Peg Cook, Donna Goodwyn, Jacob Hill, Elaine Fetyko Page, Jennifer Paliatka and Susan Swords Steffen

A culture of information literacy

At Elmhurst College, we have created a culture of information literacy in the library and across the campus. Information literacy skills are essential in today’s technology-infused world: students still need to know where to find a book on a shelf; how to cite a resource; and what ethical issues underlie intellectual property and copyright laws. The role of the librarian in the undergraduate college curriculum is to mesh general information literacy objectives with specific courses, course goals, and student learning outcomes. Collaboration with classroom faculty is essential for effective integration of information literacy into a curriculum. According to Tiffani Travis in her article “Librarians as Agents of Change” (2008), effective librarians work with faculty to understand the courses within a curriculum and the research needs of students in those courses, and then they design instruction that helps students achieve the goals of the course. We have worked very hard to integrate information literacy learning across the curriculum. This integration has led to productive collaborations with classroom faculty, which in turn has expanded the boundaries of information literacy instruction. The information literacy goals that are the foundation of the library’s programs and services create a learning environment where students can acquire and practice information literacy skills not only through direct instructional experiences led by librarians but also through more traditional contact with all of the library’s programs and services (Steffen, 2007).

Librarians at Elmhurst College teach over 300 course-integrated information literacy sessions every year. Our information literacy instruction is embedded into the curriculum both in first-year courses and through specific “skills tagged” courses in each major, which enable us to scaffold the learning process in each discipline so that students develop expertise in using content-specific disciplinary resources. Working with each faculty member, we are then able to coordinate the research needs for a major assignment with information literacy skills: how to identify a specific research need; appropriate evaluation skills; critical thinking approaches; and proper paraphrasing and documentation techniques. These information literacy classes are part of the students’ entire four-year college experience. With the large number of databases and resources in our library, the classes are appreciated by our students, who find the workshop approach focused on their assignment a helpful start to a large project. In this manner, we are also able to update the faculty member to new resources as well as changes in their discipline.

We have been particularly successful in permeating the curriculum with “First Year College Learning,” especially our embedding in the First Year Seminar (FYS) and the development of an information literacy curriculum for the first-year writing course (English 106). When we first became involved with the development of the FYS program (a result of a cultural tradition at Elmhurst of including the director of the library on curriculum committees), we wanted to create an information literacy component for the course that meshed with what was already in place in English 106. We realized we had the opportunity to build a developmental instruction program, with a beginning in FYS (a class that is required of all incoming freshmen), leading to English 106 (which most students take at some point during their freshman year) and going further in subsequent classes.

In developing the content for FYS, it became obvious that we had the opportunity to create a distinctive first-year library program, introducing students first to information ethics ideas in FYS and then to college-level research in English 106. The format that we have implemented for the last two years was created in order to provide students with a more hands-on experience and also to give faculty more control over choosing a method for integrating the Information Ethics component more meaningfully into their FYS course and course topic. Faculty choose one of four workshop options, each covering a different information ethics topic, and bring their class to the library for a session conducted by their liaison librarian. This format allows for a great deal of customization and faculty collaboration with librarians. Taking a developmental approach that introduces information ethics concepts to provide a base and then adding beginning research skills in English 106 seemed to be an appropriate way to conceptualize this building process for college research skills.

The librarian with primary responsibility for the English 106 classes teaches roughly 45 information literacy sessions during the spring semester. Each session begins with the same rhythm, by asking the assembled students how many of them have been in our library classroom (the Fishbowl) before. Nearly all of them raise their hand. If they are second semester freshmen (the most frequent “customer” of the English 106 class) we can count on the fact that most of them attended an information ethics session with their FYS class. Many of them have also attended an information literacy session for at least one other class; there are several classes that freshmen typically take which contain a research assignment that requires an information literacy session. Once responses have been elicited from students about what classes they have attended, the librarian provides some context for students about what they are doing in the library classroom, and what they will be doing in the many information literacy sessions they will attend over the course of their Elmhurst College career. We let them know, very explicitly, that information literacy is valued on our campus by the faculty, by students, and, of course, by librarians. We can demonstrate the value of information literacy to students because they are there, in the Fishbowl, and they will be there, again and again, over the course of their time at Elmhurst. They will be present in the library classroom because information literacy has become an integral part of the Elmhurst College Experience.

