 Hello, my name is Tori and I am a Libraries Fellow at NC State University Libraries and I am co-presenting today with my colleague Kevin Beswick, who I will let introduce himself. Hey, I'm Kevin Beswick, I'm the Associate Head of the Digital Library Initiatives Department here at NC State University Libraries. And today we're going to be speaking to you about a new program from NC State University Libraries called the Library Technology Career Jumpstart Program. And here is a preview of what we're going to be covering in this presentation. So we're going to start with a brief overview of the background of the program and how it came to be. And we actually also gave a project briefing on the Jumpstart Program last year at CNI after we just wrapped up the first run of the program. So we're not going to be going quite as in-depth as we did in that presentation last year. That is available on the CNI YouTube channel if you would like a deeper dive on some of that. But from there we're going to talk about our assessment efforts, having not completed two runs of the program and having analyzed the data from the program. And then we're going to wrap up by discussing some of our initial thoughts on the future directions of the program. So to begin, what is the Jumpstart Program? The Jumpstart Program is a free, immersive, week-long experience that helps to position first-year library school students for career and library technology upon graduation. It includes technical skills workshops on topics like version control with Git and GitHub, coding in Python, and web development. And it also includes a variety of other professional development opportunities as well. And we began this program in recognition of the fact that recruiting for technical positions in libraries is often difficult. This is something that we've seen at our own institution and something that we've heard from colleagues at other institutions. So this difficulty stems in part from the fact that LAS students just have differential opportunities to build their technical skills. And we wanted to help fill that gap a little bit. So one of the first things that we did as a planning committee was clarify the overall goals and objectives of the program. So we wanted to increase awareness of technology careers in libraries. We wanted to increase diversity in this area of the profession. We wanted to impart some strategies for learning technical skills, as well as provide concrete steps forward towards a career pathway in library technology. And we wanted to create a welcoming and inclusive space for a diverse cohort to learn from each other, while also fostering a community of professional and interpersonal support. So one of the goals in this list that we spent a lot of time on is considering how to recruit a diverse cohort of students each year. This is something that's important to us because we acknowledge that librarianship as a profession is made up of mostly white women. And tech positions also tend to be occupied by mostly white people, whilst being more male. Intentionally cultivating a plurality of perspectives and technical talent is only going to make our institutions and our technology stronger and will help us better meet the needs of the diverse communities that we reach on a daily basis. So given this, we wanted to make sure that our application process and the program itself is welcoming not only on the basis of gender and race, but also in terms of other demographics, such as ability, academic background and geography. Our goal has been to make the application more barrier. The application package consists of just the online application form and a resume. But specifically, don't ask for professional records because you know that that can be an unnecessary burden for folks, especially for a program like this. And we limit our choice of questions to just four, keeping those limited to 150 to each. So on the slide here, you see the wording for some of our recruiting materials and application questions as it appeared on our 2021 application. In general, what we were looking for in submissions is a demonstrated interest in pursuing career and library technology, a commitment and a willingness to learn technical skills and a persistent and creative approach to solving problems. And having now recruited and worked with two cohorts of students, we can say that we were indeed able to build a really awesome community of learners that has comprised of future library professionals from a breadth of backgrounds and experiences as well as career interests. So all of our participants so far have held at least one identity underrepresented in technology or librarianship. And they have joined us from a wide range of schools with express career interests in everything from web accessibility to user experience to human computer interaction and digital asset management. But that's a very broad overview of the conception of the program and how we put our cohorts. And now I'm going to turn it over to Kevin to give us a glimpse of some of the program content. So in addition to the technical workshops that you might expect from a program like this, we thought that it was important for people to hear from current library technology professionals about what it was like to work in the field. The range of work that we do as library technologists, as well as hear stories about how people got to where they are today. We designed panels to touch on these topics and to include perspectives from a diverse set of staff, including early career, all the way to administration and touching on a range of departments and roles across the libraries. Our goals for these panels was to draw connections between the skills that we were introducing the participants to and the work that actually happens in the library and to inspire participants by showing them that you don't need a computer science degree to get into library technology and that many people begin their library technology journeys in library school coming from a variety of different backgrounds. The topics of these panels were the same as last year, but we had an entirely new set of speakers for each for this year. The other major type of session that we planned