The Georgia Tech Writing and Composition program, part of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) builds first-year composition courses around literature, film, science, technology, and pop culture. The Library has long been embedded in this program, providing resources and course-integrated instruction led by the subject librarian for the LMC. This is a highly successful partnership with increasing demand far beyond the capabilities of a single person to meet.
For the first time, librarians whose background or primary focus is science and engineering are providing instruction to undergraduate English students. In a STEM school primarily concerned with the history of technological literature, the approach breaks new ground by combining efforts across disciplines. This presentation elucidates the model and offer perspectives from three embedded Georgia Tech subject librarians. Additionally, they will reflect on their first year in the new program, examine broader trends in library liaison models, and anticipate future developments.
In early 2016, the Georgia Tech Library reorganized many of its subject and other public-facing librarians into a single department, called Campus Engagement and Scholarly Outreach (CESO). This unit breaks down traditional liaison barriers in order to meet the rapidly shifting needs of the students, faculty, and staff of Georgia Tech. In addition to liaison librarians, CESO includes experts in assessment, digital scholarship, and data visualization among other areas of expertise. This colocation of different kinds of expertise lead to the creation of the distributed teaching model, where influences from around the academy inform and enhance instruction.
Presented at LOEX 2018 Annual Conference.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018)
Holdsworth, Liz; Valk, Alison
From data visualization to video editing, library instructional services are growing to include a wide variety of technology-rich offerings. Libraries can offer training on technologies and resources that enhance and supplement their campus curriculum. But for institutions who have not yet developed these classes, where are the starting points to implement such programming? Careful planning can reveal hidden barriers and obstacles in developing multimedia instruction. Other library instruction may only necessitate a projector and screen, but teaching multimedia skills requires the coordination of far more people, equipment, and knowledge. Multimedia skills should be taught with hands-on activities for users; librarians need to align an intricate skill set to another set of scholarly learning outcomes e.g., editorial, research, and aesthetic choices for an assignment. The strength of the program depends on relationships, materials, and a clearly articulated vision. This paper will first discuss aspects of how the Georgia Tech Library developed their multimedia instruction program over the last five years. Using the Georgia Tech Library program as a model, these resources will act as a guide for addressing the pragmatic elements of effectively developing new educational programming in academic libraries. The main components of this interactive workshop include: developing a needs assessment; performing a stakeholder analysis; identifying open source or low-cost technologies; and, based on the principles of project management, crafting a program proposal framework in order to share with library decision-makers.