Top 10 Reasons To Love The Library

1. Integrating Information Literacy into the Classroom
2. Building a Collection that Supports Student Learning
3. Measuring the Impact of the Library on Teaching and Learning 
4. Reaching out to Students, Faculty and Staff
5. Creating a Supportive Learning Environment
6. Building a Leisure Collection
7. Celebrating the Arts, Culture, and Our UD Heritage
8. Going Green
9. Contributing to Campus Life
10. Librarians are Acknowledged Leaders in Profession


1. Integrating Information Literacy into the Classroom

• More than 500 information literacy sessions
• 7th semester of collaborative ENG 102 research writing unit that includes librarians and writing tutors
• ENG 006 library lab developed and implemented in fall
• Information literacy now a stated outcome ("crossbeam") for the Core Curriculum

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2. Building a Collection that Supports Student Learning

• Circulation doubled in 5 years
• Circulation increased over 23% in one year ( 2007/08 to 2008/09)
• Initiated Buy Not Borrow program: Interlibrary loan book requests initiated by students examined to determine if they should be immediately purchased rather than borrowed. Purchased 66 titles.
• Average 5.5 turnover rate for books purchased in religion, sociology, DNAS, business, and education (more than half of these new books circulated)
• Items on E-Reserve up 200% in two years, with 25,000 uses in 2008/09
• 24,000 digital periodicals offer immediate access to top scholarly and professional periodicals
• Began circulating periodicals, with 470 circulations in spring semester
• Added new databases: Credo (reference books on all subjects), Digital Karl Barth Library, JSTOR: Life Sciences (partially funded by an Iowa College Foundation grant), The Vault Online Career Library (in collaboration with the Office of Career Services)
• Database searches:
  
  • Academic Search Premier: 39,000 searches (up 5%, about 27 searches per undergrad)
  • ATLA Religion Database: 8,200 Searches (up 21%)
  • JSTOR (full-text of core journals in humanities, social sciences, and science): 15,000 searches, accessed 13,000 full-text articles
  
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3. Measuring the Impact of the Library on Teaching and Learning

• Students in World View I take pre-test to assess information literacy (research) skills and a post-test in World View II to measures growth in these skills throughout the Core Curriculum
• TRAILS (Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills), the assessment tool used in World View I and II, now on UDOnline, resulting in better pedagogy (students receive immediate feedback) and more accurate data
• Analysis of first TRAILS cohort data (students who took both pre- and post-test) showed scores of the 8 most troublesome questions (pre-test score <60%) improved 10% or more
• ENG 102 is the first class in the Core Curriculum that is assessed in another class, RES 104
  
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4. Reaching out to Students, Faculty and Staff

• New features of web page
  
  • New books by department
  • "Book of the Day"
  • Links to bibliographies on Christianity and Higher Education, Campus Sustainability Resources, Teaching Adult Learners, Teaching & Learning Resources, Biblical Studies Periodicals, and Biblical Commentaries added to library web page
  • Link to bibliography of faculty publications of 2008
  • New blogs featuring library resources and information for sociology and education students. Continuing blogs in business, aviation, and CGIM.
  
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5. Creating a Supportive Learning Environment

• Chicago Area Theological Libraries Association (CATLA) sponsored focus group of Seminary students showed they are satisfied with the library atmosphere
• Collaborated with SGA to host Finals Study Breaks for the third year
  
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6. Building a Leisure Collection

• Received 3rd gift from SGA to expand leisure collections (films and video games)
  Student suggestions solicited on library web page and in the library
• Began leisure magazine collection

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7. Celebrating the Arts, Culture, and Our UD Heritage

• Hosted 3rd Annual Celebration of Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Creativity, spring
• Historical tour of campus by Archivist Joel Samuels, summer
• Book reading by Thomas Wolf, author of Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America's Heartland, fall
• Displays include: How to Succeed in College, History of UD, UD women, UD athlete Sol Butler, Representations of the West in American Popular Cultures (created by ENG 260, Literature of the American West), Spring Renewal
• Articulate, Student Art and Literary Magazine, and winners of Poetry Contest, soon to be linked on library web page
• Hosted art exhibits, gallery talks, Spring Renewal events, panel sessions, book signings
  
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8. Going Green

• Paper use decreased by 15%, in part because of library-initiated double-sided network printing at public computers and use of recycled paper in offices
• Anne Marie Gruber worked with Gail Walter's BIO 125, Population, Resources, and Environment, to create a Campus Sustainability Report
  
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9. Contributing to Campus Life

• Hosted 5th annual New Academic Year Reception for Faculty and Staff, fall
• Sue Reiter, Empowerment Training, summer
• Anne Marie Gruber, Diamond Program Oversight Committee, Voices/Values and Bridge Subcommittees
• Carolynne Lathrop, Wendt Faculty Scholar, spring
• Becky Canovan, Liberal Studies Committee
• Mary Anne Knefel, Arts Celebration, Assessment, and Core Curriculum Committees
• Jon Helmke, partnered with Gail Hodge in Moodle development
• Jon Helmke, working with Paul Jensen as Honors Program develops
  
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10. Librarians are Acknowledged Leaders in Profession
Presentations

• Helmke, Jonathan, Anne Marie Gruber, and Paul Waelchli. "Leveling Up Your Librarians: Teaching with Videogame Strategies." American Library Association Techsource - Gaming, Learning, & Libraries Symposium, November 3 2008, Oak Brook, Illinois.
• Knefel, Mary Anne. "What's New Pussycat? How Video Collections and Services are Developing." Paper presented at the Iowa Library Association Annual Conference, October, 15-17, 2008, Dubuque.

