Day 1 - Thursday, March 22nd

Over the past two years, the NCSU Libraries has significantly expanded the number and nature of research support trainings and programming it provides for the NC State community. These programs have become central to the Libraries efforts to promote higher-level skill development to benefit faculty, staff, and students while also connecting them to library spaces, technologies, and services for ongoing utilization.

In response to a growing campus need for instruction in advanced research skills crucial to student and researcher success, a team of research librarians, collaborating with the Graduate School and the Postdoctoral Association, developed a program to engage the talent and expertise of early-career researchers. In Fall 2017, the NCSU Libraries launched the Peer Scholars Program, which gives graduate students and postdoctoral researchers the opportunity to teach specific research skills to the NC State community. The goals and benefits of this new program are vast, including scaling library-hosted workshop offerings, building a community of practice around peer to peer teaching and learning, , and providing valuable opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to publicly present and teach their expertise.

By sharing their expertise with the NC State community, early career researchers gain valuable teaching experience, improve their communication skills, and experiment with classroom technology in an informal teaching setting. Peer Scholars partner with subject librarians to develop, plan, and deliver talks and workshops. All of the teaching and presentation materials are retained and archived by the NCSU Libraries for potential future use and preservation, both by the participants and the Libraries. Certain sessions are also recorded for wider reach.

Interested participants are invited to propose topics for talks or workshops. In its first semester, this program features workshops, seminars and other programming focused on intro-, intermediate-, and advanced-level research and technical skillsets. Topics have ranged from advanced skills in statistical software and computer programming to more effective research communication skills and interactive instruction on creating an online research portfolio.

The planning team for the Peer Scholars Program also developed an assessment plan in order to contribute to ongoing institutional data collection, as well as inform and improve the future of the project.

This session will include a discussion of the Peer Scholars Program, including development, deployment, and lessons learned. Participants will leave with recommendations for exploring similar programming at their own institutions.

Most graduate students are required to produce theses and dissertations that make an original contribution to the field of study. This requirement informs how students and faculty approach graduate research, but colleges and universities often treat the culminating works merely as student records, not scholarly contributions encompassing original research. Librarians, however, are uniquely situated to treat graduate students as emerging participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem and to help them prepare their culminating works for an outside audience. Librarians have the expertise to advise students during the submission process with questions regarding copyright, licensing, fair use, and author’s rights, as well as the awareness to spot such issues even when students are not aware of them.

Traditionally, libraries have approached graduate theses from a collections standpoint, focusing on issues of preservation, description, and access to the finished product. Engaging with these works as they are being prepared for submission, however, reveals a variety of scholarly publishing concerns that warrant greater librarian involvement in the process of completion and final deposit. As more schools make master’s theses available online, uncertainty abounds about the appropriate use of images, responsible citation of social media, and concerns about plagiarism. Doctoral dissertations, too, are rife with scholarly communication “pain points”: graduates in the humanities may agonize over access embargoes; art historians may remove crucial images entirely from their scholarship due to copyright concerns; students in fields such as economics or biology may not realize that they have signed away their copyright to those previously-published articles they now want to include in their dissertation. Librarians are thus presented with an opportunity to discuss open access policies, fair use, and author’s rights at the student’s moment of need, not in a distant, speculative future.

Our institution recently moved responsibility for thesis and dissertation deposit from an administrative role to a librarian position. We will present our experience transforming the deposit process into a scholarly communication consultation, and will provide a first-hand report of the educational benefits of making deposit a library function, helmed by a copyright-literate librarian. This session will engage participants in an exercise to identify how and where the thesis approval process takes place on their campuses, and strategize ways to insert librarian-led scholarly communication consultations into the graduation checklist.

Writing literature reviews is among the most common assignments for graduate work, and a requirement for all theses and dissertations. Students find this often a complex and even overwhelming process as the graduate students need to identify and get eligible literature on the topic, read and evaluate literature, and take notes about trends, patterns, and the latest development of the scholarship on the topic. Writing literature reviews involves a number of skill sets from the students, but practical guidance on each step in the process is often not provided by professors. Librarians have helped the students to search databases and library catalogs and to get materials, but in order to help the students to do their best for the task, librarians need to have a solid understanding of the whole process of the review project, know available digital tools and apps to help scholars manage the task more productively, develop a librarian’s toolkit to support literature review projects, and know the advanced techniques to conduct searches in more systematic and reproducible ways. In this workshop, a team of three subject librarians in Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM, respectively, will give an overview of the literature review project from the students’ point of view, and will share tips for the subject librarians to teach literature reviews in their respective field. The attendees will join one of the three groups of Humanities, Social Sciences and STEM librarians, and participate in customized hands-on exercises and small group discussions.