The other major area in which librarians have fostered a culture of information literacy is through the implementation of Information Literacy tagging in the newly adopted Elmhurst College Integrated Curriculum (ECIC). The ECIC is the College’s revised general education curriculum. It is based on a developmental model, with students acquiring knowledge and skills throughout their College programs. In the ECIC curriculum, students complete a course in their major in which they engage in research using high-level disciplinary resources and learn the conventions of specific academic disciplines and professional fields. Librarians teach information literacy sessions in which students learn to use the databases, data sources, and other library materials that scholars in specific disciplines need for their research work. With the inclusion of Information Literacy tagging into the ECIC, the structure is in place for an integrated, developmentally based information literacy program that spans students’ four-year experience at Elmhurst College, beginning with general academic information literacy skills and concluding with a capstone research experience. Because our culture of information literacy has created a collaborative atmosphere, librarians have been able to work with faculty teaching these tagged courses to design assignments, resource guides, and information literacy sessions that truly fit the needs of students within the academic departments. We have also been a resource for faculty as they prepare proposals for courses with Information Literacy tags. This is invaluable for us as librarians, as it gives us a good picture of what courses will need to be scheduled for sessions or otherwise prepared and what information resources we need to provide.

Collaboration with faculty includes not only the kind of discussion and creative application that results in an improvement to a single information literacy session in a course. It can also lead to librarians working with faculty members on creative instructional methods within a course that aim at truly seamless integration of information literacy goals. The following are some examples of specific collaborative projects that librarians have worked on with departmental faculty.

The liaison librarian for the Political Science department was approached with a need for an information literacy session for students in an American Federal Government course as they completed a project-based learning activity. The activity involves groups of students acting as media representatives for a political candidate and requires them to integrate research on issues such as health care reform, government budgets, and other “hot-topic” issues into their projects. The faculty member and librarian determined that because the projects require both research for suitable information and a need for students to be able to evaluate sources of information for credibility and bias, the information literacy sessions could be integrated as concrete steps in the process of completing the project. The faculty member designated two specific touchpoints in the group process as being good “point-of-need” moments, and the librarian designed two library sessions for the class, one as an introduction to the kinds of resources that students would find most useful in completing the project, and a second session that uses audience response technology and a group exercise to open a discussion about credibility and bias in sources. The librarian and faculty member have also been collaborating on ways of assessing the effectiveness of these sessions, and have been able to share the project and assessment data at conferences and submit a paper to an information literacy journal.

Another example of our successful collaboration with faculty is a project with the Education department. One of our librarians introduced some Education department professors to the idea of incorporating Webquests into their curriculum. “A Webquest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web” (Dodge, n.d.; the model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/). By teaching pre-service teachers how to create Webquests for use in their unit lesson plans, the students’ learning would be threefold: they would learn the idea, structure, and concept of a Webquest; they would learn the technology associated with its creation; and they would learn how to vet information found on the internet for inclusion. The faculty member loved the project, and over the years many other Education department faculty have collaborated with the librarian to incorporate the project into their curriculum, too. The subject matter for the Webquest changes depending on the focus of the class and whether the technology or authoring system used to create the actual Webquests has developed and changed over time, but the technology skills used to create the Webquest and the information literacy skills used to find and review the resources remain the same.

A third example involves a Biology department faculty member and the biology liaison librarian. The professor approached the library liaison to express her disappointment with the quality of students’ research papers in an environmental biology class. The liaison librarian suggested the incorporation of a series of information literacy sessions that were tailored to the specific research needs of the assignments. The quality of student work improved, and the students were less frustrated trying to find appropriate resources. The very satisfied Biology professor and the librarian began a multi-year study in which they developed an information literacy competency assessment and collected data from students before and after the information literacy sessions were taught. This collaboration has led to the faculty members writing an article together and presenting at the Lilly Conference on College Teaching. As an additional result of the initial librarian/environmental biology collaboration, other Biology professors have now asked the librarian to teach information literacy sessions to several of their general education and major-level biology classes.

