Day 1 - Monday, March 16th

This workshop is for instructors who work with graduate students who are starting work on a literature review for their thesis or dissertation. The graduate workshop begins with an overview of the role of the literature review in a dissertation or thesis and then transitions to a discussion of the ways that writers use different types of sources to accomplish different tasks in their writing. The main focus of the session is on general strategies and resources for finding scholarly literature using an academic library. Tracking citations, locating systematic reviews, using discipline-specific databases and research tools, and identifying relevant subject headings and taxonomies will addressed.

The diverse needs of graduate students can be difficult to gauge, and even when their needs are known, it can be difficult to develop programming that meets the needs of graduate students across disciplines and program levels. In spring 2018, a needs assessment survey was conducted by the graduate librarian at a large, comprehensive public university with graduate students at multiple campus locations. Based on respondents’ articulated needs for additional help in data management, research skills, scholarly publishing, and citation management, a workshop series, Research Tools for Graduate Students, was launched in fall 2019. The series sought to provide graduate students with a foundation in disciplinary research skills, data management, citation management, scholarly publishing, open educational resources, and copyright and fair use. In addition to teaching workshops based upon her areas of expertise, the graduate librarian recruited others from across her library to teach sessions. The workshops were offered both in-person and simultaneously online via web conferencing software during the first two months of the semester. While attendance at the workshops was relatively low compared to the number of graduate students at the institution, virtual attendance often surpassed in-person attendance and student feedback was generally positive.

This presentation will explore the development of the workshop series, including how it built on and integrated with other outreach and instruction efforts for graduate students and sought to reach both on-campus and distance students at the same time. The presenter will share lessons learned, logistical considerations, and unexpected benefits of the series’ development.

In this session, participants will take part in a graduate level workshop entitled “Introduction to Systematic Reviews*”. I developed this workshop in response to increasing requests for help in understanding how to complete a systematic review. Initially those requests came primarily from the pharmacy and communication disorders graduate students to whom I liaise, but more and more requests are coming from graduate students in areas as diverse as engineering, education, fisheries, veterinary medicine, and social work. One unique aspect of the workshop is the use of sample systematic reviews to illustrate how the different steps appear in a published journal article. After the workshop content is complete, discussion will include various ways in which librarians can support graduate students working on systematic reviews.

*A systematic review is a formal research study that seeks to first identify, through a systematic and comprehensive search, all relevant literature answering a focused research question, then appraise the identified literature and finally analyze, synthesize, and present data from all studies included in the review.

Graduate students are expected to conduct research at an advanced level, which includes a higher degree of field-specific knowledge and autonomy than many of them experienced as undergraduates. It stands to reason, then, that they need advanced information literacy and research skills. However, while it might be true that graduate students need these skills, discussions around information literacy instruction for graduate students often assume a baseline of literacy or research expertise that they may not actually have. Many graduate students need what could be considered more “introductory” support before they can get to their “advanced” objectives for a variety of reasons, and it’s important for graduate student-serving librarians to identify student needs in order to meet them where they are.

From a variety of viewpoints, contexts, and disciplinary perspectives, this panel will explore the following: ways to determine where graduate students are in terms of their information literacy skills; what their needs are, from both their own point of view and those of graduate-serving teaching faculty; and strategies for addressing those needs. Specifically, the panelists will touch on topics such as discipline-specific nuance, students returning for graduate degrees or certificates after a long hiatus, students with differing objectives for their graduate studies (e.g., going to school to be a scholar as opposed to getting a master’s degree to improve one’s professional prospects), and collaborations with graduate teaching faculty, among other things.

This will be a traditional panel discussion with a moderator, four panelists, and a list of questions to address and discuss, as opposed to the several miniature presentations panel format that is common at library conferences. There will be 35-40 minutes of discussion amongst the panelists and 10-15 minutes of Q&A, followed by an invitation to all conference attendees to find us and discuss these issues further.

PhD students have unique needs and require different resources and services from the library than undergraduates, which is especially true of professionals in a nursing program. As clinicians, many do not have experience with the research and writing intensive requirements of a doctoral degree. The majority have not taken classes for years, and their master’s degrees were more hands-on, clinically-based. They often do not feel confident in their ability to search the literature, read closely, or write expansively. A unique avenue through which to meet their needs and share library resources is a PhD colloquium course.