At Pace University and other master and doctoral universities and colleges, Graduate Students are not usually among the systematically targeted. In the fall of 2016, I undertook to specifically target Graduate Assistants (GA’s) working for faculty in research assistantships. Securing an academic assistantship is a coveted and competitive endeavor, but if the GA does not have the required research skills they can be out after only one semester. While being aware of university retention goals and the gap between GA research skills and faculty research demands, I started a pilot project of creating GA research workshops based on the specific needs of an academic department. My presentation will focus on the variety, number and content of GA research workshops taught, tips for partnering with academic assistant deans, staff and faculty and systems for creating measurable outcomes that make the role of the library indispensable in the minds of graduate students and faculty. This is just one example of a controlled targeted program to support graduate students AND faculty. Time permitting, this session could include a pair and share activity for participants to talk about the likelihood of instituting a similar program in their libraries and what they imagine the pitfalls or progress to be.

In early 2016, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) received the news that it had been elevated in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education rankings from an R2 to an R1 institution. The “highest research activity” rating was given to only 115 of the 4,665 universities evaluated in 2014. In Wisconsin, only UWM and UW-Madison received the rating. In response to this unexpected but welcome news, the university took steps to understand how it had achieved this distinction and, as importantly, how it would sustain its R1 rating for the next evaluation period. In partnership with the campus units such as the Office of the Research and the Graduate School, the UWM Libraries undertook a review of its own programs and services to identify ways to support this important campus effort. This presentation will report on Carnegie Classification metrics that are especially relevant for academic libraries, and highlight the ways in which the UWM Libraries extended services to graduate students in order to support the university's goals around retaining its R1 status. Such services have included developing a space dedicated specifically for UWM dissertators to focus on their writing (The Scriptorium) and offering workshops to orient graduate students to scholarly publication process.

Most graduate students are required to do research using the library whether in person or online, to complete their graduate studies. While most students who received their undergraduate degrees at US colleges and universities have knowledge about American libraries, international students who have not attended these universities may not have the same experience. The library literature points out that international students face language and cultural challenges in using the library and learning information literacy skills. This research would like to explore the relationships, experiences, and challenges of international graduate students at the Penn State University Great Valley Campus. Understanding the situations and problems international graduate students face when dealing with the library can assist in helping to meet these student’s needs. Data will be collected by using an online survey and interviews.

As scholarly communication continues its digitally driven shift away from a publishing model rooted in print culture, it is essential that the academic library maintain its impact by keeping in step with rapidly changing expectations and practices. As future faculty, today’s graduate students must learn the skills to carefully evaluate publishers, consider copyright in a digital environment, use information ethically and responsibly, and avoid unscrupulous vendors and publishers who prey on those who must “publish or perish.” While they develop knowledge in their respective fields, they cannot afford to be unaware of both the opportunities and pitfalls of modern scholarly communication. This presentation will discuss the steps a mid-size regional state university has taken to meet the needs of its graduate students who are planning to contribute to the scholarship in their fields through research and publication. This began several years ago with the establishment of a digital collections archive to provide open access to the university’s master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. This increased distribution of the university’s scholarly output created a greater need for bibliographic instruction and outreach to the various departments in order to maintain the integrity of the scholarship. Citation analysis of past theses and dissertations were conducted in order to identify trends and needs. The findings were shared with the graduate school and teaching faculty and created a partnership which highlighted the necessity for increased campus-wide collaboration in developing a scholarly communication initiative.

We are proposing a 50-minute panel.