Engaging the campus

Commitment to student engagement is very important in our library. We do this in many ways: from establishing relationships with departments; participating in College initiatives; mentoring a variety of students, saying “yes” to new opportunities; believing in active and collaborative learning with our students; teaching information literacy skills; and meeting student information needs by providing appropriate resources and technology. The students’ library experience is an important part of their College experience and one that prepares them to be information literate for the future.

We look to actively engage our students in every aspect of our library because we believe it is important to remain relevant to the lives of our community of learners. We have a focused agenda for our users to efficiently and effectively use our resources and services both inside and outside the physical library, from reference services to integrated information literacy instruction. Our collection of resources supports our curriculum; we have integrated technology in its many facets and forms. We consciously look for and take advantage of all opportunities to be involved with our students, faculty and staff, serving as faculty liaisons, student advisors, committee members, and hosts of Gaming Night Extravaganzas.

The library’s physical layout is a scholarly research environment that facilitates communication, invites collaboration, teaching, content creation, and multimedia use, along with comfortable living room spaces. Our library has an abundance of natural light because of the beautiful floor to ceiling windows on the entire east and west sides of the building. Facilities Management refers to it as the “glass box.” It is an inviting space, set across the street from a wooded park and encased in the College’s arboretum setting. This is a space in which we wanted our students to feel comfortable, get organized, collaborate, collect academic research, and ask questions. Information literacy is an important part of what we do so we put a glass classroom right in the center of the “glass box.” The students refer to the room as the Fishbowl because you can look right through the room and see when it is busy hosting an information literacy session. We have embraced this name and occasionally put paper fish on the glass as an acceptance of their nickname. A scholarly research environment is important, but so is communication. The main floor is a place for collaboration at work centers, which can comfortably sit three students to a station. It is not a quiet floor like the upper and lower levels, but a place to talk and work together on projects and research. Many of our librarians’ offices surround this main area with glass windows that provide easy access to our students, who are welcome to come in to ask questions about an assignment or technology issue with things like the e-portfolios. This integration works well and yet privacy can be achieved with doors that lock.

We have replaced the traditional reference desk with a reference service area that is a very active, busy place. It is a collaborative space where students sit by our side, rather than across the artificial separation of a desk so they can work with us as we navigate a question or concept. We also consult with our students remotely through phone and internet chat access. We invite them to ask questions and have a reference librarian available to work with them for all the hours we are open. While students know where to come for help and conversation, librarians also are free to move around among our collaborative workstations to engage with students as they do their work. Because we understand that research and content creation go “hand in hand” our student workstations are cross-platform stations that have unfiltered internet access, standard Microsoft Office and Mac software, and scanners with their productivity software. Questions range from how to make a bell curve with a specific formula in Excel, to helping a student understand whether or not an article from PsycINFO is empirical research, to a major consultation about how to formulate research questions for a capstone project.

All our librarians are actively involved with our students in many ways, as teachers, academic advisors, mentors, and activity advisors. Many of our librarians are involved in freshman advising and are teaching faculty in our FYS program. Students come in to see us regularly for their advising needs and at registration for assistance in course choices. Many of us also teach as adjunct professors in other departments so the students see us in our faculty role as classroom professors, as advisors for student groups, as leaders of study abroad courses, or as faculty program facilitators for projects such as the Honors Directed Reading Seminar. This visibility on campus makes us very familiar to students who know they can find us in the library to assist them with a wide variety of needs. Through these initiatives, we also consciously model the engaged learning and campus engagement that we expect of our students.

