Assumes, accepts, shares, and relinquishes responsibilities.
Post Reappointment
With staffing changes, the European Union collection became available. It was decided that I would manage the EU depository collection and I would work with Mary Jo Zeter, who would be in charge of non-governmental EU publications.
When I expressed interest in cataloging video games, this shift in responsibilities required that I relinquish my responsibility as liaison for James Madison College to the Teaching and Learning unit in the Library. Additionally, Cataloging became my new secondary assignment and my appointment in Reference shifted to a tertiary.
Pre-Reappointment
When I changed from being the Assistant Copyright Librarian to the Government Information Librarian, it required that I acquire new responsibilities while relinquishing others. For example, I was no longer responsible for responding to copyright queries, as I was now responsible for answering questions concerning U.S. and international government information. I became owner of 14 LibGuides related to government information, 26 LibGuides for James Madison classes, and co-owner of 2 Census-related LibGuides, while relinquishing responsibility for 3 copyright-related LibGuides to Amy Blair and Cen Cheng. Additionally, I relinquished my responsibilities for teaching the Turnitin and iThenticate training courses to the DLS trainers and I became responsible for providing library instruction for JMC.
Instructs library users and/or staff members and trains, instructs, and provides appropriate information.
Post Reappointment
Reference Meetings that I presented at:
Finding Census Data Online on September 16, 2016.
The Census Collection is Coming (to the First Floor) on June 2, 2016.
voxgov on March 3, 2016.
Proquest Congressional: There’s More to it Than What You Might Think on April 2, 2015.
Libguides created:
Presidential Election 2016 was created in response to the last presidential election and to help users better understand the candidates during the primaries. Published in March 2016, it received over 460 views.
United States Food Law and Regulations published in February 2016 and has received over 1,000 views.
MC 498: Civic Engagement and Community Development in Lansing highlights Lansing specific resources regarding this course topic. It also provides information on finding demographic data and using census tracts. It was published in September 2015 and viewed over 500 times.
International Food Law and Regulations was created for the Institute for Food Laws and Regulations program. I lead this collaboration to create this guide with Anita Ezzo and Jane Meland (MSU Law Library). I created the tabs on International Organizations, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This guide has been viewed over 3,500 times since its creation in March 2015.
HST 201: Food, Farming, and Nutrition in the USA was created for this course with Suzi Teghtmeyer and Bobby Smiley. I added resources to the tab for Agricultural Census resources and Congressional Documents and Laws. It was published in February 2015 and accessed over 500 times.
MC 498: Middle Class Politics and Policy highlights resources related to demographic and economic data, as well as materials related to society, culture, and consumerism. Published in January 2015 and viewed over 350 times.
Global Cities and Urbanism was created for MC 367 on the same topic. However this guide is a topic of interest to others outside of this particular class, such as researchers in Urban Planning and Design. This guide has been accessed over 580 times since it was published in September 2014.
MC 384: Metropolitan Society is a guide created for this course and focuses on finding economic and demographic data. This guide was published in February 2014 has has been viewed over 1,350 times.
PKG 485: Packaging System Development was created by Anita Ezzo, Breezy Silver, and myself. The tabs that I created were on Census Information and Laws and Regulations. This guide has been viewed over 1,700 times and was published in January 2014.
Affordable Care Act was meant to serve as a resources for our patrons who might have questions about the Affordable Care Act, such as where to go to enroll in health insurance. This guide has received over 300 views since it was published in September 2013 (this guide is no longer published).
I continue to supervise two student library employees to shelve and maintain materials on 3 West. A lot of training is required in order for my students to shelve the variety of collections and materials. Currently, my students must learn how to shelve:
Collections on 1 East:
Census
Michigan Documents (classed in Library of Congress)
Government Documents Reference (classed in Library of Congress)
Collections on 3 West:
UN fiche (classed in UN call number system)
International Documents (classed in Library of Congress)
Canadian Documents (classed in the Canadian call number system)
U.S. Federal Documents (classed in SuDocs)
ASI, SRI, IIS Fiche
Planning Reports
I have served as a subject specialist in the two librarian positions that I have occupied at the MSU Libraries, which means that I have been responsible for answering reference questions in my area of expertise, especially regarding Census data. Below are some sample email queries that I received:
Pre-Reappointment
In April 2013, I was a winner of the Research Help Now’s Best Transcript Award for my exceptional customer service exhibited in the chat reference transaction.
