Hi all,

In this installment of Marisol’s representative travel here is my report of my trip to CRL (Center of Research Libraries) to attend my first Executive Committee meeting of CRL-LARRP (Latin Americanist Research Resources Project)

LARRP, part of CRL’s Global Resources Program**, “is a consortium of research libraries that seeks to increase free and open access to information in support of learning and scholarship in Latin American Studies. It mobilizes collaborative activities among individuals and organizations on a global scale but focuses on relationships within the academic library community.”

As part of my new role as a Member-at-large, I attended LARRP business meeting at CRL’s headquarter in Chicago to discuss the new initiatives, new working groups and revise several proposals for funding to be submitted later this year to the membership for vote.

Last year the membership voted for new by-laws and the LARRP Exec Board put forward a new planning document to map out the new directions for the consortium, with a bigger emphasis to support Open Access (OA) Initiatives. So, the first part of the meeting was to official welcome the new chairs of these new (and old) working groups, and to discuss next steps for each groups. The new working groups are:

• The Collections and Analysis Working Group [charge is to] improves the scholarly experience through targeted activities to gather and analyze data, and to launch follow-on collaborative initiatives.
• The Digital Initiatives Working Group [charge is to] encourages the production of digital resources on Latin America
• The Resource Discovery Working Group [charge is to] facilitates the visibility of research resources for Latin America. This group liaises with content aggregators, discovery tool providers, and other information creators for the benefit of the Latin Americanist research community.

We also listened to a report from CRL about several projects in the making such as the digitization of “a portion of its [CRL] archives… [to] establish an open web repository representing ten nations in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa where the integrity and survival of these government documents is known to be threatened.” LARRP hopes to focus its efforts to add to this new initiative by increasing the presence of Latin American countries in this project.

The second part of the meeting was to review several funding proposals to make sure that these proposals support the main mission of LARRP to make Latin American materials freely accessible. The proposals ranged from traditional digitization and microfilm projects to a proof of concept pilot project for making OA ebooks available through a commercial vendor. Although not all proposals were approved for voting, the conversations about each proposal and how they support LARRP main mission was quite enlightening and I felt I learned a lot by being part of this conversation. I am also happy that I was able to contribute in the discussion about the OA eBooks pilot project thanks to our experience here at UConn with our own PDA pilots.

I feel honored to be part of LARRP in this new capacity and continue representing UConn Libraries in this very important organization.

**: The other Global resources projects are:

• AFRINUL: Cooperative African Newspapers Project
• CIFNAL: Collaborative Initiative for French Language Collections
• DSAL: Digital South Asia Library
• GNARP: German-North American Resources Partnership
• HRADP: Human Rights Archives and Documentation Program
• ICON: International Coalition on Newspapers
• TRAIL: Technical Report Archive & Image Library)

As a member of the Research & Access Services Pedagogies and Online Objects Workgroup, I attended a Continuing Education session co-sponsored by The Massachusetts Health Science Libraries Network and Western Massachusetts Health Information Consortium on Friday, September 26th, in Holyoke. Rebecca Blanchard, PhD, Med, Director of Medical Education and Research at Baystate Health presented a lively session on using stealth strategies for teaching. She described how we can teach our faculty members or staff, as well as students by capturing the “opportunistic teaching moment” without their even realizing that is what is taking place. Since Ninjas were known for their stealth, she entitled her session “Ninja Teaching: Stealth Strategies to Conquer Any Teaching Scenario.”
Dr. Blanchard’s presentation focused on important aspects of working with adult learners. Emphasis was on incorporating their past experience, while keeping it relevant, allowing the learner to be self-directed and respecting them as individuals. The skills that we frequently use in a reference interview or consultation to determine the real question that we need to answer were very relevant to this session. The emphasis was on providing learner-centered, engaging instruction.
The learner has things that they know, things that they know that they don’t know and things which they are unaware that they don’t know. Ideally, we would like to move some of those unknowns to the known from both of those last categories. To find out what those unknowns are, we need to “diagnose the learner” by listening to their perceived needs and setting realistic expectations. The needs of the learners are beyond what they realize. There will always be barriers, such as time constraints. We can encourage self-reflection and self-direction by highlighting the bigger picture and drawing on their past experiences.
Periodically, Dr. Blanchard broke us into pairs to discuss different scenarios including 1:1 teaching and small and large group teaching. In the process, we used think-pair-share and role playing. We discussed the differences between the scenarios, what goes well and the challenges of working with each scenario.
Some of the ideas which came out of the session are the following. In the case of 1:1 teaching, establishing the context, using hands-on application, relating past experience and working together with the learner using a positive approach are techniques that work well. Challenges include the learner who is overwhelmed or the unrealistic learner who expects an exact answer to their question. In the small group scenarios, looking for a common goal or interest in the group, monitoring the group dynamics, or using a sample case to explain something are useful techniques. Learners may have different attitudes and goals. In a small group you may want to pair someone who is more familiar with the topic or process with someone who is less familiar. Challenges include a more formal setting, that learners have different levels of knowledge or experience, and making sure that they understand why we are all there. Adapting the Ninja Teacher strategies to large groups is more difficult. Try to meet them where they are indicating that we are in this together. Identifying one project or person and have the entire group contribute suggestions is a good strategy when you cannot individualize to all. Active learning strategies can include iClickers, videos, debates, role-play or Jeopardy to help determine if they understand the material. Frequent polling is helpful in a large group. Often our best teaching is accomplished by being a supportive listener and setting realistic expectations within the context.
The second part of the program was “The Use of Labyrinths in Stress Reduction.” It was presented by Donna Zucker, RN, PhD, FAAN, from the University of Massachusetts, School of Nursing. She gave a history of labyrinth use to increase memory and improve learning. You cannot get lost in a labyrinth, unlike in a maze. A labyrinth is a metaphor for the twists and turns in life. Dr. Zucker has worked with the Sheriff’s Office of Hampshire County, where she has helped develop a labyrinth walking curriculum at the county jail. Currently she is completing a labyrinth walking study in high stress library environments. Dr. Zucker also introduced the Sparq Meditation Labyrinth, a portable, projected labyrinth which allows the user to select from a variety of culturally significant patterns. Labyrinth walking has been linked to decreased blood pressure and stress and improved quality of life.

