RUSA (Reference and User Services Association) Division

Dear Colleagues,

With every new year comes some changes and this is a perfect time to let you know about some upcoming improvements planned for RUSA and to hear your thoughts.

A key objective of RUSA's current strategic plan is to develop a proposal to transition RUSA to a new organizational structure to reduce the complexity of our organization and better serve member needs. The Organization & Planning Committee has developed a set of recommendations and draft plan (attached) of implementation that was presented to RUSA Board in December. Our next step is to get your feedback as a RUSA member. Feel free to leave your feedback here.

The RUSA Executive Committee and Organization & Planning Committee will be holding a RUSA Town Hall meeting on Thursday, January 12, 2017, 9am PT / 10am MT / 11:00 AM CT / 12pm ET to gather member feedback on the recommendations. Access instructions are:

• To join the meeting: http://ala.adobeconnect.com/r56vm6o7ozh/.
• Meeting Name: RUSA Town Hall, 1-12-16
• When: 01/12/2017 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
• Time Zone: Central Time (US and Canada)
• If you have any trouble with the audio, please dial in using: 1-888-935-0782
• Participant Code: 94018206#

I hope you can join us! If you are unable to attend the Town Hall meeting, please send your comments to Beth German, Chair, RUSA Organization and Planning egerman@library.tamu.edu.

Alesia McManus RUSA President

Please find the 2016 Annual Conference room locations attached.  Conference Services made every effort to accommodate everyone, however in a few instances they may have had to change your meeting set in order to accommodate your meeting.

Speakers and members are prohibited from making room set changes in the Convention Center and all hotels.  The rooms are set to accommodate ALL groups and not only one group.  Any fees to reset a room will be charged to the sponsoring group should this occur. 

Below is the list of convention center/hotel abbreviations:

OCCC – Orange County Convention Center

HILTON – Hilton Orlando #

HYATT – Hyatt Regency Orlando *

ROS CENTRE – Rosen Centre Hotel #

ROS PLAZA – Rosen Plaza Hotel

*Headquarters Hotel

#Co-Headquarters Hotel

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  If you have any cancellations or changes, please let me know no later than Monday, April 18^th.  We will send out all the catering contacts and menus when we receive them.

We look forward to a great Annual Conference in Orlando!

The History Librarians Discussion Group met on Sunday, January 10th, from 1 - 2:30 in room 205B of the BCEC.  Discussion on two topics: Digital Tools for History and the ACRL Framework and RUSA IL Guidelines for UG History Students: Beyond the Classroom.

Digital Tools:

Discussion opened with a brief discussion of the list of tools on Megan Martinsen's research guide on Digital Scholarship (http://researchguides.baylor.edu/ds). All of the tools are open access so regardless of library type or funding level these are available to all. Purpose, ease of use, limitations, and examples of how these tools are being used were reviewed.

Attendees were invited to mention digital projects they or their institution created and/or how they were using digital tools for outreach. 

1. The Kentucky Historical Society has digitized and provided transcripts for the Civil War Governors of Kentucky (http://history.ky.gov/?s=Civil+war+governors). The beta web site will be available soon to this important record of local and regional history.  As local disruptions to courts and other methods of redress were sparse after the Civil War the governors were petitioned to resolve disputes
2. The Minnesota Historical Society provided an outreach program designed to introduce patrons to the depth of it's digital collections. The service provided a mash up of an item of interest to the patron and a random item from the digital collections. Considered successful and wondered if anyone else had used similar programs to raise awareness.
3. Report on a North Carolina State program encouraging faculty to visualize the data of their scholarly their research with interdisciplinary areas (weather, architecture, etc.) to create experiential learning modules for their students (and the public?).
4. University of South Florida is using both Omeka and Skalar for digital exhibits.  See: exhibits.lib.usf.edu.
5. The University of Florida is introducing a graduate certificate in Digital Humanities (http://digitalhumanities.group.ufl.edu/dh-graduate-certificate/).
6. Historical Information Gatherers (http://www.historicalinfo.com/) briefly informed attendees of their fee-based collection of national maps.
7. HistoryGeo.com mentioned their collection of land ownership maps. Search is free, subscription required for use. 
8. Missouri and the Great War at http://missourioverthere.org/
9. Massachusetts WWI Soldiers Portraits: http://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/124230
10. Efforts underway to archive the Twitter feed of the #BlackLivesMatter; various locations but central archive at ArchiveIt: https://archive-it.org/collections/4783

Discussion followed regarding uniform metadata standards for the many individual institutions and projects. Omeka is using Dublin Core but no one present was able to address the larger issues. Suggested that we contact the appropriate catalog group in ALA.