We believe in providing mentorship opportunities in as many areas as possible, from our student reference desk workers, to our entry-level, evening and weekend reference librarian positions, to local graduate Library Science interns, to students enrolled in our January Term “Great Chicago Libraries” Honors experiential learning class. Through our January Term “Great Chicago Libraries” class, we also attract students who have never considered being a librarian until they get into the class and see all the interesting things that libraries and librarians are doing throughout the Chicago area. For over 20 years we have had Library Science master’s degree practicum students and Library Technical Assistant interns. These interns get experience in our library and have worked on a variety of projects over the years. Talking and interacting with these students is invaluable as we learn as much from them as they learn from us. We also have student reference desk workers, who are often interested in going into the Library Science field. These workers sit with librarians and answer basic reference questions, keep the printers full of paper, and find books on shelves for patrons. We talk to them about their courses, majors, and professors and develop great relationships with them; we often hate to see them graduate. We see our entry-level, evening and weekend reference librarian positions as mentorship positions, too. We intentionally overlap schedules, so our librarians can have interaction with our part-time entry-level librarians. They can mentor them by talking about any questions they have that come across the reference desk, provide co-teaching information literacy opportunities, and coach the new graduates with job opportunities, resumés, and interview ideas in hopes of helping them find a full-time position. We have an incredible network of past mentees with whom we keep in contact, and some even come back to help us do workshops on subject-specific resources in which they are experts in their full-time positions. We often present with them at conferences. The students and staff that we mentor through these initiatives provide us with additional assistance in delivering the library programs and services, and much needed backup for our busy and often over extended librarians. However, these mentoring relationships also provide us with many opportunities to hone our craft as we pass on our skills and traditions, clarifying what is necessary and important and articulating our values.

Most important, we say “yes” when opportunities arise because it helps us to better engage with students and often brings significant value back to the library. And, we are able to accomplish as much as we do because we believe in taking risks and saying “yes” whenever we can. Opportunities to cooperate, collaborate, innovate, and make connections occur often in unexpected places and circumstances, and we are open and ready to respond. We are very supportive, as faculty, as administrators, and as lifelong learners, of new College initiatives because they often lead us to new innovations and ways of meeting the information needs of students and faculty, departments and programs. And, because we are a small liberal arts library, we are able to move on an idea quickly to see how we can enhance a learning opportunity. All of these efforts reflect back on us as faculty members who demonstrate a commitment to our students in many valuable ways that will make their overall student library learning an important part of their College experience.

This approach has led us to a number of unexpected opportunities that have been very successful. Because we were there at the table when it was being reconsidered and developed, we are embedded into our new College curriculum. Our director worked tirelessly to ensure that an Information Literacy tag was inserted into all of the programs of all departments. More recently, various areas of our College needed to create portfolios of student work for student learning assessment and for external professional accreditation reviews. We volunteered our technology and information management expertise to help design and support new tools to meet this need. We are currently working with a new e-portfolio program piloted by the Department of Education because we want to be more educationally effective for all our students. The librarians will be the students’ conduit at the center of content creation as the students assemble their portfolios throughout their four years at this College. These active learning experiences with technology keep both the students and librarians aware of all the new innovations that sprout up on the internet, and we see how the students can incorporate them to enhance the content of their portfolios and presentations. To take advantage of student and librarian interest in computer gaming and a campus need to provide more on campus social activities, we host a Gaming Night Extravaganza every semester. We believe the engagement that takes place between student organizations like GEEC (Gaming Elite of Elmhurst College) and ECHO (Elmhurst College Honors Organization), Student Affairs, and the library is an important learning experience that elevates the students’ appreciation of the library and shows us in a new light. We enjoy interacting with the student community at a casual function, and they take ownership of the main floor of the library and transform it into a fun, less serious space that is truly theirs. Being told on the sidewalk outside the library that “Gaming Night was one the best events this semester on campus!” was a true compliment and one that makes gaming until 1:00am worthwhile for the staff.

Librarians as faculty

At Elmhurst College, as at most higher education institutions, faculty are defined and subdivided in a number of ways – tenure-track, professional and clinical track, faculty librarians, lecturers, and adjuncts. All faculty members, no matter how they are classified, share the same common interest and purpose to support the mission and academic goals of our institution through our contribution in the areas of teaching, service, and scholarship. With primary responsibility for the academic work of the institution, faculty use content expertise to promote student learning by imparting knowledge and ways of knowing. Through scholarship and creative work, faculty contribute to the knowledge of their discipline and often link their scholarship to their work with students. Faculty provide service through advising and mentoring students, participation in shared governance of the institution, performance of administrative roles on a part-time basis, and representation of the institution in the larger community. As faculty librarians, we fulfill these goals in ways that may differ from our peers in the classroom. Through a departmental liaison structure that facilitates collaboration with classroom faculty, broad participation in activities that foster student learning, classroom teaching that moves librarians outside the library, involvement in faculty governance, and commitment to meeting faculty standards for tenure and promotion, librarians actively demonstrate our commitment as faculty.

