Transforming Concerns into Improved Infrastructure as a New Instruction Coordinator at CALM 2021

It has been a while since my last update! But I'm excited to share that I am presenting a 10-minute Lightning Talk at the inaugural Conference on Academic Library Management (CALM) on Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 4:00 pm Eastern, titled Transforming Concerns into Improved Infrastructure as a New Instruction Coordinator.

The conference is both virtual and free of cost for attendees, and runs March 15-19, 2021. Although registration is now closed / sold out, as much content as possible will be made freely available after the conference at the conference website linked above. It has a Twitter hashtag too where you can follow along throughout the week of the conference: #CALM2021

I am so excited about the project my brief presentation will share about. I wanted to share here the full description of the talk I am giving. Updated to Add: Click here to view the recorded view of this talk with closed captions available. And click here to view the slides and video transcript for the talk.

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Title: Transforming Concerns into Improved Infrastructure as a New Instruction Coordinator

Description:

Transitioning from being an early career teaching librarian to coordinating the library instruction program at the same institution is a familiar trajectory for many of us whose area of specialty is research and instruction. This shift in role affords opportunities to facilitate communication and collaboration in support of solving instruction-related problems that the new coordinator has experienced firsthand while serving the program in their previous role. This lightning talk, presented by one such coordinator, will share the collaborative process by which their librarian team communally defined the program’s needs and values with the goal of reclaiming the librarians’ agency within the relationship dynamic created by “one-shot” instruction. 

Through a qualitative approach of listening and recording librarians’ concerns related to library instruction at their institution, followed by project planning concrete solutions to those concerns, the presenter’s instruction program was able to develop and implement new guidelines and parameters for course faculty who will request instruction and a new library instruction request form for the institution (www.scranton.edu/library/instruction). This process required trust among librarians at different stages of their careers whose concerns and experiences were offered as evidence from which to develop these improved workflows. 

This talk will offer a successful example of the person-centered technique of program coordination where the coordinator creates a safe space within which to transparently discuss issues and concerns within the program, and commits to transform those concerns into infrastructural change in support of librarians’ agency, improving the conditions within which they teach.