Library Staff & Services

Audio Transcript

00:08–00:33Jose HurtadoHello and welcome to this episode of The T in Teaching. This episode is focused on the people and services available through the Charles Library at Temple University. In this episode are host Amy Safirstein Sharma interviewed Adam Shambaugh, Jasmine Clarke, and Jose Hurtado. Adam Shambaugh began working at Temple University as a library researcher in 2007. He is now the liaison to the Sports Tourism and Hospitality Management School and the Fox School of Business. 

00:33–01:04Andrew ColettiSince beginning at Temple, he has created 15 different research guides for students and faculty across five different topics, including sports and Recreation management, legal studies and business. Jasmine Clarke started working at Temple University in 2017 as a resident librarian and now works as a digital scholarship librarian. Since 2019, Jasmine serves as the liaison to the School of African Allergy Studies. Jasmine also earned her bachelor's degree from Temple University in 2013 and earned her master's degree from Drexel University in Information and Library Science in 2016. 

01:04–01:30Andrew ColettiOne of her projects she's currently working on is virtual Blocks and which uses emerging technologies in the classroom. Host Wei HURTADO works as a librarian and coordinator of public services and outreach for Temple University's Special Collections and Research Center in the Charles Library. He started working for Temple in 2013 and previously worked as an archivist for various historical collections across the United States, including the University of Stanford and the online database JSTOR. 

01:31–01:31Andrew ColettiThanks for listening. 

01:31–01:33Andrew ColettiAnd please enjoy. 

01:39–01:58Amy Safirstein SharmaAll right. Welcome back to this episode of the Teen Teaching podcast. I'm here with Jose Hurtado, Jasmine Clarke and Adam Shambaugh. So we're going to go ahead and kick it off by just asking a few questions about the library. First off, can you provide an overview of the resources and services the university library offers to students and faculty? 

01:59–02:16Jasmine ClarkYeah, go ahead. So first and foremost, the three of us come from three separate departments post Ways and CRC Special Collections and Special Collections Resource Center. I'm in the Loretta Duckworth Scholar studio on the third floor and Adam is in LRC, which is for what is our. 

02:16–02:24Andrew ColettiCentral learning and research services. So this is historically what a lot of people might think of as the reference department. So that's the area that I'm in. 

02:24–02:40Jasmine ClarkSo I think a lot of people, when they come to the library, they don't necessarily think of us in terms of different types of services. But aside from us, there's also like the front desk people, the people you meet who help you fix your computer or ask you like answer your questions when you first come in as well as like administration. 

02:40–03:04Jasmine ClarkIn terms of services, I think we can each talk about our respective departments in terms of what they offer. I guess I'm talking so. So the Loretta Duckworth Star studio is on the third floor of Charles Library, and that is where we deal with like emerging technologies. So we have an AV studio makerspace, which is like laser cutting, 3D printing, sewing, embroidery, vinyl press, single board computing. 

03:04–03:20Jasmine ClarkSo single board computing are things like Raspberry Pi and Arduino. And we also have a high powered computing studio, a computer lab, and then of course, just different software. So if you work with things like this, though, we have new like library person for that. But if you 3D modeling things like that, we're there to help you with it. 

03:20–03:34Jasmine ClarkVR We have an immersive studio for virtual reality, so that is where you would come if you want to just play with the tools, use them for your research, teach with the tools. We're there to kind of help you figure out how to incorporate that into your learning. 

03:34–03:58Adam ShambaughAnd research services, as I said, is sort of a traditional evolves from the traditional reference model of librarianship. But over the years that's that's changed a lot to meet sort of the technological changes and educational changes at the university. Each person in the Learning and Research Services department has a specific liaison responsibility to an academic department or departments or colleges. 

03:58–04:18Adam ShambaughSo, for example, I'm the liaison to the Fox School of Business and to the Sport Tourism and Hospitality Management School. Our work, if you think about kind of a traditional reference desk where people approach you and ask you, you know, to help with their research, that's that's changed a lot. We don't really have that model as much anymore. 

04:18–04:49Adam ShambaughInstead, we do a lot of that work through virtual means. So each member of Larus and others within the library staff are virtual reference desk online. So through the Ask a Librarian service. Temple affiliates can at any time, night or day, log in and ask whatever research questions they may have. We also do a lot of instruction. So pretty much everyone and I think that would be true of host Wei and Jasmine as well, even though they're not part of the Learning and Research Services department, they also do classroom instruction. 