All six faculty librarians share the departmental liaison responsibilities at Elmhurst. We have divided up the academic departments among us, and each librarian provides the full range of library services to their assigned departments. Often, “liaison librarians” is a term that defines one’s role in collection development and information literacy instruction; our roles as liaisons go far beyond ordering books and determining who teaches information literacy to a sociology class. Our model of liaison work also has the faculty librarians serving as instructional technologists, helping faculty to develop and implement instructional technology such as Blackboard, blogs, podcasts, and mobile apps in their classroom. These points of contact might initially start as a quick question about how to enroll a student in Blackboard but can be crafted into a more library-focused interaction that brings increased information literacy instruction, research consultation, and collection development to the department. In fact, these touchpoints with faculty have also provided opportunities for collaboration that lead to advanced scholarship. Many of us have co-authored or co-presented library-related scholarship with faculty from our liaison departments.

Often, our success relies on our ability to craft working relationships with others and to demonstrate that, as faculty, we can make valuable contributions to the College community. In addition to working with several academic departments, each faculty librarian has partnered with other units on campus including the writing center, foreign language labs, career center, international education office, chaplain’s office, and student affairs. One of our librarians serves as the faculty moderator of the lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) student organization; another develops web pages for the Holocaust Education Week on campus. As we attend campus events and participate in faculty and student activities, we seek opportunities to contribute librarian expertise, and we try to respond affirmatively to all requests. Living in a culture of “yes” helps to build our reputation as go-to people on campus. For example, recently, a new email program was implemented by our IT department with an assumption that most users would figure out how to use it without much training. Building on our previous experience with Blackboard implementation, we held some training sessions at the library and answered lots of faculty questions about the new system. No doubt our willingness to help out built connections with a few folks. All of the connections we make promote the library and let the community know that the library is a willing and essential partner in meeting the learning needs of the College community.

For librarians, classroom teaching provides an opportunity to develop expertise in a subject area, to increase teaching skills in a concentrated way, to apply library practice in the classroom, and to experience the information needs of students and faculty from outside the library doors. Whenever possible, we say “yes” to teaching opportunities outside the library. At Elmhurst College, librarians have taught courses individually, co-taught with faculty in other departments and in the FYS program, team taught an experiential learning focused course in the Honors program, and worked as members of a team of faculty teaching international study away courses. Each of these experiences has provided opportunities for librarians to practice and develop their teaching skills in a more sustained way than they can in information literacy sessions. We get to know students and understand their behaviors, attitudes, and skill levels and then bring that knowledge to bear when designing information literacy instruction and other library services. We learn to speak a common language with classroom faculty and talk much more confidently and equally about the needs and behaviors of students. By experiencing firsthand what it is like to develop and deliver a college-level course, we develop more empathy for classroom faculty, and this empathy, in turn, helps librarians to tailor services for faculty that meet their most important needs.

Such a strong commitment to librarians teaching outside the library presents some challenges. At Elmhurst College, a number of administrators with faculty rank in Academic Affairs teach courses, and this teaching responsibility is compensated on an overload basis; so, a structure for compensating librarians is already in place. Each librarian continues to have “full-time” responsibilities in the library, but these responsibilities are not defined as a set number of hours per week but rather a number of things that need to be accomplished. We have found it necessary to define these tasks, such as covering reference desk hours, teaching information literacy session, supervising library operations, and developing and maintaining library resources and technologies, rather than to focus on a specific number of hours that a librarian must be in the library. Also with so many librarians involved in outside teaching, we often find it difficult to schedule regular librarian meetings and have learned to collaborate and work together in more informal ways.

