An Errant Librarian

Dear Internet,
I know. It’s been forever. Let me catch you what’s been going on in roughly in the last 18 months.

  • Due to the new union contract, I decided to leave my last position when the existing contract ended and took a gap year to write a book July 2014
  • My yet unnamed book stalled November 2014
  • I’ve been steadily job hunting since February 2015
  • The #teamharpy case settled out of court March 2015
  • I’ve started selling a pieces to online magazines starting August 2015

Since April 2015, I’ve been applying for loads of jobs, getting a lot of interviews, which lead to getting two offers and having those two offers rescinded. The job hunt continues always.
I currently have one outstanding interview I’m waiting on a response (yay / nay). I also interviewed with another institution during that same time period and gave a presentation as part of the interview process.

That particular institution called me a month later to tell me they were pulling the job and absorbing the duties into the library department with the caveat if that had not happened, I would have landed the job. Honestly? I was relieved.
Yet, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
These two in-person institution interviews were second step in the job process. Both jobs have a lot going for them but I feel I belong more in the Connecticut position rather than in Kentucky. During the in-person interview, I feel like the Connecticut people are my people. The job is more enticing, with a lot more opportunities.
If I do not land the Connecticut gig, I, as always, have a back up plan a, b, c, d, and e.

  • Plan A: Continue to apply for librarian positions
  • Plan B: in addition to applying for librarian positions, search for other positions that match my skill set
  • Plan C: I am set to join a cohort in in May with Code Louisville, with the intent of segueing into a system administration or developer position
  • Plan D: Get a fourth masters or get a PhD.
  • Plan E: Continue to write doing all of this

And this is where this site comes into play.
The longer the hunt has lasted, the more this site has gotten stale. I definitely needed to refresh the site and provide current content.
I’ve been writing over on my personal blog about the current process of the job hunt and other librarian pursuits, which got me thinking i should not keep lisa.rabey.net as a static site but to make it current and dynamic. Tada!
First, I began with revamping the theme to look more contemporary. I also rearranged the main pages for display the top pages. The current theme is nearly perfect except for a few aesthetic details that need tweaking, other than that, I’m pretty pleased with it.
Second, I started jotting down blog ideas on librarianship, the job hunt, and projects I’m working on relating to all of this. I have OPINIONS about such matters.
Third, I migrated the content from my last position, and previous positions, into this site. I’m also in the process of moving librarian-esque content from my personal blog over here to consolidate the information in one location.
Fourth, I’ve scaled back personal social media links and references with the exception of Twitter. To that end, I removed all social media accounts and with Twitter, I rarely use the service these days and most of it is to retweet something or to comment on someone’s tweet.
That’s pretty much it. The current main content on the site, my resume and so forth, are still going to be prominent but I’ll be updating a lot more in the near future.
Here’s to 2016!
 
 
 

Top 5 of Everything

Dear Internet,
As I formulate my perseverance, I’m opting to take some online classes to keep my skills flush in a variety of fields. As I have an interest in SEO (search engine optimization) from my days in library school when we were mapping data sets and taxonomies, this seems like a good place as any to start. If you’re interested, Udemy offers a couple of free courses (Moz.com’s SEO Training Course and Advance SEO: Tactics and Strategy) that I found useful and I’m going to apply some of the strategies here on EPbaB to see how they work.
I’ve been curious as to how people find me other than direct links from across social media. Now that Google (at least) shields keywords if you’re logged in, the data I have is actually very little. I use three different analytics software on the site (Google Analytics, WordPress JetPack Stats, and StatCounter), while there is some variation of what is coming up, it’s been pretty agreeable across the board.
And oh! A couple of things about searching: If you’re logged into Google (which, it seems, 90% of us are), your searches are influenced by what you searched with before. If you search for “lisa rabey” (quotes or othewise), Google’s results will change depending how you searched for that thing (or related thing) in the past. Additionally, if you’re logged into Google when you search, and land on my page by using keywords, I won’t see those keywords in my stats. Those will be shielded. Also! If you use a URL blocker, like donotlink.com, I also won’t see that reference.
Hence why what I’m getting back in data is tiny. So there.
Lastly, if you want untainted results, use any browsers incognito mode an search, not logged in, for that item. In incognito mode, your history is not tracked or kept thus it sill be a fresh search each time. I would teach this trick to my info lit students by having them log into Google, pop open an incognito window, then search for the same thing in both windows. Sometimes the results will only vary a bit and others, a lot.
As a mini-project, I’m going to put together top five keywords and top five pages and see how they stack against the other.
Top 5 Keywords

