make sure we had them up a mounting it available for fall. So that's all done. And then we have some subjects specific
Theresa Zahor: Most of ours in health sciences, but we have other technology business. And I want to give kudos to our
Theresa Zahor: Scholarly Communications library and Daniel Applebaum she actually created some resources for faculty and she's doing this kind of gradually in her work.
Theresa Zahor: Also tying in the HTML framework and particularly in terms of promoting scholarship, but also she has these here searching and searching
Theresa Zahor: So those are for our faculty here. So all of these, these were all done in camp Asia.
Theresa Zahor: They are posted on our farming their library YouTube channel so they're all accessible if someone needed a link, they could get them.
Theresa Zahor: Okay. And as far as our research guides, we do not use live guides, we were thinking of changing and our budgets been cut. So, for the moment, are we are we are required to use this protocol, though you can't this and we created a lot subject guides in their
Theresa Zahor: Research Guides here using that. So we have a very standard format. Megan, I think mentioned that you've been creating a lot or someone subject is subject specific we typically create these guides
Theresa Zahor: Based on new programs that have been approved and implemented in Farmingdale but we have had some individual without psycho galactic thing. So we have had some new request for specific women working on doing those as we go along as well.
Jennifer Smathers: Thanks, Teresa.
Theresa Zahor: Thank you see how I stop. Okay.
Jennifer Smathers: All right, great.
Jennifer Smathers: So this is a question for everybody. Um, what has been the hardest thing you have had. Oh, wait. We've got a question chat. How are you counting all of the online instructional resources are you counting the creation of those as an instruction or are you counting it as learning object.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): In my tennis do i'm just counting everything as an online class as a designation and where we record our statistics.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Because I figure if they're talking to me, even if I'm reusing certain assets, whether that's a video or a module. Like, I'm still having that conversation and putting in there. And I always usually end up
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Trying to encourage additional like having students reach out to me through zoom for a follow up. So I'm just counting it for simplicity sake. At this point, because I think like if we really wanted to break it down, it could get really complicated.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Really
Theresa Zahor: That's it. That's an interesting question really is, we count our I'll classes at the moment, as I'll classes we count the videos as video technology creations that they use of them. That's an interesting day. Yeah.
Theresa Zahor: To be determined.
Theresa Zahor: Counting the use of the videos where where we would put it. I think it does get complicated
Jennifer Smathers: Does anybody else want to comment on chat Clark's question.
Jennifer Smathers: Okay, we can move on to what is the hardest thing you've had to overcome. I'm not stated here is since coated
Jennifer Smathers: I'd like to start us off.
Nicki Lerczak: I'd be happy to start. Um, so the hardest thing for me. Really going forward is the replacing of so much of what I focused on which was how to find what we own, and get it to you.
Nicki Lerczak: That was a core component of all of my classes searching the catalog using I ll for physical items we have
Nicki Lerczak: Six remote locations campus centers or what we call them. There's no library there. But there's a computer lab but we used to have a college career, who would deliver a print materials to all of those locations for remote students
Nicki Lerczak: But not anymore. So we're still trying to figure out what ruled print materials has, if any, so that's a, that's a whole and a lot of my instruction and it's also a conundrum for reference. So when I feel that the print was a good resource. What am I, replacing it with and that's challenge.
Jennifer Smathers: And there's the budget complicating that
Jennifer Smathers: Always, always
Theresa Zahor: I got
Jennifer Smathers: A question.
Theresa Zahor: I'm sorry, we can. I can talk a little bit about this number one, we have no budget. So we have to purchase books right now.
Theresa Zahor: Our complication. Aside from all the scheduling issues which is it's complicated, but it's doable.
Theresa Zahor: And we've been seeing now the birds of the classes are online library is open. We have a very active Bobby's your textbook collection, which is to send oh I'm Will used to coming in the library using
Theresa Zahor: So now we have in personal preference online reference request for textbooks both places, and we do not have as you know you know subscription to electronic textbook. So we've been trying to figure out how we're handling that
Theresa Zahor: In addition, with not being able to purchase the new additions of textbooks for this semester. So we're working on that generally
Theresa Zahor: Try to come up with stamp.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And say one of the hardest things and I think this probably applies to most people is just communication.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): In terms of I'm not the direct supervisor, but I still supervise the library in my unit, if that makes sense when I feel like one of those, too many things.
