Librarian honored for involvement with Longfellow Liberal Arts School

On top of all the work she does at Tredway Library, Librarian Connie Ghinazzi was recently named the 2013 Mike Nolan Award Winner for her involvement with the “Adopt A School” partnership between Augustana College and Longfellow Liberal Arts School. Connie has been volunteering at the school for the past five years.

Connie had this to say: “I feel that kids need as much help as early as possible to develop a love of reading. In my role as the college’s outreach librarian, I will have the opportunity to work with Longfellow teachers who now have faculty-access privileges to the books and database resources we have available in the Tredway Library.”

Congratulations, Connie!

Summer Hours

Please note that the library will operate on reduced hours throughout the summer. Beginning Monday, May 20, we will be open Mondays – Thursdays from 8 AM until 5 PM and on Fridays from 8:00 AM until noon. We will be open to the Augustana community on Friday afternoons by appointment only. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays (Memorial Day and Independence Day), the library will be closed.

Extended Hours

During the final two weeks of the spring term, the library is open for extended hours.  On Thursday, May 16th, also known as the last day of finals, the library will close at 5 PM.

All about Augustana’s Field Stations

Ever wonder about the original purpose of that beautiful oak cabinet next to the printers? Here in the library, it has been a handy resting place for staplers and a three hole punch, but it is really a botany case, built over 100 years ago to hold herbarium samples.

Now as you staple those papers, you can take a peek into the world of our Augustana Field Stations.  With the cooperation of Dr. Bo Dziadyk in providing slides and plant specimens, Carlisle Evans-Peck and Darwin Club members put together this display. Displayed under the glass are descriptions of our three field stations and photographs of these natural treasures.

Pull open the  top drawers on each side  of the botany case. Here you find  specimen sheets created by Augustana students of plants found at our field stations. These dried specimens with their careful documentation are used by botanists to identify among species and provided a way a recording the plant life of a particular area.

Knockemstiff is a real town.

Knockemstiff, Ohio, is where Donald Ray Pollock was born in 1954. Fifty-four years later, Pollock published a book of short stories set in Knockemstiff, and a writer was launched. Much happened in between to make that writer. A high school dropout, Pollock worked in a paper mill most of his life. He didn’t stop dreaming about being a writer. “I’d always been a big reader, and I loved books, and I always thought writing would be a great way to get by in the world.” One thing Pollock did to prepare for writing was type out the stories of writers he admired.

“John Cheever, Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Richard Yates, Denis Johnson, and the list goes on and on. If the story wasn’t overly long, I’d type it out. And I’d carry it around with me for a week and jot notes on it, and then I’d throw it away and do another one.” When he was 50 years old, Pollock enrolled in the MFA program at Ohio State University. Now an award winning published writer with two books, Pollock be at Augustana Thursday night to read from his fiction. I’d be there if I were you.

Librarians go to Indianapolis!

Q: What do Augustana librarians do when they aren’t teaching library research skills, working at the Research Help desk, organizing displays and events, and contributing in other ways to the life of the campus community?

A: They travel and share their work at national library conferences!

Librarians Stefanie Bluemle, Amanda Makula, and Margi Rogal recently presented a poster, “The Joy of (Performance) Assessment,” at the biennial conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in Indianapolis. Drawing on Tredway Library’s recent shift from quantitative to qualitative assessment of information literacy outcomes in LSFY, their presentation outlined the process of prioritizing learning outcomes, designing performance-based assessments, and analyzing the results to acquire data that directly fuels improvement in librarians’ teaching. Stefanie, Amanda, and Margi advocate increased use of qualitative assessments, including performance assessment, among instruction librarians as a means to better evaluate student understanding of higher-level information literacy concepts. Their poster is currently on display on the 2nd floor of the library – come check it out!