  1. Exit Pursued By A Bear (no comma)
  2. Lisa Rabey
  3. live sexual harassment
  4. queen pussy
  5. Saint Lisa

Top 5 Pages

  1. Home page
  2. Apology for team harpy (now pulled)
  3. ALA code of conduct
  4. Live action Sexual Harassment
  5. Hello

Analysis
Exit Pursued by a Bear (no comma) matches with the top page. This is blatantly obvious as keyword will drop you my landing page. Tada! The name refers to a stage direction from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Talewhich came out of nowhere in the play. It’s also the name of an acting group, a band, a TV trop, and a play in addition to my website. Other variations of the keyword popping up includes the same phrase with the comma, “exit pursued bear,” “pursued by a bear,” and “exitpursuedbyabear.” (Quotes not withstanding.)
Lisa Rabey searches are ubiquitous to me though I have it on good authority there are two more of us (possibly three) in the world. Quotes or no quotes, you will find at least one of my three sites (this one, lisa.rabey.net (librarian professional) and lisarabey.com (writing professional)) will come up in the top five results. This accounts for traffic being driven to my landing page AND to my about page.
Live sexual harassment search is interesting to me because, who the hell is searching for those keywords? Actually, it could be from any numerous contributors such as people looking for data stats. This search links to Live action Sexual Harassment, which is a write up I did right after I was sexually harassed at a conference where I was on a panel talking about it, you guessed it, sexual harassment in the workplace. Oh, the irony.
Queen pussy is also interesting one to me as it is in the top 5 keyword search and I’m wondering what people are searching for exactly. Like Pussy, Queen of the Pirates maybe? I am not sure but what it does is bring the entry, Queen of the Pussy Posse. QofPP is an entry I wrote after I published widely a piece on ALA’s Code of Conduct. Someone thought the name thrown at me would be derogatory. The answer is — nope.  So while this is a top five keyword, the page does not show up as a top five page, which is intriguing.
Saint Lisa makes me giggle because there is no saint lisa, st. or otherwise. All the variations land you to an old entry from 12 years ago, St. Lisa: Patron saint of tattoos, piercings, fags and married men, in which I discourse on my friends from theology class, Matt and AQPaul. What becomes amusing about these keywords is that the page is number 25 on the list of top pages for my site and is the only set of keywords that do not align to the corresponding top 5 pages.
Other things that I know are: Pages with lists or how-tos do really well on my site. The more I write, regardless of content, generates more page views than when I take breaks (this one is seemingly pretty obvious). I get a lot of private comments on the personal stuff and public comments on the how-tos and lists.
There is a lot more to SEO than what I’ve laid out here and will discourse more at another time.
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. Don’t want near daily emails or can’t make it here everyday but want to keep up with what’s going in my world? Subscribe to A Most Unreliable Narrator, a monthly-ish newsletter roundup of what’s happening. Bonus! Comes with GIFs!

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2009, 2000, 1999

Librarian How To: Graphic Novel Collection Development in Academia

 
Dear Internet,
As my tenure at MPOW gets closer to the end, I’m in the process of writing lots and lots of documentation for my successor1. One of my projects I’m most proud of, and hope will be continued, is my graphic novel collection (which will always be mine no matter what). Since I seem to be fielding lots of questions from people in all sorts of places about graphic novel collection development in academia, I usually point people to my project Graphicdemia since that has all of my resources. But there are a few questions I have not really answered such as WHAT I’m collecting and HOW I’m marketing the collection to my community.
This post should answer those question. (Warning: Some of the content is culled from stuff I’ve written in emails, comments, and documentation so it may sound a bit familiar.)
Collecting graphic novels at a community college is a weird niche. We’re not a research institution nor are we a public library, so our needs are different and are often left unaddressed. If you look at a lot of professional publications, they more often than not push their recommendations towards public libraries (mostly) OR gear their recommendations for research libraries. Thus, trying to collect and being active in this area  while considered a niche area is is kind of difficult at times.
With that being said, when I started ramping up the collection in the spring of 2012, it contained less than two dozen items and as of today, now contains closer to 300 items.
Not too shabby.
How do I decide on what to collect?
The collection is split into two with history, how-tos, criticism, and biographies of the creators located in 741.5s. Graphic novels themselves are located at the beginning of the fiction collection with the local call number Graphic Novel, are alphabetized by the creator’s last name, and have a “Graphic Novel” designated sticker on the spine.
librarygrcc
We did this for a couple of reasons.
While the collection circulates, much of the circulation was happening outside the community via interlibrary loan. As I will later note, we were doing quite a bit of promotion within the library, but since the core collection was still stuck in the stacks (and students seemingly hate browsing the stacks just for fun), we weren’t seeing a lot of internal traffic happening with the collection. The librarians had recently decided we were going to clean up our fiction collection (adding more local authors, getting in more popular materials, updating existing copies) and I thought this would be a good time to move the core graphic novel collection to the beginning of the fiction stacks for better visibility. Our fiction stacks are prowled through quite a bit and the hope was to increase circulation within the local community by their shelf-reading.
This tactic worked. Our circulation has improved dramatically.
How did I select works? Works were selected with the following criteria:

  • If the work is geared for ages 16+
  • Preference is given if the work is an anthology, biography, historical (fiction or non-fiction), cultural, literary, standalone, regional, or independently published
  • If the work is currently not fairly represented in MeLCat (our statewide consortium) or in GRPL or KDL
    • Example: Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, which came out in March and was highly anticipated, is not currently showing up in MeLCat at any of the over 300 libraries in the state. So I ordered it for MPOW.
  • If the work is being used for an event on campus, classroom, or other college related activities
  • As space is limited, and GRPL is located across the street, long running or complex series’ and manga will not be considered unless they fall into the above definitions

Because of the nature of the collection, I use the following for collection development resources:

I bought criticisms, how-tos, commentary, and anthologies in addition to the stand alone books because I wanted to provide historical and popular thought to the collection. While it is important to me that people read comics, it is also as important to know the hows and whys comics are the way they are. I attempted to keep these titles more mainstream and less academic-y but still provide diverse thought and various reading levels.

On to promotion! You’ve got the collection started, now what?

  • Like any good librarian, the first thing I did was create a Subject Guide. In addition to keeping in line with the template the librarian’s developed for the guides, I decided to also add tabs for blogs and journals; reading lists and collections; museum, societies, and careers; conventions (local AND national) and comic book stores; and then a direct link to our graphic novels board on Pinterest.
    • Monthly, I would also update the “New Title” section of the guide to showcase latest titles received at the library.
  • I routinely advertise to various departments (English, History, Art, ESL) who also create assignments based on the collection though we do not have a graphic novel class yet! 
  • I blogged about graphic novels on MPOW’s blog, which also cross-posts to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.
  • As previously mentioned, I curate a board on Pinterest that is updated monthly with new titles and links back to the library’s catalog
  • I advertise through various college communications for events (banned books week, free comic book day, etc)
  • When we were doing displays throughout the library, I would create and rotate themed displays featuring graphic novels
  • We created promotional materials (bookmarks, mini posters) to display or hand out
  • I contacted our local public library system to partner with them for various events that could not be handled here at MPOW for whatever reason
  • I contacted our local comic book store (LCS) to also do promotions and events as well as to buy our comics through them (support local businesses, yo!)
  • I also did outreach to various student groups on campus that might be inclined to read comics (anime club, gaming club, etc)

As I mentioned last month when I wrote up Kristin’s panel at C2E2, colleges AND other educational institution can get involved for either local or national events by doing the following:

  • Partner with your local public library AND LCS to do cross-marketing for their events
  • Create displays around the library to promote the events
  • Create Pinterest boards to showcase your graphic novel collection
    • Also utilize social media
  • Volunteer at LCS and/or public library for the event (if applicable)
  • Work with departments to use graphic novels in their instruction, promote their teachings / class list

In addition to all of the above (phew!), you can also join the Graphic Novels in Libraries mailing list, while geared towards public libraries, is chock full of info. Additionally, there are several MOOCs happening dedicated to comics and graphic novels. Coursera has a class starting in August and Canvas Network has class going on right now.
And as always, all of this information (and more) is always available at the Graphicdemia project page.