Jennifer Smathers: The activity the personnel.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Yes. And so I'm trying to make sure everybody's feeling like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): That they know what they're doing, and there's like a lot of hurdles in getting people to the field like making videos is something, some people have never had to do before. And so it's a lot of coaching on my part, but
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Trying to make sure to really encourage honest communication and then communication from the side of just working with the faculty like just
Brandon West (He/Him/His): There's so much that happens informally on campus that this whole experience has really made me realize like, you know, walking to the coffee shop in
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Running into a faculty member just having that informal conversation, like, oh yeah, you should come to my class and
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Or like, you know, sitting in a faculties office and talking to them and then like brainstorming. You're really exciting idea for what we could do together.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And like, that's a really a lot harder to capture when we're not you know when we're just writing through email and I can't just like we like, Well, I'm gonna go walk over to the Bailey building and see who's available today and just pop in and say hi until that's fine. I think
Brandon West (He/Him/His): As a person as a librarian who does outreach. It's like, it's all about connecting with people and you know I don't really think there's a excellent virtual replacement for the in person experience.
Theresa Zahor: I'm going to agree with you, Brandon. And also, I just thought of it while you were speaking, we've been doing our bit obviously online references to closure, which is a big change for us because we're normally mostly in person.
Theresa Zahor: I know Brandon your online. But in our in person even taught speak with each other so library and for responses to represent Greece.
Theresa Zahor: We wound up typing typing typing typing. Then we added in double meet sessions with a student, then we created a repository and frequently asked questions from the responses so he could respond. Oh, it's been a change for us. It really have
Theresa Zahor: And we're going to continue to do that. Totally. See what happens.
Anjali: Yeah, I would say to expand on that too. Like, that's how that sort of informal running into students and having students come into the library and get excited about the library or find out what we do and even having face to face classes and having that like personal interaction.
Anjali: That's been a challenge.
Anjali: Like for me, personally, I miss it. I like I miss seeing students and, you know, having that connection.
Anjali: We've been trying to. So one thing we're trying for the fall is that we're creating lesson plans for we have a CEOs so College success course. And that's where we get a lot of our students into the library for
Anjali: Like library tours and
Anjali: So we're creating like an online version of that that we're hoping a lot of faculty will have us come into their zoom rooms and do that, and it's going to incorporate that first
Anjali: That first mission in the in the badging program, but, um, you know, I don't know how you create that informal like yeah, come on in and kind of a feeling
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I guess you could leave her zoom room. Your know your personal zoom room open all day and just let people
Jennifer Smathers: Know that's fraught with peril.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I've been to many meetings to do that though so
Jennifer Smathers: Megan.
Megan Benson: Yeah, one of the hardest things. I don't know if I've ever come in yet because I haven't met in person on starts like contexts Binghamton has a hybrid approach. There are some classes that are meeting in person with a zoom option. There are some classes that are completely online.
Megan Benson: And I guess that's all the options because there's that hybrid
Megan Benson: hybrid approach. And so one of the things that I'm so used to doing when I teach in person is if I have enough time to for students to explore on their own. Like I'll walk to each student
Megan Benson: And check in with them and kind of like talk with them sort of individually one on one at their computer, but I can't do that now.
Megan Benson: And I'm not, I don't want to shout at each student six feet apart. So I haven't figured out a way to kind of check in with each student individually.
Megan Benson: While they're having free time. And so, like, trying to figure out how how I'm going to teach in person has been
Megan Benson: Really interesting to think through what that's one of the reasons why I'm thinking through of using tablet and Google Docs and and and the poll everywhere is and things like that. But it's still like
Megan Benson: That's my personalities have teachers, kind of like talk with you about your specific problem and then move on to the next student like I can't really do that this semester.
Megan Benson: And so that's been something I'm, I'm really concerned about. And then the other thing that I'm concerned about is
Megan Benson: Making sure that the online experience is not to luxury. I think several of us have experienced this from the spring, where we just kind of chatted at the students and, you know, walk them through through our
Megan Benson: Library websites, but it wasn't super engaging and so I'm trying to figure out how to use the breakout rooms more and and I don't know if it'll be a success or not, but it's gonna be a row and we're gonna try it.
Jennifer Smathers: See what happens. Um, we're going to see what happens now when we throw it to an open discussion. So feel free to unmute yourself. Ask questions comments or put them in the chat if you don't want to be
Jennifer Smathers: talking out loud or you don't have a microphone handy and I will be happy to ask the panelists.
Jennifer Smathers: No need to be shy. We're all friends here.
Jennifer Smathers: And panelists. If you have any questions for each other. It's also open to your discussion.
