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Ben Hubert
LIS 799
4/22/15
Adopt and Adapt: Forming an Academic Librarian Identity

As part of my practicum, this essay serves as a critical self-reflection of my actions and

pervious experiences to what I have learned from my Library and Information Science (LIS) courses.
What I will be reflecting on are the empirical experiences of when I was conducting reference
service at the reference desk, and when I conducted user instruction session experiences to the
theories from my applicable LIS courses. While my third learning objective was dealing with
archival, an agreed term between the site supervisor and myself during the interview, it will not be
discussed in this reflective essay due to the lack of theoretical knowledge from never having taken
an archiving class to date.
Starting with the empirical experiences in conducting reference service, it was both a
privilege and a duty. Reference service was the most relatable to my previous line of work in retail,
from customer service and relationship-building to, in a way, reference interviewing and survey
design. From a customer service perspective, I typically greeted out of previous work habit to
students and staff within ten feet of the reference desk, or publically labeled as the research desk
at my practicum site. This openness to be approached serves as a means to encourage interaction
with students who may have library anxiety to feel more welcomed and to come over to me if they
have a request, an inquiry, or even a concern. It is the duty in working at the reference desk to
fulfill students expectations in answering questions, even if it is more complex and requires
teaching the student how to answer the inquiry (Fry, 2009, p.33). One example comes to mind

early in my reference shift experiences when I substituted in for the archivist who was scheduled
to work at the desk but was on medical leave for the day.
A student came up to the Humanities librarian and requested to have him check on all
seventeen monograph titles to see if they were in the stacks. The librarian dealt with the question
and afterwards asked me how I would have handled that situation. My initial response coincided
with how the librarian handled the student, by renegotiating the request and offer instead to
teach the student how to do it with a couple of examples. Thinking more critically now, that
renegotiation served both as a means to encourage information literacy attainment and continue
developing the students sense of lifelong learning, while establishing relationship-building with
the student, and not necessarily to free up time to help other students as I once thought out of
lack of reflection.
As I continued to work at the reference desk, I thought about the relationship-building
experiences myself or even my colleagues would be providing to students. Steven Bell suggests
making the service be distinguishable, deliver the service in a memorable way, and garner their
loyalty as the ideal reference experience (2011, p. 325). The times I greeted and walked a student
to the stacks to find a particular title, I typically ask how their day went and mix in the
conversation while demonstrating how I would find the monograph title to deliver the service in a
memorable way. Depending on the context of the conversation, I would offer any relating and
meaningful services, like upcoming workshops, talk about their life for a few minutes, and even
reassure a student how I use to be like them and could not find a monograph title for the life of
me. In doing these things, I happen to listen, observe, and give empathy to students as I learn
more about the community and not be tied down to the desk all the time (Bell, 2011, p. 326-327).

In essence, these are the general approaches to customer service and relationship-building I have
learned to do in retail but now I understand why these are the way things should be from my LIS
courses.
What sets my pervious line of work apart from what I was trained to do in my LIS courses
is the Reference Interview. Granted, I have previous work experience in directing, instructing,
advising in a non-legal and non-medical manner, and refer much like reference librarians, but the
way I went about more complex questions in my practicum enabled me to answer a customers
question more easily (Whisner, 2002, p. 162). In the past, I use to use mostly close-ended
questions, to quickly determine the customers question and respond accordingly in a large and
fast-paced public sphere. In an academic setting, the amount of foot traffic is not as large, but the
question is not always the real question, and so the academic setting emphasizes the use of openended questions, to determine and perhaps renegotiate the terms of seeking help and providing
the help. For example, a student was referred to me on needing help with Endnote.
Bringing the student to a nearby computer work station, as I was not scheduled at the
reference desk at the time of this reference interview, I introduced myself and asked how I could
help, as the first open-ended, low-divergent level question. What is meant by a low-divergent
question is that I used Cunninghams method and Blooms Taxonomy cognitive level of
Comprehension in an open-ended question to understand the students perspective of the referral
question on Endnote. The student explains that she needed help with using and registering for
Endnote to collect, organize, and prepare citations to finish her paper. Repeating the request, I
decided to renegotiate the request, as I asked a High Convergent question, or closed-ended
Comprehension question, on if the student had time to having a one day delay when registering