About my article in American Libraries on libraries, technology, and gender

amlibmag
[ed: You can read the article online, page 26, though it is it flipbook style. A direct link will be forthcoming next week.]
Dear Internet,
While I’ve known this was coming for months, and I’ve had an advanced copy for a few weeks now, today the official copy was slide into my mailbox. As it is now out in the wild, I wanted to address some things that are bothering me since the final edit a few months ago.
Most importantly: the article is horribly flawed.
After the panel at Midwinter, when it became clear other voices were not allowed to participate in the conversation including people of color,  those who do not prescribe to binary definitions of gender, and other marginalised groups, I panicked. I panicked because I did not want to present myself as the privileged, white lady feminist role of speaking for all when I was only speaking for myself. I panicked because it is important to me that others get to be a part of the discussion to, not just me.
I contacted my editor straight away and pitched an idea of less on women being marginalized and more on other types of oppression within the library technology world.
The editors felt, and I vehemently disagreed, that the focus should remain only on women in technology since that was my experience. While that is my experience, it is not the only experience that exists of the oppression and marginalization that happens to those who do not fit the white, male, able construct. I wanted to bring awareness.
That idea was rejected.
I was talked back into writing on a singular point of view with the idea more of this line of thinking could potentially come forward, hopefully by others coming to the discussion too. I agreed. I did not fight harder to be more inclusive and that embarrasses me.
I decided if I couldn’t write the article I wanted to write, I would at least be more inclusive with my language.
That language was changed and or edited out.
It’s interesting to be excited and proud creating a THING and so horribly defeatist that I didn’t do enough for that THING.
In order to work at dismantling the system, we need to make sure we are being inclusive. I was not inclusive in my piece and for that I’m deeply apologetic. My privilege was definitely showing because I could have fought harder, not written it but wrote about it somewhere else, and more. That shames me. With the upcoming book, and pieces, I will do better.
Speaking of books, as some of you already know, Sarah Houghton and I are co-editing a book on this very topic, and one of the things we’ve been doing has been inviting people (and they have been accepting — yay!) from all over the human spectrum to make sure we can get as many diverse voices into the conversation as possible.  It is going to be amazing and I cannot wait until we get it published.
 
Update: After this was published, I was notified by an anonymous person, who has done some live blogging for American Libraries magazine, that they approached the magazine to invite panelists from the Midwinter libtechgender session to write in depth about the topics that were being discussed as the live blogging was only covering the topic at a blush.  AmLib invited the blogger to extend invites to the panelists to write in as “letters to the editors” with the addendum that I, yes Lisa Rabey, would be covering these very topics in my piece and they felt I was qualified enough to write on topics I have no business writing about. Wrap this up to my panic phone call to my editor around the same time and what transpired from that conversation, it seems pretty clear to me AmLib has no intention on actually working to promote the conversation forward or by making sure that others are invited to the conversation in the first place.

How To: Free Comic Book Day At Your Library

Kristin cosplaying as Aquaman

Dear Internet,
It’s early spring which means C2E2! This is one of my favorite times of the year as I get to meet up with my CMMRB BFFs, I’m in Chicago, the weather is brilliant, and of course, comics.
This year Kristin was asked to do a panel on setting up a Free Comic Book Day event at the local library, along with reps from Comix Revolution and Diamond Distributors. I live tweeted the very informative session and it was requested I turn the tweets into a blog post for easier referencing.
The session was broken out into four parts. Due to some of the questions asked at the Q&A, I’m going to add a fifth step. To keep the flow, I’m going to bullet point and expand on my original tweets to provide additional/expand on information.
To get an idea of time frame, FCBD is the first Saturday in May every year. (Note: LCS = Local Comic Store, FCBD = Free Comic Book day)
Before you begin

  • Because of time involved, you should set up a workflow to begin the prep for FCBD months in advance. As with many libraries, you should think about costs when doing your annual budget to plan for staff, marketing costs, and other auxiliary costs so the funds are already budgeted when you need them
    • How to get additional funds to support? Donations, donations, donations! (prizes, sponsor, volunteer)
  • You should plan on contacting artists, local groups, vendors, do a call for volunteers, and other related at least six months ahead of time. This is one of the busiest times of the year for the comics industry — it’s like the Christmas season for comic retailers
  • You should also ask in advance for sponsorships, donations, and etc from local vendors and merchants. Take advantage of donations for prizes, business volunteer programs for staffing, and more
  • You should plan programming leading up to and day off at this time, including passive and active programming and think about those associated costs / staff / volunteers
  • Promotion: Make sure to work out hashtags, get sites up, FB pages and events up and running before FCBD to do seamless promos
    • Social media: Make sure someone is constantly updating twitter/tumblr/facebook etc AND interacting before /during event.