I have presented at three reference meetings to share information with my colleagues:
Turnitin and iThenticate on November 1, 2012
The Library Office of Copyright on April 4, 2013
MC 112 on February 6, 2014. MC 112 is the research and writing class that all JMC students are required to take in the spring. Each MC 112 instructor creates a different U.S.-centered theme, ranging from slavery and abolition to late 20th – early 21st century consumer culture. There are various assignments, such as an annotated bibliography and final research paper, which require a lot of research and locating useful primary sources, causing Reference librarians to encounter a lot of these students at the Reference Desk and on chat. To help my colleagues, I showed them the LibGuides that were created for each class so that they can provide the best assistance to these students.
Due to my liaison responsibilities to JMC, I often find myself working with these students in person and through email on their complex research projects. It’s important to not just give the students the articles that they need, but to also teach them how to do their own research. I’ll suggest appropriate databases to search and offer some keywords, but I will not give them an exhaustive list of keywords to try. Instead, I’ll offer tips for brainstorming keywords that might apply. The same applies to articles that I will send them. I may send them one or two on point articles, but I encourage them to look at the subject tags for the articles and start exploring what other articles may be available under similar subjects. I think that it’s the role of the librarian to help teach students how to be good researchers.
This was my first year providing information literacy sessions for MC 112 and being sought out for one-on-one assistance by these students. I provided a lot of reference assistance to these students, who often had follow up questions for their research paper. Much of the assistance that I provided was with tracking down useful primary source documents that supported their thesis. The JMC writing faculty did an excellent job referring their students to me for research help and one of the sections sent me a thank you card at the end of the semester in appreciation of all the help that I provided.
Development of appropriate online materials.
In 2012, I created a copyright flow chart to help users better understand whether or not something is in the public domain. A general rule of thumb is that if it was published before 1923, then it’s in the public domain. However, because copyright law has changed numerous times throughout the 20th century, it is possible that items published as late as 1989 could be public domain. There are a lot of possibilities, so to help make it easier for a person to investigate, I created a copyright flow chart with the intention of creating an interactive online tool that would allow users to click through a series of yes and no questions to determine the copyright status of a work. Ultimately, this project never made it to a website before I accepted another position.
Part of instructing library patrons is to make them aware of the library and the many services that it offers. To that end, between 2012 and 2014 I have volunteered each year to staff the library’s table at the Academic Orientation Program (AOP) that incoming freshmen and their parents attend. This is a great opportunity to promote the libraries and to present a friendly, knowledgeable face for the library.
In addition, in 2012, I represented the Library Office of Copyright (LOC) at the Faculty Resource Fair. The LOC had recently formed and with a rise in litigation against universities for copyright infringement, it was important to publicize the creation of this office to faculty to let them know that there are people that they can contact with copyright questions concerning what they legally can and cannot do in the classroom and in their professional presentations and publications.
In 2013, I volunteered for the Faculty Resource Fair and represented the Research Data Management Guidance (RDMG) service, for which I was a member. RDMG is comprised of librarians and archivists at MSU to help researchers with their data management plans. Many grant funders now require a data management plan in grant proposals and many researchers are not sure how to put such a plan together. It was out of this need that RDMG was formed and with any new service, advertising is crucial to let the intended recipients know that such assistance is available.
Offers, accepts, and utilizes constructive criticism. Receptive to suggestions and constructive criticism from staff members.
The Teaching and Learning Librarian Community of Practice allowed participants such as myself to provide feedback regarding the instruction sessions and activities of other participants. I was also able to discuss my instruction techniques and received very helpful feedback that I used to better shape my instruction sessions.
When I was liaison to JMC, I worked with Rachel Minkin in Information Literacy to develop and improve my JMC instruction sessions. This includes meeting with Rachel before my classes in order to discuss the intended lesson plan, as well as any activities that I am interested in using. I also sought out instruction recommendations from Sara Miller and Ben Oberdick when I was working on developing new activities for finding primary and secondary sources. Additionally, I also asked students and JMC faculty to fill out an evaluation form following their class instruction. This feedback was incredibly helpful for me and I try to incorporate it and alter subsequent classes to try to clarify any areas that seemed unclear to students based on the feedback received, in order to help improve the quality and helpfulness of the classes that I teach.
Inspires as well as participates in teamwork.
The Library Office of Copyright (LOC) was a team-centered environment, comprised of myself (Assistant Copyright Librarian), Amy Blair (Copyright Librarian), and Lynne Woods (Copyright Consultant). Questions would come to us, either individually, which we would then share with the others, or sent to the group email address, copyright@msu.edu. Discussion of the question would then ensue, especially for the more complicated queries, and other campus staff may have been consulted (such as staff at MSU Technologies or in General Counsel’s office), depending on the nature of the question.
I have collaborated with other MSU librarians and archivists on five Main Library exhibits. In all four of these exhibits, I have taken on a leadership role, setting and assigning tasks and ensuring that deadlines are met.
