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Pegasus Librarian Posts

Wishing to Track Students Better

Published by Iris on Friday, January 4th, 2008

I really wish there were an easy way to keep track of which students I’d taught in classroom situations, and what I’d taught them. With a population of just under 2000, it’s entirely possible that I’ll start seeing some of them over and over now that I’m getting invited to meet with more classes.

Now, I very rarely teach the same library session twice simply because each session is (hopefully) tailored to the needs of a specific assignment or set of assignments, and even if the same assignment comes up in future years there’s usually a new resource or something that keeps me on my toes. But there are a couple of components of these sessions that I find myself teaching over and over again in different contexts: the MLA International Bibliography, for example, or getting your hands on the actual text of an article, or the disciplinary importance and conventions of citation. Wouldn’t it be nice if I had some way of knowing if most of the students in an upcoming class had already practiced with one or more of these components and would want me to approach them in new and interesting ways? Even if I still had to cover the MLA IB because they needed something new or because a few of the students hadn’t worked with it before, wouldn’t it be nice if I knew to change things up enough that it would keep the interest of the veterans while still feeding the newbies what they needed?

I keep notes about this kind of thing for my individual appointments, and it really helps when this year’s seniors come to me for help with their senior theses and I can look back over the sessions I’ve had with them in past years to figure out what they might be expected to know already, and where I can push them to grow a little more in their research prowess.

Alas, I just can’t think of a good way to keep on top of this for the classroom situations, though. I mean, I could create a database that allowed me to describe the components of a class and link that class to all it’s enrolled students. Filtering by class could help me see what I’d included for that course number over the years. Filtering by student would show me if I’d seen individuals more than once, and what they’d supposedly learned from me. But honestly, I don’t think I’d be able to keep up with it.

Has anyone else done anything like this? How?

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It Happened… At Long Last

Published by Iris on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

I’ve tried Google Reader several times in the last year. I kept hearing other librarians falling head over heals in love with it and wondering what I’d missed. But each time there was something that fundamentally disrupted my feed reading flow. I couldn’t have labels I wanted (it didn’t like having multiple labels having the same beginning word for a while there), I couldn’t rearrange the order of the feeds and simply could not function with that draconian an adherence to alphabetical order… lots of little things.

But over the past few days, Bloglines hung up on me one too many times and I thought I’d test out Google Reader again. After all, with the world of perpetual beta you never know if the problems that irked you 2 months ago will have been solved. And lo and behold! They had been. I imported my feed collection with no problems, rearranged my feeds to my heart’s content, and began reading away.

The only thing I don’t like is that it forces me to see what other friends in my gmail address book are reading. It’s not that I don’t like these people or their feeds. It’s that I don’t have the time, and I don’t have the will power NOT to click on a link that’s bold with new items. That new-item bold is hardwired into me as something that needs to be cleaned up NOW.

But I think I’ll stick it out this time. Hopefully in the next few months they’ll add a preference that kills this particular version of water torture.

Update: I cannot for the life of me figure out the “All Items” link in Google Reader. It routinely has more items listed than the sum of all my new items below it. In fact, I just clicked on that link and read all the items in it… the screen is now blank of new items, and it STILL says I have 13 new items. I don’t! If I do, I can’t see them. Grumble.

Update 2: After a few days of watching the phantom “new items” number climb and climb for no known reason, they suddenly disappeared this morning in the middle of my blog reading. Yay! Now it works as I want it to work (except for the annoying Friends Shared Items thing… but I’ll deal).

Last Update, I promise: So it appears that I get to cycle through weirdness and normalcy. The phantom “new items” number grows and grows each day until one day it realizes that it’s lying and clears itself. It stays clear for a day or two, and then grows again. I’ve decided to find this amusing.

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Let the Pilot Begin!

Published by Iris on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

I spent a good portion of today working out the logistics of a new pilot program we’re trying. I’m so excited to see if it works, it’s not even funny!