Theresa Zahor: You know, I was just listening, this is Terry, I was just listening to what Megan was saying. And yeah, Megan. I think that's a real challenge for us in terms of engaging students online.
Theresa Zahor: We did, as I mentioned, continue our iOS classes, right after we moved online.
Theresa Zahor: It was really funny because we're used to really engaging work going around the room, working with the students.
Theresa Zahor: And trying to keep them engaged. I mean, I don't know how many times I can ask anyone have any questions, you know, in Blackboard and getting slip back so
Theresa Zahor: We'll see you know how it happens, we have to avoid some other activities in the online environment and I, those are to be determined. So if anyone has any suggestions. I'll take
Nicki Lerczak: Students can hide really well online in a way they couldn't hide face to face. If I broke them up into groups and gave them an activity. I could walk over and say, Where are you stuck. How's it going, you know, which push for you on
Nicki Lerczak: Online. I gave that activity in the spring and you know no camera and muted and you know you can call but you can't force a reaction out of an online square
Theresa Zahor: Exactly.
Jennifer Smathers: I have. We have a question from Susan parent, you have any special First Year Experience plans for freshmen.
Nicki Lerczak: Nothing more than I normally do with my freshman so now
Jennifer Smathers: What is that what
Do you normally do. It's in French.
Nicki Lerczak: Again, it kind of goes back to that counselor mode of, you know, reminding library.
Nicki Lerczak: My students that library. And so the community college or their friends and not their enemies and that we're here as partners. So I mean it's a lot of breaking down that that wall and the library each year. So I'll just continue doing that as best I can.
Theresa Zahor: And you know what we've done our freshmen experience classes were usually most of it was showing students where things are, you know how to get around. We have a librarian.
Theresa Zahor: Bad Miranda our library who incorporated scavenger hunt. So it's in class, but then they been around the library, while we can do that now. So I'm we're working on different options for that for the freshman experienced to
Theresa Zahor: can't replicate it, of course, but we're trying to figure out how to incorporate something like that into the online sessions.
Theresa Zahor: We do have a number of freshmen experience classes, we don't get over and but we have a lot who have requested library sessions we did create some
Theresa Zahor: Cheesy as it sounds, we created some slideshows of what the library look side, you know, now with Kobe. You know what's has the barriers and what's it can, they can use and can't use but yeah that's, um, that's too bad that we, the scavenger hunt was very successful.
Theresa Zahor: That happened you know which incorporated students finding books and knowing where things are, and using taking pictures on their iPhones and so it's
Theresa Zahor: Kind of disappointing that we have this situation now, but we'll, we'll adapt and see, see how we go. We did. We have not come up with a replacement solution yet but that
Jennifer Smathers: Will follow up actually for everybody. I'm you said that you were talking about how how to use the library of it and the barriers have your library directors reached out to you and asked you to help with how to instruct users on how to use the library and its new mode.
Theresa Zahor: Oh yeah i don't know if i library director is on the session, she's busy covering reference today. But honestly, yes, we have
Theresa Zahor: The out a lot of input. She said phenomenal job on setting everything up working with facilities, working with
Theresa Zahor: The safety people to help people, you know, hence our rotating schedule because they want to reduce the number of shift changes as well as people behind the references or deaths at one time on she's gotten us very evolved, she's done quite a bit herself, I think.
Jennifer Smathers: Megan, I see you nodding your head.
Megan Benson: Yeah, I think so. And I feel like I like had a moment of forgetfulness. Um, but I
Megan Benson: I've created a live wizard tutorial. And if you're, if you haven't played around a live wizard tutorial I really recommend it because you're able to
Megan Benson: Put in your library's website and you can walk the students through a search, which is what I've done. And I've also put in something similar to Teresa. So I've got pictures of my different libraries and what's there and available.
Megan Benson: In them so like the science, the science cyber has the sciences and Bartel has like a lot of other you know most everything else, just so that they get a sense of, like,
Megan Benson: Where would they go if they were on campus. Like where would their home library be but also walking them through how to search and and then I've also got some information about the different
Megan Benson: Safety Measures that we've put in place. So we've got a nice scan self checkout thing. We have a UV sanitizer.
Megan Benson: Thing for Course Reserves and the reduced density and things. So like that live wizard tutorial have created
Megan Benson: Had walks people through how to use that, how to use the library, how to navigate the library website and
Megan Benson: I directed and asked me to do it. I did it for part of our freshmen experience courses, but it was important to me that they they know how to navigate it particularly since we have any website and went live on the 19th. So folks are
Megan Benson: You know, we're still getting feedback from the new library website. It's really nice. I really like it. But, uh, yeah.
