{"id":152,"date":"2023-03-02T10:55:06","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T15:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/?p=152"},"modified":"2023-12-14T11:09:06","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T16:09:06","slug":"context-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/2023\/03\/02\/context-long\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Dallas Long’s 2016 Dissertation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a college environment upended (and still reeling) from the effects of COVID-19 and subsequent closures, college librarians have an important role to play in designing welcoming environments for students. This is especially the case for community colleges, whose students\u2014overwhelmingly minority and\/or first-generation\u2014often have no shortage of difficulties navigating the labyrinthine campus environment and the myriad services offered within. One aim of this IMLS-funded research grant, \u201cCollege Fluency Capacity Building<\/a>,\u201d is to proactively and systematically<\/em> develop college fluency as a librarian skillset. Operating within a college fluency framework, college librarians would familiarize themselves with relevant campus support systems and learn how to provide students with effective referrals, so they can prevent the protracted \u201cshuffle\u201d that often characterizes student service requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding how library supports can complement, while not duplicating, broader campus efforts will be key.<\/strong> This requires deliberate and thoughtful coordination between libraries and existing student services. The intricacies (and politics) of such coordination are examined in Dallas Long\u2019s 2016 dissertation, \u201cLibrarians and Student Affairs Professionals as Collaborators for Student Learning and Success<\/a>.\u201d Long makes an important observation relevant to this research grant: Although student affairs professionals and academic librarians often have only vague conceptions of each other\u2019s responsibilities, their ideas about what constitutes student learning and success are nonetheless converging. In particular, Long observes a shared interest between the two groups of professionals in terms of teaching soft skills \u201cthat the curriculum may not be teaching,\u201d which may be applicable to students’ daily lives (p. 202). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, both groups\u2019 positive<\/em> assessment of colleges\u2019 increasing emphasis on the library as a student hub for curricular and non-curricular activities offers a major site of alignment, and potentially collaboration, between student services- and library-oriented approaches (p. 208). Such observations suggest the importance of interventions that leverage the library context, perhaps in the form of \u201cworking groups\u2026that bring student affairs professionals and librarians together to identify the student services that might serve students best in a centralized location\u201d (p. 228). Dovetailing with Long\u2019s work, an aim of our present College Fluency research is to construct and disseminate best practices for librarians to navigate the web of student services, including strategies for developing structured and institutional<\/em> modes of coordination. As Long discusses, student affairs professionals have quite a bit to offer librarians in terms of approach: not only can they teach \u201cadvising skills that help librarians more appropriately diagnose and understand students\u2019 information needs\u201d (p. 17), but they can also \u201cintegrate librarians into activities and programs so students could become familiar with librarians, the library, and how to use library resources effectively very early in their college experience\u201d (p. 223). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This engagement between the two types of professionals could have the effect of further pushing librarians\u2019 student interactions beyond the merely \u201ctransactional\u201d into something sustained and personal. And as a result, librarians might gain deeper insight into the relationships binding student non-curricular needs and student success\u2014an important facet of College Fluency Capacity Building. Indeed, there continues to be a need for librarians to familiarize themselves with the intricacies of such services, owing to college libraries\u2019 typical centralized location, not to mention the safety many students feel in the physical space of the library. As an endeavor, this might require a reorientation of certain library services beyond the brief and transactional and into the ongoing and relational. Or, in Long\u2019s words\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

This engagement with students likely means that librarians must leave the library and participate more fully in students\u2019 lives \u2013 they must go where the students are.<\/strong><\/p>\nDallas Long (2016, p. 233)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is important to underscore that the initial foreignness of the college environment, with its various silos and compartments, is not experienced and surmounted by all students equally. Previous Ithaka S+R research<\/a> has shown that students of marginalized backgrounds, including those with limited exposure to higher-ed vocabularies (due to first-generation status or otherwise), indicate personal preference for initiatives targeting college navigation: advising, financial aid, career planning, counseling, etc. In the next College Fluency in Context Post, we’ll examine a piece of scholarship that discusses such factors in detail, especially within the community college context, and connect it to our present research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long, D. (2016). Librarians and student affairs professionals as collaborators for student learning and success<\/em>. [Doctoral dissertation, Illinois State University]. ISU Research and eData. https:\/\/ir.library.illinoisstate.edu\/etd\/519<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a college environment upended (and still reeling) from the effects of COVID-19 and subsequent closures, college librarians have an important role to play in designing welcoming environments for students. This is especially the case for community colleges, whose students\u2014overwhelmingly minority and\/or first-generation\u2014often have no shortage of difficulties navigating the labyrinthine campus environment and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17,15,14,13,16],"class_list":{"0":"post-152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-college-fluency-in-context","7":"tag-institutional-collaboration","8":"tag-libraries","9":"tag-research","10":"tag-scholarship","11":"tag-student-affairs","12":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}