 Contact Diamond

  •  You should contact Diamond (via the Free Comic Book Day day website) no later than early January. Diamond will supply you, for free, comic books, marketing and promo materials, templates, and ideas to do press releases and a whole lot more.
    • Diamond chooses the comics and the amount sent, based on library size
    • If you would like to choose your comics or have additional comics, you can pay a nominal fee ($.25 – $.50  per comic) and order via your local comic book store. This also needs to be done before mid-January
    • About 15-20 comic titles are available, ranging from popular to new to one offs. Great way to expand taste and get into new works
  • Diamond sends out promo and marketing materials like buttons, stickers, etc to about 500 libraries each year

Contact Local Comic Store

  • You should reach out to your LCS before early January, even better before
  • Why partner with LCS: The relationship works to exchange new patrons for the library, new readers/customers for LCS
  • In partnering with LCS, libraries could/should set up tables at LCS to sign up new patrons during the LCS events
  • Cross-promotion: This includes different FCBD selections, advertising each others activities, and then having a punch card to get stamped for lottery to win prizes

Plan out FCBD programming

  • Designate time and spaces for events
  • Last year as FCBD landed on May 4th, Kristin’s library partnered with Great Lakes Garrison, 501st Legion; Princess Leia and Darth Vader were on hand to do photo ops, signings, and more
  • There were artist alleys and panels on variety of topics
  • Passive programming included board gaming, color sheets from DC/Marvel (download and print for free), trivia around the library to earn extra stamps on punch card
  • Costume contests! Encourage people to cosplay. Prizes were donations from local retailers
  • Library partnered with other local retailers for sponsorship, volunteers, and prizes
    • Marketing 101: If you partner with anyone, make sure to put their logo on all materials!
  • Library also made sure branches were involved, such as doing Superhero Cinema at various locations, and there was trivia events throughout the month to earn more prizes
  • In addition to FCBD day of events, the library does a month long themed displays and programming leading up to FCBD
  •  Encouraging kids (and adults!) to create their own superhero, turn it into a poster, and public will vote on best one
  • Hold classes during the lead up and on the day of FCBD on drawing / comic book making / writing

Get Volunteers

  • How many volunteers do you need? Break out jobs happening, this includes game masters, manger of speakers, photos, handing out comics, updating social media, and more
  • Where to get volunteers: Teen advisory board, local businesses with volunteer programs, partner orgs will often send staff, friends/family
    • Also local student organizations, local like societies/groups (board gaming groups, anime groups, etc)
  • Remember volunteers are also fans! Relieve them so they can have fun. Encourage them to cosplay. Get group pics to feel valued and part of the event

Here are some of the questions asked after the presentation:
What if you are a school and cannot be open on Saturday?

  • You are allowed to use the materials from previous years FCBD to hold events and such before the current years FCBD.
  • Diamond requests that you DO NOT give out that years books prior to the day of FCBD.
  • If you do not have access to previous years materials, contact LCS to get some. Many (most!) will be happy to help.
  • You can also partner with LCS to hold events before and after the day to cross-promote.
    • Use this to cross-market so students/fans can enjoy FCBD at school/institution and on the day of

How to determine how many comic books to give out per person?
Last year Kristin’s library allocated 1 per person while her LCS was unlimited per person. This year, the library will plan for 2-3 per person.  How to determine how many? Plan on FCBD to be bigger than most of your other events, so for the first year you may want to go with lower number and then use that to base future years.
Spanish language FCB?
Not yet, but coming. there are challenges in getting spanish language books
What to do with extras/left over promos and materials?
Keep them to use as teasers/prizes for next year, donate to other libraries, schools, etc
What if you are an academic library, what can you do?
If you are open on Saturday, you can plan the same events and programming as you would for any other event types. If you’re not open on Saturday or do not have the space to do it, here are some ways you can also celebrate/promote by:

  • Partner with your local public library AND LCS to do cross-marketing for their events
  • Create displays around the library to promote FCBD
  • Create Pinterest boards to showcase your graphic novel collection
    • Also utilize social media
  • Volunteer at LCS and/or public library for FCBD
  • Work with departments to use graphic novels in their instruction, promote their teachings / class list

In addition to the above, for the last year or so I’ve been working on a project called Graphicdemia. Graphicdemia is “a resource for collecting, promoting, and circulating graphic novels at non-research institutions, special libraries, archives, and community colleges.” On the website, I’ve organized and vetted my blog posts, presentations, recommended books, and websites that are applicable to the type of libraries I just mentioned.
You will also find previous presentations by Kristin and I on comics in the library.
Resources

  • Contact Kristin
  • Slides from the presentation
  • Kristin’s posts from FCBD 2013
  • My tweets via Storify
  • Free Comic Book Day
  • Diamond Comics
  • Comic Shop Locator
  • Graphicdemia

 

On The Occasion of Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday

Happy birthday, Shakespeare!

