Amanda: Welcome to the Librarian’s Guide to Teaching! I’m Amanda…
Jessica: And I’m Jessica! Amanda: On today’s episode, we have Bonnie Lafazan as our guest and we’re going to talk about all things professional development. Why it's important, how to make time for it and how to build a culture of lifelong learning at your library. Bonnie is a former media licensing lawyer who changed careers and became an academic librarian in 2008 and has not looked back. Bonnie works as the Library Director of the Woodbridge Campus Library at Berkeley College in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Bonnie is a robust contributor to the professional librarian community both locally in New Jersey and nationally, currently serving as past president of the ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) New Jersey chapter, also NJLA CUS (New Jersey Library Association College & University Section) and now co-chairs its Strategic Planning Task Force. Bonnie serves as a board member for LibraryLinkNJ, a New Jersey library cooperative and serves as a board member of the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information Advisory Board. Nationally, Bonnie is the past co-convener of ACRL’s Library & Marketing Outreach Interest Group, is currently on the ACRL Professional Development Committee and the ACRL Conference 2021 Committee. On a personal note, Bonnie and I and Jessica, we’re all close friends and colleagues and we've done a lot of different collaborative projects together so we're so excited to have Bonnie on the show today. Amanda: Welcome, Bonnie! Thank you for coming to talk to us! Bonnie: Hi! Amanda: All right! So we're going to jump right in. Let's talk to personal development. Why don’t we all start with our experiences with professional development either as a facilitator or participant? Also maybe discuss why we think professional development is important. Bonnie, do you want to go first? Bonnie: Sure! So for me, professional development whether it’s required or not to my position will always be one in the same. I find that professional development is really enriched in who I am as a lifelong learner. And it's as a librarian professional who always is continuously learning and teaching others. I feel really grateful that I have opportunities for professional development and all these different experiences I’ve had because it’s really helped me grow as a leader and as an instructor and as a librarian. Amanda: And maybe share an experience? Bonnie: Yea, so I've had many different experiences as you might have heard some of what I've done in my bio but I've both presented at conferences, attended conferences, I’ve been in a number of different types of sessions as both participants and also as a facilitator in workshops, panel sessions, poster sessions and more. And beyond that I’ve served committees that have planned conferences such as the New Jersey Academic Librarians Conference. I have served as co-conference chair with Amanda in the past and that was a really incredible experience. Also in my work and my committee work, we’ve presented as committee members together at local conferences and also in my work at ACRL, the Library Marketing and Outreach (LMAO) Interest Group. I also presented with professionals from all over the country which is really cool. Amanda: Great. Jessica? Jessica: Great! That’s really cool. Yea, I’ve had a variety of different professional development experiences too much like Bonnie. We've presented together at national and local conferences so I've done poster sessions and presentation sessions. And actually I got my job at Berkeley from presenting a poster at VALE and meeting you guys! Amanda: Yea, that’s right! Jessica: Yea, I talked to you guys and you said there was a position open at Berkeley coming soon I got the scoop on that so you know that can be a benefit of professional development in networking. I also really loved creating, co-editing the Library Buzz with you, Amanda, our bi-weekly staff development newsletter. I miss doing that. But I am on a team now at my current job, a staff development committee, so we're working on creating a different process we're not going to do a LibGuide or anything but we're kind of polling everybody to figure out what professional development they’ll find rewarding. And we’re creating some type of experience because that culture doesn’t exist yet. So I think that’s gonna be fun. Amanda: And maybe a little bit about why you think professional development is important? Jessica: Yeah I definitely agree with what Bonnie said about lifelong learning. I mean as librarians,I think we always just like to enrich ourselves and know what's going on in the field, keeping up with trends. I think sometimes it can get overwhelming to try to do too much and take on too much and we can talk about that a little bit later I guess, how to balance everything. But I think it's just important to keep up with what's going on in our field and to network with others and learn from others. Amanda: Yeah, so true. So I'll share a little bit of my experiences. So I've done a wide range of things. I've done external professional development where I have presented at conferences and shared what was going on, what we’re doing at Berkeley. I've also, as Bonnie mentioned, I’m the conference co-chair of our ACRL New Jersey Annual Conference so that's something I’ve been doing and I just finished up my 5th year of running that conference. I've also been invited to facilitate workshops at other institutions. I’ve done some courses through ACRL and RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) where I’ve facilitated month long courses. I’ve also done a lot of internal development. I think internal development is so important. I think you don't have to spend money to learn and grow. I think every single person in your team has a talent that they could share and I think it's an untapped resource, honestly, when