The Library as a Classroom



The Library as a Classroom

The Brendlinger Library at Montgomery County Community College

Info 520: Grant Proposal

By: Siobhan Lehotta

The Library as a Classroom

The Brendlinger Library of Montgomery County Community College

Executive Summary

The Brendlinger Library of Montgomery County Community College, located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, is currently undergoing a massive renovation project. Along with this new organization of resources and general facelift, the library proposes to implement a two-phase project. The first phase of the project will provide additional education to librarians and faculties through education and information workshops. The second phase of the project will provide better access to information to patrons of the Brendlinger Library through a library classroom. As the main library of a community college, the Brendlinger Library serves faculty, students, and members of the community. Hoping to provide the most current education in aspects of library service, the Brendlinger Library seeks funding for 34 total months, in the amount of $79,300 for this two-phase project.

This project will educate librarians and the staff they work with on how to more effectively teach the skills patrons need to successfully use the library and will therefore enhance the patrons’ access to information. The addition of a library classroom at the Brendlinger Library will provide for a more fitting atmosphere for this education to take place.

The Brendlinger Library

The Brendlinger Library serves Montgomery County, located in southeastern Pennsylvania. Open to all members of the community, but used mainly by faculty and students of Montgomery County Community College, the Brendlinger Library provides an extensive variety of resources to its patrons. With just under 800,000 people living in Montgomery County and roughly 30,000 students attending Montgomery County Community College per year, the Brendlinger Library is a major source of information within the community.

With a plethora of resources, the Brendlinger Library provides information to all kinds of patrons. Patrons of the Brendlinger Library range from students to community members. The library is open to the public, free of charge, and provides an extensive collection, from textbooks to current best-sellers and all that is in-between. The majority of the patrons are students of the college. Working closely with faculty to develop collections by department, the librarians feel that their role as an educator is one that they need to constantly work on. The library staff and the faculty need to have a strong relationship to successfully provide the information that students are looking for. One librarian is assigned a department and works as a liaison with the faculty of that department to develop the library’s collection.

The staff of the Brendlinger Library, comprised of 25 librarians, technicians, and student workers, not only provide help to patrons in accessing information but also teach students how to successfully use the library. As the library director, I am very much aware of how devoted my staff is to providing nothing but the best assistance to our patrons. Currently, the library is going through renovations and is looking forward to providing a more efficient and accessible library. During this renovation process, all materials are still available to patrons through interlibrary loan or the online databases the library provides.

Statement of Need

With renovations focusing on providing a more organized and accessible library, the library staff is eager to keep up with the renovations and grow as a group of information professionals. As a part of the active staff, I am fully involved with the strong relationships the library staff has formed with the faculty. Those relationships have shown us that faculty members are often unaware of the vast amount of resources available to them and their students in our library. Because of our relationships, it is important to us that both the librarians and the faculty receive the education they need to be familiar with the resources available at the Brendlinger Library.

Collaboration between the library staff and faculty has been a benefit to the library as a whole. The library believes that “if teaching students is the art of using information resources efficiently and independently, cooperation between teaching and library staff is … essential” (Bhatti, 4). While the library staff and faculty work closely together, it would be beneficial to both parties if they were educated with the current issues within the information science field. The education would allow for the library staff to be more confident with their help and also allow the faculty to feel more comfortable with sending their students to the library. These results could be applied to the whole community and all different types of libraries. Information professionals are always interested in learning how to better provide access to information.

The Brendlinger Library is prepared to make all preparations for the education and implementation of our two-phase project proposal. Through this project, we hope to promote the education of librarians and faculty, as well as the patrons they serve. It is also a hope of the library that we will enable “libraries [to] explore ways to impact instruction in new and systemic ways” through the relationships built by librarians and faculties during our project (Dupuis, 5). With the renovation of our library, the staff and I would like to take the initiative to extend these renovations to the information professionals in our area. The staff of the libraries and the faculty that they work with would benefit from additional education while the patrons of the libraries would also benefit from the librarians and faculty receiving additional education. The Brendlinger Library would have the benefit of being able to provide even better information to the students of Montgomery County Community College through the classes about access to information that they could teach directly in the library.

Proposed Project & Project Goals

The overarching goal of this program is to enhance the ability of the Brendlinger Library staff and related faculty, as well as the staff of other libraries in the community, to provide the best possible information needs to the community. By bringing in members of the library community to lead education and information workshops for library staff and faculty and teach them about the current issues among databases and libraries in general, the staff and faculty will form stronger relationships that will lead to a more successful information center. Bringing in information professionals from outside of Montgomery County will eliminate any possibility that there is “a hierarchy of position on campuses,” like is often thought in workshop situations (Julien, 4). The goal of these workshops is collaboration. Because “there are few opportunities for citizens to receive formal training in information literacy skills,” the workshops will provide those opportunities to both the librarians and to the faculties that they might work with (Julien, 1). They will also learn about the best ways to provide better access to information to their patrons.