04:49–05:12Adam ShambaughSo when faculty or other instructors have questions need for their students to understand how to do research or some other aspect of the libraries, they can reach out to us and request an instruction session. The other thing that we do a lot of is consultation. So for a lot of students and faculty who have more in-depth research questions, those individuals can schedule an appointment with us. 

05:12–05:26Adam ShambaughWe all have our virtual office hours posted online, so it's very easy for individuals to contact us, set up an appointment and have a conversation, whether in person or over Zoom, to get the information that they need. 

05:26–05:49Jose HurtadoSo the CRC is like the library's repository of like unique, rare, you know, fragile, valuable, unusual parts of the collection. We like to say it's like, you know, where the fun stuff is in the library, you know, no offense to the rest of us, but yeah, so if you think of like the, you know, special collections is like archival material, university archives, primary sources, documents like all kinds of stuff on a variety of topics. 

05:50–06:07Jose HurtadoAnd we collect all those materials and make them accessible for your support, teaching and learning here at Temple. But we are also open to the public. So the collection is also used by community members. People really come from from all over the world to use the collection and they use the resources, the primary. They're mostly primary historical sources. 

06:07–06:23Jose HurtadoSo you get things like you get people coming to use the materials for their own research, like faculty members. But also we get people writing books, students doing research papers, and it's a little bit more of a lot of the material. It's like historical materials. So it's a little still almost like, you know, we've got the in-person reference there. 

06:23–06:38Jose HurtadoStill. We do a lot of virtual stuff, but a lot of the materials, because it's so rare and unique and fragile, we're kind of balancing access and long term preservation. So a lot of the materials are accessed in person and there's some unique sort of research skills you need to find in use, special collections materials and archival materials. 

06:38–06:56Jose HurtadoSo that's a lot of the instruction that we do, is classes that bring in, you know, who are learning like historical, like research methods. So a history class will come in and they'll do an instruction session with myself or a colleague about how to how to identify, use and find these kind of materials. But it's a really great collection of stuff like, you know, again, university history, but also like big collections called the Urban Archives. 

06:56–07:14Jose HurtadoSo it kind of documents the history of Philadelphia in the 20th century. If you've ever seen any sort of documentary on an example of like the movie bombing or anything like that, I guarantee you they came in to use our collection because we have the records of that investigation commission. The other records related to that. So that's a big one. 

07:14–07:33Jose HurtadoBut there's a lot of things like that, like really strong in 20th century Philadelphia history. So that's what we do. We do a lot of instruction. We do reference, you know, answer reference questions from around the world, from faculty members, from students. We have a really great collection of rare books as well that kind of gets used and a good group of us there who like various subject expertise of various topics. 

07:33–07:42Jose HurtadoBut yeah, that's what the Special Collections Research Center is. And it's yeah, it's a pretty cool collection. So, you know, you want to definitely encourage people to use it. Again, we're open to the public so anyone could really come in and use it. 

07:42–07:44Amy Safirstein SharmaSo you're protecting all of the treasures of the. 

07:45–07:59Jose HurtadoTreasures, but we really want to make sure that it's not too precious. We want them to get used or it's not a museum. They they're not locked behind. If you want to see some medieval manuscript, we'll bring it out for you, you know? So that's what I'm doing about this interview. Yeah, exactly. That's what it's there for. We want to get used, so. 

07:59–08:09Amy Safirstein SharmaYeah. Awesome. Okay, so moving on to the next question. What specific tools and platforms does the library provide to help students and faculty with research and academic projects? 

08:10–08:29Jasmine ClarkI guess I'll jump in. So because I talked about the technology that is in the center, I'll start with that, especially since Adam's part going to cover the more centered like databases over things related to like more traditional reference work. So we provide a number of software once again, that can be 3D modeling, that can be software to work with certain like specific hardware. 

08:29–09:06Jasmine ClarkSo like single board computing, VR and just a ton of different options and technologies. And those are incorporated into teaching your research in a number of ways. So for example, I worked with an art history professor to develop a course where her students would come and they would receive a floorplan of an Islamic architectural like building use SketchUp to recreate some aspect of it in 3D, and then come in again with a VR headset to view what they had built in VR so they would actually get to walk through the thing that they had created and that helped them get a better conceptual understanding of the space. 

09:06–09:31Jasmine ClarkAnd that can be used for marketing as well. If you were to say, I want to figure out how consumers would interact with the space that we're in or how this changes, you know, some kind of spatial component that's like a same thing that can be done. So we kind of help faculty and students think through what they're trying to do, how they can maybe even mix technologies together, and what is sustainable cost wise, as well as just how much they can learn in the time frame they're given. 