Librarians at Elmhurst College have had full faculty status with rank and eligibility for tenure for over 30 years, but during that time the roles and responsibilities of librarians have changed. We take our roles seriously not because faculty rank and status provide us protections, but because they allow us to speak as equals. With that equality comes the responsibility to assess and document the librarianship, service, and professional/scholarly activities of librarians. The ACRL Standards for Faculty Status for Academic Librarians document urges institutions of higher learning to implement ten standards for faculty librarians (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2011). At Elmhurst, great strides have been made in recent years to successfully implement all of these standards. Grievance, dismissal, leave, and sabbatical standards are identical for all full-time faculty members, including librarians, and compensation for faculty librarians is commensurate with the salaries for other faculty throughout the College. In 2011 when the tenure and promotion standards in the Faculty Manual underwent significant revisions, the sections for librarians were also revised to affirm the Master of Library Science (MLS) degree as the terminal degree required for tenure and promotion to the associate professor rank. Although we expected this to be controversial at a time when many campuses are questioning faculty rights and responsibilities for librarians and other categories of faculty, these revisions were approved with the full support of the faculty and very little discussion, let alone controversy. The adoption and application of these standards allow our faculty librarians to operate on a level playing field with other faculty and administrators.

Faculty librarians have served at all levels of College governance, from appointed committees and elected councils to the president’s cabinet. At a minimum, faculty librarians learn about faculty research, curriculum, and teaching by sitting in the same meetings as faculty colleagues. We have been able to provide materials and library services more effectively and in a more timely manner in reaction to what we hear and experience at these meetings. As faculty that participate in, not merely observe, the shared governance of the institution, we are able to take a more proactive role in shaping the programs and curriculum that we, in turn, support with library services. This early intervention can significantly increase the library’s role and profile in the education of our students. An example of this is the participation of faculty librarians in the formation of the FYS program and the revision of the Elmhurst College Integrated Curriculum. Both programs now include more frequent and more meaningful intersections between students and librarians via information literacy sessions. Had a faculty librarian not been serving on those committees, it is quite likely that we would have lost these opportunities to improve the education of our students.

As faculty librarians, we have been able to optimize informal and formal interactions with our faculty colleagues. By eating lunch in the cafeteria with other faculty members, attending faculty lectures, and taking part in social events, we get to know faculty members in neutral, low-pressure settings. We learn much about the institutional culture, history and current concerns of the College and develop common vocabulary that makes other conversations easier. Sometimes, the most valuable conversations with colleagues occur before and after the committee meetings that we attend. Additionally, faculty librarians have a full voice and vote in faculty meetings. Our participation in meetings allows us to keep the library very present in the minds of our colleagues. Talking with faculty about the behavior and learning styles of “our” students and “our” frustrations in making shared governance work creates a common understanding of the challenges that we face. If we never left the comfy bubble of the library, we would not be able to craft these relationships with our faculty colleagues.

By devoting the time and energy required to develop formal and informal relationships with faculty, pursuing opportunities for classroom teaching, meeting faculty criteria for tenure and promotion, and participating in faculty governance, we have learned to behave like faculty and, in turn, to think like faculty. Frequently, academic librarians find it challenging to work with faculty as equal partners, whether from lack of full faculty status, lower entry-level degree requirements, or lack of teaching and research experience. On the other hand, many faculty may not have had the experience of working in partnership with librarians, but rather may be more familiar with the service delivery functions of libraries. Too often, these very real barriers decrease the confidence of librarians in their own expertise and lead them to view themselves as servants waiting to do the faculty’s bidding. We have found that when we behave like faculty, view ourselves as equal partners in advancing student learning and meeting the educational goals of the institution, faculty respond to us as fellow educators who they trust to do quality work that will benefit them and their students and are eager to cooperate and participate in the library programs and services.

When librarians assume faculty roles and behave like faculty, the supportive work of other library staff becomes critical. We have been fortunate that our paraprofessional staff have accepted our culture of “yes” and have been willing to take on “other duties as assigned.” Technical and access services positions have traditionally had clearly defined roles and duties, but the dynamic academic library requires more from all library staff. John Lehner, writing about library personnel selection, sees that in academic libraries, “the use of teams in the workplace … Is having a profound impact on the nature of our work” (2010: 34). Our team includes not just the faculty librarians but extends to all library employees.