Having staff and faculty that are more knowledgeable will, in turn, lead to more informed students. The goal of every academic library is “successful library use by students [which] depends on the meaningfulness of their educational use of the library” (Bhatti, 3). Because of this, the Brendlinger Library plans wishes to create a better learning experience for students. The creation of a library classroom asks for a “collaboration to devise both short-term and long-term strategies and methods” so that the needs of both librarians and faculty are met (Kirchner, 5). The library classroom will provide a space for this sharing of information and the addition of a suite of laptops will provide a mobile classroom that will allow all those being educated to have a hands-on experience. The information taught to students in the library classroom will essentially be “integrated, collaborative, content-based lessons, [where] students gain the competencies needed to use, create, and share new knowledge” (Martin, 2).

Proposed Materials

The most influential material that this project needs is speakers. Leading colleagues and experts, as members of the library and information science field, will be asked to over-see workshops for staff and faculty. The costs of having these individuals provide education and information workshops will be covered. The renovation of the Brendlinger Library is currently underway. The plans include a space for a library classroom, but the library is proposing that it be constructed to meet the needs of this project. The library proposes that the library classroom be comfortable, multifunctional, and technologically fit.

Proposed Schedule

The months we have leading up to the beginning of this two-phase project would be used for planning. Librarians and faculties throughout the community would gather together and lay out their goals for the information and education workshop project. One workshop would be held per month, with several meeting times available for the librarians and faculties throughout the community. After the workshops are completed, the participants will evaluate the successfulness of them. The librarians of the Brendlinger Library would meet with the faculty of Montgomery County Community College after the workshops are completed and discuss their goals for the library classroom project. Once these goals are decided, the teacher librarians would get together and create a curriculum for the semester. After the curriculum had been tested for two semesters, or one year, the librarians would get together and evaluate their success.

|Workshop Timeline (19 months) | | |

|6 months before first workshop | |Preparation and planning |

|12 months of workshops | |1 workshop per month |

|1 month after last workshop | |Evaluation |

| | | |

|Library Classroom Timeline (15 months) | | |

|6 months before first class | |Preparation and planning |

|2 semesters (one year) | |Library classroom is used, curriculum is taught|

|2 weeks after last class | |Evaluation |

|2 weeks before first class | |Reorganization, if necessary |

Evaluation

Evaluation of the one-year information and education workshop project will be done at the end of the year. A survey what information the library staff and faculties would like to learn would be given out among each library interested in attending the information workshops. The surveys would be collected and a schedule of workshops would be created based on the results of the surveys. At the end of each workshop, a survey would be passed along allowing the participants of that workshop to evaluate what they learned and how it can be applied to their work as information professionals or teachers. The success of these workshops would be evaluated based on the results of these surveys.

Evaluation of the library classroom will be done at the end of the first year of implementation. The library teachers would first meet at the beginning of the year to discuss a curriculum and goals of the courses they would be teaching. At the end of that year, the library teachers would meet again and discuss how successful their curriculum was and whether or not their goals were met. They would make any adjustments they feel are necessary to the program and repeat the process the following year, each year adapting from their results the year before.

Proposed Budget

The budget we have laid out for this two-phase project includes what will be needed for the workshops as well as the materials needed for the library classroom. The classroom itself is already a part of the Brendlinger Library renovation budget.

|Workshops | | |

|Travel/accommodations/compensation for 12 speakers | |$ 24,000 |

|Workshop venue rental and materials | |$ 12,000 |

|Marketing for workshops | |$ 800 |

|Library Classroom | | |

|Multifunctional furniture | |$ 12,000 |

|Classroom materials | |$ 500 |

|Suite of laptops | |$ 30,000 |

| | | |

|Total | |$ 79,300 |

Conclusion

The education of information professionals is the first step to providing information to patrons. By providing the opportunity for library staff, as well as the faculty they work with, to learn about the most effective ways of providing access to information, the students and members of the community who wish to use the resources offered by the Brendlinger Library and other libraries in the community will be able to access the information they seek without constantly relying on the help of others. The ability to access the information on seeks is a priceless skill that can be applied throughout all aspects of life. Allowing librarians and faculty to receive the education they need to more successfully help patrons will provide patrons with better access to information and a better understanding of how a library is there to help them.

References

Bhatti, R. Teacher-Librarian Collaboration in University Libraries: A Selective Review. Pakistan

Library & Information Science Journal v. 40 no. 2 (June 2009) p. 3-12

Dupuis, E. A. Amplifying the Educational Role of Librarians. Research Library Issues no. 265

(August 2009) p. 9-14

Fenton, D. The Reference Librarian. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Mar.,

1938), pp. 153-156

Julien, H., et. al., Librarians' experiences of the teaching role Grounded in campus relationships.

Library & Information Science Research v. 31 no. 3 (September 2009) p. 149-54

Kirchner, J. Scholarly Communications: Planning for the Integration of Liaison Librarian Roles.

Research Library Issues no. 265 (August 2009) p. 22-8

Kozel-Gains, M. & Stoddart, R. Experiments and Experiences in Liaison Activities: Lessons

from New Librarians in Integrating Technology, Face-to-Face, and Follow-Up,

Collection Management, 34: 2, 130-142

Martin, A. M. Promote, Lead, & Refuse Librarianship in Tough Times. Knowledge Quest v. 37

no. 4 (March/April 2009) p. 6-10

Melnick, V. The Librarian’s Role. Theory into Practice, Vol. 6, No. 1, The Library in the

Elementary School (Feb., 1967), pp. 40-43

Wilkins, E. The Librarian as Colleague. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Apr.,

1934), pp. 180-186

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download