09:32–09:55Adam ShambaughYeah, so I'll say a few things are from a public service, research and learning support. We use a variety of tools, software applications that a lot of that exists on the back end. So when students or faculty or anyone else visits the library's website, there are widgets where you can chat with us, you can schedule an appointment with us. 

09:55–10:30Adam ShambaughWe try to make things as streamlined as possible as far as discovering our resources, finding articles, etc. and we try to make that as as easy and straightforward for any user, regardless of their experience level with library research. As far as specific tools and resources, the library subscribes to several hundred electronic databases, thousands of journals. We do still have books, and not just in our rare books archives, but even within Charles Library and other locations. 

10:30–10:58Adam ShambaughBut as you can imagine, the library is as much a virtual space as it is a physical environment, and that's becoming more and more the case. We are constantly learning our staffing is changing to accommodate different needs and emerging technology. We recently hired a GI specialist named Philippe Valdez. He is phenomenal expert in all things mapping and he's situated in learning and research services. 

10:58–11:31Adam ShambaughBut as you can imagine, his work with mapping tools really spans across the university. So if you are a geography major, if you're a business person and entrepreneurship person, if you're in public health and you need some kind of geospatial data, he would be the person to to work with. So I think for a lot of us, the traditional liaison role exists, but it also is broken down because our responsibilities and our areas of expertise are pretty inter-departmental or interdisciplinary. 

11:31–11:45Adam ShambaughSo really the research or the services that we provide really incorporate a lot of these resources and tools. But it really depends heavily on the information needs of the individual. 

11:45–12:02Jose HurtadoAnd as far as like the special collections. And so we're kind of in a unique place where kind of a bit of a library within a library. So a lot of our stuff is still based on physical materials, historical materials. But having said that, we do are always creating new like projects to make some of our resources just more accessible online. 

12:02–12:27Jose HurtadoSo we have a very large collection of digitized historical photographs. We've got digitized maps, documents, a few different specific websites that kind of put together, put it all together, kind of our resources together to kind of show what you can do with special collections materials. For example, there's our civil rights in the Northern City website, which kind of has these different individual units on different topics of civil rights here in Philadelphia over the years. 

12:27–12:44Jose HurtadoAnd so it kind of pulls together a variety of resources to show you what you can do with these primary sources. Oral histories online. We're in the beginning stages of actually a gas related project where you can kind of put out all of our historical photos on on a map. So we're just kind of we had a meeting to start talking about that. 

12:44–13:09Jose HurtadoSo we kind of create resources to make to increase the accessibility to everyone, basically to our special collections materials. Having said that, there's just so much stuff that's probably never going to be digitized, at least not in the immediate future, because it's such a big and expensive infrastructure to to maintain these giant digitized collections. So there's always going to be some in-person sort of angle to those materials. 

13:09–13:28Jose HurtadoAnd so we're always trying to make, you know, sort of come up with descriptive tools and things that make access accessibility a lot more easier for for students, faculty members. Again, we're open to the public. So the world really. So that's kind of what we have and what we're bringing. We're always doing like part of the instruction set people how to be able to find these materials as well on their own. 

13:28–13:40Amy Safirstein SharmaSo so on that note, you've all told us a bit about the different resources that are available. So how can students leverage the library's resources and the staff to enhance their academic experience and their success? 

13:41–14:07Jasmine ClarkThere are more like integrative things. So for example, we have externship so that the access where students can come in and get funding to actually like practice skills for graduate students. But there are different kind of funded programs in the library meant to help faculty and students use our resources. But beyond that, I think there is sometimes not a lot of clarity on the role of librarians and library staff in the research process. 

14:07–14:29Jasmine ClarkWe talk a lot about misinformation. We talk a lot about academia and scholarship. But those words don't necessarily get broken down. It's like there's a set process. There is a way that research is done in academic research, in particular as process. And when students come to us, they're coming to us for us to help them say, like, Hey, this is how you set your sources. 

14:29–14:57Jasmine ClarkThis is how you can determine whether something's like a reliable resource or not. This is how information is organized. And this is how especially when it comes to the subject librarians, this is how you write and style things and the convention of your discipline. We're very much there to help with those things. SIRC is a little more so in terms of subjects expertise, in terms of like how would you find things, how are things categorized or language and terminology that you may need to find things, Right? 

14:57–15:05Jasmine ClarkRight. Yeah. Like I remember I was looking up cookbooks and had to learn the word cookery. That's the term that she would use right? 

15:05–15:06Jose HurtadoThat's what we're for. Yeah. Yeah. 