“Unidentified Flying Objects: Flying Saucers, Little Green Men, and Other Extraterrestrial Subjects.” I collaborated with Emily Sanford on this exhibit which ran from July – September 2015.
“Preservation: Forestalling the Ravages of Time.” November 2013-March 2014, with Eric Alstrom, Aaron Collie, Devin Higgins, Ranti Junus, Hailey Mooney, and Lisa Schmidt.
“Fifty Years of Doctor Who.” October-November 2013, with Suzi Teghtmeyer.
“April is Copyright Month.” April-June 2013, with Amy Blair and Lynne Woods.
“Retracing the Unsinkable: Remembering the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic Disaster.” April-July 2012, with Holly Flynn.
I have created the following libguides collaboratively:
International Food Law and Regulations was created for the Institute for Food Laws and Regulations program. I lead this collaboration to create this guide with Anita Ezzo and Jane Meland (MSU Law Library). I created the tabs on International Organizations, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This guide has been viewed over 3,500 times since its creation in March 2015.
HST 201: Food, Farming, and Nutrition in the USA was created for this course with Suzi Teghtmeyer and Bobby Smiley. I added resources to the tab for Agricultural Census resources and Congressional Documents and Laws. It was published in February 2015 and accessed over 500 times.
PKG 485: Packaging System Development was created by Anita Ezzo, Breezy Silver, and myself. The tabs that I created were on Census Information and Laws and Regulations. This guide has been viewed over 1,700 times and was published in January 2014.
For HST 201 and PKG 485, I also co-presented information literacy sessions for these classes.
In August 2012, Portia Vescio, Assistant Director of MSU’s Archives and Historic Collections, and I collaborated to create a half-day workshop on copyright issues for archives that was offered by the Historical Society of Michigan. There was so much interest in this workshop that Portia and I were asked to offer the same workshop again in December 2013. In 2015, Megan Malone from University Archives and I presented another half-day workshop on copyright issues for historic collections.
In 2016 I was asked by a member of the Education Committee for the Midwest Archives Conference if I would be willing to do a half-day beginners workshop on text mining in archives. Since I lack the expertise in archives, I asked Megan Malone if she would like to collaborate with me on this and she agreed.
I have served on numerous library teams and committees, requiring my interaction and collaboration with both support staff and librarians. These include:
U.S. History Librarian Search Committee, 2017
Link Resolver Discovery Tool Implementation Team, 2014
Head of Reference Search Committee, 2014
Bylaws Committee, 2013-2014
Steering Committee, 2012-2014
Library Staff Association, 2012-2013
I work together with the Catalog Maintenance team, especially Don Depoorter, Lisa English, and Andrea James on the various government documents weeding projects that we have pursued. While I make the decisions as to what we should keep, they and their staff are the ones who are actually doing the work for this project: pulling volumes, updating records, preparing volumes for shipping or disposal, etc. Along with making the decisions about what should actually happen, I also am the one who works through any problems or weirdness that they may encounter. Andrea James has provided a letter highlighting her views in regards to working with me. While letters from support staff tend to not get included in dossiers, since I work so closely with Andrea and her students I thought it would be valuable to include her insight here.
As Video Game Cataloger, I work closely with other staff in Technical Services processing these items. I also work closely with the Video Game Coordinator who pulls games for me to catalog, photographs the games components which I then add the photos to the Sierra records. The coordinator and I am still sorting out procedures for video game processing so there is a lot of coordination and communication to make sure that games are processed as quickly, efficiently, and completely as possible.
As a member of the Research Data Management Guidance (RDMG) team I worked with Aaron Collie, Ranti Junus, Lucas Mak, Hailey Mooney, and Lisa Schmidt to found the Research Data Management Community for Advising, Facilitating, and Enabling (CAFÉ) in order to begin a cross-campus conversation regarding research data management, between service providers (such as the High Performance Computing Center) and data creators (such as researchers). In addition, the RDMG team also worked to create a promotional booklet about best practices that we could hand out to faculty and researchers, in order to advertise our services.
Elicits appropriate information from faculty and/or administrators in teaching departments.
As liaison for JMC, at the start of the semester I contact the faculty in that college to encourage them to contact me to schedule library instruction sessions and to have course-specific library research guides created. My timely emails and reminders are especially important during the Spring semester which is when the freshmen research and writing classes occur for JMC. To create the most helpful instruction sessions and research guides, I need to make sure that the faculty provide me with their syllabi, as well as any additional project descriptions and instructions for additional assignments that the students will need to complete during the semester. This is also helpful because I can alert other reference librarians to approaching deadlines for assignments and helpful resources so that reference can provide the best service possible to these students.