Students take the colloquium course for one credit hour each semester throughout their time in their graduate program. Each Friday, a different expert from the nursing college or the university campus shares his or her expertise with the students. Over the last four years, the presenter has worked closely with nursing graduate-level faculty to create relevant, helpful presentations on a variety topics. She developed unique programming for students attending both face-to-face and online simultaneously. Topics have included academic reading, writing like a pro, library tips for literature reviews, journal selection for publication, and advanced searching. Typically, the librarian is given two slots per semester on the colloquium calendar during which to present different sessions.

The benefits of presenting library information at the colloquium are that 1) students get to know their nursing librarian, 2) both students and faculty become more familiar with library resources, and 3) the librarian is seen as an expert on campus. With any type of library instruction, improvements can always be made based on challenges faced. Presenting to students both face-to-face and via an online platform at the same time can be challenging, especially if the librarian wants to do active learning. Another challenge is students throughout the program attend the sessions. They are often in different stages of their classwork and dissertations, so it’s important to remain flexible and responsive to students’ questions and past experiences. Throughout eight semesters, the presenter has adapted content and presentation style based on faculty and student feedback.

During the conference session, the librarian will share information and materials developed that others can use at their institutions. Additionally, she will share successes and challenges with tips on how to make the most of feedback from faculty and students. Lastly, she will share ideas on how to adapt her instruction for various graduate student groups and different presentation formats.

Scholars analyzing the relationship between creativity and graduate research have tended to be PhD supervisors and psychologists. Using qualitative research methods and personal insights, these authors have looked closely at what creativity in the research process entails, and have called on supervisors to more effectively, and explicitly, foster creativity in graduate student research. Within this scholarly conversation, the teaching and support services of librarians have been largely overlooked.

This presentation contends that librarians are ideal collaborators for the development of creativity in graduate research. What’s more, a review of the doctoral education literature reveals ample opportunity for librarians to engage. In order to illustrate these entry points for engagement, this presentation will identify five themes from the doctoral education literature that dovetail with the work and mission of academic librarianship. These themes include: (1) Academic support groups (2) Affective dimensions of research (3) Literature reviews as integral to creativity (4) Research as nonlinear, and (5) Metacognition.

This presentation will show how these five themes intersect with the graduate librarianship literature, Kuhlthau’s affective approach to research, metaliteracy models, and the ACRL frames, and will highlight recommendations for how the literature can inform outreach services and research consultations.

Providing one-shot instruction sessions can be difficult, particularly in the graduate learning environment. As librarians, we want to provide students with the skills to search effectively for health information without overwhelming or confusing them. In health science graduate programs, we are expected to connect literature searching skills with the content of the courses in a manner that is engaging to students. This challenge can be exacerbated when students are new to graduate school and have not yet become familiar with scientific literature searching or the research process. Two medical librarians sought to overcome these challenges by empowering genetic counseling students in a Masters-level introduction to research class to be investigators. In an effort to engage students, the librarians incorporated an active learning session focused on genetic consumer health resources. After a brief overview of the resources, students were divided into groups and each group was assigned a consumer health website to explore and evaluate. To facilitate their exploration, students were given a particular genetic disorder to investigate. Each group reported back what they learned about the website that would be beneficial to them in their future professions as genetic counselors and how they thought patients could benefit from the site. This activity empowered students to engage in searching for reliable health information sites and provided them an opportunity to be peer instructors when they reported what they had learned. Searching for a specific disorder provided a framework and a focus for the exercise and resulted in rich and specific feedback about the different features of each genetic consumer health site. The librarians received excellent feedback from the School of Medicine faculty member who reported supporting more active engagement in future classes. Students also reported that they enjoyed the session and felt engaged in the class.

Louisiana State University Libraries is transforming its scholarly communication effort by focusing on graduate students. After small group and library-wide discussions, we hired a consulting firm which specializes in helping organizations meet the research needs of diverse populations. They led us through a self-examination so as to help us determine our best path forward.

Our consultants met with library staff, held focus groups from the university, and then created flowcharts and spreadsheets describing current practice. From these exercises, our consultants helped us conclude that, for LSU Libraries, concentrating on graduate students is our best first step forward.

Currently our Research and Instruction Services (RIS) librarians provide much undergraduate support, and these services are very successful. Although graduate level sessions are offered, attendance rates are far lower at graduate student sessions.

Conversely, in our graduate student focus groups, we heard students craving research support. These students aren’t getting this support from their major professors and they seemingly aren’t aware of what the Libraries has to offer. Where is the disconnect? What can we do differently? How best can we serve this population?

We will discuss the consulting process, and we will outline the decisions we are making to reach our graduate students. We’ll address questions: What do we offer to capture the attention of graduate students? How do we assess their most critical needs? How do we market this campaign to grab their attention? And, critically, how do we measure our success?

