Planning for the Unknowable Fall Semester
Hello from your new Chair, Courtney Hunt (Art & Design Librarian at The Ohio State University) and Vice-Chair, Nimisha Bhat (Visual Arts Librarian at Smith College)! We’re excited to lead discussions throughout this coming year to share ideas and build resources within our community related to research services at our institutions.
Our section met in July to tackle the looming question in all of our minds — planning for a fall semester amid a pandemic as many of us are returning to in-person services at our libraries. Some highlights of the conversation were:
- Practicing “slow librarianship”: many of us discussed strategies for slowing down our work in this fast-moving window of time when procedures and communications are constantly changing, like giving ourselves more time to answer reference questions and working on being uncomfortable with with uncertainty; instead of planning every small detail out in our teaching, reference, and support practices, it’s important to leave room for the unknown and allow ourselves to fail in front of students, e.g. not over-planning instruction sessions
- Re-learning how to to teach in-person classes again
- How our physical spaces have changed for either better or worse: outfitting spaces with improved and upgraded technology and offering more remote services both for those who can’t get to or across campus easily and for distance learners
- Major budget changes that affect collecting: some budgets have remained frozen with major weeding and cancellation projects happening; leveraging accreditation; some have found a solution in purchasing magazines with individual ISBNs from their book budget; a few members shared that they were hiring practicum students to help with collection assessment
- Limitations on ordering artists’ books: at some institutions, artists’ books are considered “less traditional” library materials and therefore some librarians haven’t been able to purchase any during this time of budgetary restrictions; some have secured a permanent budget line specifically for artists’ book collections while some only consider them when requested by faculty; others are dealing with anti-print collection managers and major stacks and space reductions
- Accessibility and flexibility in the classroom: Students at some of our institutions have been giving positive feedback about having multiple ways to contribute that don’t necessarily center on talking aloud; asking questions in the classroom like: “are you ok with raising your hand and talking or would you rather contribute to a crowd sourcing tool?”; the group also discussed our thoughts on recording our classroom sessions and while this could be a major solution to inaccessibility for students, some mentioned that this might not be a good mode for sharing information privately, tech obsolescence, intellectual property concerns, and image use permission ambiguity
- Reevaluating the traditional reference desk model: training students or an on-call librarian to navigate basic reference & directional questions and passing referrals to liaisons; practicing tiered reference models like the READ Scale
The topics covered here make up a non-exhaustive list of the challenges and opportunities that we are all dealing with as we continue our work during this pandemic. We hope that some of the things discussed inspire you, or at the very least, make you feel less alone during this difficult and tiring time.
Our next RISS discussion will take place on Tuesday, October 19 from 2-3 p.m. ET. The topic for our October discussion is “Outside the Canon – Sharing Resources and Tools for Researching and Learning about non-“Western” Art.” Please join us if you can! Zoom information is below:
Link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/92697044656?pwd=NmQ1dW1hLzNRNHB4aVVOd283a0owZz09
Meeting ID: 926 9704 4656
Password: 503817
Courtney & Nimisha
Research and Information Services Section 