Virtual Posters |

Virtual Posters are like standard conference posters, just presented virtually. There will be two poster sessions on the 28th. During these sessions, attendees will be able to view the posters and interact directly with the presenters in a virtual conference space. Details about this will be coming soon.

To view a poster (on or after July 28), click on the poster title.

Addressing ERM Operations and Staff Readiness During a Period of Significant Disruption

The virtual poster describes the challenges Morgan State University’s Earl S. Richardson Library have experienced, as well as the operational opportunities that have arisen, in managing electronic resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the environment that precipitated these challenges is temporary, some of the solutions implemented to address them will represent permanent changes to library operations. The first challenge was an inadequate contingency/continuity of operations plan to avert traditional service disruption. This exposed serious weaknesses in the library’s readiness to meet the challenges of operating in a pandemic environment, such as staff learning how to telework effectively. The second challenge was that many staff were insufficiently trained to manage and support e-resources. However, the opportunity to telework provided ample evidence that ERM work can be successfully performed remotely. This removed any lingering doubts that library administrators previously harbored about telework.

Fanuel Chirombo, Ph.D. – Acquisitions, Serials, and Electronic Resources Librarian, Morgan State University
Fanuel Chirombo is the Acquisitions, Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian at Morgan State’s Earl S. Richardson Library.

Bryan Fuller, MLS – Reference and Government Document Librarian, Morgan State University
Bryan Fuller is the Reference and Government Document Librarian at Morgan State University

Renise Johnson, MLIS – Head of Access Services/Systems, Morgan State University
Renise Johnson is the head of access services/systems at Morgan State University

Creating Community in the Virtual Study Hall: Lessons from Spring 2021

The undergraduate learning commons (Terrapin Learning Commons – TLC) at the University of Maryland, College Park serves as a key study space and site for student engagement in the Libraries. In an effort to reach out to students and meet their needs when university activities were restricted to a virtual environment, the TLC began offering virtual study sessions through Zoom. While feedback on these events was positive, the attendance was relatively low. As a result, the TLC partnered with Casey Hughes, a Research & Teaching Fellow and MLIS graduate student, in Spring 2021 to revamp the virtual study session program and shift the focus to student organizations. This poster will present a model for how to assess and learn from less-than-successful projects, while describing the program, detailing key changes made in the Spring 2021 semester, discussing challenges faced, and offer important takeaways moving forward for future virtual programming possibilities.

Casey Hughes – Reference and Instruction Librarian, College of Southern Maryland
Casey Hughes is the Reference and Instruction Librarian at the College of Southern Maryland. She graduated in Spring 2021 from the Masters in Library Science program at the University of Maryland, College Park. As a graduate student she was a Research and Teaching Fellow as well as a graduate student worker in Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries. Her research interests include reference, outreach, first-year instruction, and archives instruction.

Sharona Ginsberg – Head of Terrapin Learning Commons, University of Maryland, College Park
Sharona Ginsberg is Head of Terrapin Learning Commons at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was a 2015 recipient of the Library Journal Movers & Shakers award for her work on MakerBridge–a website and blog devoted to the maker movement in libraries and schools–has presented at numerous conferences including ALA Annual and the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces, and has been invited to speak on the topic of makerspace in libraries. She has recently published Terrific Makerspace Projects: A Practical Guide for Librarians, co-written with Juan Denzer, Engineering and Computer Sciences Librarian at Syracuse University.

End of the Comfort Zone: Prioritizing Patron-Centered Service When Resources are Limited

Have you been tasked with implementing a new service with little to no lead time? In too many cases, this situation can result in stressed-out staff and unsatisfied patrons. The Salisbury University Libraries faced exactly this situation when we realized our entire physical course reserves collection would be inaccessible during the Fall 2020 semester. It seemed impossible that we would be able to meet our patrons’ needs without overwhelming our staff. Nevertheless, through careful planning, good communication, and a little bit of luck, we were able not only to meet but also exceed our patrons’ expectations – all without sacrificing staff happiness. This poster will outline how we provided this patron-centered service even under extreme time and staff limitations and share some tips to help you offer responsive service when demand exceeds resources.

Amy Jones – Head of Circulation, Salisbury University
Amy Jones (she/her) has been the Head of Circulation for the Salisbury University Libraries since 2014, working alongside a great team of people offering responsive service in Circulation, Course Reserves, and Interlibrary Loan. She has a BA in French and a MA in Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution.

