Thursday, May 26, 2011

Librarian takes creative sabbatical

Terri Bogan has served as our Associate Librarian for Reference and Instruction since 1995. That role has evolved as the school transitioned from College to University, from traditional to including non-traditional adult learner programs, and from completely on campus to remote, online, and hybrid teaching environments. The goals to provide information resources and develop information literacy for lifelong learning have remained the same, but the platform and methods have changed over the years. Terri has done an amazing job of keeping up with all of these changes as a one-woman department providing the only library instruction sessions for the entire university in every subject!

She is taking the first of two summers away from other library responsibilities to focus on developing innovative ways of expanding her presence in online classes while preserving her sanity. She will be working on ways to make efficient use of her time while maximizing the meaningful instruction value for our online students. She says,

"Much teaching and learning at Hope International University is now done in an online environment. This means providing a classroom type environment as well as access to other University resources such as the library and librarians. The online library is a critical component to the education of the online student and online access to resources as well as tutorials, reference assistance and well designed placement of these resources is necessary. The Darling Library at HIU currently provides online access to many resources as well as email reference, a few guides and tutorials, and an embedded librarian in the Strategies for Success online class. Dedicated time and focus is needed in order to create and coordinate the delivery of online library learning resources and services that provide more complete assistance to the online student. This two part sabbatical would revolve around the creation and strategic placement of library research learning aids for our adult online students."

We look forward to what she will have to offer when she returns to the library in August! Until then, direct all reference and instruction questions to library_ref-help@hiu.edu. We will do our best to fill in for her!

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