Jennifer Smathers: Anyone else
Jennifer Smathers: Does anyone in the audience have questions, feel free to unmute or put them into chat.
Oh,
Jennifer Smathers: My dog would like to ask a question.
Jennifer Smathers: I'm not sure what it is.
Anjali: Um, I have a question for Nikki. Actually, I was wondering, you were talking about creating
Anjali: Using discussion boards in Blackboard. And that's something that we've been considering doing but I've been. I was wondering
Anjali: How do you keep that manageable. Do you get a lot of questions. Do you, is it distributed among multiple librarians are you doing all of it. Like, how are you. How are you formatting that
Nicki Lerczak: Okay, so, um, as far as my being embedded online. And like I said, I did four to five classes. Usually I had
Nicki Lerczak: Another library and full time, who would help me with online classes. And then I had for part time reference librarian to helping with face to face and a little online.
Nicki Lerczak: So now it's it's me and that other full time the systems library and sort of doing just about all of it. Um,
Nicki Lerczak: Thankfully I didn't get a lot of questions through discussions, mostly it was through the messaging system so you know if it was a lot more of the one on one here and there. I didn't get a question and then 40,000 students on chime in on it regularly.
Nicki Lerczak: There were just a couple of discussions and like I said that subscribe to this thread was a super handy because there's no way I wanted to have to remember to go check all the glasses to see if there's something hiding in there so
Nicki Lerczak: You subscribe. And then when something comes in, it pops it to your email sending someone says, got a question. Um, it can get out of here and I was monitoring, one of the classes just to keep an eye on it and yeah one class can easily be overwhelming. So it's challenging
Anjali: Thanks. It's good to hear your experience with it before we sort of dive into that.
Nicki Lerczak: Ya know, scalability is such a problem.
Jennifer Smathers: I heard. Any other questions. Yeah.
Jennifer Smathers: We got a fair number of people still on the call. So feel free
Jennifer Smathers: I actually have a question about you talked about those faculty loops, the faculty who were just you'd bump into them and get them to invite you to our class. Do you think that faculty have been more proactive as they've had to pivot online, or do you think it's really about the same.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I think it depends on the faculty member, like a dentist. Do we this pivot to online, I think, is a little more work for our campus because
Brandon West (He/Him/His): We really only offered some online sessions during winter session and summer session before and not that many courses overall so
Brandon West (He/Him/His): It's a really big learning curve for a lot of the faculty and I think like should we be, you know, continuing this all this mode of online instruction in the spring. I think we might see a little bit more
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Creativity, not the creativity or maybe like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): When the summit. One of the other panelists had mentioned like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Looking to librarians, I think, Nikki and mentioned for inspiration on what else they can do in the class at that point because I think again like doing a semester of just doing zoom lectures is going to get boring real fast. Um, but I think right now. It's just a survival mode for everybody.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And I think it's not as maybe tense as it was at the as it was last March, but still, it's really stressful, especially for faculty are trying to build the whole course over the summer and get it up and running by next week.
Nicki Lerczak: I want a second that real quick. We've had a lot of online classes, that's not new for us, but it's the faculty who weren't doing online are the ones that I'm hearing from much more
Nicki Lerczak: Is there a little overwhelmed.
Megan Benson: I think faculty to are also chatting with each other about how they're approaching their classes and getting ideas from each other.
Megan Benson: And I think the libraries are being included in those conversations, a lot more. So I've had several people reach out to me.
Megan Benson: Because someone, someone recommended that they that they talked to me. So it wasn't necessarily my outreach, but it was word of mouth that oh hey Megan. Megan can help you with that. And so
Megan Benson: I think that that's a positive sign that there's more collaboration going on among faculty members as well. And they're not like siloed. And this is my class, and I'm going to do it this way, kind of thing and
Megan Benson: They're open to more ideas. And so I think word of mouth is about the library support services is also spreading that way too.
Theresa Zahor: Yeah. For us, it's been a mix. We normally have new faculty can request an aisle class. Anytime you are born, and then we work with them from there.
Theresa Zahor: I am thinking will go in debt reduction in number of classes do to whoever was saying about the faculty challenge and moving everything online. I really do.
Theresa Zahor: All of our repeat customers have already scheduled with me. So that's, you know, the people that we've been teaching for for years. They're like, oh you teaching online this semester. Can you get, you know, and that's fine.
