For a complete list of my instructional work in the publication pipeline, see my CV on the "experience" page
In the process of writing my article "Library Social Media Needs to be Evaluated Ethically" I found myself coming across professional development tools for social media management in libraries that largely focused on trend-spotting and best practices. I found very few resources on how to approach social media (and communications in general) from a pedagogical and philosophical reference. I decided to condense many of my lingering thoughts into a presentation for the Western Pennsylvania West-Virginia Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries, and intend to present this at other conferences and in other platforms. I believe in order to engage in holistic, sustainable, and ethical relationships with our library patrons, we need to consciously participate in social media and consistently evaluate the impact of our participation.
Here is the abstract:
"Communications and engagement has grown as an increasingly important practice in our field over the past decade. But business marketing has unsurprisingly influenced our approach towards social media. We exist for the benefit of the community, and as a result we can use our outreach mechanisms for promotion and dissemination of information. This presentation will provide a reflection of our institutional practices in social media, evaluate the surveillance implications of social media data evaluation, and provide an alternative theory of outreach and communications as well as provide some resources for community building and further reading. No platform experience is needed to attend except an openness to critical evaluation."
Owning our impact: Re-evaluating how we think about (and brand) vendor-owned systems - Workshop
co-presentation at WPWVC-ACRL Summer 2018 Conference with Gesina A. Phillips
For close to two years, I worked with Gesina A. Phillips, Digital Scholarship Librarian, at Duquesne in order to promote and support outreach for the institutional repository. Our poster presented at the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference covered the process work to support a platform acquisition and name change for the IR. We learned how to remain flexible and iterative in our approach to branding and promoting vendor-owned systems and decided to present at the WPWVC-ACRL conference on lessons we learned and philosophies we developed for others to take ownership of their own platforms.
Here is the abstract:
"Libraries make use of a great number of vendor-branded platforms and systems: catalogs and discovery layers, inter-library loan services, institutional repository platforms, and more. However, we often adopt the branding, jargon, and naming conventions of those systems when we present them to our patrons. This talk will discuss the importance of finding opportunities to take ownership of our services, even when they are facilitated by a paid software or platform. The reasons that we will discuss include: to increase visibility and find spaces for consistent branding, to future-proof our practices in the event of a platform transition, and to take ownership of core library services that—while facilitated—are efforts on the behalf of library workers for library patrons. This presentation will come from the perspective of a Digital Scholarship Librarian and Outreach and Communications Librarian, and will hope to prompt ongoing dialogue among participants."
This was a conference poster presented at the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference at the University of Austin March 3 - 8, 2018.
Citation for published article: Phillips, G. A., & Kliewer, C. (2018, March). Flexible Marketing and Outreach: An Institutional Repository Case Study. Poster presented at Electronic Resources & Libraries 2018, Austin, TX. Available from https://dsc.duq.edu/library-scholarship/17/
Abstract: Librarians at Duquesne University did a soft rollout of their institutional repository in 2016, with a full rollout planned for 2017. Elsevier's acquisition of Digital Commons prompted a reevaluation of the marketing plan. The Outreach & Communications Librarian, Digital Scholarship Librarian, and Systems Librarian approached this problem collaboratively to craft (and rebrand) a marketing message
CC BY 4.0
While at the Downtown & Business Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, I noticed the need for instruction and assistance for our patrons on basic technology skills. I proposed running a course for our patrons on Google Drive in the Summer of 2015 and ran 4 sessions while employed at the branch. The course focused heavily on Gmail and Google Drive, with audience interaction to illustrate the sharing capabilities and accessibility of the platforms. I provided laptops and tablets for patrons to follow along. In addition, I offered assistance generating secure and unique passwords at the end of the course. During each session, I provided a course outline and handouts of cheat-sheets created by the Google Help pages for patrons to take home and study from.
Gesina Phillips and I spent the Spring of 2015 conducting research on the use of the terms "usability" and "user experience" in library case studies. We saw a tendency of librarians to use both terms vaguely in their research, and we were curious to understand whether this could affect our profession. Our research culminated in this poster we presented at the Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries Spring Meeting in 2015.
To see the full poster, use this link.
CC BY 4.0
