New Directions Faculty Interviews – Ideas for Effective Partnering
Suggestions were culled from faculty interviews conducted by librarians as part of the Library's New Directions Initiative. The elements selected indicate areas for further conversation regarding the Library's support of teaching and learning. Comments following the arrows (-->) were added by me to indicate possible actionable items. --David Eifler--
Adam Arkin, Associate Professor, Bioengineering and Chemistry
• Biggest problem facing researchers is the “time crunch”.
• “It’s really hard to keep up; the fact that the time issues etc. are overwhelming is hurting scholarship
• Not aware of QUOSA and was interested in its capabilities --> 15 minute educational session at faculty meeting?
• Instead of using b-Space for course materials, he puts everything into a class wiki including “e-presentations”. --> we should speak of “library presence on course websites and B-space” rather than just “B-space”
• New Miller scholar, Julius Lucks, is exploring citation management solutions for the labs
Leonardo Arriola, Asst Professor, Political Science, Center for African Studies
• Geospatial Information System (GIS) data is becoming much more relevant and needed in his field --> can we learn, can we teach?
• If he wants information on X he has to go to the X silo, if he wants information on Y, he need to go to the Y silo. --> librarians as “silo bridgers” and “integrated searchers” until silos can be removed?
• Collaboration across campus departments and through professional associations is largely informal. --> librarians as “research matchmakers”?
Ruzena Bajcsy, Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS)
• She thinks there is a need to help people transition from paper to electronic
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Professor, East Asian History and History
• Bibliographers in the library who will be able to guide students and advise scholars.
• Guides to the major search engines in particular fields of study.
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Anthony Cascardi, Professor in the Depts of Comparative Literature, Spanish & Portuguese, and Rhetoric, and Director of the Townsend Center'''
• He saw a blurring of the lines between humanities and social sciences, and saw possibilities for conducting research through online computer applications --> librarians from other subject specialties supporting faculty reaching across disciplines?
• He uses both bSpace and Google web pages for his courses --> integrate library resources into either/both?
Rachel Morello-Frosch, Associate Professor, Environmental Sciences & Policy Management and Community Health & Human Development
• It would be great if the library sponsored and publicized a comprehensive website that made clear what datasets the university has access to --> librarians identifying sources already available and making them known to faculty?
• New acquisitions of data and data sets need to be proactively advertised.
• Provide a "current awareness" service to faculty on literature in their areas on a weekly or monthly basis similar to Environment Health News http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/.
• Give faculty efficient tools to keep up on literature in our field. -->; training on the use of RSS feeds and readers and database alerting services?
• Better pre-organization of literature... "find it for me and feed it to me; I'll read and write".
• It is absolutely essential that librarians attend new faculty orientation sessions (perhaps with all librarians supporting new faculty in attendance) to tell us what they can do for us. At my former institution librarians had 15 minutes at new faculty orientation AND the new faculty reception was held in the library as an enticement.
• Non-tenured faculty are desperate for any assistance, which the library already provides but doesn't publicize well (BI's for classes, advanced training on databases).
• Librarians should be allowed to come to faculty meetings and provide concise 15 minute trainings on new databases, features, datasets and services. Solicit willing faculty member as example and provide product to them at the end. Lunchtime sessions are good for this also.
• The library as place: "I love working in a pleasant library (although not my own as I'm often interrupted there). --> refer faculty to great UCB libraries other than their own?
• The libraries should open their beautiful spaces up to be accessible for meetings, gatherings and receptions in order to draw faculty into the space.
• "Browsing used to be so important to me, but I don't seem to have time to do it any longer." "As a Cal graduate student I spent a lot of time in the library (especially Doe, ENVI and Biosciences) --> can librarians identify and demonstrate virtual browsing facilities (Melvyl’s link to Google Books, Amazon, others?)
• Being able to find out who's doing what research on campus. --> can Library host or highlight database of sponsored research?
• Reference desks have to be made more inviting with signs saying, "Ask us... we're waiting for your questions" or "we can save you time". People (many faculty included) need an invitation to approach reference staff.
Greg Niemeyer, Associate Professor, Berkeley Center for New Media; Art Practice; Film Studies
• Need to create not just consume information (web 2.0) --> librarians demonstrate Web 2.0 technologies to faculty?
• Interdisciplinary research and challenges --> can librarians bridge the gap through our interdisciplinary connections?
• We could take advantage of other people’s knowledge and experience through keywords and “meta-tagging.” --> possible 15 minute library instruction session on metatagging, folksonomies (in deli.cio.us, other)?
