NASIG Newsletter

PROFILES
LIBRARY SCHOOL OUTREACH COMMITTEE, née TASK FORCE
Susan Davis, Profiles Editor

The Library School Outreach Task Force was formed in 2006 as a result of suggestions from the Awards & Recognition and Membership Development Committees. The NASIG Board appointed one representative each from Awards & Recognition, Membership Development, and Continuing Education (CEC) to the original task force.  The task force’s charge included increasing the visibility of NASIG to library school students, promoting serials librarianship as a career path, and providing the schools with resources and information to make them aware of the organization’s activities.   NASIG has been fortunate to have provided student conference grants and a scholarship to outstanding students for many years, but with so many competing interests it seems that awareness of NASIG is not as high as the organization would like.  The board and the task force agreed that a more personal approach to the library schools was warranted.

Therefore, the task force initiated a pilot project whereby original task force members (Linda Smith Griffin, Steve Oberg, Sarah Sutton, and Paoshan Yue) served as ambassadors to a small number of library schools.  These “ambassadors” contacted their assigned schools and made sure each school was aware of NASIG student grant awards, conference and continuing education events, and, when possible, attended social gathering at the school.  The task force recommended that it be made a standing NASIG committee in April of 2007, and the board did so, creating the Library School Outreach Committee (LSOC).

Members of the LSOC for 2008-09 are:  Carole Green, Kara Killough, Linda Smith Griffin, Sarah Sutton, co-chair, Marcella Lesher, co-chair, Sandy Piver, and Steve Oberg, with Jeff Slagell as board liaison.

The committee is actively trying to grow the Library School Ambassador program and invites interested NASIG members who have a connection with a library school to apply for an ambassadorial appointment.  Each ambassador works with a committee liaison.  At the time of this writing, ten library schools have ambassadors:  Louisiana State University, University of Texas at Austin, Texas Woman’s University, Dominican University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, San Jose State University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Indiana University, University of Arizona, and University of Washington.

Ambassadors come from all segments of the library community and from all levels of experience.  One of the ambassadors, Eugenia Beh, was a 2008 NASIG Student Grant Award recipient and is now volunteering as an ambassador to the University of Texas School of Information.   Former NASIG President Steve Oberg works with two schools, Domincan University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The committee established a set of guidelines to help ambassadors with their charge to establish contact with their school, offer assistance in finding mentors and guest lecturers, and new this academic year, to create a bank of support material to share with the library schools and with each other.  An Ambassadors’ Google Group has been established for the sharing of these materials.

LSOC was very successful in promoting the NASIG awards during 2007/08.  Thirty-three percent of the student award applicants were from students at schools with ambassadors; no applicants came from those schools in 2007.  This year, the committee will again work closely with A&R to promote NASIG awards.  A&R suggested, and LSOC enthusiastically agreed, especially to promote the Marcia Tuttle International Award among doctoral students. LSOC hopes that other measures of success will come from feedback from schools with ambassadors as well as success stories from the ambassadors.

LSOC is also exploring the possibilities of sponsoring a time when alumni and students from the various library schools could get together at NASIG annual conferences.  With the already very full conference schedule this may take some creative planning!!  Eugenia Beh, ambassador to the I-School at the University of Texas at Austin, arranged for the first of these get-togethers during the 2008 conference.  Although it was not a huge success, LSOC learned a lot from the experience and will work with the ambassadors to improve the rate of success at the 2009 conference. Some ideas are for ambassadors to lead a dine-around for alumni and students of their particular schools or by organizing a group table(s) during lunch or breakfast.  So far these activities have not needed any budgetary support, but some of the other events being explored will.  LSOC will consider soliciting sponsorship and/or funding from library schools for a library school reception of some kind during an upcoming conference, or to be an organizational sponsor of NASIG.

Online discussion groups such as Serialst have occasionally addressed the question of how much serials-related education is available in library school programs.  The answers usually indicate that this area of education is somewhat lacking.   This topic has been addressed at NASIG conferences since the very beginning (Ed. note—I led such a discussion at NASIG 1 in 1986).   The serials world has expanded from print to a very complex set of issues now encompassing the world of continuing resources (Ed. note–please no, not an organizational name change to NACRIG!) NASIG members anecdotally relate stories about the lack of time in the curriculum to focus an entire course on serials, as well as the feeling that on the job training is where one is expected to learn about serials and continuing resources.  Co-chair Sarah Sutton analyzed content of library school course catalogs for a research project last spring. She learned that stand alone courses covering continuing resources are few and far between, but that continuing resources are included as a component of broader courses.  And with the expansion of online learning opportunities, particularly the WISE consortium developed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Syracuse (http://www.wiseeducation.org/), more students will have exposure to continuing resources. Library School Outreach naturally has a very close relationship with Awards & Recognition and is very excited about bridging the gap between career possibilities addressed in library schools and the career experiences of NASIG members.

I asked the committee for thoughts on what NASIG members can do to positively impact a library school student.  The response from Sarah Sutton was quite interesting.  “I conducted my research project specifically to cover not just serials but continuing resources in general because my personal feeling is that NASIG isn’t doing enough to present to the public the broad range of issues, functions, and resources that fall within our scope of interest.  I think there is a persistent impression among non-serialists that we are only interested in serials and not electronic resources, scholarly communication, online publishing, etc., that NASIG could/should do more to change.  And that is something that LSOC in particular and the NASIG membership in general could actively be doing in library schools: eliminating the ’serials mystique.’”

It sounds like this committee has its work cut out for it, but in an exciting and rewarding way.  Meeting students, potential students, and library school faculty is a great way to get the word out about NASIG and the challenging world of continuing resources.