With only six librarians including the director, many of our successes are only possible thanks to the assistance of our library support staff, especially full-time paraprofessionals and part-time evening–weekend librarians. We have six paraprofessional staff in access services, technology, and technical services who assist with up to 18 hours of weekday reference desk coverage each week. They cover the early morning hours – technical services staff handle 7:30–9:00am Monday–Friday – as well as additional daytime hours by access services and technology staff. Of our six paraprofessionals, three currently attend or have completed their master’s, which we hope has been encouraged by the expansion of their job responsibilities.

What do the paraprofessionals bring to the table? They have intimate knowledge of how our catalog works, the acquisitions process, circulation, and interlibrary loan. Those who have completed their library degrees also bring professional training to the table, but the on-the-ground knowledge is a definite plus for all those who work the reference desk. They have been able to share their knowledge of the “back room” with the librarians, making the relationship between professionals and paraprofessionals truly bidirectional. This encourages the staff to step out of what is more comfortable, and we have seen them take more responsibility in their work, not just at the desk but in their regular duties too. Many of these paraprofessionals have also been cross-trained within technical and access services as well, offering support to each other and not just to the librarians, fostering the team concept horizontally as well as vertically.

Sustaining excellence through innovation

Like most libraries, we collect data about services and use. Examples include database access, circulation metrics, and the number of research sessions we have taught. But in many ways, this data is not a true measure of “excellence.” Figures are a snapshot in time and somewhat ephemeral, in the sense that fluctuations (or stagnation) in data can give a misleading picture. For example, if use of the print collection shrinks over time, are we no longer providing “excellent” resources, or is it something else? Is data ever a useful way to examine a library’s provision of resources? Is there an objective measurement over the long-term?

Perhaps a better way to gauge a library’s sustainable excellence is to go one step above inputs like data, and look at how the library handles big challenges. A staff’s response to a challenge uncovers a lot of tacit practices. Does your library toss money at issues, or throw up its hands in despair? Does it respond in a predictable manner, or is it inconsistent? At the A.C. Buehler Library, we’ve historically responded to challenges with staff innovation, and we feel it is this quality that sets us apart. It is telling that that the ACRL’s Academic Library Excellence Awards specifically indicates “creativity and innovation” as one of the award’s criteria, rather than resources, facilities, and other inputs (Association of College and Research Libraries, n.d.).

Innovation requires risk, with the potential for failure. Some projects many never see the light of day because they run up against institutional resistance or operate in organizations that do not reward independent innovation. Some cultures only support top-down innovation, or in extreme cases, leaders might not tolerate risk. Some libraries look to new hires for ideas but this approach merely shifts the creative burden to those with the least power in the organization (Lankes, 2010: 52). Once the immediate problems are “solved,” these innovators are unable to gain sufficient institutional enthusiasm or buy-in to effect further changes.

With all these roadblocks, how does a library champion innovation? ACRL’s second award criterion points the way: “(excellence is demonstrated by) leadership in developing and implementing exemplary programs that other libraries can emulate” (Association of College and Research Libraries, n.d.). Innovation springs from an institution’s organizational culture, which is shaped by leaders. It’s up to them to foster an environment where innovation can take root. Pithy mantras such as “think outside the box” are not helpful in this case, but literature suggests a number of other tactics. McGrath’s “Failing by Design” article equates innovation with risk-tolerance, and emphasizes the importance of “intelligent failure” (2011: 4). This approach views failure as a learning opportunity rather than a pejorative experience. The goal is to create a culture that recognizes that failure is informative, and shared experiences can motivate employees to take continued risks (Nohria et al., 2008: 95). At the A.C. Buehler Library, we have combined this attitude with a different approach: an institutional reluctance to say the word “no.” We try to find an answer, and when we cannot, we create one. It gives us an imperative, and flexibility to react to unanticipated problems. Librarians do not like to admit defeat, and we are used to framing innovation as a way of circumventing barriers. The following are some examples of this institutional mindset in action.