As Graduate Services Coordinator at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the presenter was asked to provide instruction on academic integrity to all new graduate students during New Student Orientation and to new graduate teaching assistants during their training program. For the orientation and training programs held in the Fall Semester of 2019, the RIT Office of Graduate Education placed a greater emphasis on academic integrity content and less emphasis on information about library resources and services. This presentation will focus on the evolving role of the librarian as academic integrity instructor at RIT, review and assess feedback from graduate students who received academic integrity instruction, and discuss some lessons learned in practice.

For graduate students, writing a dissertation can be an isolating experience. In 2018, librarians at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Libraries collaborated with the Graduate School to organize and host the campus’ first Dissertation Prep and Writing Intensive workshop. Inspired by the examples of Simon Fraser University and Concordia University libraries, we aspired to offer a dissertation workshop that would provide writing support to UNC doctoral students at a crucial stage of their academic journey. Initially, the workshop to students who had completed oral examinations and submitted committee proposals. However, this stringent stage-related requirement was subsequently eased. Over the course of the three-day workshop, UNC librarians, faculty, and administrators offered information and advice on topics such as work-school-life balance, goal setting, time management, writer’s block, copyright, and methodologies of graduate research. Interspersed with these sessions were periods of intensive writing time and opportunities for the participants to engage in networking and peer review with fellow student writers. Due to the success of the 2018 pilot and positive feedback from participants, the workshop has become a biannual event at UNC. Over time, it has evolved into a more inclusive event that appeals to a wider range of students.

This panel presentation, consisting of UNC academic librarians and a graduate assistant for the UNC Graduate School and International Admissions, will provide an in-depth case study delineating the successes and challenges we encountered during the phases of preparation and follow-up of the Dissertation Prep and Writing Intensive workshop, from initial planning and marketing strategies to implementation and project assessment. We will highlight how a collaborative planning effort, which involved the UNC Libraries, the Graduate School, and several key units across campus, led to a widely successful inaugural workshop. We will also focus on the significance of working in partnership with a wide variety of stakeholders, including library administration, individual subject liaisons, the Graduate School, academic departments, and additional campus entities.

The impetus for, and implementation of changes during the subsequent iterations of the workshop will be discussed as well. We will then detail the workshop structure to highlight how each section did or did not contribute to creating a supportive research environment and positive impact upon the graduate student experience. In addition, we will share what we have learned as hosts and what remains to be discovered. We intend to demonstrate how the workshop’s value was evident in the creation of community and camaraderie through numerous opportunities for the participants to interact with peers and glean insights from faculty members on research design, academic publishing, and preparing for a career in academia. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the workshop’s sustainability plan.

LaTeX is a document preparation system used in a wide variety of disciplines. Originally written for mathematics, LaTeX is now used throughout the sciences and in fields as diverse as linguistics, economics, and political science. With LaTeX, users can create professional-looking articles, lab reports, and presentations with complex mathematical expressions.

LaTeX is widely used, especially in the sciences, but the learning curve for LaTeX is steep and can be daunting to new users. While it may be necessary for future success in the student’s discipline, getting started with LaTeX can be a significant hurdle. For graduate students, a structured introduction provides a supportive way to begin using LaTeX for articles, dissertations, and other documents.

In this session, participants will take part in a graduate level workshop entitled “Introduction to LaTeX.” This workshop was developed in response to requests for LaTeX instruction and emphasizes basic concepts that can be applied in any LaTeX document.

Eager to provide graduate students the opportunity to develop themselves professionally, University Libraries in partnership with the Graduate School and International Education initiated a graduate student speaker series in 2018. The series, now in its second year, provides graduate students a forum in which to present their research- whether a finished product or work in progress- to the university community. To be eligible to speak in the series, each student must have used resources from the Special Collections Division as part of their work. This initiative highlights the research graduate students are engaged in, and draws attention to the university’s unique resources available for use. Each semester there are three scheduled speakers. Each talk is hosted in the division’s reading room, which doubles as an event space, and is planned for late afternoon on the second Thursday of each month.

Dr. Birrell, Associate Dean of Special Collections, first approached the Graduate School in spring 2018 and with their support pitched the idea to the officers in the Graduate Student Congress. The Congress’s president volunteered to be the first speaker when the series launched in October 2018. With the creation of a new position in the division, facilitation of the series transitioned from Dr Birrell to Kara Flynn, Research & Educational Services Archivist, over the course of Fall 2019.