was looking at our bigger picture of library tech. So we offered an HR session that included our associate director for organizational design, equity and talent, where participants learned about the application and interview process for library tech jobs. We also had a question and answer session with our senior vice provost and director of libraries and our associate director for digital and organizational strategy, where they touched on topics like organizational structure, the future of library technology, offering a higher level perspective of each. And then the jumpstart program also included a mentorship component. So each participant was paired up with the library technology professional. We made these connections based on what we learned during the application and interview process and tried to match with someone that had a common interest background or career trajectory. We asked each mentor to schedule at least two meetings with their mentee, one during the program week and one post program with each pair being able to decide if they wanted to continue the relationship beyond that. This year we were more intentional in preparing the mentors and mentees ahead of time and setting expectations. And if you saw our presentation from last year, you'll remember that we had a more packed and ambitious program planned for each day. But with the program being shifted to offer online, we had to make some tough decisions about what content was most important to offer. But rather than cut entirely, we organized a bundle of asynchronous content and offered participants this content in a variety of mediums with the help of over 20 of our colleagues in the libraries. So in their information packets, participants had access to the content that you can see on this slide. Our hope is that the participants can refer to this content at a later time when it's most directly relevant to their lives. So like when they're considering applying for jobs or they're just starting out in the profession. And all of this content wouldn't have been possible without the help of our colleagues around our library. So over two dozen in total participated as presenters, panelists and workshop leaders and asynchronous content producers. So I'll pass it back to Tori to talk about our process for evaluation and assessment of the program and what our participants thought about it. So in terms of assessment, we wanted to measure what sort of short and long-term impacts participation in the Jumpstart program might have on participants' perceptions of and their intentions to pursue careers in library technology. And to measure this, we sent out a pre-programmed knowledge and attitude survey, a post-programmed knowledge and attitude survey as well as a general satisfaction survey. And we also conducted some six-month post-program interviews with the first cohort, which we're also planning to do with the second cohort as well. And so our completion rates were actually really stellar overall for the surveys, as you can see here. And given that, we feel pretty confident about the conclusions that we were able to draw from the responses that we received. So the open text field on the general feedback survey was able to pull for us some really great positive as well as constructive feedback. In terms of constructive feedback, really appreciated folks' honest and thoughtful responses here is what allows us to make iterative improvements to the program each year and make it the best it can be. So our 2020 cohort, for example, brought up some important points about accessibility and expressed things like a desire to have more opportunities for cohort building and more pre-work and contextualization before arriving, as well as a more streamlined troubleshooting process. And so these are all things that we were able to do our best to accommodate in the 2021 cohort. And then in terms of some positive feedback that we received, here are some high-level themes that emerged from that. So overall participants reported that hearing from library technologists really helped demystify careers in library technology that they were able to see how the text fields that they were learning could be applied on the job and that they also really appreciated the structure of the program given its online delivery, including, for example, all the asynchronous content that Kevin just talked to you about. And so one participant stated that this is a much needed program that they would definitely recommend to other LAS students which confirmed one of our most exciting data points, which is that all students from both cohorts who completed the survey strongly agreed with this statement that they would be likely to recommend the Jumpstart program to other LAS students. So that was really great for us to see. And then here are some examples of some of the pre-to-post knowledge and attitude survey items. So what we were trying to get at with these was students' self-perceived confidence levels in pursuing library technology careers, said both before and after the program. We asked them things like, or we presented them with statements such as, I know what technical skills I need to learn to be successful as a librarian. I'm confident in my ability to learn those skills. I'm aware of my career options in library technology. I'm likely to pursue a career in library technology. I know someone working in Lib Tech I could reach out to. I'm not sure how to best present myself in a resume cover letter or interview. And so students answered all of these statements on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. And overall for both cohorts, we saw at least one degree of improvement for most participants across most items. We did see some interesting regressions. So for example, one participant moved from strongly agree down to just agree for I am confident in my ability to learn the technical skills that I need to know. But that same participant also moved from neither agree or disagree to strongly agree on I am likely to pursue a career in library technology. And they answered that almost all of the content was new for them. So that was similar across some other participants as well. And we really still consider this to be