Information Literacy Commons^™

Artifacts As Ambassadors: Sharing Special Collections Through Collaboration With Student Curators, Carolyn Sautter

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Special Collections and College Archives at Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, regularly collaborates with various academic departments to conduct class visits utilizing the primary sources in Special Collections Reading Room. In the last two years, some of these opportunity have grown into semester long student curation experiences both inside Special Collections and in collaboration with Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College.

The exhibits discussed included:

Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era

Slow to Heal: The Evolution of Medicine from the Civil War Era to WWI

Owl & Nightingale Players, 1914-2014: One Hundred Years of Drama

Art …

Teaching Students To Fish: Creating A Sustainable Student Peer Research Program, Mallory R. Jallas, Meggan D. Smith

All Musselman Library Staff Works

A Peer Research Mentor (PRM) program was developed at Musselman Library, Gettysburg College to augment traditional reference services and expand library outreach. Goals included enhancing these students’ information literacy skills helping them become better researchers, as well as sharing that knowledge with peers. This poster will highlight the initial and on-going training, their involvement at the reference desk, and outreach projects to date.

Breathing Life Into Information Literacy Skills: Results Of A Faculty-Librarian Collaboration, Divonna M. Stebick, Janelle L. Wertzberger, Margaret E. Flora, Joseph W. Miller

Education Faculty Publications

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, …

Categorizing History, Megan E. Fowle

Blogging the Library

Since my last blog post, I have become more familiar with the desk and have begun to answer questions that are more in depth and make use of the reference skills that I have been learning. This week, I have even started working the desk by myself! I was a little nervous at first, but once I had my first patron, I realized that I felt confident in what I had learned in my training and I was able to help! [excerpt]

Reaching Our Students Using Instagram, #Hashtags, And National Library Week, Mallory R. Jallas, Stephanie Bowen

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Academic librarians are striving to outreach and promote libraries to students where they are. We oftentimes find ourselves asking… how do we find the students and how do we interact? At Gettysburg College we tackled these questions and devised engagement opportunities using social media and anchoring activities around popular spaces in the library. Our session will explain the planning, execution, and assessment of our projects and how it can be adapted to other libraries.

You’Ve Gotta Read This! Connecting With Readers At An Academic Library, Kerri Odess-Harnish, Clinton K. Baugess

All Musselman Library Staff Works

At our small, liberal arts college, the library has developed a vibrant browsing collection of popular fiction and nonfiction titles in both print and ebook formats. Additionally, we have developed extensive outreach and programming initiatives to support the recreational reading habits and intellectual engagement of our students and faculty outside of the classroom. Some of these efforts include an annual summer reading booklet, an online featured reader column, and first year and other thematic reading and discussion groups. Learn how librarians on our campus continue to successfully promote recreational reading in support of lifelong learning.

Just Keep Plugging Away, Alexander K. Schweizer

Blogging the Library

I am not the greatest technology user, but I am in the process of creating a page on the library’s resource guide that will include resources, links to resources, and links to links to resources about pretty much anything anyone might ever want to know about the President’s Own Marine Band. It will include audio resources, as well as links to more audio resources. It will include links to notable and informative websites that will show you super cool pictures of various aspects of the Marine Band, as well as its musicians and directors, past and present. It will even …

Meetings, Weedings, Development.. Oh My!, Celia M. Hartz

Blogging the Library

Hello!! Since the last time I posted a lot has happened and so far, still good. That’s not to say I haven’t needed help on a few Reference Questions but things are going pretty well. I’ve had a few ‘RefWins’ where I’ve felt that I was particularly helpful, one was even over chat! Everything is going great thus far and I’m definitely learning, a lot. [excerpt]

Librarianship Is Neat!, Celia M. Hartz

Blogging the Library

I’ve got a few weeks under my belt now with this Internship and so far, so good. I’ll be totally honestly though, when I first started every time someone came near the desk I got a little nervous because after 3.5 years I thought I knew my way around the Library; nope. BUT, now with three weeks of perusing research guides, databases, asking a zillion questions and rereading everything in my training guide approximately three times, I feel confident that I can be helpful, and that’s great! [excerpt]

Behind The Scenes: Secrets Of Preparing For Successful Research Appointments, Sarah Myers

Blogging the Library

Have you ever noticed how librarians are stereo-typically portrayed in movies and on TV? There is the perception that librarians are extremely uptight, awkward, and boring, that they require nearly complete silence, and they rarely offer any actual help. That is definitely not what being an academic librarian is about. For me, it’s about helping, learning new ideas, exchanging information, and making the research process (which I love!) a bit easier. Remember the librarians in Matilda or on Arthur? They were always willing to help and make the process of finding resources a little bit easier. That’s what I want …

Improving And Assessing Information Literacy Skills Through Faculty-Librarian Collaboration, Meggan D. Smith, Amy B. Dailey

All Musselman Library Staff Works

This article addresses ways to assess the effectiveness of integrating information literacy into college courses by taking a close look at a partnership developed between Dr. Amy Dailey and the reference librarians at Gettysburg College.