it comes to professional development. I think professional development is so important because you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to keep learning and moving forward and changing with the time but I also think as an instruction librarian since a lot of us don't have that formal education the only way we're going to grow and learn is if we make space and time to work on learning new things in our given field especially with that instruction focus. Jessica: That’s very true. My mom always asks because my mom has a master's degree in art therapy and when she was coming out of it she always had to do continuing education credits and she always thought it was funny that we don’t have to do that. We’re not required to do that for any certification that we have but I always tell her that it's just such a part of librarianship that we're kind of doing it anyway. Because it's just important. Amanda: Agreed. Jessica: Alright, so Bonnie, could you share some examples of professional development experience that you have either facilitated or participated in over the years? Maybe one that was successful and one that wasn't so successful? Bonnie: Sure! Some of my favorite professional development experiences and that were very successful were panel sessions that I’ve helped facilitate. I find that having quick lightning talks in a panel session of maybe four or five academic librarians from different institutions is really successful because you can hear stories and struggles from each both successes and maybe failures. But we all know that no matter what type of institution we’re in, sharing our stories and a lot of it is more of the same than not. Jessica: So I guess a follow-up question - how do you decide which opportunities to take? Did you just in the beginning of the new librarian, just going to take everything that was presented to you just so that you could get experiences? How would a new librarian decide where to go with these opportunities like the ones you had with LMAO? Bonnie: Yes, I think it was a slow learning, a lot of these were slow learning opportunities where eventually there was an opportunity to be a committee chair of an organization or to co-chair or convene an organization. But I think it it started out as becoming a member and participating in meetings and participating in online webinars and online YouTube channels. Jessica: Right, so people can't just expect to join a group and then all of a sudden be presenting. Bonnie: No, you have to be part of the team to get those opportunities that come. So let's say I was chairing a committee and I said, “Hey we're going to have academic librarians talk about their, you know, successes in marketing and outreach in a library, do you want to be on the panel? Because that person was part of that committee and was on that meeting they have that opportunity to be a part of that. Jessica: Right, right. So then what about maybe one that wasn't so successful? Bonnie: One that wasn't so successful - I remember presenting with you Amanda a while back at our New Jersey Library Association Conference and I know we were so pumped for our session. The topic of the session was actually about learning and growing together as a library or library department. How when you align your own personal interests and strengths as a library you can really grow professionally. But it just didn’t go over well. There weren’t that many people in the session, not that that it always means it’s going to be successful. You can still have a successful session, in my opinion, even if you don’t have 50 or more attendees. It was just that the ones that were there just didn’t seem really engaged. They seemed bored. It was just disappointing. Amanda: Yea, I remember that. It seemed like it fell flat. I think it could have been a combination of things - that it wasn't the right audience, that they didn't have that culture or they felt they would never have that type of culture. So it was a variety of things. But I agree with you, that was probably one of those experiences where it didn't click for people. Bonnie: But on the flip side, we’ve had so many successful experiences. That reminds me of when we presented the internal workshop on how to present at conferences. Amanda: Oh, yea! Bonnie: We had those interactive activities in the workshop where participants actually planned out proposals, like real conference proposals of ideas of what they're working on at our college. And some of them went on to present after that. Jessica: Yeah I did! I presented a poster. Amanda: That’s right. I was just about to say that. Bonnie: That’s right, Jessica, you were in that when you first started with us. Jessica: Yea, that was like the first presentation I went to. The first professional development thing I went to at Berkeley that I went to. And yea, it worked out into a poster. That was great. Bonnie: So to me that was a true success because it was internal, we didn’t have to pay, we didn’t have to take a day off of work, and yet so much came out that. I know that others presented a poster at ALA, too, from that session. Amanda: Yea, those are great examples. I definitely agree with some of the points you made that it just starts with just participating. That’s how I started. Someone said to me, “Hey you might be interested in this committee” and I joined the committee and three years later I was the co-chair of that committee and then three years after that I was asked to run a conference and I did that, you know. And a lot of the collaboration across institutions happens in these meetings. It's where you have dedicated time to network with your peers and talk about professional development and not feel guilty about it. Because I think sometimes we feel a little guilty like sometimes I'll find a really great article and I’m like, “Oh, I really want to read this article but I'm not going to take the time at work to read it” even though it’s all about