a success because we figured there might just be some done in career effect going on there in which participants came in rather unaware of everything that they needed to know to become a library technologist. And so then once they became aware of all of that, it might have been a little bit overwhelming, which could explain a minor way in self-confidence. But given that by the end, all participants either agree or strongly agree with the statement that they would be likely to pursue a career in library technology. It seems that we were still able to accomplish our goal of raising the profile of such careers in the minds of students that we worked with. And hopefully they now have a much more realistic pathway for how to continue working towards these careers. And then in terms of our six month followup interviews, our hope there is that they would reveal any potential long-term shifts in thinking for students on their career planning. And this is just the data that we have so far from our 2020 cohort, three of eight participants completed those interviews. And from those participants, we heard overall that the Jumpstart program really did introduce them to career opportunities in library technology that they had not yet considered. And that it did have some impacts on the types of courses and internships that they pursued and the confidence with which they pursued them. One participant summed it up really nicely when they said, I don't think it's like a boot camp. It's more like a space to introduce students to this world so that they make better choices about what they want to learn and how they want to spend their time in grad school. And this was really great to hear because very much in line with exactly what we were trying to do with the program. And then in terms of assessment, I'll just leave you with this second really great quote from our 2021 cohort. The Jumpstart program exceeded my expectations. I expected to learn something about GitHub, Python, HTML, et cetera, but I also gained a lot of confidence through this program from the hands-on learning and working through problems with troubleshooters. Hearing from professionals in the field about how they got to where they are today gave me insight into how I can gain experience and learn the skills I need to start a career in this line of librarianship. So again, that was another really affirming thing for us to hear. And with that, I'm going to pass it over to Kevin to take off the conversation about what might be next on the horizon for Jumpstart. So offering the Jumpstart program each year is a fairly big undertaking, requiring a lot of time and effort from the planning committee, panelists and workshop facilitators and participants and then asynchronous content creators and especially from Tori who acted as project manager, lead logistical coordinator, people wrangler, communicator, workshop leader, panelist and countless other roles. So we've offered the program twice internally and we've validated that it is valuable to students and the profession, but we've also learned that offering the Jumpstart program ourselves each year is not scalable or sustainable in the long term. So after the offering of the second iteration this past August, we've started to think about the future of the program and those questions of scalability and sustainability of the program and an effort to bring more people into the area of library technology. So what's next for the Jumpstart program? We know that we'd like to continue being a part of offering the program in our local context. We have four library schools within a 100 mile radius of our area and many university libraries with a need for library technology talent in the area. So one potential direction we could take is to broaden the scope of the program to include more than just our library. So we could partner with other libraries to share some of the logistical effort of organizing the program and expand on the perspectives represented within the program. We could consider expanding even further than our local context here in NC and partner with other interested libraries or organizations from across the country as well. We're looking into the possibility of applying for grant funding to explore these questions further and to help keep the program running while we figure out how to proceed with it into the future. We've also put some work in scaling the offering of the program. So one of the things that we believe is valuable about the program is the intimate nature of it. So by limiting the number of participants we're able to offer meaningful cohort-based experiences one-on-one mentorship and the opportunity for each participant to engage with panelists and workshop leaders throughout the week. We don't want the program to feel like a webinar. So this creates some challenges around scalability and now Tori is gonna talk about how we're approaching that. So in addition to those strategies just mentioned by Kevin something else we are interested in and helping kick off is essentially a network of similar programs at institutions across the country. So after getting several inquiries from other organizations wondering how they could do something like Jumpstart we decided to create a comprehensive how-to guide that chronicled our process from the bottom up and that is available at the link on the slide. That guide includes helpful information about everything from getting institutional buy-in to building your planning committee to soliciting program content to the technical aspects program delivery and a lot more. We've heard from a few groups that they already have their own version of the Jumpstart program in the works based on this guide and conversations that they have had with us. And that's definitely something that we want to continue to encourage and we would love to chat with others about that if that's something that you're interested in. And so to close this out if you have any further ideas again about how this program can continue to expand please reach out to Kevin or I. We welcome thoughts, feedback and questions. We've also listed on the slide a couple of important links so that you can learn more and we look forward to hearing from you.