By Lisa M. Rabey
Systems & Web Librarian
Did you know William Shakespeare coined the phrases, “too much of a good thing” or “kill with kindness”? Or that he invented over 3,000 words? How about that Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into more than 80 languages including Klingon? Even better, many movies and TV shows we love such as 10 Things I hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew), She’s the Man (Twelfth Night), Strange Brew (Hamlet), The Lion King (Hamlet), Sons of Anarchy (Hamlet), and Scotland, Pa (Macbeth) are either modern interpretations or heavily influenced by the Bard’s work?
Yep, it’s all (mostly) true!
Today is Shakespeare’s 450th birthday! To celebrate this momentous occassion, below are some ways you can celebrate:

RESCHEDULED: Diversity Lecture Series: Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan

By Lisa M. Rabey
Systems & Web Librarian

Dr. Reza Aslan, acclaimed author and scholar, will be speaking on Youth Revolt: The Future of the Middle East April 16 at 7PM at Fountain Street Church.

The event is free and open to the public.

Azlan, who has written four books, will be addressing the topic of the younger generation of Muslims and their acuity for being socially conscious, politically active, and technologically savvy. He will also be discussing the development of the new Middle East and his predictions for the future.

For more information about tonight’s talk, visit the library’s Subject Guide on the [Continue Reading]

Originally published at: Lisa @ GRCC

And so it begins

Dear Internet,
I was thankful to have known ahead of time my position was going to be converted from contract to permanent, which was why I sat on the fence about my decision to reapply for so long. The fall out from the revised job description, plus a few other factors, was the tipping point for my final decision. And that was that — I was on the market once again.
It doesn’t feel like four years since I last job hunted, but here we are once again doing the shuck and jive to win the approval so I can feel like a productive (and wanted) member of society. Go team.
Four years ago I thought I was hot shit because I had all this experience stacked behind me from a variety of career fields that translated well into library speak, which was and still remains  true. But I was wholly naive about the depth and breadth of the library world. Even though I had worked as a reference librarian throughout my MLIS program, I was woefully unprepared.
Thanks to the insight from working full time in my current position for the last three years, I can now pinpoint all the mistakes I made in the first go round, and there were a lot of them, that I can now avoid on this round of job hunting. I feel immensely smarter, slightly more wiser, and better prepared then before.
I should feel like I am a better candidate and in a much better place to apply for positions.
But yet.
Yet.
I can’t help but feeling my first thought about this whole process is of soul sucking dehumanization.
I spent most of today, really all of today, tweaking my profesh website, cleaning up my resume and building up my references list. I had started saving jobs to apply for in January , but of course most have now passed, so more time allocated cleaning up that list. In nearly ten hours of working steadily through all of that today, I only completed applications for two jobs and started another two, which I will be picking up on tomorrow.
Last time I went job hunting? 114 job applications over six months.
While I’m praying to all of the gods that a new job will be much easier to find this time around, I am forever cautious on the process.
Don’t worry, I always end up on my feet, but sometimes I can get a bit weary of it all.

Librarian How To: Preparing for Department Accreditation

Dear Internet,
We’re gonna shift a bit from existential crises and go into work details. One topic I have yet to see covered in my trolling of academic librarian Internet is putting together support for academic departments when they are in accreditation years. Since I completed such a thing and recently took a survey that was pushed out to an academic mailing list on this very topic, this proved to be an opportune time to get something written up.
In my current position, I am a liaison to many departments on campus, which align with my education background and interests. One of those departments is the Visual Arts department along with certain sections of Fashion and Interiors (Interiors) and Computer Information Systems (web design) are accredited by National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD). What does accreditation mean? NASAD explains:

…is a process by which an institution or disciplinary unit within an institution periodically evaluates its work and seeks an independent judgment by peers that it achieves substantially its own educational objectives and meets the established standards of the body from which it seeks accreditation.