Publications Accepted

• Gruber, Anne Marie. "Emergency Preparedness Drill with Dessert" (Nursing information literacy session), to be published in Library Instruction Cookbook. Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries, 2009. (1 of 200 proposals submitted)
• Canovan, Becky, Anne Marie Gruber, Mary Anne Knefel, and Michele McKinlay. "Many Voices, One Goal: Measuring Student Success through Partnerships in the Core Curriculum." In Collaborative Information Literacy Assessment. Edited by Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson. New York: Neal-Schuman, to be published.

• Mary Anne Knefel. "Strategic Planning in Libraries." Loras College Library Staff Workshop. July 23, 2008.

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Feedback from Students and Faculty

     "I would like to thank Jon Helmke and the library staff for their support throughout the year. I was especially impressed while working with Jon second semester. He was a very valuable resource as we constructed research papers along with practical projects for the Air Transportation class taught by professor Joe Suarez. Jon helped us formulate ideas for our papers and also found many valuable sources to include in our research. He was very timely and detailed with his responses to our questions and requests. I benefited greatly from working with Jon throughout the semester and would like to express how grateful I am for him and for the library staff." Aviation student

    "Jon is the Chuck Norris of computers." DNAS student

    "Jon did a great job with the discussion yesterday. Look forward to seeing Anne Marie on Monday." English faculty

    "I am writing to let you know how much I appreciate Becky Canovan as a librarian. I have worked for several other universities or colleges in the past and I must say that working with Becky has been the best experience with a librarian I have ever had. She is really nice, enthusiastic, and a pleasure to work with. She is very open and always has many interesting suggestions. She has assisted me with several projects and she is always willing to help and find solutions, including when she had to deal with somewhat unusual or tricky requests from me (such as finding ways to get copies of old magazines, etc). She always understands very well the goals of my assignments and makes sure the library orders relevant material that students need to complete the assignments. I very frequently send students to her when they have difficulties finding appropriate resources for a paper and she always provides a lot of valuable help and useful information. I also find the library sessions that she and Anne Marie Gruber co-teach very effective.
Basically, Becky is a wonderful librarian and I wanted to communicate that to you." Sociology faculty

    "I just wanted to put in writing what we discussed on the stairs in the library the other day regarding Anne Marie's contribution to the IPC210 course.

    To begin, Anne Marie created a Moodle resource that included an embedded video that walked students through the process of locating scholarly communication articles for a course assignment. This assignment was a prelude to the team project where Anne Marie provided a face-to-face session with students to review scholarly article location and evaluation. As part of that session, she worked with the students to create hard-copy concept maps of the communication topics the students were applying to their case studies, which she then transferred to electronic files the students were able to access on Moodle.

    Overall, I was thrilled with the quality of sources the students located and successfully utilized in their team project this semester (compared to semesters past). This was also acknowledged during the mid-process team project check-in, where one of the students said Anne Marie's session was "the most useful library session I've had at UD" - a sentiment the other students on the team promptly echoed.
As much as I hate adding more to Anne Marie's obviously full plate, I'm very much looking forward to working with her on IPC210 this fall. Communication faculty

    "I am writing to share with you the positive experience that I had recently in classes taught by Reference Librarian Carolynne Lathrop. Carolynne was the Library liaison for the English 102 class that met at 2:00 p.m. on MWF (Instructor David Gillota). I assisted with the class as a Professional Tutor from the Academic Success Center.

    Carolynne did an exemplary job of leading the group of about 20 students through a reading and discussion of the article by David Niven. Her presentation gave evidence of thorough preparation. Carolynne was extremely familiar with the material in the article and was able to present it to the class in a way that engaged the students in finding information and discussing the article with Carolynne and with each other. She was skilled in evoking student responses and acknowledged student contributions with respect and affirmation.

    On the last day that I attended the class, Carolynne led a process of writing a thesis statement from the three major articles that the students had read. She was able to do this with a skill that put the students at ease so that they were very responsive to her questions, and ready to take some risks in front of their classmates. Carolynne demonstrated respect for, and collegiality with, the Instructor, David Gillota, as well as with the peer tutors and the professional tutor (me) who were present.

    It was a pleasure to be involved in the discussions and the writing process that Carolynne led." English faculty

    "Thanks, Mary Anne! Your energy and sense of humor are always a treat. Thanks for the session yesterday. All of us needed it!" Seminary student

    "Your article ("Modeling Scholarly Inquiry: One Article at a Time") was ‘transformative.' We want to try some sort of collaborative research process and incorporate peer review.... Your article continues to provide us with valuable discussion." California high school librarian; Article Written by Mary Anne Knefel, Anne Marie Gruber, and Paul Waelchli

    "Thanks, Jaimie, for all the e-reserves and work that you do!" Faculty

    "Thanks Sue, you're awesome and you do so much work for all of us!" Faculty