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Can We Stop Preaching to the Choir and Expand Our Base ? By Innocent Awasom

Can We Stop Preaching to the Choir and Expand Our Base ? By Innocent Awasom. Texas Tech University Libraries. Preaching to the choir or telling our stories within and without?. My story – Zoologist / Environmental Scientist – Mix of Biological and LIS conferences ( before 2004)

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Can We Stop Preaching to the Choir and Expand Our Base ? By Innocent Awasom

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  1. Can We Stop Preaching to the Choir and Expand Our Base?ByInnocent Awasom Texas Tech University Libraries

  2. Preaching to the choir or telling our stories within and without? • My story – Zoologist / Environmental Scientist – Mix of Biological and LIS conferences ( before 2004) • Post 2006 has been exclusively LIS related conferences • February 2014 Publication Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sponsored 30 Science Librarians to its annual conference in Chicago • AAAS preaches to the public - Family open/citizen science day and exhibit • What about the LIS community? Any non library world attendees here?

  3. They saw it coming ! • In 2000 Denise Davis et al, of the ALA Office of Research and Statistics sounded an alarm on the effect of impending retirement of baby boomers to the LIS profession • In 2005 Stephen Tordello corroborated the above at the SLA Annual conference opining that the greatest retirement wave would occur between 2010 and 2020, creating a potential deficit of LIS grads between 2015 and 2020 • In 2006 a Special Issue of Science and Technology Libraries was dedicated to Recruitment and retention of STEM Librarians

  4. Retirement by Decade among Credentialed Librarians

  5. STEM Librarians affected the most? • Stem job adverts always add academic background in the sciences preferred or experience in an academic library equally desirable • STEM Librarian Search committees not having it easy.

  6. Where do we go from here: Fire on the mountain …. • Catch them young – Science majors working as student assistants • Where do we Publish our works ? LIS publications only and why? • Marketing and outreach through our stories, our narratives • Attracting feral librarians – our narratives too may certainly help • STEM librarian advocacy “Librocacy / Libravocacy” • Advocate for competitive remuneration to keep STEM librarians from migrating to greener pastures

  7. Catch them Young ACRL Brochure 2006/07!

  8. Publish or Perish but where ? • In exclusively LIS Publications ? Certainly Not. Let us diversify and publish in all STEM journals to bring more visibility to our works and efforts. • Let our various faculty see what we can do for them in Information Literacy, Collection development, bibliometrics, embedded in research teams etc. • Collaborate and publish with Faculty members in journals specific to their disciplines thus bringing visibility and recognition to STEM Librarians

  9. Marketing and outreach through our stories – our narratives • Narratives are non fictional personal stories about matters relevant to STEM librarianship such as our experiences in helping faculty and grad students draft their data management plans, use a bibliographic software to manage citations or review literature or search for that lost book or elusive article • We tell stories around and through the products and services we offer such as Bonnie Swagger and John Dupuis who blog about science Librarianship (the undergraduate science librarian and confessions of a science librarian respectively) • We provide metrics for scholarly productivity of our institution to the VP for Research

  10. Attracting Feral Librarians into the STEM Librarianship • There are quite a number of people with post graduates science degrees who are post docs and not getting faculty positions out there? • Some institutions are offering Project Management certificates/degrees that they are enrolling into. What about a fellowship or library residency with PM certificate as a perk and who knows how many may end up staying as the tenure process is what it is • Our colleague from Baylor gave us tips on how to work with Feral Librarians.

  11. Library Advocacy – Libravocacy/Librocacy ? • Advocate for competitive remuneration to keep STEM Librarians especially Bioinformaticians, Engineers and Computer scientists from migrating to greener pastures. • Promotion and Tenure ranked journal list – LIS journals only ?

  12. Parting Thoughts on question to the list serve • A science degree doesn’t necessarily make you a good science librarian! • May help to get a job (chemistry as few of them in the market).. Helps to speak their language, nomenclature, structures etc and grabs questions quickly. • Outreach is the key. Embedded, active on curriculum committees, research teams, reinventing/shifting our expertize to scholarly communications, OAI, tenure metrics, data curation, Information literacy etc. (Ben Wagner)

  13. Thank You • Questions ?

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