My second week reflections

Tuesday workshops

The day started with a session with Clara who got us thinking of the role of librarians in sustainable development, where we reflected on what programs libraries are going globality to promote sustainable development

Information literacy

Lisa, with Information Literacy articulated the role that information literacy plays in academic libraries and how it strategically places the library in its central role to the mission and priorities of a university. She highlighted best practices and future trends in IL giving case studies from Association of College and Research Libraries and some lessons from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Digital Humanities
This is a term for projects that take advantage of digital technologies to pursue humanities scholarship. It usually involves certain research practices such as collaboration, learning through doing; and attention to digital data, code, interfaces, or technologies as a materials condition of the scholarships.
Sources for Digital Humanities projects can be in form of books serials, photos, social media, archival documents etc. Processes include curatorial, which mean digitizing, data and file management, data extraction and data transformation. Another process is called analytical and this involves text and data mining to identify patterns in text, images and multimedia.

Acquisitions

The day ended with a tour of the Library Resource which has 24 staff before which was preceded by an overview of how the University of Illinois library resources are acquired, processed and made available to library users. They use demand driven acquisition model where records from vendors are harvested into the catalogue and as patrons try to use them then that triggers a purchase. This trigger model is what UNZA Library needs as our budget needs to be informed by evidence instead of buying a batch of books which are not all used. The idea of combining the task of acquiring both books and serials to one department was interesting and I think it avoids duplication of duties. This session helped me gain the evidence based decision making competence.

Wednesday workshops
Grant funding and writing

Jean, with Grant funding and writing helped me gain some more communication skills when she highlighted some very helpful sources Foundation Center is a nonprofit organization (http://fconline.foundationcenter.org, SDG Funders – SDG Philanthropy platform) that give information on which organization offer grants and gave tips on successful grant writing. One of the interesting features which I most certainly utilize is the “Foundation Map” because one can choose the library subject and it shows the funders who are interested in it. Of particular value was the advise to write directly to NGOs and also establishing relationships with grant officers who can advise the procedures of writing grants for their particular organisations. An example of how a grant proposal called Project Welcome written by Mortenson Centre will be of great help to me as try my hand a writing grants for UNZA Library.