Discussed the possibility/value of a portal listing the many digital projects underway. Several were mentioned: 

1. LC's Web Guide to State Digital Resources (https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/statememory/)
2. Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la)
3. University of Southhampton (UK) ROAR: http://roar.eprints.org/http://dhcommons.org/
4. http://dhcommons.org/

Suggested that it would be most useful if links were posted to the existing LC or DPLA sites.

Most attendees did not have a digital humanities librarian at their institution. Several attendees recommended "The Programming Historian" (http://dhcommons.org/) website as a useful independent learning tool.

ACRL Framework, RUSA IL Guidelines for UG History Majors - Beyond the Classroom

RUSA IL Guidelines for UG History Majors: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sites/ala.org.rusa/files/content/resources/guidelines/information-literacy-guidelines-history-undergrad.pdf 

ACRL IL Guidelines: http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency

ACRL Framework: http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/infolit/Framework_ILHE.pdf

For library and patron education beyond the academic environment it was suggested that IL be framed from the "scholarship as conversation" perspective. In non-academic settings patrons must often be taught without it appearing that the librarian/library staff member is actually teaching them. Suggestions for achieving this included building trust by responding to the inquiry with respect and to emphasize what you do have in your collection to help the patron first prior to discussing what you don't have or how difficult the question is to answer or research.

The group next discussed how to move beyond just providing access to the necessary sources to working in a way that incorporated the guidelines. Many raised the need to work with teachers (high school/middle school) to provide some initial training and a desire to incorporate the RUSA IL Guidelines into their teacher training workshops (existing or planned).  Other points raised included:

• Improving access for teens, both to primary source materials and to the thinking skills contained in the IL Guidelines
• Working with Local History groups and Local History Commissions to provide opportunities to move beyond providing access to sources. Use and share the Guidelines as a rationale for why the sources and the work of these Commissions are valuable
• Consider using the IL Guidelines and the Framework as organizing principles for our websites - as a means to encourage scholarly thinking (would this work? How could we make it work?). Promote the Framework in this way beyond the traditional classroom applications
• Using the Guidelines and Framework when working with faculty/teachers to provide more realistic timelines for assignments they give for students to use local history sources and archives.
• Introduce the Guidelines and Framework to Boards, teachers, etc. to demonstrate that librarians and library staff have a degree of authority and ownership in the educational role we have when working with these groups and users.

Similarly, share the Guidelines and the Framework with your State History Day organizers to enlist their help in crafting good research schedules for History Day events.

There is a need to emphasize the ethical components of the Guidelines and the Framework to students, teachers, general users, and faculty. An understanding of privacy (of records, interviews, etc.) as an ethical issue is often overlooked.

Work with First Year Student programs to incorporate a required meeting with the appropriate librarians to discuss the research process and introduce the assistance Librarians can provide.  For upper division and graduate students use a workshop approach.

For historical societies, museums, state libraries, tag team with the academic institutions liaison librarian to resolve problems. 

Create a Lib guide (ex. http://researchguides.baylor.edu/archives_and_special_collections)to direct patrons/students to as a preparatory assignment.

Discussed issues and concerns with the ACRL Framework document,  esp. the issue "does the Framework define what students/users find or does it address what they need to know?  See second item in this bibliography: http://www.ilthresholdconcepts.com/publications.htmlhttp://www.ilthresholdconcepts.com/publications.html

Lastly it was requested that links to the Guidelines and the Framework be posted to the site Familysearch.org as this is used by many organizations and individuals outside of academia. This would disseminate this valuable information more widely.

Eileen_Bentsen@baylor.edu