This (distanced and strange and smoky) summer has been busy at the UW Tacoma Library. We’ve published regularly and frequently on our blog about all our work, but want to collate all our activities here, in case you missed a post!
Most of all: we remain committed to working with students, faculty and staff, during this very challenging time. Reach out if you have questions or needs we have not addressed! We miss being with you all on campus greatly.
Planning for Onsite Work and Activities
Over the summer, a considerable amount of work has happened behind the scenes to plan for onsite work and activities during the restrictions created by COVID-19. While Library spaces will remain closed to visitors at the start of Fall Quarter, Library staff are preparing for a curbside checkout. In August, Interim Library Director Justin Wadland took up the questions “When Will the Library Open?” on the blog and provided an overview of the phased return to onsite activities.
A Commitment to Anti-Racist Work at the Library
In June 2020, the UW Tacoma Library committed itself to reexamining our own practices by committing time, thoughts, and actions towards anti-racist work at our Library. A number of library workers have met regularly every other week since as a community of practice, readings and discussing shared texts (e.g., Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Menakem: In Conversation; Niche Academy webinar on dismantling institutional racism in libraries). A second group is committed to action and is working to learn about anti-racism audits and consultants. We will continue updating you on our learning and unlearning as we move forward.
Guidance for Faculty and Students for Fall Quarter
To make it easier for faculty and students to navigate through current Library services, we created some guides for faculty and students. Check them out – we hope you like them!
Digital Scholarship and Open Educational Resources
In case you are interested in digital and public scholarship skills in the classroom, check out our blog post on SPLOTs! We have convenient templates for WordPress sites that present a great opportunity to an alternative culminating project in your classes. These templates are part of the Libraries’ three year digital scholarship infrastructure pilot. We are currently in year one of the pilot right now. Our Data and Digital Scholarship Librarian is excited to work with you to see how you might incorporate this tool into your upcoming course!
Eleven faculty members participated in an Open Educational Resources training program in early summer. The program was funded by a campus Strategic Initiative Fund Grant, and helped faculty find, assess, and implement free, openly licensed resources for upcoming UW Tacoma courses.
Congrats to our colleague, Marisa Petrich, for graduating in the third cohort of SPARC’s Open Education Leadership Fellows! Marisa Petrich’s capstone project was to design and test a model for revising and adopting Open Educational Resources for high-enrollment courses on campus.To support and incentivize these efforts, Marisa sought grant funding from the UW Libraries to lead a small team of faculty through a quarter-long OER prototyping project.
IT and Access Services
We are working hard to get all things IT ready for Fall Quarter: laptop checkout, calculator checkout, remote IT support, and remote desktop. Stay tuned for more information when those services are ready to go!
Our Access Services Team has also been busy processing textbook orders for fall. Whenever possible, we are buying ebook copies of textbooks for UWT courses. And we’ve been working hard to get our book drops up and running: they are now open for returns!
Oral History
The UW Tacoma Library was pleased to announce the release of the UW Tacoma Oral History: Founding Stories digital collection. The collection currently comprises 37 oral history interviews with full transcripts and audio recordings. Browse the collection on this new website and explore the multiple pathways to interact with experiences, perspectives, and testimony shared by the faculty, staff, alumni, and civic leaders that contributed to the establishment and evolution of UW Tacoma.
Book Clubs: Real Lit and Staff Reads
As part of Staff Reads, the collaboration between the Center for Student Involvement, the Center for Equity and Inclusion, and the UW Tacoma Library, funded by the Staff Association, we hosted Dra. Aurora Chang for a one hour conversation about the experience of undocumented students in Higher Education. Staff Reads also met weekly via Zoom all summer, discussing Dra. Chang’s book; half a dozen campus units were represented across the participants.
Real Lit, our fiction-based social justice book club that just won UW Tacoma Staff Association’s Team of the Year Award, pivoted to online, and held its first summer session ever. By meeting online in a social setting, we hoped to reduce isolation and enhance campus education through peer-based discussion groups. Join us this Fall Quarter to discuss Brittney Morris’ Slay.
![Photo of three team members of Real Lit, including the logo, and text: 2020 Recipient Team of the Year Award: Real Lit[erature] Book Club](https://sites.uw.edu/uwtacomalibrary/files/2020/09/real-lit-team-of-year.jpg)
The goals of Real Lit have always been to create a greater awareness and discussion of the experiences that are being had by our students, staff, and community members. By interacting with narratives that reflect different experiences, it has provided opportunities to dialogue with peers about shared and disparate experiences.
Faculty Appreciation:
Every week beginning in May, we highlighted staff and faculty publications through our Publish & Flourish blog series. We are very proud of the creative and intellectual output on this campus, and remain committed to purchasing for our collection the books you write! Congratulations everyone!
Every Quarter, the UW Tacoma Library shares the scholarly work of our community with campus through Digital Commons, author profiles, and the Library blog. The list includes all known books, book chapters, edited volumes, and peer-reviewed articles that were first published (including online) between April 1 – June 15, 2020.
Research Help: New Drop-In Hours
We launched drop-in Zoom hours for research help during the summer to find new ways to connect with our UW Tacoma community. It is nice to know that, for a few hours a week, someone will just be there to answer your questions. Work one-on-one with a librarian to get support on developing your research question, finding resources, searching databases, figuring out if your sources are reliable, fine-tuning citations, and more!
Library Celebrations
We celebrated our 2020 Grads through an amazing Zoom celebration, bid farewell to a number of colleagues, and have been meeting regularly for Zoom Teatimes and listening to Library Spotify playlists that we have created as a team (favorite: Teen Angst Playlist!). We find ways to connect remotely when we otherwise would do so in person.