work. So I think participating in those specific committee meetings gives you that space to feel like it's okay to talk about things that you wouldn't necessarily get to do everyday on a daily basis. Jessica: Yea, and everybody learns in different ways so some people need to talk it out. Some people need to be in a group of peers and have a conversation about a topic as opposed to just reading an article about it and sometimes I think that's why podcasts are successful because you hear other people talking about topics and it clicks a little better for people. Bonnie: I think we live in silos. We all as librarians, we all have to work together, no matter what library you’re at or what type or what type of institution you’re at. Amanda: Agreed. Agreed. And I think it allows us to sometimes extend the conversation because in New Jersey at least, we do get to see our colleagues present but we don't necessarily get to have the conversations with them that we want to but when we see them we get to maybe talk and say, “Hey I saw your poster and blah, blah.” It really does put it into a different context and it extends the conversation in a way. Jessica: Yeah and going back to, you know, like you said being an instruction librarians we have to grow and I think presenting taught me a lot about being a teacher. Because I'm presenting and doing...I think that has always been the least successful part of my teaching, the part where I had to go to the most, was in the doing things on the fly, presenting to a group getting over my stage fright, and I think presenting at conferences and doing posters was a part of my growth. It really helped me, even internally within to my colleagues, I mean sometimes that is scarier to do a presentation for 10 of your close colleagues as opposed to 150 strangers. That can be even more nerve-racking, so you know professional development can actually connect to your job responsibilities when you're practicing new skills that you may not have the chance to practice otherwise. Amanda: Yeah Bonnie: What you guys were talking about before just you know about being an instruction librarian really just, it came to me about. ACRL has a model/role model for what a teaching librarian should look like and one of those roles is that he or she is a lifelong learner, they’re always seeking out opportunities for continuous learning. So we should never really feel guilty because that is what it is to make us better teachers. Make us reflective in our approaches to instruction. Amanda: I totally agree. And I think that actually lends itself really nicely to our next question which is how do you make time for professional development? Bonnie, you want to start? Bonnie: I think I make time for professional development because I enjoy it. So when I see that article I'm going to read it because I want to. And I think it's part of also what I do. So I know at some institution’s it’s required as part of your tenure position or things like that but I think it’s part of who I am, of being a librarian, like I said earlier. So if I have a meeting that has to do with an organization that I am involved with it goes on my to do list. If I have tasks that have to do with my professional development activities, I put it on the list with all my regular work tasks. Amanda: Jessica? Jessica: Yes, so I think for me it's a kind of a balance between doing things at work and doing things at home. I used to want to learn about so many different things and get a deep understanding of everything both out of curiosity but also to stay involved in library discussions. But I just realized I don't have the mental bandwidth for that. Because professional development is supposed to be that. You’re developing yourself on top of representing your institution and networking and all that but I've noticed that if I'm rushing through it to get to the next thing I'm not developing, I’m just memorizing things. And after I had my son and having some health challenges you know I really had to prioritize my health, by sanity, and doing less stuff at home. So I push myself a lot less and I do less overall and I think that's okay, you know? I'm re-prioritizing what topics and projects are important to me and what I do at home and what I do at work. So for example I used to be really passionate about marketing and outreach. And I used to do a lot of that with Bonnie. But it's so much less of my position now, so while I'm still in the amazing Library Marketing and Outreach Facebook group, I’m spending a lot more of my time researching things that make an impact on my students like on a teaching in critical librarianship which we talked about. And honestly, I really have to make time for things that are free. We haven’t really touched on that a lot yet but I don't have a lot of funds for most of the things that maybe used to be covered from my job and we share a big pot of money and I have really have to show justification of what I can attend. But there's so much information out there and free opportunities that librarians should be taking advantage of those and maybe we’ll include some ideas in the show notes. For example you know I follow a lot of people on Twitter for article recommendations, I listen to podcasts, I read the publications that come with our memberships from ACRL and ALA. And while presenting does take work, it does create more of an incentive for our institutions to fund us for conferences so I do like to spend time writing and presenting to make that happen and that kind of stuff, like Bonnie said, I do that at work because I am presenting for my institution so there's a benefit to them there. And there's also a lot of scholarships that people should apply for. Don’t be ashamed to apply for a scholarship. I remember winning an ACRL new librarian scholarship for the ACRL national virtual conference and I got access to all that content in one of the first year after grad school and that that was