Student Employment in Academic Libraries (SEAL)
Permanent URI for this community
The Student Employment in Academic Libraries Virtual Symposium seeks to showcase educationally purposeful student employment. We're providing a space for colleagues who care deeply for the growth and success of students to share ideas about student employment, and connect with and learn from other practitioners. Our focus is on approaches to student employment that are compassionate, strive to be inclusive and equitable, and center learners and learning.
Contribute to the SEAL community conversation by joining our listserv. Send a blank email to:
seal-community-l-subscribe@list.iupui.edu
SEAL website
Contribute to the SEAL community conversation by joining our listserv. Send a blank email to:
seal-community-l-subscribe@list.iupui.edu
SEAL website
Browse
Browsing Student Employment in Academic Libraries (SEAL) by Title
Now showing 1 - 10 of 31
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item 1. #Bookstagram; 2. Why the Library?(2022-10-21) O'Keefe, Alex; Bortell, Alex; Vine, Liz; Moffett, PaulPRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: #Bookstagram: Implementing Collaborative Social Media Training in the Library - Alex O'Keefe and Alex Bortell, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Social media has become an integral component of outreach, providing a distinct voice for the library. Recognizing the importance of student workers’ perspectives and the fact that they are at the forefront of content creation in their own lives, the John M. Flaxman Library piloted a Student Worker Content Creators program. Making institutional Instagram content modernizes students’ professional development and provides skills they can use beyond the library. Through the program, students learn to design appropriate content while collaboratively shaping training implementation. The individualized and independent approach gives students agency to learn through hands-on processes, while their honest feedback improves the quality of the experience. The presenters will discuss developing training through collaborative modifications and the outcomes for one student worker. They will also share advice based on their successes and failures for others who are interested in building a content creators program or generally creating collaborative training processes.Item 1. Bringing Their Whole Selves to Work; 2. Navigating Fulfilling Student Employment(2022-10-20) Wenger, Kate; Hebert, Shelby; Laddusaw, SierraPRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: Bringing Their Whole Selves to Work: Capitalizing on Student Employee Strengths to Improve Their Employment Experience and the Library - Kate Wenger, Chatham University. Student employees bring unique perspectives, skills, and interests to their work in academic libraries. They are also a wealth of knowledge and ideas about what students actually want from the library. Libraries can and should capitalize on this to both enhance the student employment experience as well as to benefit the library. This presentation will discuss efforts at a small university library to connect student employee coursework to library work, assign special projects based on personal interests, and solicit and act on student employee ideas for improvements to library services and the library experience.Item 1. Career Readiness and Advanced Information Literacy Skills; 2. Beyond Bookshelves(2022-10-20) Proctor, Christopher; Ofsthun, FranklinPRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: Career Readiness and Advanced Information Literacy Skills: From High Impact Practices to Programmatic Assessment - Christopher Proctor, IU Southeast. This presentation is designed to explore the multi-phase changes we’ve made to student employment at IU Southeast. After conducting a research study surveying six years of student employees, we set to work developing strategies that would strengthen retention, persistence, and completion for our students, and this led to redesigning not only the training program but also the daily workflow of students to incorporate High Impact Practices (HIPs). Examples include: Increasing complexity of responsibilities; Deconstructing the supervisor/supervisee hierarchy to create a culture of collaboration and mentorship; Increasing time and effort on purpose-driven activities; and Engaging in higher-level research interactions to enhance information literacy skills. Then, to ensure continuous improvement, a thorough assessment plan was developed, which meant developing program-level goals, student learning outcomes, and both direct and indirect measures of student learning. In this presentation, we will highlight how each of these various components align, the results thus far, and resources other libraries can use.Item 1. Making Student Employment Meaningful to Student Employees; 2. Motivating and Retaining Library Student Assistants in Access Services(2022-10-20) DeVito, Jennifer A.; Paolillo, Catherine; Marcum, ChristopherPRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: Making Student Employment Meaningful to Student Employees - Jennifer A. DeVito, Stony Brook University. Increasingly, academic libraries use student employment to help students to develop job skills and build their resumes while also providing needed support in the library. The Access & User Services department at Stony Brook University Libraries employs between 40-60 students each semester. Over the years, we have grown our student employee program from being one in which we trained solely for the tasks in the library to one in which we use online training, in person training, encourage professional development, and work with the student employees to identify and develop transferable skills that they can use to build their resumes. This presentation will demonstrate how we set expectations for student employees, incorporate feedback, and set the stage for progressive career development. The presentation will also include areas for improvement and our process for continually updating the student employee program.Item 1. Power and Convenience; 2. Unifying the Student