for the Web of Science/Endnote account. She expressed preference for not wanting to wait, which
then I offered to teach Zotero and compare it to Endnote as a relating tutorial experience. The
student was verbally pleased with how I conducted the reference interview and taught the
mechanics and information literacy skills in using Zotero, and I was within RUSA guidelines in using
a mixture of open and closed questions to deliver fast and reputable service (Ward, 2011, p. 196170).
While conducting reference interviews helps achieve customer service and relationshipbuilding, these interactions do not gauge the overall quality of service of the library. The University
Library recently finished most of its renovations, creating larger living-room type spaces and more
furniture while moving the computer lab out of the library space and into a neighboring one.
Offering to develop a survey to gauge the perception of the library and its services since the
renovation, particularly the reference desk and the research guides, my practicum site supervisor
started the collaboration process that would later be an interesting learning experience. Back in
Weeks 1 and 2 I designed the questions with the intent of having a mixture of awareness and
satisfaction questions to promote more in-depth answers and assessing the percept quality of
service provided, and subconsciously aligned the questions to LibQual (King Jr., 2005, p. 104). The
collaboration process was put on hiatus until a few challenges presented to my site supervisor was
cleared.
When the challenges were cleared, I resumed in following-up the survey process and got
the survey out of hiatus with my site supervisor sending the draft to the other librarians, reference
staff, and the Library Dean for input. No input beyond suggesting to get rid of the marketing
question of where the participant found the survey was provided by the librarians and staff. The

email sparked further collaboration with the Library Dean, Marketing and Communications officer,
the Institutional Research & Effectiveness Director, and myself to further define the questions and
discussed disseminating approaches. While agreeing to conduct the dissemination process at each
of the desks and an online web format, internal communication postponed delivery. While King Jr.
had nothing to say about a suggested workflow procedure, but rather how to deliver and retrieve
the survey results from a marketing stand-point, there was miscommunication between the
Marketing and Communications officer, my site supervisor in his Head of Reference role, and
myself (2005). The issue was that neither two were initially communicating with each other, as I
followed the Marketing and Communications officers steps for rolling the survey out.
Since the library service survey was my last task in the practicum, I implied to the Library
Dean for needing some support to resolve this matter during a status update, as it was my
understanding to lead the survey discussion but not lead the library staff and other librarians. My
pervious leadership preference is situational leadership, and I felt I needed to fall back in a
supportive delegating role from a lead coaching role at this point. If I had to describe the basic
culture of the library that lead to this miscommunication, it would be a sense of a networked, or a
sense of people know each other all over and higher loyalties, thats somewhat outgrowing its
fragmented culture. I basis this on empirical experiences with interacting with my practicum site
supervisor and the User Instruction librarian in some email communications and a few friendly
conversations attempted, but still has a lingering aspect of their worrying more about their
external status amongst their peers in other associations than their internal (Montgomery & Cook,
2005, p. 173, 176-177).

The Dean had resolved the logistics for getting the staff involved, from my initial
suggestions encouraged by the Communications officer, and by the end of the first week of
planned two weeks the library had collected 28 surveys. Tabulating the results, the preliminary
comments seem to typically match the comments from the LibQual survey done three years ago,
meaning the library is doing good but can still improve. It was an interesting experience in how
much time, effort, and collaboration is needed to send the survey out.
Reflecting on my empirical experience in reference services, it was again a privilege and a
duty to uphold, despite making a few mistakes that made me more aware of the role I had played.
As I begin now to reflect on my empirical experiences in conducting user instruction, it was also an
enjoyable privilege and a duty to uphold in planning a couple of workshops and how my teaching
pedagogy influenced those sessions. In collaboratively planning Endnote and Zotero workshops,
my practicum site supervisor recommended me to the User Instruction librarian for learning the
librarys needs assessment. Without needs assessment, I could not effectively recognize and tailor
students needs while developing and designing lesson plan objectives and handouts, and
delivering the instructional content (Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2001, p. 132). The User Instruction
librarian informed me that a lot of the workshops are geared towards Microsoft Office programs
as many students have subpar computer literacy skills. During the course of the meeting, we
agreed that I would provide computer and information literacy skill training with Endnote and
Zotero citation management systems for striving information fluent students and faculty.
Sitting down and constructing my lesson plans with the needs assessment in mind, I took
the approach from the students perspective in how they would be able to learn the content. From
there I used Blooms Taxonomy verbs to demonstrate more overt and less convert student

behaviors (Grassian & Kaplowitz, 2001, p. 141). Having created the workshops in theory, I went
back to the User Instruction librarian about marketing the workshop. Due to my retail and indie
video game developer experiences when it came to marketing, I inquired about service
transactional promotion and eblast to brochures and the TV wall announcement section. The
librarian was bogged down on assessments but then decided to follow-through with my brochure
suggestion, and eblast and the TV wall were being used. While I was a bit too enthusiastic, I always
viewed workshops as an independent, startup platform, a mockup to a full-fledge program in
deciding if that is the future the library will take to supporting the Library and Institution missions
(Mathews, 2012, p.4).
Having planned and marketed the workshops, I did get a couple of students and staff from
the reference and circulation desks. In leading the two workshops, I notice having Constructivist
tendencies and conditional Cognitive and Behavioral tendencies, as well. When instructing, my
bias favors the Constructionists value of the individual and the social context influences the
learning outcome, yet also the motivational and emotional factors in knowledge creation from
Cognitivism, and positive reinforcement from Behaviorism (A Crash Course, 2011, p.38-39). My
teaching pedagogy is not one to be restricted to only one school of thought, as I follow an old
Japanese phrase, adopt and adapt, meaning I believe I can adopt a foreign and seemingly
unrelated concept and apply, or adapt, it to an existing concept to achieve knowledge. This can be
most seen in my library tutorial videos, where I give a course context for motivation to stay
actively learning and active learning checkpoints as a follow-along that plays on similar themes of
hands-on demonstrations.

