CJARL Meeting Notes – 03/23/07

Location: Student Life Center Room 108, Mercer County Community College

In Attendance: Brookdale Community College – Amy Clark; Burlington County College – Dave Peterson; Mercer County Community College – Martin Crabtree, Martha Czop; Katta Koppel; Monmouth University – Lisa Coats; Ocean County College – Beth Roszkowski; Rider University: Nancy Wicklund

Meeting Notes

Group members were welcomed by the Vice President for Student & Academic Affairs.

Announcements:

CJRLC News: Refer to CJRLC website and calendar

NJLA Reference Section program: Print vs. Electronic Resources: What's a Librarian to Do? -- March 27, 10am - noon at Mount Olive Public Library (RSVP to kowalski@main.morris.org) **FYI: Lisa Coats plans to attend. She will share what she learns with the group.

NJLA early bird registration ends April 4, 2007

Discussion:

Information Literacy Assessment
Update on MCCC's experience with Tools for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Sills (TRAILS), program as a joint effort between the English Department and the Library. Preliminary results of this "pre-test" in a small sample (~4 sections) of English 101 show that students were weakest in the areas of topic development and creation/revision of search strategies, but did better with questions about evaluating sources. The college will administer the TRAILS assessment at the end of the term with a small sample of the English 102 classes, in which students have received library instruction.

The group discussed the desire not to re-invent the wheel while insuring that questions on canned tests address what is taught, as well as how examining and selecting questions for assessment requires librarians to talk about/coordinate what concepts are presented to students. Several members present said their institutions have or are working on some kind of formal information literacy assessment.

Information Literacy
Members discussed the "one-shot" library workshop as problematic. A reference was made to Craig Gibson's Student Engagement and Information Literacy (ALA, 2006). A podcast of an interview with the author is available on ACRL's website. In this podcast, Gibson presents some interesting ideas and calls for somewhat of a paradigm shift in how we conceptualize and teach information literacy.

MCCC is working to build a partnership between the library and the Honors faculty, in which a one-credit library skills course would be attached to specific research-based Honors courses. The Honors program at MCCC is very new, as is the partnership idea, but we look forward to hearing about its progress!

Reference Services & Instruction at Branch campuses
Many of the institutions present have satellite locations to their main campuses. Many of this subset have libraries, staffed with at least one librarian, at the branch locations.

New Technologies in Reference, Instruction, Etc.
Several members attended the Technology & Library Services: Meeting Today's Users Need Symposium at Princeton University, 3/15/07. Those who attended gave a brief recap of the symposium. Several members shared what they've tried so far and demonstrated these on the computer/projector Martin provided. (Thanks Martin!) These Web 2.0 applications included: a library MySpace account; RSS feed aggregators Bloglines and Google Reader; link rolling del.icio.us links into a subject guide webpage; LibraryThing.com; and EBSCO RSS via the "My Account" feature.

Powerpoint slides and audio of the symposium are now available.

MCCC Library Tour

Martin, Martha and Katta gave the group a tour of the library.

Next Meeting: Friday, May 18, 2007, 10 am-12 noon.
Location: TBA

FYI: The book I mentioned, Never Check Email in the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making your Work Life Work(2005), is a newer edition of Julie Morgenstern's book, Making Work Work: Strategies for Surviving and Thriving in the Office(2004). I have not read the book, but here's what PW had to say about the original, (from Amazon.com):

Publishers Weekly
(June 7, 2004; 0-7432-5087-7; 978-0-7432-5087-0)

Whether in the executive boardroom or a windowless cubicle, the key to a more balanced, productive existence, according to organizer extraordinaire Morgenstern, is PEP (physical health, escape and people), the four Ds (delete, delay, delegate and diminish) and a healthy dose of reality about what is doable, and what is impossible, at work. Written in the same to-the-point approach as her Organizing from the Inside Out, this volume espouses a combination of philosophies that not only makes a whole lot of sense but is practical and applicable to the real world, no matter what the job or office setting. Each "competency" (as the chapters are called) includes scenarios taken from actual clients, bullet-pointed tips known as "grab-and-go-strategies," from getting away from wasteful e-mails to planning your day better and always dancing "close to the revenue line." Morgenstern promises readers a significant change in their workload, productivity level and all-around confidence if they refrain from reading, replying to or even perusing e-mail in the first hour of the day. This may be a hard sell for some desk-based professionals, but it's clear that Morgenstern knows her stuff. The habits of workaholics and perfectionists, she argues, are impractical and will render one unproductive. In accessible, encouraging prose, Morgenstern helps readers learn their boundaries, limits, strengths and weaknesses. Agent, Joni Evans. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Informatio