Experience(2022-10-20) Sexton, Manda; Peters, Amanda; Bruce, Allyssa; Davis, Erin; Ervin, EricaPRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: Power and Convenience: Methodological and Ethical Considerations for Student Workers and Assessments - Manda Sexton, Kennesaw State University. The use of student workers as the initial (or beta) testers seems to be a growing trend in academic library assessment. While this convenient sample might allow for “impromptu” testing for the assessments, the use of student workers as these testers not only puts the students in a place of negative power-differential, it also does not allow for accurate initial testing of these various assessments. These ethical and methodological considerations are often ignored. Librarianship is already on the fringes of the academy and if we continue to do things, like use convenience sampling to justify our existence, we continue to perpetuate our positions on the edge of what is considered a “legitimate” academic profession. This presentation details an upcoming paper in the Journal of Academic Libraries which calls for librarians to take those extra steps to promote strong ethical and methodological results and suggestions on how this might be accomplished.Item 1. The Research and Scholarly Communication Peer Associate Program; 2. Graduate Student Assistants and the Library(2022-10-21) Schlesselman-Tarango, Gina; Lifka-Reselman, Genevieve; Pryor, Elizabeth; Vue, Fue; Venzke, Tricia; Boggs, Sarah Henry; Rouan, Katrina B.PRESENTATION 1 ABSTRACT: The Research & Scholarly Communication Peer Associate Program: Medical Students Take the Lead - Gina Schlesselman-Tarango, Des Moines University. Medical students are hungry for research experience that can help them stand out, but there is often limited opportunity to work alongside faculty. The Des Moines University Library’s RSC Peer Associate Program provides students a paid opportunity to participate in an intensive institute that not only connects and expands upon their coursework, but also provides them with library research and evidence-based medicine training they can list on their resumes. After completing the institute, associates work together to develop, promote, and assess an outreach or educational project meant to support their peers. This presentation will outline the application process, design and implementation of the institute curriculum, communication of the program to the campus community, challenges, and more. We hope to have one or more student presenters share their perspective(s) to give them an opportunity to contribute to the scholarly communication ecosystem firsthand.Item Building Student Employees' Sense of Belonging and Community with Weekly Bulletins(2024-10-24) Schipano, Kathleen; Hughes, JenniferThis poster will provide specific details about how to develop weekly bulletins that engage student assistants! The weekly bulletin is an inclusive method of sharing timely updates to student workers, celebrating student successes, and providing ongoing training opportunities throughout the school year. This poster will provide tips on how to solicit content from all areas of the library as well as introduce MyEmma as one platform for creating the bulletins.Item Checking In: Slowing Down and Doing Less to Empower Students(2024-10-24) Gingerich, MonicaPenn State's President Bendapudi has said, "We can do anything, but we can't do everything." Taking this sentiment and a culture of care for our student employees in mind, I threw out my carefully curated training guide for the year in lieu of slowing down and checking in with my student employees to assess their capacity. This poster explores the power of developing training around “check-ins” with student employees at bi-weekly training meetings, and empowering students to choose future projects and training topics based on their interests and mental load availability. The results of this simple practice of “check-ins” helped build relationships and foster a supportive environment for library student employees to grow in their roles as Peer Research Consultants. How to build “check-ins” into your training, build a program based on student need and input, and reflections on the process will be discussed.Item Combining Desks for Success(2024-10-24) Fiser, Susan; Barth, LibbyAt St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, we have two libraries that jointly employ around 40 student workers, a main academic library and a music library. Two years ago we switched from having these libraries work independently of each other to training the student workers to work at both libraries. This has helped ease the burden of finding substitutes for shifts, which has lessened students' anxieties around having to drop a shift. The larger worker pool means that the odds of a shift being picked up is much higher, particularly for music students, as many of them are in rehearsals or other music-related events at the same time. This also means that workers are also able to meet students they may not have interacted with before, which has helped us build a stronger overall community.Item Creating a Culture of Gratitude with Library Student Employees(2022-10-21) Webb, KatyCreating a Culture of Gratitude with Library Student Employees - Katy Webb, Yale University. Student employees’ work efforts constitute a valid, meaningful contribution to the academic library. When working in a collaborative environment, all people want to be recognized and valued for their contributions. By creating and fostering a culture of gratitude toward student employees, students feel a greater satisfaction with their jobs. This shift in outlook centers student employees as valued members of the team completing meaningful work. Full-time employees may be able to assign them more challenging tasks. Libraries retain student employees for longer periods of time, reducing the amount of time devoted to hiring and retraining. In this poster, methods for establishing a culture of gratitude will be shared from the presenter’s experience at two academic libraries. Examples of these methods include but are not limited to creating a bookplate honoring graduating students, providing study spaces only for student employees during exams, and using affirming language for student employees.