Staff Workshop

Summer is the slow season for instruction around these parts, but I've been able to do a little bit. I gave a workshop today for some of our staff who support distance education students. They work all around the state, as well as on campus. I love doing instruction for students and often work closely with faculty, but there's something extra special and fun about working with staff.

Today's session was all about accessing resources and services from off-campus, which meant that I got to demonstrate all the fun technological tools we've been madly implementing. When I demonstrated the citation format feature in EBSCO's email form, the participants broke out in applause. How awesome is that? Undergrads are far too cool to get that enthusiastic about anything we show them. Other fan favorites seemed to be the federated search, link resolver, citation matcher, and the for-credit, online IL course we'll have next spring.

After the workshop, several of the attendees commented that I was really enthusiastic. I truly love my job, especially the teaching part, but I know everybody else's enthusiasm and eagerness to learn really made the session what it was. I only wish we'd had twice as much time together.