Library Staff & Services
In this episode we explore the robust roles and services provided by the library faculty at Temple.
Show Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: Hello 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, our host Amy Safirstein Sharma
interviewed Adam Shambaugh, Jasmine Clark,
and Josue 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.
Since 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 Clark 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 Africology 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.
One of her projects she's currently working on
is the virtual Blockson, which uses emerging technologies
in the classroom.
Josue 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.
Thank you for listening, and please enjoy.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: All right.
Welcome back to this episode of The T in Teaching podcast.
I'm here with Josue Hurtado, Jasmine Clark,
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?
JASMINE CLARK: Yeah, I'll go ahead.
So first and foremost, the three of us
come from three separate departments.
Josue is in SCRC, or Special Collections Resource Center.
I'm in the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholar Studio
on the third floor.
And Adam is in LRS, which is the--
what does LRS stand for?
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: 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.
JASMINE CLARK: So 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 the front desk people,
the people you meet who help you fix your computer
or who answer your questions when you first come in,
as well as administration.
In 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--
JOSUE HURTADO: [INAUDIBLE] start.
JASMINE CLARK: Yeah.
So the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholar Studio
is on the third floor of Charles Library,
and that is where we deal with emerging technologies.
So we have an AV Studio, makerspace,
which is laser cutting, 3D printing, sewing, embroidery,
vinyl press, single board computing.
So single board computing are things like Raspberry Pis
and Arduinos.
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 GIS,
though we have no library person for that.
But if you 3D modeling, things like that, we're there
to help you with it.
VR, 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 help you figure out how to incorporate that
into your work.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: Learning and research services, as I said,
is sort of a traditional-- evolves
from the traditional reference model of librarianship.
But over the years, that's changed a lot
to meet 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.
So 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 to help with their research, that's changed a lot.
We don't really have that model as much anymore.
Instead, we do a lot of that work through virtual means.
So each member of LRS 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 Josue and Jasmine
as well, even though they're not part of the Learning
and Research Services Department,
they also do classroom instruction.
So 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.
And 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.
We 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.
JOSUE HURTADO: So the SCRC is the library's repository
of unique, rare, fragile, valuable, unusual parts
of the collection.
We like to say it's where the fun
stuff is in the library, no offense to the rest of you.
But yeah, so if you think of the special collections
is archival material, university archives, primary sources,
documents, all kinds of stuff on a variety of topics.
And we collect all those materials
and make them accessible to 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 all over the world
to use the collection, and they use the resources.
They're mostly primary historical sources,
so you get people coming to use the materials
for their own research, like faculty members,
but also you get people writing books,
students doing research papers.
And it's a little bit more of--
a lot of the material, it's historical material,
so it's a little still almost like--
we've got the in-person reference desk still.
We do a lot of virtual stuff for 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 and use special collections materials
and archival materials, so that's
a lot of the instruction that we [INAUDIBLE] classes
that bring in, 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 identify, use, and find these kind of materials.
But it's a really great collection
of stuff like, again, university history,
but also a big collection is called the "Urban Archive,"
so 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 the MOVE bombing or anything like that,
guarantee you they came in to use our collection because we
have the records of that investigation commission,
a few other records related to that.
So that's a big one.
But there's a lot of things like that, really
strong in 20th century Philadelphia history.
So that's what we do.
We do a lot of instruction.
We 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 have various subject
expertise in various topics.
But yeah, that's what the Special Collections Research
Center is, and it's a pretty cool collection.
So we want to definitely encourage people to use it.
Again, we're open to the public, so anyone can really
come in and use it.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: So you're protecting
all of the treasures of the library for us.
JOSUE HURTADO: Yeah, the treasures, but we
really want to make sure that it's not too precious.
We want them to get used.
It's not a museum.
They're not locked behind.
If you want to see some medieval manuscript,
we'll bring it out for you.
So that's one of the cool things about it.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: OK.
I know what I'm doing after this interview.
JOSUE HURTADO: Yeah, exactly, come over.
That's what it's there for.
We want to get used, so yeah.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: Awesome.
OK.
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?
JASMINE CLARK: I 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 probably going to cover the more
standard databases and other things
related to 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 specific hardware,
so like single board computing, VR, and just
a ton of different options of technologies.