Natasha Finnegan – Assistant Head of Circulation and ILL Borrowing Specialist, Salisbury University
Natasha Finnegan is the Assistant Head of Circulation and ILL Specialist in the Access Services department at Salisbury University Libraries. She oversees interlibrary loan borrowing operations, stacks management, and circulation, as well as supervising student employees and part-time staff at the Library Service Desk. She has worked at Salisbury University Libraries for two years. Prior to joining SU, Natasha worked in several Maryland public libraries in the Wicomico and Frederick County systems. She is looking to graduate from her MLIS program from San Jose State University’s iSchool in the Spring of 2022.

Cassy Lewis – Course Reserves Specialist, Salisbury University
Cassy Lewis has been with the Access Services team since 2010 as a Circulation Assistant and has been the Course Reserves Specialist since 2016. She has a BA in Biology from Rhodes College and a MS in Ecology from University of Iowa.

Chris Woodall – Technology Librarian, Salisbury University
Chris Woodall is the Technology Librarian for the Salisbury University Libraries and the coordinator of the SU Libraries MakerLab. In addition to running the day-to-day operations of the MakerLab, he provides instruction to SU students using MakerLab equipment for coursework, supports various back-end library technologies, creates custom web applications for the Libraries, and developed and maintains the SU Libraries iOS app.

Friday Polls: How to Gather Student Feedback during a Pandemic (and Beyond)

This poster discusses how an academic library marketing team used the polling features in Instagram Stories to obtain student feedback during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We describe the Friday Polls concept, detail how the questions were formed and presented, as well as discuss what helpful feedback the team received from using this format.

Joyce Garczynski – Assistant University Librarian for Development & Communications, Towson University
Joyce Garczynski is the Assistant University Librarian for Development & Communications at Towson University’s Albert S. Cook Library in Maryland. In this role she teaches journalism students about the research process and manages her library’s social media. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Library Science from the University of Maryland, College Park and has a Master’s in Communication from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to becoming a librarian, Joyce was a Project Coordinator and Research Assistant at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Joyce received the 2019 Distinguished Education and Behavioral Sciences Librarian Award from the Association of College and Research Libraries for her excellence in teaching and service to the profession.

Sydney Avelino – A-LIST Student for Marketing & Social Media, Towson University
Sydney Avelino is a second-year mass communication major at Towson University. During 2020, she became the first first-year student to be selected for Albert S. Cook Library’s student leadership training program, A-LIST. In this role, Sydney developed and implemented marketing and promotional strategies for the library. She currently is part of Towson University Admission’s social media marketing team. Sydney most recently received the Mary Leeper Emerging Leader Award from Towson’s Division of Student Affairs for her efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion on TU’s campus.

How to Create Interactive OER with H5P

Explore the possibilities of creating ancillary materials for OER using H5P.

Jamie Witman – Online Learning and OER Librarian, Community College of Baltimore County
Jamie Witman is an Assistant Professor and the Online Learning and OER Librarian at the Community College of Baltimore County. In this role she guides the library’s online presence through the use of digital learning objects and coordinates OER efforts and initiatives. She has presented at various conferences on both her work with information literacy and OER. Her interests include open educational practices, digital scholarship, critlib, and pop culture.

A Legislative Genealogy

Taking advantage of the unusual circumstances created by the pandemic, two librarians (Elizabeth Bateman and Richard Sigwald) at the Maryland Legislative Library embarked to find obituaries of former state legislators in order to create a valuable resource for current and future historians. Once they started working, they realized the scope of their project was much more than just newspaper clippings. They also became more aware of the importance of this project as they uncovered generations of families that represented their communities in the legislature. They also gained fascinating insights into the political history of Maryland.

Richard Sigwald – Reference Librarian, Maryland Legislative Library
Before joining the reference team at the Maryland Legislative Library in 2016, Rich worked for Baltimore County Public Library for 12 years, with the last four of those as a generalist librarian. Rich completed his MLIS degree in 2014 at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. He completed his BA in music performance in 2003 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Rich was born and raised in the Arbutus and Catonsville area and currently resides in Bowie, Maryland.

Elizabeth Bateman – Reference Librarian, Maryland Legislative Library
Elizabeth Bateman is a Legislative Librarian at the Maryland Department of Legislative Services. She received her library science degree from The Catholic University of America and a bachelor’s in English from Washington College. She previously worked in the Engineering and Architecture Libraries at Catholic University, after making the transition from working in bookstores. She grew up in Howard County and currently resides in Crofton, Maryland, where her hobbies include playing the viola.