Presenters: Dr. Wendy Doucette, East Tennessee State University; Ms. Mandy Havert, University of Notre Dame; Dr. Kyung Kim, Florida State University

The number of international graduate students continues to rise at American universities nationwide. While academic librarians wish to serve this student population effectively, few of us have received formal training or meaningful exposure to this sector of our student populace. This panel will provide first-person experiences from academic librarians who are actively engaging with and researching international students. Acknowledging and encouraging cultural diversity fosters the awareness of building inclusivity into graduate programming. Rather than viewing international students as a challenge to be resolved with a one-size-fits-all approach, cultivating cultural intelligence makes us more thoughtful and effective instructors and service providers for all students. This panel will discuss

• Tailoring services and support from the perspective of inclusivity for all students.
• Empirical best practices and lessons learned from focus groups with international students
• Tips for providing sessions tailored to multicultural audiences across the disciplines
• Partnerships with International offices, programs, and groups on campus
• The problem of academic writing
• Shared aspects of the graduate student experience
• Plagiarism and the academic honor code
• Thoughts about future engagement

A current list of professional resources will be provided.

We anticipate audience discussion will be generated by this topic and will encourage participation through informal polling and direct questions.

This session highlights graduate outreach services at the University of Central Florida and Clemson University libraries and compares institutional program approaches, outreach strategies, and the research needs of student populations in the Social Sciences and Engineering.

The presenters coordinate graduate outreach services at their institutions, and the first part of the presentation will include a discussion of each institution’s service model and each librarian’s role. Details about collaborations with campus partners and networking, f2f workshops and use of online platforms (Canvas LMS) to promote services, recruiting outreach advocates, and marketing programs will also be discussed.

The second part of the session will include a focus-group activity using a series of question prompts to generate discussion about outreach topics and engage attendees in learning what other libraries are doing to provide graduate outreach services.

Attendees will be asked to share their experiences guided by the following question prompts:

1. What graduate outreach services are offered at your library?
2. How does your library coordinate and evaluate graduate outreach programming?
3. What is your elevator pitch and/or approaches to marketing graduate outreach?
4. Do you offer graduate workshops? If so, what topics and formats are offered (f2f or online)?
5. What are two (or more) best practices your recommend to support/promote graduate outreach?

Graduate student serving institutions can be as different as night and day, which can include everything from student population size, types of programs offered, number of programs offered, and even the makeup of the students served. But just as those institutions vary, so does the manner by which libraries respond to the needs of the graduate student population. Some universities may convene a standing committee, or a task force. Others may hire or realign a single person or a team of people. But how does that all look in real-time? How does a single person or team tackle all of the graduate student needs of an institution? How does the library administration support the initiatives of a single committee? Of the aforementioned methods, which is most effective or ineffective? These are some of the questions that will be posed within a roundtable discussion of the organizational structural benefits and challenges when meeting the needs of graduate students. Participants will share and learn best practices when working with the barriers of existing job descriptions (or lack thereof.) Participants will also share and learn how to work smarter with existing organizational support.

Graduate students in the humanities and social sciences rarely receive formal departmental training in archival literacy. Even disciplines that rely heavily upon archival evidence devote surprisingly little time to the nuts and bolts of finding and using rare book and manuscript collections. [1] Academic libraries are uniquely positioned to fill this gap in the curriculum. This workshop will explore how to organize and implement a graduate training program in archival literacy at your institution by modeling one successful initiative, The Archives Research Program (ARP) at Emory University. This joint project of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library and the Robert W. Woodruff Library consists of workshops and speaker series that seek to build graduate students’ proficiency and confidence when using archives. Through the program, graduate student participants acquire a greater understanding of professional archival standards, develop research skills necessary for success within their disciplines, and build useful connections with librarians and archivists. Workshop topics cover all aspects of the research process and include archival arrangement and description, archives culture and etiquette, finding archives, using digitized collections, understanding born digital collections, creating a research plan, applying for travel and research funding, care and handling of archival materials, and productivity tools for archives. Since its founding in 2014, 100% of graduate student participants responded that they would recommend the workshop to their colleagues. After a brief discussion of the Archives Research Program’s development, implementation, and lessons learned, participants of this hands-on workshop will be introduced to the program’s curriculum and will work to adapt it for their libraries. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to assess the needs of their graduate student populations, identify institutional partners, create an initial timeline and marketing plan, and select relevant modules to begin building their own archival literacy programs. [1] Matthew P. Long and Roger C. Schonfeld, "Preparation for the Future of Research in Art History: Recommendations from the Ithaka S+R Report," Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 33 (2014:) 192-205.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The varied functions of graduate research commons, which may include academic study space, collaborative meeting space, and communal engagement space, foster graduate student interaction at the peer and faculty levels. Moreover, these research commons exist as a symbolic home for graduate students who may otherwise feel overlooked on campuses. Given the unique nature of research commons as both functional and symbolic spaces, as well as the diverse engagement that takes place within the commons, the Graduate Research Center (GRC) at Baylor University studied the potential effects of the GRC on graduate students’ academic self-concept, an umbrella term that captures individuals’ confidence, sense of belonging, and motivation related to their institution and graduate program.