And those are incorporated into teaching and 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 floor plan
of an Islamic architectural 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.
And 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 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.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: Yeah, so I'll say a few things.
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.
We try to make things as streamlined as possible,
as far as discovering our resources,
finding articles, et cetera.
And we try to make that 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, not just in our rare books archive,
but even within Charles Library and other locations.
But 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 GIS specialist named Felipe Valdez.
He is phenomenal expert in all things mapping.
And he's situated in learning and research services,
but as you can imagine, his work with mapping tools,
it really spans across the University.
So if you are a geography major, if you're a business person,
an entrepreneurship person, if you're in public health
and you need some kind of geospatial data,
he would be the person 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.
So 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.
JOSUE HURTADO: As far as like the special collections,
we're kind of in a unique place.
We're 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 are always
creating new projects to make some of our resources
just more accessible online.
So 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 it
all together, kind of our resources together,
to 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.
And so it kind of pulls together a variety
of resources to show you what you can
do with these primary sources.
We have oral histories online.
We're in the beginning stages of, actually,
a GIS-related project where we can
kind of put our all of our historical photos on a map.
So we just we had a meeting to start talking about that.
So we kind of create resources to increase the accessibility
to everyone, basically, of 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 maintain
these giant digitized collections.
So there's always going to be some in-person sort of angle
to those materials, and so we're always trying to sort of come
up with descriptive tools and kind of things
that make it accessible accessibility a lot more easier
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 bring.
And we're always doing part of the instruction
is teaching people how to be able to find these materials as
well on their own.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: So on that note,
you've all told us a bit about the different resources that
are available.
So how can students best leverage
the library's resources and the staff
to enhance their academic experience and their success?
JASMINE CLARK: There are more integrated things.
So for example, we have externships in the DSS,
where students can come in and get funding
to actually 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's sometimes
not a lot of clarity on the role of librarians and library staff
in the research process.
We 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,
and academic research in particular is processed.
And when students come to us, they're
coming to us for us to help them, say, hey,
this is how you cite your sources.
This is how you can determine whether something
is 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 in the convention of your discipline.
We're very much there to help with those things.
SCRC is a little more so in terms of subjects of expertise,
in terms of like how would you find things,
how are things categorized, old language and terminology
that you may need to find things.
JOSUE HURTADO: Right, right, yeah.
JASMINE CLARK: I remember I was looking up cookbooks
and had to learn the word "cookery" because that's
the term that you would use.
JOSUE HURTADO: That's what we're for, yeah.
JASMINE CLARK: And so I think the first thing
that students can do is come and talk with us, ask us questions.
I've had students who clearly didn't really know
what I could help them with.
But over the years, as they kind of built a relationship,
they would just keep coming to me
and be like, I have a thing I need to do.
Can do you help me with that?
And I would help them either myself
or direct them to where they could get resources.
And that was the kind of first way
that they learned what we did and did not do
and how we could assist them, at least that's my answer.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: Yeah.
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 GIS specialist,
but there are people who are super
competent with data management, for example, or any other--
if a business question overlaps with art,
we have an art specialist.
If a business question overlaps with engineering,
we have an engineering librarian.
So 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--
and if you ask us a question, it will
be funneled to the right person, the person with the expertise.
The other thing that the library 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
misinformation, those are the kinds of workshops
that we cover.
We recently did a series of workshops
about artificial intelligence and how generative AI is
affecting higher education.
So really, it's not just 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.
JASMINE CLARK: So finding information
and really advanced information is a matter of practice
and expertise.
We offer workshops on other topics, too, as well as
technical things.
But beyond that, I also liaise the Africology
and African-American Studies Department.
And I am the person they come to when they're like,
I need to find prison records from 1913
of this specific person, or I need
to figure out where this French article is located.
If you need a 14th century manuscript
in the French library related to African [INAUDIBLE],,
I'm your girl.
I will find that.
But that's years of experience of being
information brokers of sorts.
And I kind of say oftentimes, if you have a toothache,
you go to a dentist.
If 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.
JOSUE HURTADO: Yeah.