Lib-guides
Liasa Moustafa gave us a demo of how lib-guides are created. This is very useful tool of making sure that the library resources are used properly by students. I will definitely use this tool in creating syllabus libguides in collaboration with the lecturers for effective use of the library in learning and teaching. Marketing and advocacy, plus communication have been highlighted in this aspect of our learning.
My trip to Chicago.
My visit to Chicago started with a visit to the Chicago Public Library. We arrived at 10am and was warmly received by Michelle Carnes the …. Division Chief. Following round the table introductions we set of to a very exciting and mind opening tour of 10 floor Chicago public library. The Library relies mostly on gifts but has a small budget for operations. During the tour, a small cabinet wit books that were donated from England after the great Chicago fire, caught my attention. This was a way of keeping the library going after the fire. On the 3rd floor, the section of public access computer seemed to be quite busy, which shows how the public library is regenerating into the cyber world. Another place that caught my attention is the marker lab, where patrons are taught how to use special software to make things. About 4000 people a year take workshops of various types. Of interest is the layout of the Children’s library which was designed to make it more open and child friendly, with fluid demarcations between 3 age groups of users, the toddler, primary school and the middle school age group. The shelves are at a low heights to ensure openness. The public libraries in Zambia could pick a lesson or two from the layout of the Chicago public library and it has been engaged helping the communities to solve problems such as helping out with tax registrations or creating spaces for musicians to practice. This can attract more people and make the library more interesting. Ms Caine stressed the need to show the value of the library by emphasizing the fact that as a librarian, you are not just doing a job but helping people educate themselves and make the world a better place.
American Library Association
The visit to the ALA was very inspiring. The association is the oldest and largest library association having been established on October 6th 1876. With a membership of …, its mission is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all. It has a workforce of 270 employees spread across it 11 divisions. Of most interest to me is the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). It was interesting to learn how ALA has maintained such large membership through persistence and hard work. One of the strategies that the Library and Information Association of Zambia would learn from ALA is to follow and get engage student librarian while they are still studying and keep them in the association. One way the ALA has managed to show the benefits of membership is to put a lot of stress on the concept of “if you want to be a better librarian and develop in your career, you need to be member of ALA”. One initiative that caught my attention is the “Libraries Transform” initiative which is a campaign designed to increase publice awareness of the value, impact and services provided by library professionals. I will ensure that Libraries in Zambia benefit from interacting with ALA’s offer of resources and support for libraries willing to participate in the campaign.
The Center for the Future of Libraries is another initiative of ALA which works to identify trends relevant to libraries and librarianship. This online collection is available to help libraries and librarians understand how trends are developing and why they matter. This resource will help librarians in Zambia to innovate with trends and the website from ALA will help Librarians to keep up with the trends and remain relevant.
With this trip I have been able to acquire the advocacy part of the LLMA competences.
Upshort marketing agency
The visit began with Associates having a cup of coffee. Upshort is a marketing agency with 150 employees, with high class clients which include top international brands. Ms Liz Aviles is the Vice President, Market Intelligence responsible for empowering the company with consumer and market place intelligence designed to spark new ideas for strategic and creative development. Innovation was the cornerstone of every activity that Ms Alvile was engaged in. She brought her LIS skills as an internal resource for the employees of Upshot. Besides running a very small collection of physical resources, her is keeping her team smart through subscriptions to specialized databases
The first lesson I hope to share with our special librarians in Zambia is to come up with a personal mission statement which she did , which articulates the role she plays in making sure they have the information on research, information, the latest technologies so that the create competitive marketing strategies. The job involves thinking about something new every day. Another lesson drawn from her talk was to Take inspiration from a retail trends.
Lessons I am going to carry home as articulated by Ms Alvile are:
• Align your priorities with the organization. Embrace strategy not tradition. Be visible
• Be flexible. Expectations are now changing, if need be change the title of your job, strategist, knowledge manager etc.
• Be a brand: what are you know for, smart, fast, efficient? The are element of ones personal brand
• Be paranoid: Chose your battles carefully by focusing on what is very important to your organsiation.
• Be a competitive advantage: how can you make yourself indispensable, being a resource that your competitor does not have.
The key is be valuable, essential by going above and beyond your responsibilities by doing projects that bring value to the company. Equipped with these lessons a librarian needs to think outside the box and think differently about what a librarian needs to do, this is in order to be relevant and the trends advocated by ALA will help librarians to remain relevant and show their value to the communities they serve. Innovation
University of Chicago
The Library has 11.6 million volumes in print and electronic form. The highlight of my visit to University of Chicago was the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library features modern glass dome and how the storage of large collections in high density automated storage and retrieval system with the capacity to store a combination of print volumes and archival materials equaling 3.5 million volumes. Storing items by size is meant to maximize on space, with temperatures of 60 degrees fareiheight to preserve materials. a soaring elliptical glass dome capping a 180-seat Grand Reading Room, state-of-the-art conservation and digitization laboratories, and an underground high-density. This visit helped me to be forward looking as we look at how to expand our facilities at the University of Zambia
My overall reflection of lessons learned from the activities of the week are that the 3 workshops provided an opportunity for me to sharpen my communication skills in successful grant writing and also to be forward thinking, which is one of the competences of LLMA. The lesson on lib-guides has enhance my communication skills as well as marketing skills as outline in the LLAMA competences. My forward thinking competencies were further highlighted with lessons learned from innovations from University of Chicago as it helps me with problem solving as it helps me think of ways of storing books that have been weeded from our collection as we think of freeing up some space to create collaborative spaces in the UNZA library. The talk of the Libraries of the future has helped me and my colleagues to be forward thinking by looking at new trends in the field of Library and information science as articulated on the ALA website. Problem solving competences have been . We could also explore the idea of collaborating with student union to use some space in the library to offer refreshment. This way the students will have a sense of partnership with the Library. It is worth noting that as I learned from the Chicago Library before making a adjustment to the space it is critical to ask students on what they want to do in the space in order to design spaces that will be useful. I hope to share some valuable lessons I got from the Upshot visit and ALA with my fellow professionals in Special Libraries during one of the Library and Information Association conferences.

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