All Librarians in Training courses

This is a workshop that Ruth Walker has run with Master’s students in Cambridge this year, and which has been recommended by a member of library staff attending it. By going to this workshop, staff will understand Academic Integrity and how it impacts students, and it will inform good practice for teaching opportunities.

The role of liaison librarian is common in UK academic libraries and is changing with shifts in digital technologies and universities’ research agendas. What are the key practices of academic liaison librarianship? Do we embody them at Cambridge? What challenges do we face and how can we improve and overcome them?

In this class, we will explore the nature of academic liaison librarianship through discussion and small-group activities. By the end of the class, you will have an understanding of the practices associated with being a liaison and key areas or services you would like to improve.

The following short articles give different perspectives on academic liaison librarianship. Please read them before the class so that we have a base of shared knowledge to build our discussion on.

Crawford, A. (2009). Academic liaison librarians-where do we stand? SCONUL Focus (45).

Parsons, A. (2010). Academic liaison librarianship: Curatorial pedagogy or pedagogical curation?

Woods, L., & Dunn P. (2016). Relationship management as a tool for engaging with the academic community. SCONUL Focus (67).

Everyone wants their teaching to be as engaging and successful as possible, right? But how often have we found ourselves talking to a group of students from behind a podium and thinking “there must be a better way to get this group more involved?” but aren’t sure where to start? Active learning is an approach that makes the traditional, passive approach to teaching more active and this session will explore how to harness good active teaching techniques in any educational scenario, whether you’re doing a 1-2-1 with a student or teaching a big group of people in one go. The session will be built around active learning principles so be prepared to get involved and get engaged in your own learning and teaching practices.

Please bring an internet-enabled device (phone, tablet, laptop etc.) to help with engaging in some of the activities.

• Backward design, which uses learning outcomes to determine assessment approaches and course content, is an approach to curriculum design that was developed by Wiggins and McTighe (2008) and plays a vital role within the newly developed ACRL Framework.
• This hands on workshop will provide participants with an overview of backward design and its pedagogical underpinnings as well as the opportunity to create a backward-designed lesson-plan that can be used as a basis for running a session in their workplace. Focusing on the development of learning outcomes, assessment methods and class content, this workshop is suitable for people looking to get started with teaching as well as for those who are looking to consolidate and strengthen their teaching practices.

• Alison Hicks is a lecturer in Library and Information Science at UCL. Her research and professional interests lie in the areas of information literacy and information practices as well as in various aspects of academic librarianship.

A growing number of images from cultural heritage institutions around the world are available for use and re-use by scholars through IIIF (the International Image Interoperability Framework http://iiif.io). This framework and community facilitate comparison of materials across repositories through a common protocol. It also allows for the use of a number of lightweight tools that can be hosted at your institution, or on your laptop, for viewing, annotation, transcription, and collection-building.

No previous experience with IIIF is required. The workshop will be led by Dr Anne McLaughlin, Sub-Librarian of The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, and Andy Corrigan, Cambridge Digital Library Co-ordinator.

Please note: This course will be cancelled if booking numbers are insufficient.

You’ve seen the gorgeous photos of hand-drawn planners on Instagram and thought, “I would never have time to make my diary look like that.” Or you’ve bought pre-made planners before only to abandon them after a week, but still prefer to have a paper-and-pen backup to your online calendars. Or maybe you’re just curious about what a bullet journal is. Whatever the case, Emma and Kirsten have you covered! With six years of bullet journal experience between them, they’ll talk you through the basics of bullet journaling, show you some of the ways you can customise yours and get you started on planning your life with paper and pen. Participants should bring their favourite pens as well as their appointments and to-do lists for the day of the session and the next day. If you have a notebook you were already going to use as a planner, feel free to bring it. Otherwise, scrap paper will be provided for practice.

In 1906, Melvil Dewey wrote that ‘what we call books have no exclusive rights in a library. The name “library” has lost its etymologic meaning and means not a collection of books, but the central agency for disseminating information, innocent recreation or, best of all, inspiration among the people.’

Most libraries contain mostly books. But most libraries have other things in them too. Some of these objects – films, musical recordings, maps, sheet music – have established cataloguing standards, developed through communities of practice. Others are more problematic. What should we do with our flashcards, skeletons, jigsaws, bookstands, postage stamps, DVD players, and the other odds-and-ends we collate, curate and circulate?

Should these things be catalogued? Perhaps. Can they be catalogued? Certainly. This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of cataloguing ‘realia.’ Examples will be provided for group cataloguing activities, but feel free to bring along your own unusual library materials too.

• A short interactive session that will focus on hints and tips to help people who Chair meetings do so more effectively.

Recording your professional development activities is a vital part of the Chartership process. This session will demonstrate how to compile a CPD log on the VLE and how this can be transferred to a portfolio for assessment or revalidation. There will then be plenty of time to put this into practice and record your development in the session. You are also more than welcome to just use the session for as a quiet time to get some work done on whichever aspect of your Chartership portfolio you choose.

Chartership portfolios rely on candidates displaying a range of evidence of their development but it can be hard to know where to start. What counts as evidence? How many pieces can I include? How do I choose what to include in my submission? This session will answer these questions and offer attendees tips, tricks and the chance to work on compiling their evidence. You are also more than welcome to just use the session for as a quiet time to get some work done on whichever aspect of your Chartership portfolio you choose.