How the A.C. Buehler Library practices innovation

Between 1999 and 2008, our library website was a homegrown affair, limited by the skills of the librarians who designed it. Even though many of us had no extensive formal training in web design, we were willing to put an embryonic version online and revisit it constantly to add improvements. Along the way, we were comparing our site with other institutions’ sites, often designed by institutional marketing teams and/or IT departments. Other institutions had access to consultants, but we had only ourselves as a resource. Nevertheless, annual refinement of our website eventually brought us parity with other libraries. Our organizational culture encouraged us to find solutions when our homegrown pages were shown to be lacking. No one librarian had a formal charge to create a great website, and it would have been relatively easy to cede control and let others in our institution take responsibility. However, we were committed to maintaining control and the process of iterative improvement.

In 2007 the library site, after two major revisions, was beginning to appear antiquated again (see Figure 7.1). We were losing parity with our peers, and even worse, our process for adding content was becoming complex and unworkable. Our other responsibilities and demands had increased to the point where we were able to devote less and less time to the laborious, time-intensive hand coding that our website required. It was becoming clear that we either had to devote precious resources (time, training, and funds) to a total redesign, or relinquish control to maintain parity. However, a small subgroup of staff decided to risk a serious investment of time on a plan to redesign the website by basing it on an experimental open-source platform. If successful, the platform would allow us to add content in a WYSIWYG format, and the product also allowed us ways to modernize our website’s services and appearance without outside help. We did anticipate that a formal organizational change would entail resistance; staff preferred the knowable, antiquated website over the unknown, and using the new site would require training and new workflows.

We decided to form a small innovation group and approach influential peers to bring them on board once we had a workable prototype. Our team sought out the requisite individuals, previewed the site to them, took feedback, and changed structure accordingly. The process took approximately six months, and at the end we had a functioning alternate website, with zero investments besides staff time (see Figure 7.2). It was possible that our new site would be rejected because it was designed outside a collaborative, committee approach, but ample literature suggests that organizational change is not a democratic process, especially as it relates to technology (Brown et al., 2007: 95). Innovation is typically brought about by small teams who are charged with formal projects. Lacking such charges from our administration, it was fortunate that we had inducted influential members into our project group who were able to convince staff that our site redesign was a viable alternative and worthy of consideration. The website was eventually embraced by the library with a minimum of resistance, and brought us to parity (and beyond) amongst our library peers. Continuous improvement of the site has continued to keep our website relevant since its 2008 deployment.

Small innovation team projects have proven themselves critical to our organization. There have been failures – an attempt to implement print management software in the library in 2007 was disastrous, as the product worked well in test environments but not in actual practice – but the flexibility of small teams means that products can be rolled back as easily as they are rolled out. In addition, we adhere to many elements of the aforementioned “intelligent failure” structure as defined by McGrath’s article (2011: 5–9):

These innovation teams are but one example of how we tacitly support innovation, but avoiding “no” as an answer has made us a better library. When students’ desire to text us at the reference desk became evident, we found a way to support it on the cheap with Google Voice in combination with other tools. When mobile devices proliferated, we did not want those users to left out in the cold so we built a homegrown mobile site. When we saw increasing prevalence in questions regarding Mac computers and saw demand for Mac software, we couldn’t ignore the need, which led to dual-boot operating system workstations. All of these needs could have been answered with the response “sorry, we don’t do that,” or with an investment of planning time and money to add the service. We have avoided both necessities by applying innovation and creative solutions to each issue, with varying levels of success. In other institutional cultures, perhaps there are compelling arguments deployed by staff for monetary support and resources, but we have saved our efforts for larger issues. Innovation gives us the flexibility to handle most requests head-on, and we are better employees and a better institution for it.

Nurturing librarians: Kyle Jones reflects on his pathway to the profession

Conclusion

So, at Elmhurst College, we have created and assembled an excellent college library from carefully handcrafted pieces: a vigorous culture of information literacy; intentional library engagement across the campus, especially with students; wholehearted embracing of faculty roles for librarians; eager participation of support staff and beginning practitioners in the provision of library services; and conscious support of innovation and creativity. We have stitched these pieces together with a lot of hard work by a team of dedicated librarians and other library staff who are committed to being active members of an academic community. This group of supportive colleagues has learned to tolerate the ambiguity and lack of certainty that comes with experimenting with new roles and activities that challenge what it means to be an excellent college library in the twenty-first century.

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Additional reading