But first, the background. Our writing center contacts professors who will be teaching WR (“writing rich”) courses across the curriculum to see if these professors would like a writing assistant assigned specifically to their classes. So, for example, a bunch of English courses and a handful of sociology/anthropology, PoliSci, and History classes promise to provide their students with a portion of the intensive writing experience that’s required for graduation. And professors teaching these courses have the option of working closely with a single writing assistant who will shepherd enrolled students through all the writing assignments.

Well, last year the director of the our writing center and I began scheming ways to make our two operations work together more closely. I attended a writing professionals’ mini-conference with her. She invited me to start training new writing assistants. And this winter we’re taking it a step further.

She provided me with a list of courses that have a writing assistant assigned to them. Each week at our departmental meeting, I’ll check with the other librarians to see if they’ve been asked to work with any of these WR courses. If they have, they will contact the writing assistant for those courses in invite the assistants to the library session. That way the writing assistant will understand the research process and options when working with each of the enrolled students. They’ll also be encouraged to send students our way when they read drafts.

I’m going to choose one course to take this set-up one step further, just to see how it goes. I’m going to have one writing assistant take down the names of student that could use a librarian’s help and (with the students’ permission, of course) hand that list over to me. I’ll then initiate the contact with the students. I’m curious to see if overcoming that initial shyness of approaching a librarian for help makes a significant difference. On the other hand, I’m a little worried that this might be more of a workload than we can handle. Hence the pilot within a pilot… and zero publicity. It’ll just be between me and my writing assistant (and a few thousand of my closest internet buddies).

So today I got the list of courses and their corresponding assistants and spent some time creating a new section of the Moodle space we use to collaborate within my department. Hopefully with courses listed, contact information easily at hand, and spaces for noting our impressions of the process we can keep this thing moving forward smoothly and effectively. Goodness knows that if the process isn’t as easy as falling off a log by the time classes start (tomorrow, by the way), the scheme will never fly.

Wish us luck!

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Quite a Year

Published by Iris on Sunday, December 30th, 2007

It’s been a strange year. It’s flown by like no other year I can remember, and yet more has happened than in any other year I can remember. Here are some of the stand-outs, in the order I thought of them:

  • My best friend fell in love and moved just about as far away from here as she could get and still be in the U.S. Then she got engaged.
  • The Library Society of the World got started and is now pretty much the cornerstone of my social life (sad, I know, but these people are amazing and I’ve made some wonderful friends).
  • Swing dancing re-emerged as a hobby.
  • My library survived consultants and reorganization (very minor reorganization, but it entailed many meetings and some uncertainty anyway).
  • I totaled my car and bought a new one, which also introduced me to the new experiences of dealing with insurance companies, negotiating with car dealers, and making car payments.
  • My computer died and so I bought a new one… and learned Vista and Office 2007 in the process.
  • Librarianship and my place in it started to make more sense. Most of the time, I’m even reasonably competent now, which is great!
  • My sister graduated from college.
  • My youngest brother started ask my librarian-self for help with his research… and got a healthy dose of my sister-self’s help into the bargain.
  • Twitter happened. ‘Nuf said about that.
  • I wrote a chapter of a book with one of my co-workers and discovered two things: that she and I work very well together, and that chapter writing is a pain in the neck…. and inordinately time-consuming.
  • I figured out how to direct a vocal choir, and started directing the college handbell choir.

Meanwhile, what with all this stuff going on, I’ve had an increasingly hard time writing. I haven’t kept my paper journal, haven’t written here very much, haven’t written in any of the places I normally wrote before. Currently I don’t know what I think about that. I’ve been staring at the screen trying to think of something coherent to say about it, but I can’t seem to find my way through to a complete thought. All I know is that I hope this changes, and soon. And I hope that I can manage my workload and personal life such that writing becomes the seamless part of my life that it was a year ago.

Meanwhile, I’m going to kick back and enjoy my last Sunday before the beginning of Winter term. Fall Term took a lot out of me, and I don’t think I’ve completely recharged my batteries yet, but Winter Term waits for no librarian. And I’m actually kind of excited about the coming term. We’ll begin with round two of trying to hire a social sciences librarian, and there are some really interesting classes coming up that I can’t wait to support.r

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