Denise A. Garofalo

True Serials: A True Solution for Electronic Resource Management Needs in a Medium-Size Academic Library

A desire for more functionality seemed to clash with the fiscal reality of limited funds, but after investigating alternatives, Mount Saint Mary College was able to provide its faculty and students with a more useful and function-rich electronic resource management through a move to a hosted open source service.

E-Book Cataloging (NCSU Libraries)

Technical services are at the forefront of the changes that are taking place today in libraries. In this issue, our reviewers will introduce you to useful resources you may not be familiar with that can help you incorporate non-traditional metadata into your cataloging operations, take advantage of social media tools like blogs and crowdsourcing, and gain a better understanding of data-driven assessment. Do you have websites or applications of your own you would like to share with your colleagues in technical services? Our column WELCOMES new reviewers. Send comments and suggestions to the column editor: Marta Mestrovic Deyrup at marta.deyrup@shu.edu

Connecting With Students: Information Literacy and Personal Librarians

Integrating information literacy instruction and meeting Middle States requirements drove a Personal Librarian pilot in ENG 101 classes, a pilot conceived, developed, and implemented in just three short months. Librarians at Mount Saint Mary College (Newburgh, NY) turned to technology as a means to deliver content on certain key points, and overall our bumpy and rushed implementation led to a positive collaboration with teaching faculty, activated campus-wide clamor for Personal Librarians, and actually imparted information skills to freshmen. We began our journey towards Personal Librarians via concern over retention rates and Middle States requirements. Mount Saint Mary College, a four-year private liberal arts college, began investigating High Impact Practices for firstyear programs as a means to raise retention rates (Kuh, 2008). A Task Force selected a Passion Course Model for a First Year Experience (FYE) Program, and information literacy would be a component, with each Passion Course having an assigned personal librarian. But as time progressed, issues such as the lack of academic learning outcomes doomed this model, and our attempt at systematically addressing information literacy skills in a freshman-focused course were stalled. The librarians decided to pursue our goal of integrated information literacy in an established course on our own. We knew we wanted our course to be focused at the freshman population, and if we offered a number of instruction delivery formats to accommodate various learning styles, we could address time and consistency concerns. Most importantly we wanted the course to make research and the librarians seem a little less imposing and more personal — we wanted students to feel comfortable contacting us for research assistance. So we decided to take the Personal Librarian (PL) model proposed for the FYE and pair it with a freshman-focused course, hoping to establish a PL program to create a culture of connection to the library. Personal Librarians have been utilized as a means of outreach to the freshman student population. Universities such as Yale, Barnard, University of Richmond, and Drexel have led the way by developing programs to help raise awareness about the library, reach out to students, assist with research, and provide a contact person for all things library related (Dillon, 2011; Freedman, 2011; Henry, Vardeman, & Syma, 2012; Nann, 2009). We chose to develop an information literacy program around the Personal Librarian moniker. Our program would be similar to the PL pioneers in that we are targeting the freshman population, reaching out to students, and hoping to develop a personal connection. But our goal is different — to systematically teach information literacy concepts to our freshman students. In order to successful launch our PL program pilot, we needed to pair it with a freshman-focused course that all freshman students were required to take, ensuring that we were targeting the freshman population in a systematic way. Information literacy skills, specifically a research component, needed to be a part of the course. And most importantly, we needed a course where the teaching faculty would be supportive of our collaboration. After consideration, the course that met all of those requirements was ENG 101: College Writing. The faculty was willing to work collaboratively with us, and we were off and running, with only three months to plan, create, orient, and implement. After establishing outcomes, we identified objectives that not only align with Middle State’s Profile of an Information Literate Person (Middle States, 2003, p. 8) but were appropriate for the course.