My 2nd Reflection: 30 May – 3 June 2022

Monday (30th May 2022)

In the morning, we attended a session at the Mortenson Center during which we were taught how to create and publish blog posts using WordPress. In the process, we learnt how to use WordPress in order to create blog posts. Associates are expected to document their experiences and publish them. It turns out that the Mortenson Center relies on blogging in order to enable the attending associates to document their experiences and make them accessible to their colleagues at their home institutions. These blog posts are published on the Mortenson Center’s blog. Associates are required to blog about their experiences, lessons learnt, observations and insights during the course of the program. This provides associates with an opportunity to enhance their blogging and commination skills. It also serves as an opportunity for colleagues from the associates’ home institutions to follow the associates during the program. In the next couple of weeks I will need to publish a minimum of four blog posts – with each post covering a specific week.

In the afternoon we went to Allerton Park and Retreat Center. This was a scenic beauty. The property is surrounded by lovely gardens and several hiking trails. Unfortunately, we did not have time to go for a hike or for a tour of the main house. We took a walk through the extensive gardens. This was literally a breath of fresh air. The journey to our destination permitted us to have a good view of the countryside. I must state that the landscape was remarkably flat. There was not a single mountain or even hill for that matter in sight.

Tuesday (31st May 2022)

In the morning the group went to the Siebel Center for Design where we toured the facility and attended a session on design thinking and human-centered design. I was able to see practical examples relating to the previous week’s presentation at the CITL. This was the case specifically in the case of the flexible learning spaces which could be easily rearranged. It was interesting to note the presence of whiteboards on most of the walls so that students could scribble their ideas as they worked to solve certain problems.

The afternoon was spent at the  Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) where I visited the media laboratory, innovation studio and virtual reality laboratory. On this occasion I was able to spend more time experimenting with the Virtual Reality-headset. I also had the opportunity to try out the Mixed Reality headset. Unfortunately, I ran out of time. Furthermore, the headset’s battery ran out of power just as I was about to leave. My main observation is that spaces such the innovation studio and virtual reality laboratory can be useful in providing people with so experiencing working the Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality tools. There did not appear to be a specific use case relating to academic studies – perhaps with exception of fields focused on studying technologies. If one were to advance an argument that virtual, augmented and mixed reality tools be acquired by an academic library it would be prudent to start off by incorporating such tools into a larger space such as a makerspace. Should the demand prove to be extremely high in the future it would then be reasonable to create a dedicated space that only caters for these different types of reality (VR, AR and MR).

Wednesday (1st June 2022)

1) I attended a session on the development of professional development and action plans. These are plans that we will have develop as part of this program. Dr Chu has indicated that she would like for us to think about the practical implementation of these plans. We were given some forms which will provide us with some guidance in developing our plans. 

2) We visited the School of Information Science (iSchool). The iSchool offers the following programs:

I found out that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has the top libarary and information sciences school in the entire country. Apparently, it has consistently been in the top or joint-top school for the past 30. I thought this was quite interesting.

3) We toured the main library (Scholarly Commons, Archives, Special Collections, International Areas room).  

There were three things that I thought were really interesting during this tour.

Firstly, whilst visiting the Special Collections, we were shown a Babylonian clay tablet that dates back to 2,000 BC. This is probably the oldest dated man-made artifact that I believe I have seen. Unfortunately, none of the associates were permitted to touch the tablet – but that is certainly understandable.

Secondly, I took note of the fact that the Special Collections (more specifically the Manuscripts and Rare Books sections) offers training sessions. These are instructional sessions which make use of materials that form part of the collection. 

Thirdly, I noticed that the Scholarly Commons section served as a front-end for a number of services provided to researchers. By serving as an aggregator of sorts, the Scholarly Commons is able to bring together services that other people might not otherwise be aware of if they each had their own separate front-ends. I went on to have a look at the Scholarly Commons website later on and noticed that there are currently thirteen services that make use of the Scholarly Commons as client facing front-end.

Thursday (2nd June 2022)

1) We had another session on blogging.

2) We went for a tour of the different units that make up the Preservation division. Digital preservation, digitsation, book conservation, multimedia preservation.  We also found out that the UIUC has a partnership with the Internet Archive. Based on this partnership the Internet Archive has an office located in the Main Library. Even though this office is located in the Main Library it is only staffed by employees of the Internet Archive. This specific Internet Archive office makes use of the UIUC’s collection in its digitization efforts.

3) We met the University Librarian. Even though this was a brief encounter I can certainly appreciate, the fact that he took allocated some time from his busy schedule in order to meet with the associates.

4) We went for a tour of the Urbana Free library. As an academic librarian I was not expecting that there would much that I could learn from touring a public library which I could apply to the academic library setting. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are a few aspects from this library tour which could possibly be applied to academic library setting.

Friday (3rd June 2022)

1) Chris Prom presentation on digital strategies. There are several units which fall under digital strategies namely:

  • User Experience,
  • Discovery and ILS Coordination
  • Preservation Services
  • Research Data Service
  • Scholarly Communications and Publishing
  • Library IT

The library is provides researchers with support in writing grant applications. I suppose this is possible since a number of the librarians are faculty and therefore have experience with applying for research grants. It was noted that Chris Prom’s position is a dual role which include the digital strategies components as well as aspects relating to research and innovation. I am not sure if a similar model can actually be replicated at my home institution. Considering that some solution may be institution-specific it may not be necessary to try to adapt every single practice or organizational structure adopted by the UIUC as this may not be desirable.

The application of machine learning and AI in libraries is something which surfaced during the presentation. It seems that it will be possible to acquire more information about this when we visit the IDEAS lab at the Grainger Engineering Library.

The management of sensitive research data was not explicitly addressed. I will have to follow up on this matter.

2) Tour of the Campus Instructional Facility (CIF). We were able to see a number of the study spaces as well as the spaces which are used for active learning purposes. The space also bore characteristics of the design concepts which I had been introduced to when I visited the Siebel Center for Design. Most notable were the following design spaces which I visited:

It was good to see these spaces in real life as they represented a physical manifestation of the design thinking and active learning concepts. The tour put a number of things in perspective in my mind as it added some more context about the form that the physical teaching and learning spaces take when incorporating active learning. Although the tour at the Siebel Center for Design exposed me to physical learning spaces they were not meant for very large classes. In contrast, the CIF had spaces for small groups as well as very large classes.

3) We had an introductory discussion on Artificial Intelligence which was followed-up by watching a documentary titled Coded Bias. Afterwards we discussed the relationship between AI and ethics.

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