Library Tutorials in the time of COVID

With the abrupt arrival of COVID-19 there was a huge need to provide the same quality services in an online format. At Daytona State College we created tutorial videos to show students how to access and use our databases as well as different searching techniques. We created a virtual version of our one-shot instruction session that also highlighted the DSC Writing Center and Academic Support Center. These new tutorials also created a dialog with faculty that led to new and more focused Libguides. The added bonus of increasing our online presence is the increased metadata that we can examine to help better meet the needs of our patrons.

Maxwell Hackman – Instruction and Outreach Librarian, Daytona State College
I have been at Daytona State College Library for the past 4 years and am currently serving on the Florida College System’s LIS Curriculum Committee. I obtained my MLS from Indiana University and my MA in Urban History from Butler University.

Making From a Distance

See how the Loyola Notre Dame Library pivoted its makerspace to protect makers and staff while still providing innovative making services.

Clara Love – Technology Resources Assistant, Loyola Notre Dame Library
Clara Love is the Technology Resources assistant at the Loyola Notre Dame Library. They graduated from Loyola University Maryland in 2018.

Matthew Treskon – Technology Librarian, Loyola Notre Dame Library

Youlanda Halterman – Digital Technology/Web Supervisor, Loyola Notre Dame Library

Pandemic at the Archives: Changes to the Special Collections Service Model to Support Remote Learning

Like many academic archives, the Special Collections and University Archives at Towson University has primarily relied on an in-person service model to facilitate access to its unique materials. COVID-19 proved to be a major disruption to this model and prompted us to rethink how we could provide primary source research services in a remote learning environment.

Inspired by the tools used by our Research and Instruction colleagues and techniques taken from the professional literature, we implemented a range of remote services to meet patron’s research needs. This poster discusses the implementation of those services, reflects on the successes and failures of these new methods of engagement, and outlines future projects that will continue to support users online.

Allison Fischbach – Research and Archives Associate, Towson University
Allison Fischbach is the Research & Archives Associate at Towson University’s Cook Library. She is also a current MLIS candidate at UMD’s iSchool and serves on the Society of American Archivist’s Web Archiving Steering Committee. Outside of the library she does bookbinding, printmaking, and takes pictures of cicadas.

Read It and Weep: How One Library Began to Improve its Database Descriptions

Academic libraries rely on publishers for costly, highly specialized databases in order to support curricula and research at our institutions. Due to time and workflow issues, however, we often wind up depending on these same publishers to describe our databases on our library websites. Such descriptions can be lengthy and jargon-filled, making them less readable and potentially discouraging and confusing for researchers. Find out how one library team tackled this issue during the pandemic by conducting usability and readability testing, exploring readability metrics and researching relevant literature. Later this summer, the team plans to share their findings and strategies with their liaison librarian colleagues, start a conversation on how improving readability can help library users, and address logistical issues for better database descriptions.

Shana Gass – Business & Economics Librarian, Towson University
Shana Gass is the Business & Economics Librarian at Towson University and also liaises to the Human Resource Development Master’s program. Prior to Towson, she worked at Wheaton College, Mass. and the MIT Libraries. Active in MILEX, CABAL, and ALA-RUSA/BRASS, Shana’s research interests include business information literacy, confirmation bias, and collection management.

Mary Gilbert – Assistant University Librarian for Content Management, Towson University
Mary Gilbert is the Assistant University Librarian for Content Management at Towson University’s Albert S. Cook Library, and part of the library’s senior management team. Responsibilities include management of the library’s collection budget, acquisitions of books, e-books, serials, and e-resources; cataloging and government documents; liaison and instruction responsibilities for the Department of Foreign Languages; and management of a department consisting of six staff and three librarians.

Carrie Price – Health Professions Librarian, Towson University
Carrie Price is the Health Professions Librarian at the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson University. She liaises with the majority of departments in the College of Health Professions. She joined the Cook Library in August of 2020. Prior to her work at Towson University, she was a clinical medical librarian at Johns Hopkins University and Medical Institutions. She has a strong interest in user experience, instructional design, and evidence-based research methods.

Lisa Sweeney – Research & Instruction Librarian, Towson University
Lisa Sweeney has been a Research and Instruction Librarian at Cook Library for over 20 years. An added benefit of work on the library’s User Experience committee is that its value continues to reveal itself and motivates her to integrate lessons learned into her professional practice.

Miriam DesHarnais – Research & Instruction Librarian, Towson University

Resource Sharing During the Time of COVID: Challenges and Solutions

Although the pandemic has created many challenges to providing library services, library staffs have prevailed. This poster will address the challenges faced and the solutions implemented in providing interlibrary loan (ILL) and document delivery (DocDel) services during the pandemic. Two stages will be reflected: complete shutdown and partial re-opening of the library building. Among the issues to be addressed are staffing concerns, loss of access to print collections, changes in processes and technology challenges. A statistical analysis of what was accomplished will also be featured. Finally, we will identify the keys to successfully maintaining ILL and DocDel services during this unprecedented time.

