 All right, next up on our lightning round at Big Doc Nusmal Libraries is Raymond Bunn and Jennifer Shimada. They're going to talk about working as solo librarians in their libraries. So go ahead and take it away, guys. Thank you. Well, thank you all for joining. I'm really, we're really delighted to be here and to be able to speak from our respective regions. So I'm Ray Punn. I'm at the Alder Graduate School of Education as the Instruction and Research Librarian, helping collection acquisitions and research services as the only librarian. And I'm with Jennifer. Hi. I'm Jennifer Shimada. I'm at the Relay Graduate School of Education, also a solo librarian, so doing some of everything. And it's really interesting because we're also active on Twitter, and you're welcome to message us there and keep in touch. We're from different coasts. I'm from the West Coast in Redwood City, and Jennifer is in New York, and I'm actually from New York, and Jennifer is actually from California. Is that right, Jennifer? Yep. So he's watching. So it's funny because our work is actually quite aligned. And I started my position in October of 2018 as a new librarian, the first librarian at Alder Graduate School of Education, which I'll briefly mention more about. And Jennifer has been a role a little bit longer, but her school at Relay Graduate School of Education is a little bit further than Alder. So it's sort of like a future vision tunnel for us at Alder. And she'll tell you more about her role and the university and what they're doing. So we wanted to start off with some of these reflection questions. We have the question of startup, and we want folks to think about the word startup, and whether it's good or not so good, and does it blend well with academic or library cultures in general? So you sort of think about that. Why or why not in your minds? Because it's sort of like something that I think people might have misconceptions or misunderstanding. And for myself, working at Redwood City in Alder Graduate School of Education, it's basically known as Silicon Valley, where we are helping about 110 students more or less, and we're growing further. And it's a graduate school of education, basically. So we are focused on helping graduate students, all 100 plus graduate students to be public school teachers in K-12 environments. And then they're actually working full time, meaning they get placed in different districts. And at the same time, for us, my role at the library, I started in October of 2018. We had no website. We only had an overdrive database, which many of you from the public libraries might be familiar. And it was just very interesting to see how it progressed now, where now there is a website that I had been working on, and it's set up in a way that folks can use it. And also, we have a Skelth membership, which stands for Statewide California Library Consortium. So when you're doing startup, it's very important to partner with different groups. And this is one really important group to help us focus on database collection. And we also now have a collection development policy that I've been working with different faculty, and then the authentication process. So for those who are in tech services, you might be wondering, or you might know already like how the system is set up. But for many of us who have been working in outreach and public service, it's really brand new and exciting because you're figuring out how do students connect to the resources you have. And it's not really just a sign-in. There's a lot of technical processes and workflows, and then also gathering new databases. So it's kind of exciting. This is the context I wanted to mention in terms of startup, right? You have these different kinds of roles, and you're really moving in different directions, but you're moving in a direction that makes sense to the university's or the institution's mission. So all the graduate school of education is nonprofit, and it is based on this philosophy of encouraging social change with teachers, students who become teachers in the public school environment. And so we really want to encourage that kind of thinking where in my work, I have to support students with research, but also setting up the library itself. So there's sort of like two different components there. And so what's next for Alder? It's really interesting. We have textbooks we're working on, test prep resources like I heard in the other presentation. It's so great because you have these opportunities to do it in person. But for the work I do, it's all distance, I should say. I don't actually meet the students. We don't actually even have a quote unquote school and classrooms and stuff like that, or a campus. It's actually all remote work. They do the work on modules, on Canvas, and we meet on Zoom, which is another online meeting platform. And so it's really interesting. I don't actually get to meet the faculty or the students, but then we all just find a way to connect any time when they need help. And then it also comes down to developing more writing help. In addition to just research, there's also writing. You know, that research and writing, they go hand in hand. And really thinking about tutorials that really work with the faculty. So at a startup context in this environment, it's really nice to work closely with faculty to develop these kinds of collaborations that support their curriculum and utilize the resources that we have. But also if it doesn't work out, we can switch because we don't have to stay with this one path. That's sort of how a startup is. You're kind of exploring your experiment and you're taking risks, but you're also taking advantage and optimizing what you have with folks with what they think might be helpful and then you can try it as we're growing and going further. And it's only been our second or third year or so, and then I joined October. So it's still relatively new. And then also we're thinking about promotions, like e-newsletters, but also not being really careful and not to like span them, the students, because they get a lot of emails already, but just ensuring that they have opportunities to read the updates that we have provided in the library. And actually this one, this last tip came from Jennifer and she's been a really great coach and mentor in the process, being sort of like in New York and then having that experience before I got to Alder. So that's how we were able to put this presentation together. And with that, I'll pass it to Jennifer. Thanks, Ray. So like I mentioned, really graduate school of education is very similar to Alder, just a little bit farther along in our development. So we also work in teacher and school leader training and preparation. Our library was created in 2011, which is when Relay became an independent grad school and I started working with Relay's library around 2013. So by this time, the library had most of the basics that Ray has been working on in terms of a website and databases and authentication. But you can see on the screen that we have grown rapidly since 2013. We had two campuses when I started. We are at 18 campuses now, about 4,700 students. And yes, I am the solo librarian for all of these campuses, working with most of them from a distance at New York. Can I get the next slide? Thank you. So while I didn't quite have to start from scratch, it's definitely still sort of a startup culture. And I had to build scale to all of those 18 campuses. We're still considering sustainability. I'm one librarian. I can only do so many things at a time. So the three main things that I've learned to do is to prioritize, collaborate and work smarter rather than harder. So as a librarian at a small startup library, there's always way more to do than you have time for. You're doing all the day to day work of keeping things running. But you're also growing things and trying new things. We call it often you're building at the plane as you fly it. So it's really important to prioritize. So the very first thing I did when I took over the library was I spent about a year really getting to know the needs of the library and creating a mission and vision statement and goals and strategic plans to guide my work. For me, my priorities ended up being scaling up support so that we could serve all 18 campuses and creating a robust information literacy program. So once you have your priorities, how do you meet those? As a solo librarian, I couldn't do it without collaboration. And that's a theme I've been hearing from Ray and from some of the other presenters. I collaborate with others inside the institution, but outside the library by co-designing curriculum with faculty so that they are the ones teaching information literacy through the courses that they already teach and working with local staff at each campus so that they can be my ambassadors and communicate with students about the library. I also seek help from librarians outside the institution. So Ray has mentioned that we worked a lot together to brainstorm more practically. I participate in the Ask Academic Cooperative to provide my students with 24-7 reference support without me having to be the one who is available 24-7. And finally, I work on focus on working smarter rather than harder. So our collection is primarily electronic. So I focus on things like demand-driven acquisition that doesn't rely on me having to make as many collection decisions. And for things like outreach instruction, Ray mentioned newsletters. That is something I do at Relay. Instead of sending each campus a different newsletter, I focus really on all the math student teachers get the same newsletter. Webinars can be attended by students from across campuses. So I really think what are the ways that I can streamline but still individualized support for the needs of each campus and program. So from all of that, that is how I've been able to build a library that can serve 18 campuses without burning myself out. So we have some reflection questions. What are the first priorities if you have nothing to start with? I mentioned prioritizing in my slides. How would you plan that through in a small library? And where and how do you begin to purchase e-reals sources? Thank you for listening. If you have questions, you can find us on Twitter. And we would be happy to discuss with you and collaborate with you in the future. Great. Great. Thanks a lot, Ray and Jennifer. That was really great. I wanted to hear about your very unique situations in your online only, practically, libraries that you're working with and in your education program. So that was awesome. All right.