Instruction And Focus Groups, John C. Hill

Blogging the Library

My internship focuses not only on reference librarianship, but also information literacy and instruction. Accordingly, I’ve been fortunate to sit in on some library instruction classes with Clint. I think that the image of a librarian as a reference resource is pretty well established in our cultural consciousness, at least here at Gettysburg College, but the image of librarian as teacher is perhaps not as prominent. At some colleges and universities, however, librarians are considered part of the faculty. [excerpt]

Information - Access: Denied, Riccardo M. Purita

SURGE

I have been privileged during my lifetime to always have the opportunity to learn about something if I wanted to. When I became interested in music and psychology—or even when I was learning how to apply for college—I googled it. The resources to obtain information have always been there for me: access to computers, the internet, books, journals. It is hard to imagine my life without a computer or access to books to learn about the world, and even harder to imagine if I did not know how to read or write. For this, I can thank my education and …

The Research Consultation: What Do You Do When You're Meeting With A Student?, Clinton K. Baugess

All Musselman Library Staff Works

Research consultations are individualized research sessions tailored to meet a student's particular information need. This infographic outlines six best practices for reference librarians or other information professionals providing research consultations to an undergraduate population.

Health & Wellness Page, Ilana A. Mesnard

Blogging the Library

Where is health on your priority list? Good health is crucial for all people, but especially for musicians (or athletes) who need their bodies in top performance shape. Musicians in the conservatory need to be aware of how to stay healthy. The purposes of the Health and Wellness Page are to promote good health, and to create awareness of reliable resources on healthy lifestyle choices as musicians. [excerpt]

Classroom Observation, Kelly M. Fullerton

Blogging the Library

Besides lots of practice for the Book Cart Drill Team (we zombified shirts yesterday, get excited to see) the past few weeks have been mostly working at the Reference Desk and observing classroom sessions lead by other reference librarians. The desk has become more interesting as the semester goes on, and a lot harder. Students and faculty are asking me questions that I do not quite have the answer to yet, which is very challenging but I also like. I learn something myself trying to answer their questions, and it makes me feel smart when I do find information for …

Published And Proud, Hannah R. Leone

Blogging the Library

Today was an exciting day at work: my Bisexual and Transgender LibGuides are published and available to the public!! Excuse me as I squeal in nerdy glee. I made a couple of small changes before I published them: I added a user feedback box so that visitors to the LibGuide can let me know what they think, as well as changing some titles of boxes after Jess pointed out that they were in Librarian-speak instead of Normal College Student. I also took the LGBTQ landing page from its half-baked state to make it an officially “under-construction” welcome page. In case …

Bisexuality Week! (With An Aside On My Growing Librarian Instincts), Hannah R. Leone

Blogging the Library

As I mentioned last week, this week I began work on my Bisexuality LibGuide. Actually, I finished work on it too. Now that I’m more familiar with how to build a LibGuide and now that I have a template for how I want my pages to work, it didn’t take very long to get the bones of the page laid out. I just needed to find the items in various categories with which to fill in the page. [excerpt]

First Day Without A Desk Buddy: A Detailed Summary, Audrey H. Schwinn

Blogging the Library

Today is my first day behind the Ref. Desk without a Desk Buddy. I'm glad it's a morning shift because those are usually much quieter and less eventful than afternoon shifts. All of the librarians have reassured me that if I need help answering a question I can just call any of them, but so far I've been fine. I've been keeping a list of everything that occurs at the Desk this morning so that I can properly document my first day out here by myself. So far it hasn't been terribly interesting, but right now I'm ok with that. …

Exploring Library Room 20 - The Library Instruction Lair, Audrey H. Schwinn

Blogging the Library

For the last couple of weeks, in addition to working behind the Reference Desk, I have also been further investigating the Instruction part of the Reference & Instruction Department. While some instruction necessarily happens at the desk, the librarians have a chance to get more in-depth into teaching research skills when professors bring their students into the computer lab classroom in the basement. In the past couple weeks I have observed an English 101 and a 200-level Psych class, and my own Environmental Issues class was also brought in to meet with a librarian. [excerpt]

Recent Discovery: Answering Research Questions Is Not Impossible, Audrey H. Schwinn

Blogging the Library

Having a name plate is still the most exciting part about being behind the Reference Desk. (It's the little things in life that really make a difference.) But almost equally exciting is that I have now successfully answered several research questions! I am continuing to learn how to do things and, more importantly, I am (usually) remembering how to do them. The other librarians are still taking turns being my "Desk Buddy" so there is always someone to help me answer the questions, but I am starting to provide students and other patrons with helpful information on my own. [ …

Photomicrographs, The Npr 100, And Student Teaching: Library Liaison Ideas That Really Work, Katherine Furlong, Janelle L. Wertzberger

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In 1997, Gettysburg College's Musselman Library revived a dormant liaison program. Librarians were assigned to each department and program on campus and expected to serve as the first point of library contact for the teaching faculty.

Some core communications and activities emerged that we now encourage every liaison to practice; attending department meetings, sending reviews of new materials, tracking faculty book orders, and visiting faculty offices are seen as standard liaison activities.

We were delighted to find that almost every librarian had some unique and interesting experiences to report. The authors collected these experiences so that they could be shared …

The Gettysburg Experience, Robin Wagner

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In February 1994, Gettysburg College launched an ambitious experiment that joined computing and the library into a new organization known as Information Resources. Gettysburg College, one of the first liberal arts colleges to undertake such a merger, sought, along with only a handful of other institutions, a level of integration so complete that all vestiges of the traditional library disappeared. This is the story of that merger and why it failed despite the best efforts of many. [excerpt]