Vickie Campbell – Resource Sharing Supervisor, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Vickie Campbell is the Resource Sharing Supervisor at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland Baltimore. Vickie’s expertise includes ILL services and technologies. She is responsible for coordinating the workflow of the department, training, and working with the department head to keep the service running efficiently. She also serves on the USMAI ILL Resource Sharing committee. Vickie’s focus is on excellent service for patrons and staff.

Na Lin – Resource Development and Sharing Head, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Na Lin is the Head of Resource Development and Sharing at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland Baltimore. Na is responsible for the interlibrary operation where she focuses on service excellence through staff development, process efficiency and technological innovations. In addition to ILL, Na is in charge of the UMB institutional repository and data catalog services.

Patricia Hinegardner – Resource Development and Access Division Associate Director, Health Sciences and Human Services Library, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Patricia Hinegardner is Associate Director for Resource Development and Access at the Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HSHSL), University of Maryland Baltimore, where she provides leadership for the division which includes Resource Development and Sharing, Collection Strategies and Management, and Metadata Management.

Twitter and Higher Education: A Bibliometric Analysis

Since the inception of Twitter in 2006, the platform has grown enormously, with over 199 million daily active users worldwide as of May 2021. Higher education institutions are getting hip to using social media platforms, and especially to Twitter. Faculty, staff, and students have begun to leverage the power of Twitter as a tool for outreach, networking, recruitment, advocacy, and pedagogy. This bibliometric analysis will help shed light on an ill-defined and nebulous topic.

Carrie Price – Health Professions Librarian, Towson University
Carrie Price is a Health Professions Librarian at Towson University’s Albert S. Cook Library. She has also spent time as a clinical medical librarian at the Johns Hopkins University/Medical Institutions’ Welch Medical Library. She is an avid Tweeter at @carrieprice78.

Using Research Metrics to Empower Faculty and Contextualize Collection Decisions

Academic libraries have been implementing research metrics education and services to improve journal selection, to educate faculty and researchers, and to provide departmental or institutional snapshots of research output and impact. This poster explores the adoption of journal, article, researcher, institutional, and alternative metrics at a large, public university. To help faculty more fully understand their impact, librarians performed bibliometric analyses of departmental output, incorporating various metrics to create useful data. In addition, librarians shared journal metrics with faculty to articulate the impact of proposed journal cancellations in their subject areas. This poster also investigates future directions for the development of research metrics services and use. Journal, article, researcher, institutional, and alternative metrics are a valuable element of an academic career and understanding how to use them appropriately and ethically is even more critical. Librarians can partner with faculty to provide value-added training, services, and outreach about research metrics.

Elisabeth B. White – Science, Technology, and Mathematics Librarian, Towson University
Elisabeth White is the Science, Technology, and Mathematics Librarian at Towson University. In this role, she serves as the liaison librarian to the majority of Towson’s STEM departments and programs. She has been in this role since January 2019. Prior to becoming a librarian, Elisabeth worked as an assistant at a public library, a K-12 math tutor, and a laboratory technician in a biomedical engineering lab. Her research interests include information literacy instruction in the laboratory setting, accessibility in library instruction, and diversity and inclusion in collection management.

Write On! : A letter exchange program for students to stay connected during the COVID-19 pandemic

Getting mail is fun! “Sent by Stags”, a letter exchange program, connected Fairfield University undergraduates living both on and off campus. It was devised by the DiMenna-Nyselius Library and University’s The Writing Center after participating in a University committee meeting about how to encourage social interactions and a feeling of connectedness to campus life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were matched to another student based on their sign-up form responses, and corresponded monthly through handwritten letters for one semester. They were provided with optional writing prompts and downloadable stationary via a LibGuide link, and a survey was sent at the end of the semester. This program was a zero to low cost initiative and could be replicated at other institutions with potential to partner with other campus departments.

Lisa Thornell – Student Engagement & Outreach Librarian, Fairfield University
Lisa Thornell is the Student Engagement & Outreach Librarian at the DiMenna-Nyselius Library and does marketing, communications, and event planning at the in addition to research services, instruction, and serving as the liaison to several academic departments. She runs the Personal Librarian Program for first-year students, and annual Library Research Prize, and is the chair of the Student Library Advisory Board, and co-chair of the Human Library committee, just to name a few. Lisa has a Little Free Library in front of her house and helped install others around her town with the Friends of Milford Public Library.