This presentation will feature the definition and applicability of academic self-concept, connections between graduate students’ academic self-concept scores and levels of engagement in the GRC – as evidenced by data gathered from master’s and doctoral students at Baylor – and implications for programming, the development of research commons, and graduate student success in light of these findings.

SESSION OVERVIEW

- Introductions and ice-breaker activity that introduces audience to academic self-concept (5 minutes)

- Review of relevant literature (2 minutes)

- Study methodology and survey overview (3 minutes)

- Research findings (10 minutes)

- Implications for learning commons and future research (5 minutes)

- Question and answer with audience (5 minutes)

KEYWORDS

Learning commons; research commons; academic self-concept; fit; belonging; success

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After participating in our conference session, our hope is that participants will:

- Recognize the need for research or learning commons;

- Be able to define and apply academic self-concept, especially in relation to graduate students;

- Understand the relationship between academic self-concept, institutional fit, and sense of belonging, through the lens of graduate student achievement;

- Appreciate the role of a research commons in influencing graduate students’ academic self-concept;

- And acknowledge the greater implications of environment on student success in higher education.

A separate study area reserved for faculty and graduate students was established at Auburn University’s Draughon Library in 2008, but, for many years, there was no formal effort to study the use of the space. In 2016, recognizing that the needs of these user groups differ in significant respects from those of undergraduates, the presenters developed a questionnaire to gather information on the faculty and graduate students using the area and the adequacy of the space to support their work practices. For two weeks in the summer and four weeks in the fall of 2016, users visiting the area were asked to complete a survey that asked about their departmental/college affiliation, how often they used the space and the length of time they spent there, the type of work they were doing, and whether anything was preventing them from accomplishing their goals. The questionnaire also invited users to provide additional feedback they had about the space. The presenters will share the results of their research, the steps they took to improve the study area based on the feedback they received, and the campus partnerships they forged to support the graduate “scholars in training” who are the primary users of this space. At the outset of the talk, audience members will be asked to lend their voices to the question of what elements are most important to library environments that aim to facilitate the academic work of graduate students.

Description

Graduate student time for professional development is limited, tightly controlled during coursework, and must be prioritized. It can be argued that new learning happens best in context and at the point of need. One panelist will discuss how the Framework can be used as a foundation for building a graduate student inventory of research skills designed to identify areas for growth and match those needs with planned programming that is aligned with the demands of their respective programs.

Workshops and writing intensives for graduate students are typical pillars of graduate student programming at many academic libraries. Learn how one library used select Frames to develop outcomes for graduate programming on showing research impact, preparing to publish and author rights, teaching roles, and dissertation support. This panelist will reflect on successes and challenges regarding use of the Framework to design a variety of programs.

Learn how one panelist’s library adopted the Course Assessment Matrix planning tool, that allows librarians to track forward from the Framework to develop course objectives, learning activities, and, finally, assessment. The tool also permits users to begin with course objectives and track backwards to connect course objectives to the Framework. The panelist will share the planning document for others to use, while also giving an overview of specific examples from recent online instruction for graduate students.

Liaising with graduate students is distinct, as the needs of graduate students differ from those of other academic library constituents. Liaison work is an integral part of all academic librarian public services positions, and the work is often viewed as closely tied to teaching information literacy. No national-level standards exist to guide liaisons, though some institutions have such documents at the local level. ACRL’s Framework provides national-level standards for teaching which provides guidance for portions of liaison work. A panelist examines the possibility of using the Framework to guide liaison practices with graduate students in areas beyond classroom instruction.