1. Career Readiness and Advanced Information Literacy Skills; 2. Beyond Bookshelves

Abstract

PRESENTATION 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.

PRESENTATION 2 ABSTRACT: Beyond bookshelves: exploring the implementation and outcomes of a professional development program for library student assistants - Franklin Ofsthun, University of Maryland. Students employed by Priddy Library at the Universities at Shady Grove participate in a professional development (PD) program that emphasizes skill building, professional experiences, and career competencies with a variety of activities. The program involves participating library workshops, reading articles, attending webinars, undergoing a career competency-based employee evaluation, and engaging in special projects. This presentation will outline the components of the PD program as well as its reception and outcomes as determined by interviews conducted with seven former library student employees. Attendees will benefit from seeing how a successful professional development program is run at a nontraditional campus, and seeing how outcomes of such a program can be demonstrated.