To clarify: in addition to making sure that the department and programs associated with that department are academically on par for what they are being promoted as, it also makes it whole lot easier for students transferring from one accredited school to another.
What the hell does this have to do with the library? As the often main support unit for these departments, the main function of the library is to illustrate and provide documentation, usually in written form, of that support.
For MPOW’s 2014 accreditation process, my documented support came in at a 15 pages. Your mileage may vary.
Now  I will tell you that as someone whose academic life has mainly been in the humanities, I am the effing champ at writing tight copy in cases like this, so I knocked the writing out fairly quickly. However, I was foolish enough to not prepare this long before I should have and blindly/naively believed previous years documentation was going to be readily available. Let us be surprise that it wasn’t, so in the end it was the gathering of data that dragged on rather than the writing itself. This guide is geared to those who will find themselves in similar situations and need help.
Before You Begin
This guide is being written having been the basis for the NASAD accreditation. If you’re not writing for NASAD, you will need to check with your department to find out the accrediting body and what they require for support. NASAD had very specific formats and formulas for their documentation, so the onus is on you to make sure you get the right guide and format for your documentation.
Budgeting Time
I am going to assume you have already spoken with your department head that is under accreditation to find out due dates. You may also need to have regular meetings to go over details. In my example, I received a packet from the department support in mid-November 2013. I met with the department chair within a week and was told the final due date for submission from me was January 31, 2014. I gave myself a soft deadline of January 15. I turned in the documentation on January 29, 2014 and had zero revisions.
You should budget roughly 40 hours between research, meeting, and writing the support. It will vary from department to department and school to school, depending on how hands on/off the department is and what has already been done. Some departments schedule a year for data collection and writing, mine was only a few months.
Another note: In addition to the library’s support, the Visual Arts department also has a private library available only for VARTS students and faculty. This may vary from institution to institution. Thus, many of the collection and monies spent was separated by what the college library (me) spent and cataloged in addition to what the VARTS department bought and cataloged.
Data You Are Collecting
For the NASAD, I was not only collecting data on entire Visual Arts department, but also sections of Computer Information Systems and Fashion and Interiors. Now our set-up does not allow for splitting out titles from Fashion and Interiors that are only for Interiors, so I had to lump those together unless I wanted to count by hand, which was not going to happen. Now going forward I could manually track specifically what I was buying for that side of the department, but when running stats, it would not be possible.

  • Total volumes This refers to print and ebook, which I was able to separate out by department and then gave the combined totals
    • This also includes a subject inventory, broken down by call number (print) and LC subject (eBook) and the number of holdings for each section
  • Total periodicals This refers to print, electronic, and microfiche, again separated out by department and then a combined total
    • I broke this down by access type (print, online, microfiche, or some combination) and access years
  • Audio/Visual This was not required by NASAD but I provided it anyway, with just the combined total
    • Similar to the volumes set up, broken down by call number (physical copy) or LC subject (streaming) and the number of holdings for each section
  • Streaming Audio/Video Again, not required by NASAD but I provided it anyway with combined total
  • Slides Required by NASAD, but the library does not have them, the VARTS library does
  • Databases Listing of subject specific and general databases, with direct links to our holdings
  • Other libraries available This was an in-depth list of all local libraries, special history, archives, museums, and consortia our students and faculty could freely visit. So this list included titles, URLs, and a brief description of each. In my list I included local library systems, colleges, public museums and the like. Since this list more than likely won’t change much, this is easy to pull and update.
  • Budgets You’ll need to pull reports on money spent for each department (in my case there are three) individually for designated years and the projected budget for the current year. You will also need to note current fiscal year budget for the library as a whole and money allocated to staff, maintenance, and other areas as dictated by the accreditation agency.
  • Volumes per year In addition to how much you spend per year, you’ll need total number of volumes bought per year per each department you’re supporting for the accreditation.
  • Number of staff assigned/liaisoned to the department and their credentials In this section, you’ll add your name, titles, and your education/expertise as well as any other persons from the library who act as support to collecting, budgeting, etc.
  • Policies and procedures for collections, preservation, and replacement of materials Pretty self-explanatory. Here you will give a brief overview of your library’s collection policies, preservation of the collection, and how materials are replaced plus any other related materials

NASAD wanted a listing of ALL volumes owned by the library to support documentation. I wrote something along the lines of, “with nearly 13,000 volumes, it would be unrealistic to produce a listing due to the sheer mass of material.” I did, however, break down the volumes section by call number and the number of holdings for it for print titles and combined the LC subjects associated with each major section (Visual Arts, Interiors, Web Design).
Now that’s the general jist.
And yet there is more! Of course there is! NASAD also wanted:

  • Governance/overall requirements/facilities Example would be: size of the facility, how many computers are available for students to use in the entire library, is there WIFI available, printer/copiers, what software is available on the machines, any special software (Adobe Creative Works, CAD, etc) available specifically for VARTS students, what is available on each floor in terms of collection, and the breadth of the library’s collection as a whole. So essentially all of the library’s services and what/when/how/why.
  • Administration of the collection What parts of the collection are available at the library proper versus what is being kept at the VARTS library
  • Needs of student/faculty How can students/faculty get materials on/off campus, type of access that is available, how can they make suggestions for new materials, and so forth
  • Services How long the library is open each week in total hours, how the library’s resources are divided between print and electronic (ex: X books are in print, X books are online, we have X number of databases) and so forth. How the library operates its communication channels of new materials, and here I mentioned the library’s use of social media and listed our social media accounts with links.
  • Value of the collection By this it is meant, how can the campus community get access to and find materials? I wrote about keyword searching, using LC subject headings, using Dewey Decimal System, and Subject Guides. I broke down how each worked and for the Subject Guides, included all of the tabs we streamline across the guides themselves and links to each department’s own Subject Guide.

