In this installment of College Fluency Conversations, we interview Julie McDaniel, Student Success Librarian at Sinclair Community College. McDaniel has been influential at Sinclair in advancing a holistic vision of student success, seeing her network of campus connections as an extension of library resources and spending as much time outside the library as she does within it. For this reason, her approach to learning interweaves closely with the principles guiding our College Fluency research. We are thrilled to present our interview with McDaniel in a two-part format, in which she shares her own professional journey and the meticulous shaping of her position into what can undoubtedly be considered a model for Student Success librarianship.
Craig Nielsen: Thank you for joining us. We wanted to begin by asking you how you came to librarianship and your current position. How would you describe your journey as a librarian?
Julie McDaniel: My mom used to say that when I was in third grade, I told her I was going to be a librarian, and that I never considered any other occupation or career. I don’t actually remember that conversation, but I know by the time I was in sixth grade, I was volunteering in the school library. I did that all the way through high school. When I was in college, I didn’t qualify for work study, so I still was volunteering, but in the college library. I then went to grad school and was able to work in the library as a graduate research assistant. After grad school, I worked at two different colleges, and then a hospital library, and then another college, and now my current Sinclair position.
My first two positions would have been the late 1980s and early 1990s. In retrospect, I realize we never left the library. In part, we were tied to the card catalog. So, it wouldn’t have been very helpful for me to be in the business department, for example, because I would have had to say, “I need to go back to the library and use some books and some cards to answer your question.” When I got to the hospital library, I found that I had to be out in the hospital–especially talking to nurses–to be able to help them understand how I might be able to help them, and why they needed the library that the hospital provided for them. As I look back on it now, I think that really informs what I do: that I’m not making an assumption (like I believe I did in my first two professional positions) that people just know that the library is great, and they’re going to come and find me.
So, when the position at Sinclair was advertised as a Student Success Librarian, I thought, “What is that?” I looked around and realized that almost nobody was doing it. It was pretty exciting to say, “Hmm, I might get to craft what this could be.” When I went to the job interview, they had a pretty nebulous idea about what it was going to be. That appealed to me even more, because then, I could create it. When somebody says something that doesn’t sound too exciting to me, I think, “I don’t think Student Success Librarians do that.” But if someone suggests something that makes me think, “Oh, that really resonates with everything that is Julie,” then I’m likely to say, “I’m pretty sure that’s a thing a Student Success Librarian would do.”
Craig Nielsen: You’ve played a huge role in changing the way that librarians at Sinclair think about holistic notions of student success. How have the expectations for librarians at your institution changed to adapt and accommodate the changing needs of students, particularly since the pandemic? And how has the library balanced these new roles and expectations compared to their more traditional ones?
Julie McDaniel: At Sinclair, we definitely have the luxury of a whole position dedicated to Student Success. When I was hired, nobody was expecting that I would have much collection development, instruction, or even faculty contact, as my colleagues do. They really handle all of that. When I first started, which was a few years before Covid, what the other librarians saw day-to-day in me, was that a librarian could leave the library, because Sinclair was very much an “everybody stays here” kind of place. People on campus were sort of surprised. They would ask, “Who is this librarian person… we have a library?” It was sort of sad to hear people ask that, because Sinclair has a pretty big library, actually, for the size of community college that we are.
One of the things that we started was our Crucial Conversations, where, on a pretty regular basis, I send out a reminder to anybody who works at our front desk–which for us is Circulation, IT folks, and our reference librarians–with “hints” about what students should be doing at that time of the semester. So, when it’s time to register, I’m sending out an email that reminds staff, “Hey, fall registration starts today. While you’re doing your process to check out a book or check out a room or help them in whatever way, if there’s an opportunity for you to say, ‘Hey, have you registered for classes yet?’, this is an opportunity to remind them about that.” At other times it might be, “Did you know that there’s this program or event that’s coming up?” When we started it a few years ago, that was new for everybody. It was typically, “I’m here for a transaction. My job is to check out the book, and if I take the time to say hello, that’s good enough. What is this asking me to do a little bit more, something beyond this transaction?”
Then, some of our other librarians have added Librarian-on-Location, which is the service where we send a librarian to a different department on campus that has a lounge or some other student gathering space. That way, we can be in that space and students eventually figure out that they can come and find us there. We have two other librarians so far that are doing Librarian-on-Location. So, that would have been a new responsibility for them.
I also share a lot of information with library staff about different campus resources, so that hopefully, if somebody mentions something that causes someone to think, “Oh, maybe this person should know about our food pantry, or our free lunches, or our social worker, or any of those types of things,” that information is getting to the library staff–which, I think prior to me, it didn’t. Many staff on college campuses don’t know everything everybody does, so I really try to make sure that our library staff is aware of those things.
jean amaral: What are the different ways you make sure the library staff are aware of those things?
