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‘All GAAs’ meeting, 2022-09-23

First of three ‘All GAAs’ meetings this term. Next meeting likely in December. Final meeting likely in April.

ACTION ITEM (student employees): Send bio information and picture to Angela for posting on Research Commons’ website

ACTION ITEM (Evan): Connect with Lily at a future date to discuss career opportunities for GIS/map work within libraries and skillset required

Attendees:

  • Angela Liu
  • Ashley Yue Mao
  • Bamidele Oladipupo
  • Brett Dimond
  • Doug Brigham
  • Eugene Barsky
  • Jeremy Buhler
  • Jess Yao
  • Joe Melanson
  • Keith Bunnell
  • Lily Crandall-Oral
  • Reza Karimi
  • Scott Cameron

Agenda:

  • General welcome (Doug)
  • Introductions (everyone)
  • Purpose/activities/scope of each team (Team Leads)
  • Peer observation of instruction (Jeremy and Jess)
  • Advice from continuing GAAs to newcomers (Reza and Lily)
  • Roundtable question: What is something you hope to learn or a skill you would like to develop during your work at the Research Commons? (everyone)

General welcome (Doug)

  • Looking to integrate service offerings between Research Commons (RC) and Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)
  • HSS Student Librarians will comprise the 6th team

Introductions (everyone)

Jess: Digital Scholarship (DS) Librarian

Keith: Reference and Collections Librarian

Jeremy: Data Librarian

  • Helps researchers access data

Joe: HSS Librarian and Citation Management (CM) Team Lead

Eugene: RDM Librarian

  • Works closely with Jeremy around data needs of patrons

Brett: RC Program Assistant

  • Ensures access and use of RC spaces
  • Provides backup for Angela for certain functions
  • Works with Data Team

Angela: RC Coordinator

  • Works with Brett to ensure facilities run smoothly
  • Responsible for communications/promotions

Reza: 5th-year PhD student

  • Citation Management Team

Scott: 2nd-year dual student

  • HSS Student Librarian

Bamidele: 3rd semester at iSchool

  • Works with Keith as HSS Student Librarian

Ashley: 4th-year PhD student

  • Works on Data Team in quantitative data analysis and visualization

Lily: 2nd-year Masters student

  • Geospatial Information and Technology (GIT) team

Jared (not present): Data Team

Shayan (not present): DS Team

Billie (not present): RDM GAA working with Eugene

  • Will not be present during fall term, but will return in Jan
  • Profile on RC website

2nd GAA for GIT Team soon to be hired.

Purpose/activities/scope of each team (Team Leads)

Data Team (Jeremy):

  • Historically, have seen a high demand for consultations
  • Will only be focusing on quantitative data analysis and visualization this term
  • Primarily support data analysis with the R programming language, with limited support for Python and SPSS
  • This term will include a set of 4 workshops–with Ashley hosting the first one on Tuesday of next week (‘Introduction to R and RStudio’)

DS Team (Jess):

  • Digital Scholarship is an umbrella term which covers any research applying computational tools
  • Tools the team generally supports: Git, GitHub, Unix Shell, Docker, Visual Studio Code

CM Team (Joe):

  • Conduct both workshops and consulations
  • Recent work has involved supporting patrons in migrating from RefWorks to another CM tool; UBC Library will no longer support RefWorks after 30 Sep 2022
  • Zotero and Mendeley–both freely available–are primary tools we support

RDM Team (Eugene):

  • Provide Research Data Management consultations for researchers and faculty
  • Collaborate with other units on workshops, such as with WestGrid on today’s workshop ‘Automation and scripting in Bash for absolute beginners’
  • RDM website: https://researchdata.library.ubc.ca/

Reference Team (Keith):

  • Scott and Bamidele will be providing reference support for 6-8 hours per week

Peer observation of instruction (Jeremy and Jess)

  • Explainer: https://ubc-library-rc.github.io/rc-docs/docs/gaaonboarding/peer_observation.html
  • Started last spring
  • Plan to run once in fall and once in spring
  • Required for continuing GAAs; new GAAs can participate if they would like to, but should inform their Team Leads
  • There is a peer-observation sign-up spreadsheet; place your name in ‘Observer’ column
  • The sooner you enter your name, the more options you will have
  • When connecting with another GAA, we encourage finding someone from another team; teams will be discussing instruction internally
  • Discuss the form of feedback your partner might be interested in and whether they are looking for specific feedback
  • Team Leads will coordinate sign-up, likely via email

Reza: This can also be viewed as a professional-development opportunity from more than one angle; I observed Amir and Jeremy during an NVivo workshop because, in addition, to learning from their instructional methods, I also wanted to learn more about NVivo

Keith: I suggest leaving this until next term for Bamidele and Scott

Angela: Of course, you are always welcomed to attend each others’ workshops, even when not participating in peer observation

Advice from continuing GAAs to newcomers (Reza and Lily)

Lily: One thing I enjoy about this position is its flexibility and the opportunity to work on different tasks

  • I engage in one-on-one consults, lead workshops, and participate in a project creating a spatial index
  • This is a work-learn position; talk to your supervisor about what you’d like to get out of it

Jeremy: I’d like to reinforce Lily’s point; while we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to accommodate every request, don’t be shy about suggesting new workshop topics, projects, etc.

Reza: This position provides a great opportunity to practice your presentation skills

  • Its flexibility is a great advantage
  • Learn from your own mistakes (e.g., something not working with a certain OS); will require regular updating of workshop material
  • During consultations, don’t be afraid to say you don’t know the answer to something–you’re not expected to know everything; instead, try to troubleshoot with the patron

Angela: I want to emphasize your work is very helpful to the Library and will live on for quite some time

  • We are always open to feedback on how things might be improved

Roundtable question: What is something you hope to learn or a skill you would like to develop during your work at the Research Commons? (everyone)

Bamidele: Interested in opportunities to develop skills working with data and metadata

Eugene: Bamidele, a good place to start could be learning some markdown language

Scott: Interested in developing instructional skills, especially keeping people engaged

Keith: There are opportunities for instruction, such as informational sessions

Ashley: Interested in developing instructional skills

  • Has participated in lots of classroom observations, but has had few opportunities to teach herself
  • Interested in developing a network of colleagues and staying connected with people

Jess: For those interested in improving their instruction, I found the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) at UBC to be helpful while I was a graduate student: https://ctlt.ubc.ca/programs/all-our-programs/instructional-skills-workshops/

Reza: Interested in working to adjust his pace during instruction, as every session is different

Lily: Interested in learning more about what jobs for GIS and mappers there are in libraries, and what skillset is required for that kind of work

Angela: Lily, we’ll connect you with Evan on this issue