15:07–15:24Jasmine ClarkAnd, and so I think the first thing that students can do is come and talk with us, ask us questions. I've had students where we didn't really know what I could help them with, but over the years, as we kind of built a relationship, they would just keep coming to me and be like, I have a thing I need to do. 

15:24–15:39Jasmine ClarkCan you help me with that? And I would help them either myself or direct them to where they could get resources. And they that was the kind of first way that they learned, like what we did and did not do. And how we could assist them. At least that's my my answer. 

15:39–16:05Adam ShambaughYeah. I think as the liaison to business and STHM, I always tell students and faculty, if I don't know the answer, if I'm not able to help you, there is probably someone on staff who does know. And so I mentioned our GI specialist. But there are people who are super competent with data management, for example, or, you know, any other, you know, if if a business question overlaps with art, we have an art specialist. 

16:05–16:33Adam ShambaughIf a business question overlaps with engineering, we have an engineering librarian. So there's there's there's it's really easier than ever to get support and assistance from the libraries because there are so many ways to get in touch with us via our website. I think it's really in if you ask us a question, it will be funneled to the the right person, the person with the expertise. 

16:33–17:03Adam ShambaughThe other thing that the libraries has been doing for the last few years are Drop-In workshops, and those are open to anyone they're easy to register for and they are online, I think almost exclusively online. So what that means, if you need to learn about how to cite sources, how to do research, how to deal with misinformation, and to identify that and avoid and avoid misinformation, those are the kinds of workshops that we cover. 

17:03–17:27Adam ShambaughWe recently did a series of workshops about artificial intelligence and how generative AI is affecting higher education. So really, it's not just, you know, sort of traditional old school library stuff. There's a lot of information available and support for students and faculty and other researchers who are engaged in myriad different types of scholarship. 

17:28–17:51Jasmine ClarkSo finding information, I mean, like really advanced information is a matter of practice and expertise. We also workshop some other topics too, as well as technical things. But beyond that, I also liaise after college at African-American Studies Department and I am the person they come to and they're like, I need to find prison records from 1913 of the specific person, or I need to figure out where this French article is. 

17:51–18:08Jasmine ClarkOkay, If you need a 14th century or like manuscript in the French middle in the French library related to African culture, I'm mean girl I find that it guess like years of experience of like being information brokers of sorts and I kind of like to say oftentimes I'm like, if you have a toothache, you go to a dentist. 

18:08–18:16Jasmine ClarkIf you're sick, you go to a doctor. If you need advanced information, like just figuring out where to even orient yourself, like libraries, that's what we're trained to do. 

18:17–18:34Jose HurtadoYeah, the only thing I would add is like, yeah, like the number one thing in all the instruction sessions I do is just to emphasize, like, just ask us like the we are here for that. We like that where you're framing, this is what we do. It's never, you know, I'll get people like, Oh, I'm sorry to bother you as if it's a bother to like, make me do the job that we're here for, you know? 

18:34–18:51Jose HurtadoDefinitely. Yeah. Like you say, just contact us. Don't hesitate. That's. I mean, like, the number one thing. If you're ever hitting a wall on any topic, no matter how big or how small, I mean, this is what we're here for. This is what we like to do. I mean, I love a challenge like that. You know? I mean, we that's what we do all day. 

18:51–19:03Jose HurtadoSo, yeah, I would definitely just, you know, if anything, that's the one takeaway I want. I always want the students to leave with is like, don't hesitate to contact us because, you know, this is what we this is what we do all day. We like it. 

19:04–19:25Jasmine ClarkThat one student come to me every semester for the last three years to ask me increasingly complex questions, how to cite random things. It was like books. And then he was like, How do I cite a Supreme Court case? And then it was like, How do I cite this YouTube video every year? It's just a different And that's like all he comes to me for, like, you know, and it sounds boring, but that's what we're here to help. 

19:25–19:32Amy Safirstein SharmaAwesome. Okay, okay, sing on that. Can you share some success stories of students or faculty utilizing the library to the fullest? 

19:32–20:00Jasmine ClarkSure. So I can talk about we have a number of students who have not necessarily gone on to continue working in higher ed, but who have transitioned in a way to take their academic knowledge into the private sector, specifically because of. So I'll use an example of a communications graduate expert who was researching how misinformation spread using a public health model. 

20:00–20:28Jasmine ClarkSo she's network analysis, which is where you map out vectors of information, relationships, bridges, things like that. So all of these people gather here. That's the common information. And what she did, she mapped out where information was starting, at what point it spread to different channels and networks. So let's say it was Twitter, and then she would have lines showing like, this is the point at which first that Facebook and things like that. 

