PLO 2 Understand, engage, and serve users and their communities.
Primary Learning Outcome 2 and the subparts work to create engaged, service-oriented librarians. PLO2 supports my future goals within this profession, as community engagement and providing service to users requires continued learning, advocacy, empathy, and cultural competence. The librarian I hope to be carries these qualities. Through the linked assignments below, I show my desire to remain engaged and educated on community issues, accessibility, and problem solving throughout my professional career.
2.1 Assess the needs and goals of users and communities.
Throughout this program, there have been many exercises, discussions, and assignments asking students to understand an individual user, or a librarian’s user population. Once the understanding of a specific user or specific user group has been completed, students were asked how they would engage with the users and then how we would ultimately serve these users as their librarians.
Assessing the needs and goals of users and communities (PLO2.1), has been the first step in a myriad of projects- especially when observing a specific library for a specific course. The best example of this process put into action and learned through the program would be the IST613, Planning, Marketing, and Assessment’s major partner library/librarian project. The project asked students to reach out to a librarian of their choice, analyze their library and user groups, work with the librarian to organize a recommendation for change within the library, to then plan and structure the change, with a marketing and an assessment plan for the library to maybe, eventually, put into place. Luckily for me, I started this project right around the same time I started my first position in an academic library. I partnered with one of the librarians on my new team and we discussed the changes that could possibly be made. Ultimately, we decided that I should plan a partnership with the nearby public library. To do this through the project lens, I had to fully understand the users of the library (SUNY New Paltz, Sojourner Truth Library (STL)), their needs, goals, visions, and expectations. I also had to understand this both at large and then specifically through a library lens.
Example:
2.2 Engage diverse users and communities with empathy and cultural competence.
Engaging with a diverse population of users, MLIS students were guided to using empathy and cultural competency- showing up for individual users and their larger community in a productive and helpful way.
For my final project of this program, the previously discussed partnership for IST613, I had to begin engaging with the users to see what they wanted and needed, I also had to begin engaging with users through my new professional role leading student instruction sessions and staffing the reference desk. I had experience from previous courses asking to provide similar work and felt confident with the task. For IST564 Accessible Library & Information Services, I had already chosen this library and library users for my course assignment’s focus. Throughout the course I was observing the library, library users, and the library facilities through an accessibility justice lens. In IST672 Public Library as an Institution, I analyzed a different community and a public library to identify user needs and library responses. To combine both public and academic library user needs for my final project felt very natural. The work was intimidating but my previous course work gave me confidence in myself and my ability to engage with diverse user groups through empathy and cultural competence.
Examples:
IST672 Public Library Community Issue Analysis
2.3 Elicit the voices of, advocate for, and collaborate with users as community partners in the provision of information resources and services.
Once understanding and empathy are present, listening to, advocating for, and collaboration with diverse user groups is the organic next step in the learning process. For the IST613 final project, I was collaborating with professors and TA’s, with my partner librarian and the others on my new team, and I started meeting with student groups to understand what they would need from a partnership with the public library.
I had previous course work to help me understand the needs and abilities of a public library to highlight benefits for college students, college faculty, and staff, in the previously discussed course IST672. In IST605 Reference and Information Literacy Services, I already interviewed a reference librarian at the public library in New Paltz, so I understood their team, their services, and collection, and their professional practices. I actively saw how building a network and continuing a rapport benefited myself as a student, my professional goals, a public library, & their users, an academic library, & their users.
Examples:
IST672 Public Library Community Issue Analysis
2.4 Provide equitable, just, and culturally responsive services and resources.
Through conversations and collaborative efforts, the services and resources provided are more equitable, just, and culturally responsive. For the final project in IST613, I met with the sustainability student ambassadors who spoke about their desire for a way to utilize the local public library’s ‘library of things’, and I spoke with student staff who wanted more community engagement with their favorite program put on by the library each year- the ‘poem in your pocket’ program. When I focused on this academic library previously, it was for a course on accessibility and disability justice. I was able to utilize what I learned in that course to make sure the projects and programs reflected disability justice. Using UDL, high-contrast visuals, and accessible language, I strived to make sure the work I did with this university be inclusive and accessible for all users.
Examples:
IST564 Assistive Technology Report and Recommendation
2.5 Use educational theory, instructional design, and assessment to develop, implement, and evaluate education, training, and programming for a variety of learner audiences.
Using this understanding, collaboration, and the services blindly is not enough. By incorporating theories regarding education, assessment and instructional design, librarians (and MLIS students) should be able to effectively implement and evaluate how successful specific programming will be.
We discussed the benefits for both the college population and the public community, and devised plans to strengthen the ties between the public and academic libraries in New Paltz, New York. What is next for this project, it to devise assessment and marketing plans, to create a memorandum of understanding for the two libraries, and to then go out and implement this change. The hope it to give students more options for study space, more access to resources and materials, and a closer tie to the community they are situated in, while giving the community reasons to go to campus, feel like they belong on campus, utilize the campus resources, and build a stronger tie to their own community as well.
The undergraduate students I am working with are very excited for this change and to help the project along. Both groups are currently designing marketing posts/fliers and surveys to push out to the college, and I am beginning conversations with the public library’s outreach coordinator. Using the tools I am strengthening from my course work; the project seems to have the ability to grow and foster community engagement at large.
Examples:
MeganBetke 