Problems
Here is a list of things I came across that put a hitch in my giddy up:

  • Support from the last accreditation in 2003 and the follow-up in 2007 was sparse. I was given a binder of printed off emails which was essentially chatter going back and forth between people in the various departments but not a lot of substance. I found one document from 2007 for follow-up support but there was no full report written from 2003 available electronically or only pieces of it in print. I had to start from scratch. Solution: I saved everything from my go round in clearly labeled text documents in a centralized location on the library’s intranet and backed up copies to a cloud service. This also includes the finalized document I turned in to NASAD.
  • We changed how we track funding for various departments at least twice between 2003 and 2013. We now use fund codes for each department to track spending but before, not so much. Solution: I, with the help of our cataloger, created complex search routines in the ILS to find items purchased between specific dates for various call numbers and/or LC subject headings to get what I needed. This also solved the problem with getting the totals of what was spent from each department. Going forward, I will be running yearly searches to have materials easily on hand.
  • Electronic books do not include call numbers but only LC Subject Headings, which slowed down searching for items. Solution: Again, using search routines in the ILS, created often dozen plus long lines of search queries to get list of items. Saved list of items can be re-used in the future to update on the fly.
  • The departments were without a liaison for a few years, collection development and maintenance was erratic. Solution: Noted this in the support, but since I came on in 2011, I’ve been furiously buying to support all of my departments, replacing what is damaged, and keeping in touch with my faculty to make sure their needs are met.
  • Support documents available from the past reviews was filled with flowery language and supercilious commentary. Solution: Cut that shit out. Literally. This is not a creative writing contest, you do not need to describe your collecting process done with “great and overly joyed enthusiasm.” Be direct and to the point.

With all of that being said and done, here a process I would recommend you should be doing to keep this up to date so you’re not scrambling when the time comes to write-up the support. It should be noted again that you should have the found and formatted the accrediting body’s requirements into a working document.

  • Most of the above can easily be collected at any time because the values are not going to change. You are more than likely not going to lose computers or you are not going to suddenly lose a whole floor. So even if it is not your accreditation year, you can start gathering the easy stuff first and writing it up so it will be on hand when you’re ready to rock.
  • Harass your faculty as often as you feel comfortable with on requests for new materials as your buying materials. Example: one of my photography professors recently sent me a list of over a 100 photography books he wanted. I was able to order over 50% of those (the rest were out of print or unavailable or yet to be published). Stress they can make suggestions for ANYTHING: books, ebooks, film, journals, databases, etc. Many of my faculty are often surprised at what how in-depth we’ll get for their needs
  • Keep your faculty abreast of what is coming in by sending them monthly reports of materials that have arrived so they know and can tell their students. Use social media/Subject Guides to advertise the new materials
  • Run yearly reports of each department of funds spent and items received so you have them easily available for the yearly breakdown
  • Find ways to streamline your searching in the ILS. Would appending call numbers to electronic materials helped? Hell yes. Creating search with dozens of lines to match the LC subject headings took forever and could have been made a lot easier.
  • Weed often. Weed with care, but weed often. I have titles about the Internet going back to 1994 but I could not pull from the print stacks because I did not know if my totals were going to be high enough. NASAD required for a BA level school to have 10,000 volumes combined, and we’re an AA level school with 13,000 volumes combined so I would have been beyond okay. But with lack of liaison for several years before I came along and how the job has changed, there has been no real time to weed. Now I make time so next time this comes around, the collection is fresh and currency is high.
  • Take copious notes on everything; make those notes available at a shared and central location. We have a shared accreditation folder since several librarians are liaisons to accrediting departments and the NASAD folder was sparse. I created a child folder specifically for FY 2014 and dropped everything from NASAD’s notes on prep to pulled lists to the finalized document.

One last thing. NASAD had two sections required to be filled out that were both damn near repetitive in the questions. The idea, apparently, is the first section would be a brief intro while the second separate section would be the in-depth, so you may end up repeating yourself. NASAD does prefer you reference other sections if need be, so keep that in mind.
And seriously, one last thing. Keep in touch with your department head spearheading this for any questions you may have while you’re writing. Get clarification to your answers before committing and make sure to also follow-up with them after the report is submitted.
Now go forth and get accredited!