20:29–20:56Jasmine ClarkIt's hard without a visualization. But she ended up going to work for like a major private company because of this research and taking her like background and academic research and communications outward. And so we we say all the time that learning these kind of techniques and tools and methods take you beyond allow you to expand the reach of your research and academic background mostly. 

20:56–21:17Jose HurtadoI mean, the things that I always enjoy every year is kind of seeing the various, like books that get published using our materials and special collections, academic articles, theses and dissertations every year. You know, we track that, you know, it's usually about 50 to 70, somewhere in that range of like just articles, books, movies, documentaries using our material. 

21:17–21:37Jose HurtadoSo it's really always that's like really rewarding just to see it get used. One recent favorite, like a favorite one recently was as Temple student who got her Ph.D. in history in like public public history. But it was on the dissertation was on like the food trucks and like the temple area and like the history of like that kind of, you know, food on campus, basically. 

21:38–22:02Jose HurtadoIt's just like, it's really like way more in-depth than you. It all tied to all kinds of other larger sort of societal issues about food and and and education and sort of temple history. It was a really fascinating dissertation, but she did a lot of research here in the special collections, and it was really like rewarding to see that, you know, you get her dissertation so you're out there and then so that kind of stuff. 

22:02–22:23Jose HurtadoI think just seeing like the end product again, it shows that we could be in that can really, you know, serious academic tone, but also just it's in movies and documentaries. So it's really cool to just see the materials get used and see how the creative ways that students use them in Tyler, in history, in a variety of disciplines. 

22:23–22:29Jose HurtadoSo that's just always like every year. It's really rewarding to kind of look back and see what was made this year. Yeah. 

22:30–23:16Adam ShambaughYeah. I think, you know, working with Fox and, and for me, I, it is important to see students succeed academically, but I'm also concerned about how the information that I provide to them can help them beyond graduation. And so working with marketing majors or entrepreneurship students or other other students who are interested in kind of real life business applications, I love working with the Entrepreneurship Institute, but I really like seeing students come up with, you know, the sort of genesis of a small business idea and how the library resources can help them bring that to fruition. 

23:17–23:42Adam ShambaughSo the different library tools that are available to do that, I've seen so many temple students over the years that I've worked here who start off with, you know, a very kind of general idea for a business. And I'm able to provide them with market research and competitive analysis and things like that that can help them move forward with their business idea. 

23:42–24:14Adam ShambaughI think also seeing marketing students have the opportunity to work with research tools that they'll actually use in the industry when they graduate, those kinds of things. It's hard to really quantify that, but knowing that the kinds of things that students learn from the libraries, it's not merely to succeed on the next assignment, but it's actually to prepare them for all different kinds of information challenges that they might encounter later on in life, in their careers. 

24:15–25:11Amy Safirstein SharmaOkay, great. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you for sharing your stories. Before we end, there's one library department that's not being represented here. So if one or more of you could just go ahead and give us a little bit of information on them. Give us a little bit of representation on what they're about, That'd be great. 

25:12–25:20Jasmine ClarkSure. So we have the public services department, but there's a number of we also have like you say. 

25:20–25:21Jose HurtadoAccess services. 

25:21–25:54Jasmine ClarkYeah. So the people help you reserve books and put things on hold. But also there's the public facing public facing colleagues who answer questions from the public. Help you find where you're going in the building, as well as manage the public computer space and help people from the community, the local community use our resources. So they are the kind of I mean, if you can imagine, like we talk about retail workers, but like public facing and of course we deal with people, but they deal with them and it's like incoming rolling basis. 

25:54–26:07Jasmine ClarkThey end there. They kind of keep us organized, help direct people to us. Sometimes we get students who don't know who their librarian is and they're like, where can I find them? And they'll instantly call us up and let us know to come down and help you. 

26:07–26:10Jose HurtadoOr like on the front lines. Yeah, all day they keep it running. 

26:10–26:35Adam ShambaughI guess I should say. At the other end of that, there is an entire, you know, task force of, of people behind the scenes who maybe don't get a lot of recognition. You know, when I think about our cataloging, our metadata management department, the people who really oversee our collection and people who fix the but the book bot the the automatic storage and retrieval down into the robot. 

26:35–27:05Adam ShambaughYeah. The people who repel into the book by proxy there are you know it is I think people are really surprised when they realize how many staff are the library employees because it it really takes a lot to keep all of these things to keep our website running, to keep our catalog items in our catalog discoverable, to make sure that when you request a book from the book bot, it shows up and is available to you. 

27:06–27:14Adam ShambaughThere just a lot of really great people in the libraries doing all kinds of different tasks to keep the organization running.