really valuable. Sso I think it's a balancing act in a lot of different ways. Amanda: So true. Jessica: What about you, Amanda? Amanda: So for me, I have to schedule it. I have to make time for it and feel - I have to prioritize, too. I’ve had to make decisions. There were sometimes I’d say in the last 5 years where I’ve just presented anything and everything, any opportunity I could get, but I really have to be a little more selective just because of personal reasons. I have a daughter now and you know, monetary reasons so for example, this year with the way our budget falls is the Distance Library Conference (DLS) and ACRL 2021 falls in the same budget year. So I have to prioritize and I’m not going to go to DLS, I’m going to go to ACRL because it’s a little more important to me. And it’s sad because I really, I like both of those conference but you have to prioritize. I also oversubscribe to a lot of things. (Jessica and Bonnie laugh) A lot of list-servs. And then I browse through, you know, like if I find myself in between tasks, I’ll stop and I’ll browse the list-servs and try and follow the conversation. I'm very active on Twitter. I follow a lot of people on Twitter. My Twitter is all library stuff mostly. Where I get a lot of my free professional development from. You know, I also look for those found moments to read. When I’m standing on a line or when I have a few minutes in-between meetings or something, I'll pull out whatever article that I printed out in my bag and just read. And I’ve been doing a lot of audio these days. I drive about an hour each way depending on what campus I'm supporting that day so audio is really easy for me to have access to and have the time to listen to. So those are some of the ways that I make time for professional development. But I agree with both of you, conference proposals or chapter writing, all that stuff I do make time for that during work hours because you're right you are representing your institution so to me, I don't feel as guilty so I've learned to get over that guilt. Jessica: And like Bonnie said we're talking about being non-tenure. I know a lot of tenure librarians, maybe not everybody because I can't speak for them, but you know they have writing time or they can take research days and stuff like that, you know. We're talking about not having that but still wanting to get in that professional development. Amanda: Agreed. So I guess one last question to wrap things up is a few of our listeners might be thinking, how do you build a culture of professional development at your library? So perhaps we can share a few tips on how to build that culture at your library? Bonnie, you want to go first? Bonnie: Sure. I think one way and I think I've done this over the years is by setting an example by being an active participant in your local library organization, whatever that might be. Attending conferences. I mean we have a free academic librarian conference in New Jersey every year, and going back and sharing. Sharing with colleagues. Sharing with others. And I think just by hearing about it that others wanted to be part of it, too. Jessica: Yeah definitely. I would also say kind of to make it fun. I think that was one thing about the Library Buzz that made it interesting for everybody. I mentioned it before. It was a biweekly LibGuide that we emailed out to everybody that was Amanda's brainchild and everybody could submit things and it was all in different format and it was fun for us to create. We even started our first mini-podcast on there which was the brainchild for this. So it was fun for people to be able to participate in that so it made them want to. But also you know getting input from everyone. Where I am now we don't have that same culture that we had at Berkeley of staff development but are University Librarian wants to build it and so he asked us to get input from everybody and ensure that everybody's job responsibilities are represented especially at libraries where not everyone is a credentialed librarian. That's why we don’t use the term professional development where I am specifically for that reason so we’re just ensuring that there’s a culture of respect first as well which is key. Amanda: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I’ve spent a lot of my time in my recent roles, I’d say the past five or six years to build a culture of professional development at Berkeley and a few things that I think are really important is it to have to give people a wide range of options. People might feel comfortable attending a one-day workshop but then there's other people who maybe want to tackle something more challenging. I created a thing called 23 Things where librarians had a whole entire year to master 23 technology skills and that gave people the space to learn on their own time. And then I have also done things where it’s a week-long course. So I think giving people a range is important because everyone is at a different level. I also think it's important to give people a say in what their professional development is. Every year we are very fortunate that we do an internal conference that you know sometimes it's 2 days or 3 days and all of the workshops are done by Berkeley College librarians. But it didn't start out that way. In the beginning it was me and one other person that planned it and we would force people to collaborate. We would force them to research particular topics that we thought were important and people resented it. People were not happy. People would not feel like they were learning what they wanted to learn. So we completely changed that process. Now it's very much vote on what you're interested in. Participate if you want to participate. I think it's really helped develop that culture of people wanting to learn and being a little more open to say, “no, you know, I really don't want to learn how to do this” or “No, I don't want to participate this year as a presenter but I really want