This year I didn’t attend the Society of American Archivists (SAA) annual meeting per se, but I attended several meetings and events as part of my official duties as a committee member, as part of what we called the official business side of annual meetings.

I have been a member of SAA for many years (since 1999) and the past 4 years I have been a member of the Cultural Heritage Working Group (CHWG), who charge is:

[to] take the lead in fostering discussion, clarifying issues, and investigating a range of alternative approaches to managing, preserving, and providing access to cultural heritage, given the rights and responsibilities of cultural groups and stakeholders and archivists’ interest in providing equal and open access to all.

In the last 4 years I had the opportunity to be the co-chair of the group (2011-2012) and the online communication point person (2013-2014). This year was my last year as a member so I attended the working group business meeting to finalize tasks given to me last year which included creating an online presence in Facebook and Twitter and to provide a case study based on my experience with the Puerto Rican Civil Court Documents collection that we were able to digitize with the support of CRL-LAMP and the great staff of the digital project team, specifically Michael Bennett. During this year meeting, the new chair, Jennifer O’Neil, focused the discussion on the next steps for the group: gathering case studies that showcase good strategies to better serve cultural heritage collections (e.g. how to balance access to materials with restrictions requested by the creators of these cultural heritage collections); developing best practices and establishing collaboration with other groups such as the education/curriculum committee to further the knowledge of cultural heritage archives issues among the membership.

In addition of attending CHWG meeting, I was invited to speak on a panel sponsored by ARL-SAA Mosaic Scholarship program. This is a new program that got funded thanks to a “$487,652 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program.” There mission is to:

The ARL/Society of American Archivists (SAA) Mosaic Program promotes much-needed diversification of the archives and special collections professional workforce by providing financial support, practical work experience, mentoring, career placement assistance, and leadership development to emerging professionals from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups. An important objective of the program is to attract and retain individuals who demonstrate excellent potential for scholastic and personal achievement and who manifest a commitment both to the archives and special collections profession and to advancing diversity concerns within it.

I was asked to share my experience as a minority archivist/librarian in SAA and provide my advice on what to do to get their voices heard and foster change in the organization. This was a great experience since the panel was populated with a cross-section of the most inspiring people who shared their life experience in the organization to these graduate studies pursuing careers in archives, special collections or related fields.

A wonderful lunch with LACCHA members and three presenters from Honduras: Nilda Lizeth López Fernandez (far right), Dilcia Mayela Valle (middle right), and Alexander Flores (far left). In addition, in attendance, Theresa Polk (near left), Marisol Ramos, Beatrice Colastin Skokan (standing-right); Natalie Bauer (taking the picture)

Finally, I attended a lunch sponsored by LACCHA (Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives) roundtable to meet and exchange ideas with several archivists from Honduras that presented later that week at the LACCHA roundtable meeting. This was an event that I helped coordinate but this year the roundtable meeting was changed from Wednesday to Friday so I couldn’t attend their meeting (the first time ever since I helped established this group in 2008). I was grateful for having this great opportunity to meet face to face and exchanged ideas with our colleagues from Honduras and learned the similarities between their work and ours.

Although this year I didn’t stay for the annual conference, as you can read there is a lot of work done even before an annual conference started. Most of the work done by committee, working groups and roundtables happen prior to the opening ceremony and I am happy that this year I was able to attend very productive meetings and events!

Joe Natale recently participated in a presentation at the annual IDS Project Conference this year in Syracuse. His presentation covered UCONN’s role in RapidILL’s pilot of the RapidR program, the borrowing and lending of returnable materials among 5 participating BLC libraries.

He also attended sessions that covered upgrade announcements for ILLiad 8.5.x later this year and enhancing ILLiad web pages for users.