The only thing I would add is, yeah, the number one thing
in all the instruction sessions I
do is just to emphasize, just ask us.
We are here for that.
We like that.
We're your friend.
I mean, this is what we do.
It's never-- I'll get people like,
oh, I'm sorry to bother you, as if it's
a bother to make me do the job that we're here for.
Definitely, yeah, like you're saying, just contact us.
Don't hesitate.
That's to me the number one thing.
If you're ever hitting a wall on any topic,
no matter how big or how small, this is what we're here for.
This is what we like to do.
I love a challenge like that.
You know what I mean?
That's what we do all day.
So yeah, I would definitely just--
if anything, that's the one takeaway I always
want the students to leave with, is
don't hesitate to contact us because this
is what we do all day.
And we like it.
JASMINE CLARK: I had one student come to me every semester
for the last three years to ask me
increasingly complex questions on 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
all he comes to me for.
And it sounds boring, but that's what we're here to help.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: Awesome.
OK.
Staying on that, can you share some success stories
of students or faculty utilizing the library to the fullest?
JASMINE CLARK: Sure.
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 extern
who was researching how misinformation is spread
using a public health model.
So she used 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 is 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
this is the point at which it's first that Facebook,
and things like that.
It's hard without a visualization.
But she ended up going to work for a major private company
because of this research, and taking her background
and academic research and communications outward.
And so 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.
JOSUE HURTADO: Mostly, the things that I always
enjoy every year is kind of seeing the various books that
get published using our materials
and special collections, academic articles,
theses and dissertations.
Every year, we track that.
It's usually about 50 to 70, somewhere in that range,
of just articles, books, movies, documentaries
using our materials.
So it's really always-- that's really rewarding
just to see it get used.
One recent favorite, a favorite one recently
was a Temple student who got her PhD in history and public
history, but it was on-- the dissertation
was on the food trucks in the Temple area
and kind of history of that kind of food on campus, basically.
And it was just a really way more in-depth than you--
tied to all kinds of other larger sort of societal issues
about food and education and sort of Temple history,
and 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, see your dissertation,
see her out there.
And then so that kind of stuff, I think,
just seeing the end product, again,
it shows up-- it could be in like a really you know
serious academic tome, but also just it's
in movies and documentaries.
So it's really cool to just see the materials get used
and see the creative ways that students use them in Tyler,
in history, in a variety of disciplines.
So that's just always--
every year, it's really rewarding
to look back and see what was made this year.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: Yeah.
I think, working with Fox and STHM for me,
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 students who are interested in kind
of real-life business applications,
I love working with the Entrepreneurship Institute.
I really like seeing students come up
with the sort of genesis of a small business idea
and how the library resources can help them bring that
to fruition.
So 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 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.
I think also seeing marketing students have the opportunity
to work with research tools that they'll actually
use in 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.
AMY SAFIRSTEIN SHARMA: OK, 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.
JASMINE CLARK: Sure.
So we have the Public Services Department,
but there's a number of--
and we also have, what would you say, Access Services?
JOSUE HURTADO: Access Services.
JASMINE CLARK: Yeah.
So the people who help you reserve books and put things
on hold, but also there's our 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 local community use our resources.
So they are the kind of--
I mean, if you can imagine, we talk about retail workers,
that public-facing end.
Of course, we deal with people, but they deal with them
on this incoming, rolling basis.
And 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.
JOSUE HURTADO: They're, like, on the front lines.
JASMINE CLARK: Yeah.
JOSUE HURTADO: All day, they keep it running.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: I guess I should say, at the other end of that,
though, there is an entire task force of people
behind the scenes who maybe don't get a lot of recognition.
When I think about our cataloging, our Metadata
Management Department, the people who really oversee
our collection, people who fix the book
bot, the automatic storage and retrieval--
JOSUE HURTADO: Who go down into the robot.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: Yeah, people who repel into the book
bot to fix it.
JOSUE HURTADO: Literally.
ADAM SHAMBAUGH: There are--
I think people are really surprised
when they realize how many staff are the library employees
because it really takes a lot to keep all of these things,
to keep our website running, to keep our 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.
There just a lot of really great people in the libraries
doing all kinds of different tasks
to keep the organization running.