In an effort to make the series accessible beyond the university community, Special Collections staff have experimented with live streaming, first on Facebook, and then on the University Libraries YouTube channel. On Facebook Live, videos averaged 366 views across 5 presenters. YouTube Live Stream was used in the Fall of 2019, as it allowed for the pairing of PowerPoint slides with the livestreams, a feature Facebook Live did not offer. YouTube Live Streaming averaged 95 views across 2 presenters' videos. In-person attendance for the series has averaged 37 participants, with a mix of undergraduates, graduate students, university faculty, library faculty/staff, and community members. As we move forward, optimizing promotion of the series will be an important aspect to consider.

In addition to promoting the series, recruiting participants can be a challenge. Participants have largely been gathered through recommendations from previous semester’s speakers. Other avenues for recruitment have included speaking to the Graduate Student Congress, and reviewing patron statistics to identify and reach out to graduate students who have engaged in research in Special Collections. The speakers as of Fall 2019 have all been history graduate students, and recruitment for the spring 2020 semester has focused on recruiting from different disciplines.

As the series continues, we will pursue new avenues for promoting the series, and hope to increase participation from disciplines beyond history graduate students. With more varied disciplines, the format of the series may also be subject to change in order to best serve the needs and interests of the speakers. For example, a printmaking student scheduled to speak in Spring of 2020 will curate an exhibit in conjunction with her presentation to document her research and creative process.

This poster demonstrates how to reconceptualize research ideas using the Mind Tool “SCAMPER” developed by Alex Osborn and Bob Erbele.

One of the most intangible aspects of the scholarly research cycle is the act of thinking and reasoning. Much of it is assumed, taken for granted, or simply expected as part and parcel of being an academic in a research university. But thinking, understanding, making sense, processing, synthesizing and developing new ideas pervades all or most of the research activities in which scholars engage.

We need to help make the information in our library systems usable in our digital world by connecting our various resources to the software and hardware that our researchers use to perform their "brainwork." This poster demonstrates how to perform an Idea Development activity by applying the SCAMPER mind tool to literature searches with graduate students for research idea development.

In response to a growing need for training in advanced research and professional workplace skills, a team of research librarians at the NC State University Libraries have developed a platform to engage and enhance the expertise of early-career researchers on campus. The Peer Scholars Program offers graduate students and postdoctoral scholars a paid practical experience in creating and delivering effective instruction on core and emerging research skills to their peers. Participants are invited to suggest topics for library talks or workshops and partner with research librarians to develop and deliver interactive and engaging sessions in an informal teaching setting. Topics have ranged from advanced skills in data science and computer programming to strategies for communicating research in various environments and navigating professional experiences.

In collaboration with the Graduate School, the program’s offerings have greatly expanded the volume and nature of early-career researcher professional development opportunities at NC State over the last two years. In addition to scaling library-hosted workshop offerings, the program continues to build a community of practice around peer-to-peer teaching and learning on campus. The Peer Scholars Program provides valuable opportunities for participants to publically present their expertise, engage audiences with a variety of classroom technologies and in high-tech spaces, and gain teaching experience before going out into the job market.

When our copyright education program initially began, it was tied only to copyright clearances in dissertations and theses. However, it became apparent that it would be beneficial to graduate students to learn more about copyright as it intersects with academia in broader ways than just ensuring copyright compliance in dissertations. Graduate students need to understand copyright in order to effectively collaborate in their research, publish, and teach.

At the same time, our university graduate office began developing a graduate professional development program. This professional development program encourages students to participate in programs that will help them succeed in their careers, and a number of office on campus provide workshop offerings on topics ranging from literature reviews to independent development plans.

In response to the development of this program, we developed a workshop sequence that starts with copyright basics and extends to traditional and open models. Offering copyright education within the graduate professional development program has several benefits:

1. Students have an incentive to attend copyright education workshops because they count for credit towards a professional development certificate.

2. Students learn about copyright before the final stages of their dissertation work, allowing them more time to plan for copyright permissions if necessary.

3. Students seek out classes on a broader array of copyright topics than they do as a part of their dissertation review process.

4. Librarians have had the opportunity to collaborate with other campus offices to develop more interdisciplinary copyright education workshops, and have been invited to teach new audiences.

This poster will present the evolution of the copyright program, an overview of the scaffolded workshop curriculum, and the benefits of participating in a graduate professional development workshop program.