In both workshops, I do adhere to the direct instructional approach of opening the session
with stating the student-version learning objectives, review any materials as needed, present the
new materials, conduct learning and assessment checks as needed, and provide a review (A
Correction Course, 2011, p.52-53). Recalling the firm handshake from one student as he
voluntarily handed me the session evaluation form, the gratitude simile from the second student,
and the general feedback from the library staff, these are the moments I love to see when
teaching instruction sessions.
To demonstrate the needs of Higher Education in performing active learning during the
sessions I teach, I did a step-by-step, hands-on demonstration during the Zotero workshop while a
more traditional demonstration with Endnote. It was much easier to do a hands-on, my bias
preference, with Zotero as the software lacks the one day delay of political license registration
red-tape that Endnote has. With having only two participants for the Zotero workshop, I spent
more time on individual one-on-one with each participant for increased relevancy and tailoring to
their specific needs. During the Endnote workshop, I followed through with the more overview of
the topic, demonstration, waited five seconds here and there for the two students to finish jotting
down side notes I made, and I asked for volunteers giving a verbal response during the
demonstration rather than have a volunteer come up to demonstrate what was covered.
Part of Amy Harris tendency to, if necessary, just call on them to come up to
demonstrate, I disagree with because when limited to a traditional teaching format, even an
overview without a clear and relating course context can put people into a passive learning state
(2010, p. 14). Depending on the motivational and emotional states of each student, even a clear
and relating context may still yield a passive learning state. Taking a hypothetical scenario where

the students are self-motivated and emotionally stable with no clear and relating course context,
switching mental gears at active competency checkpoints, like calling for volunteers to physically
walk up to demonstrate without a clear reward or respect structure, takes time that from my
experiences as a student that creates a lot of eerie silences and uses up valuable class time. It is
my pedagogic preference to call upon for a verbal answer that requires lesser mental strain while
students switch mental gears from passive to active learning when hands-on demonstrations are
not a viable option.
Further Educational Psychology discussions for another paper, I do agree with Harris that
entertainment has its positive reinforcement uses in teaching information literacy, whether its for
the millennial generation or not (2010, p. 14). Having said that, no matter the variety of
entertaining tools to teach information literacy, if an instruction librarian does not at the very least
relate the topic to the courses expectations, guided learning may become self-discovery learning
and can be anybodys guess the effectiveness of the instruction session then. It becomes
important to advocate for, as needed, embedded librarianship to have more time in the classroom
throughout each consecutive semester of each program career pathway to foster curriculum
assignments that meet information fluency thresholds, per department and business expectations.
During the course of my practicum it was a privilege and a duty to be allowed to conduct
reference and instructional services that provided an educational purpose. In developing and
adapting my professional identity as an academic librarian, I am grateful for being able to put my
skills from other fields to good use, and the LIS courses to redefine how I use those previous skill
sets. With the practicum finished, there are more tangent thoughts to further reflect upon for

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another time, and in my own way, that will continue to define my professional identity and
contribute in the academic scene.

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Reference List
Bell, S. (2011). They Need to Know Us and We Need to Know Them: Preparing Todays
Students for Tomorrows Reference. The Reference Librarian, 52(4), 320328.
Booth, C. (2011). A Crash Course in Learning Theory. Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning:
Instructional Literacy for Library Educators. Chicago: American Library
Association, 35-47.
Booth, C. (2011). A Correction Course in Instructional Theory. Reflective Teaching, Effective
Learning: Instructional Literacy for Library Educators. Chicago: American
Library Association, 49-61.
Fry, A. (2009). Lessons of Good Customer Service. Library Journal, 134(14), 33-34.
Grassian, E. S., & Kaplowitz, J. R. (2001). ILI Program Planning. Information Literacy Instruction:
Theory and Practice (pp. 131-148). New York: Neal Schuman.
Harris, A. (2010). Active learning for the Millennial Generation. Georgia Library Quarterly, 47(4),
13-14.
King Jr, D. B. (2005). User surveys: Libraries ask, hey, how am I doing. Law Library Journal, 97, 103112.
Mathews, B. (2012). Think like a startup: A white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism.
Montgomery, J. G., & Cook, E. I. (2005). Examining Your Organizational Culture. Conflict
Management for Libraries: Strategies for a Positive, Productive Workplace.
Chicago: American Library Association, 172-179.
Wang, L. (2007). Sociocultural learning theories and information literacy teaching activities in
higher education. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47(2), 149158.

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Ward, D. (2011). Expanding the reference vocabulary: A methodology for applying Blooms
taxonomy to increase instruction in the reference interview. Reference Services Review,
39(1), 167180.
Whisner, M. (2002). Teaching the art of the reference interview. Law Library Journal, 94, 161-166.