Theresa Zahor: And I mentioned the options we have so
Theresa Zahor: I we did, we, we do sometimes get into referrals from one faculty to another and they contact us. We do get some referrals from our subject liaisons on. We're not running into anybody on campus because we're not
Theresa Zahor: We're not all on campus right now so I'm sometimes they will come to the reference desk. Oh, I hear you teach I'll class, whatever, but I haven't seen that yet. It's too early. It's only the first day today.
Theresa Zahor: We are
Theresa Zahor: We are down for the moment.
Jennifer Smathers: I can. Can you tell me more about paddling. What is it, what does it do
Um,
Megan Benson: You create a question and then people can respond to it.
Megan Benson: On that little like discussion board. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And I there's probably someone on this call, who knows that better than I do, because I've only just gotten into it.
Megan Benson: But you've got a question and then people can respond to it, you can set it up so like I've made one the other day that was in column. So people responded in the columns. Yeah, it's like a digital bulletin board and people just kind of post their response there. So, and it's
Megan Benson: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's web based so you don't have to have an app or anything to log into it because I worry about like that takes time away if people have to log in and create an account and all this other stuff. So you don't have to do that with that. Yeah.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Kind of like the equivalent if you were to take like a pack of sticky notes and everybody, whereas you gave you a sticky note and they can stick it wherever they want
Nicki Lerczak: Exactly the analogy I was going to use
Jennifer Smathers: We've got another comment. Um, thank you. I'm BCC for saying you you love that and that it's super easy to embed in the live guide or Blackboard. We also have a note. I've had faculty panicky because they didn't think they could include library sessions in the online world.
Jennifer Smathers: And they finally realized how useful and needed. We were so anybody else had that experience.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I had that experience. So I have a my anthropology department at Jonas you is a very strong library supporter and like I do a ton of
Brandon West (He/Him/His): A TON OF LIFE instruction for that department, but there's like professor who sometimes like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Oh, sure. Maybe I'll have you come in. Maybe I won't. But I found the key and I've been using this strategy in my communication with faculty
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Is he asked me about, like, oh, do you have a scholarly versus popular tutorial and we use Canvas. I found a oh we are
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Module in Canvas commons and adapted it for him specifically for what he was wanting in his class. He was like this blew my mind. And then all of a sudden he started asking me for all of these other things. And so I think it was just a matter of helping them see like
Brandon West (He/Him/His): If I have something that you need versus like this, these like generic emails we send out like here's a library services update, which, you know,
Brandon West (He/Him/His): We need to get that information out. But I think like hooking people just a matter of being like, here's something you need. And here's how I can get it to you.
Jennifer Smathers: Mary, Joseph. Yay, we are
Brandon West (He/Him/His): You know, I love that we are saved my life.
Jennifer Smathers: Like a t shirt slogan.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): I know
Jennifer Smathers: So where we're at almost 258 and any last wrap up comments. One last possibility for a question from our audience.
Jennifer Smathers: Alright statement, you would say to your other instruction colleagues and reference colleagues to to give them hope.
Megan Benson: Less is more.
Jennifer Smathers: That's a good one.
Theresa Zahor: Let's do the best you can.
Brandon West (He/Him/His): Yeah, I'd say, just keep being empathetic with people and they're gonna you're gonna keep coming back to you that's, you know, try to find a way to have a connection with people, even though that's probably one of the biggest girls, we have right now.
Nicki Lerczak: A flexible doing to try to take small victories or you can
Brandon West (He/Him/His): And
Nicki Lerczak: It'll get us through
Anjali: Yeah, I think I'm going to echo what Brendan said and say focus on the connection.
Jennifer Smathers: And we'll, we'll and on on what I would say, which is, you're not alone.
Jennifer Smathers: Reach out to each other. We have our, our colleagues in our libraries, our faculty teaching faculty colleagues and our colleagues at other SUNY libraries as well so
Jennifer Smathers: Just keep reaching out, we're not alone. And we're going to make it. Thank you all for joining us. We really appreciate your time and effort and
Jennifer Smathers: Sharing what what could have been a little difficult to own up to you. Sometimes
Jennifer Smathers: We've got a few comments about thank you for sharing your creative student centered approaches and lots of. Thank you. So again, thank you to the panelists and have a great semester, everybody will just keep reading.
Jennifer Smathers: Bye bye.
Theresa Zahor: Thanks, everyone.
Jennifer Smathers: I'll give everybody a few minutes to save the chat if they wanted to.
Jennifer Smathers: That was, I'm gonna go ahead and stop the recording.