Julie McDaniel: Definitely conversations. We share weekly reports, where everybody has to list everything they did. Often, when I say I met with Academic Advising to learn more about what they’re doing, I try to put in a little “something,” and then others will see it and ask, “Hey, what is it Academic Advising is doing?” or “What is the new thing that’s going on in that department?”
Craig Nielsen: It sounds like you’ve been very successful in organizing cross-departmental collaborations, as well as getting information from other departments and passing it along to your staff. In terms of working with other departments, what approaches have you found to work for getting the ball rolling on different partnerships and having consistent points of contact? What behind-the-scenes work do you feel is necessary for building and sustaining these kinds of relationships?
Julie McDaniel: I think it ultimately comes down to connect, connect, and to just keep trying to reach out and connect with people. I sometimes do that on a very personal level. You know, kids, hobbies, anything that might be a reason that somebody will take time to go, “Hey, Julie!” and have a conversation. Because you never know what’s going to lead to a collaboration or an opportunity to work together.
I think Dallas mentioned that every area of college has a different view of the students, and so he talks about connecting to be able to get a 360-degree view. I try not to make the assumption that there’s any department I don’t need to know about. The people who are sweeping the streets–they’re talking to students, too. When students get lost or students feel like no one’s paying attention to them, if the guy out there shoveling snow is willing to pay attention, then the student’s going to make a connection with them. So, I try to have a no-blinders approach to who I talk to. And there are times when people wonder, “Why did you talk to that department?” And I think, “Because until I talk to them, I don’t know what they know, and I don’t know how they’re going to be able to help me make a connection, whether it’s with another department, or whether it’s directly to students.”
I also sometimes feel like I’m always listening… I hesitate to say gossip, but you never know where you’re going to pick up a piece of news. It might be in an elevator. It could be the line in the cafeteria. You just never know when you’re going to hear about a new program or a new approach somebody’s taken to try and make something happen that there’s been no announcement about.
I do think it is one person in one department at a time. I wish there was some magic way to say it’s not, but I haven’t figured it out. If someone else knows it, please shoot me an email. We also planned a lot of fun events to give staff an excuse to leave their offices and connect with other people, and to see the library as not a silo or a scary group of people. We were making connections and trying to break down barriers, so we hosted a spelling bee. That was before Covid, but we still have people who talk about the spelling bees that we hosted. The library hosted it and managed everything. We did have one team in particular–they all dressed up as bees. They made their own signs and went over the top. I really think when people continue to talk to us about that spelling bee, they’re remembering that team a lot more than the library. But it broke down a lot of barriers and opened up a lot of opportunities for us, because people could say, “Oh, that spelling bee was so fun.” And then, you could say, “Okay, so tell me more about your department. What is it that you do?”
After Covid, we also created “Connecting” groups that invite people with similar interests to get together and talk about their common interests once a month. We have a “Connecting Stitchers” group that has continued to meet. Anybody can come: it does include students, but it’s also faculty and staff. People can bring any project that uses a needle, is how we describe it. We have knitters and crocheters and embroiderers.
Our biggest lift was probably Sinclair 101, where once a month, we have one department talk about the services that they provide. Then, anybody from campus can come to those sessions and learn more about other departments. It helps foster those connections, and lets people learn about things they might not have known, so that if a student shows up in XYZ Department, hopefully, somebody from XYZ Department was at the program a couple weeks ago that Financial Aid did, and now can help direct the student to Financial Aid.
I also have lots of saved searches that run in our databases, so that when something of interest is published, I can send an email to a particular person in a department and say, “Hey, here’s this new article.” This keeps me in their email inbox. It also keeps the library top of mind, sending the message that the library can support staff as well as students.
Because Sinclair has no centralized calendar, I write weekly emails that pull together the activities from eight different campus calendars. There’s one that goes to faculty that just lists upcoming programs for students, and there’s one that goes to faculty and staff that is broader than that. It’s sort of the “everything that’s going on on campus that you don’t have to be in a particular group to participate in.” That also helps keep the library top of mind, and lets people say, “Oh, there’s a lot of things going on, and I could go to this to help me learn more about whatever activity it might be.” So, from a librarian-brain point of view, I think I have a really big definition of what counts as information that I don’t necessarily manage, but that I’m trying to connect people to at the Sinclair campus.
jean amaral: I think that’s really important. Oftentimes, when we think about information in the academic context, especially for librarians, we think of scholarly literature and monographs. Can you talk a little bit about that bigger conception of information?
Julie McDaniel: I often tell people, I think my best information sources are not books and databases, but people. If I can connect people to people, that’s really what Sinclair is paying me to do. Being an old librarian, people say, “All you do is books and journals,” and I say, “No, that’s really a very small part of what I’m doing.” Because our social worker can do amazing things for students that handing them a journal article is never going to accomplish. So, it’s a really important role to be able to see the landscape at a much wider level than something that I could put on a shelf or put in a database. It’s people.
Part II of our conversation can be found here.