• A role for the library, which is connected to all disciplines, in facilitating discussions of goals between disciplines
• It’s important not to lose those values, to maintain our sense of substance and reliability. “Make sure the library does not become semi-reliable”.
Paul Rabinow, Professor, Anthropology
• Pedagogy and training are both at play in the librarians work with Faculty.
• Human sciences need to re-orient learning toward teams and collaborative work and to move away from the emphasis on individual performance. --> should librarians also reorient towards cross-disciplinary teamwork?
• The role of information specialist requires knowledge about what specific researchers are doing.
• More training (in the use of library resources) – but this needs to be much more tailored and focused than the current library offerings which are too time consuming and too general. --> tailored training on use of library resources
• Tailored training (targeted to graduate students) could provide an important link between research and teaching not currently found at Berkeley. It would be particularly helpful to have collaboratively developed training modules that could be integrated into his online course environment. --> training “modules” for rapid deployment in course websites in consultation with instructor?
• With Townsend Center design and provide library and information sessions for graduate students.
• Specialization and the emphasis on individual contributions is a barrier to collaborative work in the academy.
• When I want something from the Berkeley Library it is out and for $79.00 (annual service fee for “free” expedited delivery) I can get anything I want delivered here in two days. --> do we show faculty how to use Berkeley Public’s link-plus which will get them the volume for free in 3-5 days to their local branch?
John Radke, Assoc. Professor, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design
• Explicitly stated that the library should teach “spatial thinking” classes
• His frustration with the practical problem of the library no longer recognizing his CalNet ID. --> annual email to faculty offering help in this and other areas?
Raka Ray, Associate Professor, Sociology, South/Southeast Asia Studies, Center for South Asia Studies
• Today browsing has disappeared from her life. --> can we re-introduce browsing in a virtual manner, or bring faculty into the library with wine and cheese to encourage browsing?
• She asked that the Library (i.e. selector) send to the department chair a list of all the electronic databases the Library has access to and what they are about ( i.e. the email could say here is a website and it has information on population economy) Either the selector or the staff could send the email once a year
• She is looking for more pictures: Google images. She says all the departments are going through this. --> highlight visual resource dbases we have (Artstor, others)?
• Faculty migrating all their resources to B space, but there really is no visible Library presence. In order to access Library catalogs or databases you have to go out of Bspace. --> integration of library resources into course websites (including B-space)?
AnnaLee Saxenian, Dean, I-School
• There will be more collaboration long distance. --> does Library have a role in teaching Skype and other Web 2.0 collaborative technologies (voicethread, yugma, slideshare)?
• NIH Initiative may change access to information. --> Librarians to educate about mandatory deposit of NIH funded articles?
• Provide guides to resources, especially to finding data sources. --> or at least better advertise the ones we have?
• School faculty and students use internal wikis; there are listservs for every class. They don’t use bSpace,
• Teach all those software tools such as EndNote, RefWorks.
• People don’t know how to create graphs online, or how to most effectively display information. -->librarians to teach basic concepts in visual display of information?
• She liked the idea of Google translations, and described an example where they used it to translate an article in Portuguese --> highlight this tool (and Babelfish) to faculty?
David Schaffer, Professor, Chemical Engineering, Associate Director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center and affiliated with LBL, QB3 and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute
• Instruction on how to use the centralized data repositories like Protein Data Bank would be useful, but the use of such databases requires specialized knowledge.
Charis Thompson, Associate Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies, Co-Director, Science, Technology and Society Center
• Her workload and administrative responsibilities mean that she has less time to do research. --> timesaving techniques such as alerting services in Melvyl and citation dbases, Google, RSS feeds, etc.?
• Amazon.com. Instead of shelf browsing, she relies heavily on Amazon and its recommender feature --> librarians to demonstrate librarything, technorati for blogs?
• Multiple times during the course of our conversation, Professor Thompson expressed her dissatisfaction with the library reserves service. --> back office responsiveness to faculty concerns that are “controllable”
David Wagner, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
• Library reduce the barriers to access publications. For instance, he mentioned the desire for a single search interface for all publishers so that less time is spent searching for publications across different platforms and databases --> do we teach Google Scholar with caveats as to what might not be included and where to find it?
• He thinks that there is a lack of university training for new instructors, and would like to participate in more campus group discussions on teaching so he can learn tips and techniques from other instructors.
• He likes the library and can’t see anything that he would want to change; he would like to continue to see the library working with the department.
• The idea of UC Berkeley mandating (or providing an opt-in option) that researchers deposit publications in institutional repositories was discussed and supported.