In today’s academic environment, students equipped with self-regulated learning and information literacy skills have an excellent opportunity for professional success, given our current information-based practices in health care. Information literacy instruction provided to students early in their coursework will aide them in acquiring competency for the remainder of their studies, especially scholarly projects. Along with information literacy issues, library anxiety has been identified in the literature as a contributing factor to poor academic performance in students. The purpose of this study was to explore components of library anxiety, if present, as well as to help students become more comfortable and proficient with library resources in analyzing research articles. Library anxiety and information literacy was addressed by requiring, via a class assignment, a cohort of MOT adult learners to connect 1:1 with a librarian for a research consultation. This study took place strategically at the beginning of the students’ professional program to better prepare them for future research assignments, including their scholarship project.

The Lacy School of Business at Butler University (Indianapolis) has embraced an experiential approach for the school’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program by combining traditional classroom instruction with opportunities for students to learn through partnerships with local businesses. Beginning with the MBA Gateway Experience course, graduate students are tasked with conducting team research to present informed recommendations to business owners and community leaders. The related support provided by the Butler Business Librarian for MBA students complements the experiential nature of the program by engaging students with the real-world challenges of collecting and evaluating business information for applied problem-solving. The proposed poster presentation will illustrate how graduate library instruction for Butler MBA students has transitioned from a 10-minute orientation to a required two-session workshop. Scheduled each semester for cohorts of incoming graduate students, the training is delivered in a hybrid format with the first session completed online followed by an in-class meeting. The poster will feature visual examples of online learning objects, including tutorials and worksheets on company and industry research, and outline an in-class activity designed to simulate the research and presentation tasks the students will encounter for the experiential Gateway project. The poster will also address lessons learned and highlight the collaborative efforts of the librarian and graduate faculty in providing critique and assessment of student team performances.

This poster presents as a case study the recent library reorganization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The reorganization was initially spurred by the need to divide the library’s large, hydra-headed Public Services and Scholarly Communication unit into smaller, more coherent units. One of the five resulting units is Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship, composed of librarians who provide services related to scholarly communication, the institutional repository, data management, digital scholarship, digital preservation, and theses and dissertations. In other words, this new unit provides services that pertain not to the discovery and consumption of knowledge but rather to the production, dissemination, and preservation of it. These services all already existed or were in development at the library, but the reorganization clustered and structurally surfaced them.

As its name suggests, the Graduate Center offers only graduate degrees, and the structural change acknowledges our students’ dual roles as learners and contributing scholars. Further, it puts those of us who provide scholarship-related services in closer contact with each other, leading to improved understanding of each other’s work, increased collaboration, and ideas for new services. Importantly, the restructuring was not merely a personnel action, hidden from public view — the services of the new Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship unit are now prominently displayed together on the library homepage. As a result, they are more visible to our students and more easily understandable as a suite of interconnected services.

Each January, Harvard Library offers Unabridged, a 5-day library master class for graduate students. Designed to lay the groundwork for a lifetime of scholarly practice, the program’s topics range from “Self-Care for Scholars” through specialized reference sources, organizing your research travel, and negotiating contracts with publishers. A host of experts from across the University teach sessions in a variety of formats, offering a range of perspectives from different disciplines and areas of expertise.

Unabridged focuses on concepts as much as currently relevant tools and encourages learning through hands-on activities. Our holistic approach helps develop strategies that are adaptable and enduring. It has also been a fertile space for developing new content, and librarians across the university have reused our session plans, infographics, and other materials.

First offered as a 2-day event with an open RSVP, the program has evolved over the years into a 5-day offering with an admissions process, a bonus day on archives and special collections, and a series of “Prologue” and “Epilogue” workshops during the fall and spring terms. A successful university-wide event, the Harvard Collections Showcase, developed out of an Unabridged session.

This poster will describe the Unabridged curriculum, provide some highlights from our iterations of the program’s design and development over the past 5 years, and an extract of the feedback we have received.

More information about the program is available here: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/62558

In 2012, the University of San Francisco's School of Management underwent a monumental change in both location and student access to academic services. In that year, all classes and most staff and student services for the MBA and other business graduate programs were relocated to a new site near the Financial District, which is across the city from the main campus. Suddenly, a major group of my service population was no longer on campus near me or near the library! In this poster, I will describe the process I undertook to remain visible and accessible to this important group of students, staff, and faculty. In a fortunate turn of events, the work to re-establish my services with our graduate business students combined my concern about remaining connected to them with a professional passion of mine, embedded librarianship. In this poster, I’ll summarize the process, including what worked well, what didn’t, the kinds of feedback I’ve received and how it has been incorporated, the other services that have resulted from my outreach efforts, as well as hopes for the future.