to learn x, y, z.” So I think that’s another thing. And I think you also have to not make assumptions about people’s skill levels. Even things like, and this kind of a generic answer but, don't assume everyone has the same skill level of making a LibGuide. Everyone is on a different level and that's okay. But don't just say, “okay we’ve had LibGuides for 5 years. Everybody should know how to make a LibGuide.” I think you're going to shun people away and they're not going to want to learn new skills so I think it's important to be ready and prepared to help people where they’re at. Jessica: Yea. Bonnie: Yea, absolutely. So I know also because I'm a library director as well. So I really, as a manager, really try to encourage it. And in a lot of the tips that you said and making it a goal. Making the yearly goal to participate in a conference or to join a committee. And I think that by that sort of mentorship I think also helps build that culture of professional development as well. Jessica: Yea, it has to come from the top down, definitely. Amanda:Yea, yea. So that wraps up our questions session for this. We have a question for our audience that we hope you share with us whether you tweet us or email us - what are your go-to’s for professional library development? We hope to hear from you! Jessica: Alright! So we're going to roll into our weekly segment and we’re going to do a work triumph and work fail with Bonnie. So Bonnie, do you want to start? Bonnie: Yes, a work triumph for me this week is I finally incorporated a legal research introduction module and advanced legal research module into three courses this week. I worked really hard with Amanda who's the director of research and instructional services here at Berkeley College for several months in creating these active learning tutorials and they're now in the classes, they’re now live and we're really excited to see the responses from the students and also feedback for the faculty. (Amanda and Jessica say, Yay!) Amanda: Go ahead, Jessica. Jessica: Alright, so my triumph is that I am updating my English instruction with some critical pedagogy concept. So I have about five different lesson plans to update. I removed a lot of the demo, I added a lot more discussion, I updated my examples to include more social justice information so I'm really looking forward to teaching those in the coming semester. Bonnie: Yay! Jessica: For a fail, it’s kind of a fail in that I didn’t expect students to respond a certain way in a discussion board so it became kind of a missed opportunity. I’m in this online class for the intercession. It’s a short class so students had to participate in like half a week for me. And I should have asked them to tell me what their topic was when they posted a bibliography but half of them didn't. So I didn't get to really respond to them because all my response was like “what's your topic?” Because I wanted to give them research context for their sources and so they never responded because they had to move on to the next thing. So I should have edited the discussion board instructions to say post your topic but I didn't think about that in advance so it was just a little bit of a missed opportunity but the professor said it was valuable for the ones that did participate. So womp, womp. But that’s ok. What about you Amanda? Amanda: I have a fail. So in our last episode we talked about critical digital pedagogy and breaking that mold of online instruction and I did not break that mold. I, and you know what, I think it was hard because it was two of our winter semester and I just was not prepared to revamp something so quickly. And it really frustrated me halfway through the week because I was responding to these students and I'm just like, “Ugh, this could have been so much better.” Like it’s been on my to-do list for awhile to revamp this course and I just didn't get to it and I really paid the price and I was just like this is so awful. It's just, and it’s my fault you know. I totally mismanaged my time and I just didn't revamp the content in time to make it dynamic like all those exciting ideas that we talked about in episode 7. So it's definitely on my to-do list because I do support this class every semester so it’s definitely on my to-do list. I think I'm actually going to start doing it now so that I don't run out of time, and it doesn’t sneak up on me again. So fail on my part but I know the students got something from it but it wasn't that amazing spectacular critical digital pedagogy instruction. Jessica: Right, I mean, also like Romel said it too in episode 4, you fail and you get back up and you do it again. Next time will be awesome! Amanda: There’s always next semester! That’s how I look at it. Bonnie: There’s always next week, next semester and there’s tomorrow. Jessica: Exactly (Chuckles) Amanda: Alright, so thank you so much, Bonnie, for being our guest. We’re so excited we got to talk to you and share all your exciting ideas with everybody about professional development and how to get started. Bonnie: Thanks so much for having me! Amanda: Alright, so that wraps up episode 8! Jessica: So you can find the podcast on Twitter at Librarian_Guide. You can find Jessica at LibraryGeek611. You can find Amanda at @HistoryBuff820. And you can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to rate and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen! And send us an email or a tweet to share your questions, ideas for potential discussions or your triumphs and fails in the classroom. You can also hashtag your tweets with #LibrariansGuideToTeaching!
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About the podcast:The LGT podcast is hosted by two instruction librarians interested in sharing their experiences teaching information literacy, discussing current trends, and having meaningful conversations about librarianship. Archives
May 2021
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