And Teachable Moments
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In one of the early months of us being remote, I got a request from a professor in the Chemistry department (one of my subject specialities) to do a research session with him and two of his internship students. They were working with a compound in the lab previous to the shutdown and wanted to find out more about said compound in the literature. Going into this, I didn’t realize that a compound could have the same chemical equation but have a different configuration. When we had our webconference, the students with the guidance of the professor were able to figure out the configuration of their particular compound they had been working with. Once they were able to do that, I was able to find the common name for it to then use to search for articles. With just the chemical equation we were turning up all kinds of irrelevant results, but with the name of their particular compound we were able to find relevant literature as well as the number from the American Chemical Society to find additional resources. For me, this really illustrated the importance of teamwork and also how different knowledges can support each other – on their own, they couldn’t find what they needed, but I also couldn’t find those sources without having puzzled through some of it with them as well. This exemplifies both elements of the reference interview and inquiry-based learning.
I developed the Gender & Sexuality Studies LibGuide to operate beyond typical research guide. It serves that purpose but also functions as a community guide—thinking about how our students often require information and resources outside of our walls—that in supporting these other needs of our students and our students as a whole can help them in their academic journey.
I expanded Interlibrary Loan services to include borrowing books from other libraries for students where previously the CityTech library has only ever been able to borrow articles both because of being understaffed and lack of funding. It is way to further engage students in their learning and research and to give them more options in that process, thus providing them with tools for greater academic success. And we’ve thus seen an increase in the use of Interlibrary Loan by our students.
In selecting materials for the library to purchase for the collection, I have purposely collected items by BIPOC authors as well as resources related to Brooklyn and New York City. I think it’s important to make sure that the stories of BIPOC, disabled and other underrepresented groups within the queer community have a space in our collection, and that students both see themselves represented in our collection but also can also expand their frame of reference or worldview through these materials.
I created the Open Education Resources (OER) Creative Commons (CC) License guide to introduce instructors to the different CC licenses they can use when creating OER textbooks for their students – in a creative and interactive way. It’s designed as a choose your own adventure game where the user works through what kind of OER textbook they want to create and through the process learn what kind of Creative Commons license they will then use. Although many people know about copyright, fewer people are familiar with CC licenses and how they work, so this guide engages them through the process to learn more about them.
I updated the library’s Interlibrary Loan webpages to be fully accessible and responsive on mobile devices. This coupled with updating our system to use the CUNYFirst login means that it is much easier for students and faculty to place requests from Interlibrary Loan. There are less barriers to access, and the whole process is more user-friendly to facilitate learning and use for assignments and other research.
In working on the reference desk, I’m able to teach information literacy skills to students in various ways including how to use OneSearch (our online catalog) to find library resources and materials as well as how to use library technology. This often serves as a very important learning moment for students as they are getting to put what they’ve learned in library instruction sessions into practical use or for others, it may be their first point of contact with the library. If it is a student’s first interaction with the library, I find it essential to explain the various library resources related to their task and that as they work through it, I’m here to further assist and answer questions as they inevitably come up.
This past year, I was finding more and more students were placing Interlibrary Loan requests for items that we already had in our collection at the City Tech Library. I reached out to my library colleagues Prof. Nora Almeida and Prof. Rachel Jones who specialize in Library Instruction to see if we could create a guide to both help students understand Interlibrary Loan and how to use it, but also how to search for books we have here first. We want to students to know all the rich resources we have ready to go in our own library before we look to other libraries. They created these guides in consultation with me, and now when a student places an Interlibrary Loan request for an item already in our collection, I share out this helpful guide instead of simply cancelling the loan and saying “Item available at CityTech library,” so it becomes a teaching moment and the student is then still able to get the item they need.
Interlibrary Loan Guide to OneSearch https://youtu.be/nTGogiTpRX8
Interlibrary Loan Tutorial https://youtu.be/osiMMqZX2uw
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