Cross Timbers Library Collaborative 2020 Virtual Conference

The Cross Timbers Library Collaborative (CTLC) is an established group of library professionals based throughout the Cross Timbers region (south eastern Kansas, across Central Oklahoma to Central Texas). The Collaborative fosters partnerships among the region’s libraries through cooperative staff development, resource sharing, and innovative programming. CTLC holds annual conferences and the 2020 conference was slated to be held at Texas Woman’s University Libraries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference organizers moved the conference online, allowing presenters to participate via Zoom conferencing platform.

The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries was well represented at the CTLC Conference this year. The following is a summary of each UTA contribution, with links to the presentation materials on the Texas Woman’s University Libraries institutional repository.

In Comparing Teamwork & Collaboration Competencies between a Technology in Art Education course and an Engineering Project Management Course, Martin Wallace, Morgan Chivers, and Ryan Hulla (CRTLE Research Consultant) presented the results of a student teamwork and collaboration study, using an “assembling effective teams” homework assignment and a semester-long, team-based academic library makerspace project. Students in two upper-level undergraduate classes, Technology in Art Education and Engineering Project Management, took self-assessment-surveys at the beginning of the course and again after having completed their makerspace projects. Results show that students in both courses significantly overestimate their competence in the pre-course survey. Engineering students rate themselves higher in both pre- and post-surveys than art education students. There are signs that the “assembling effective teams” homework assignment has a significant effect in student self-ratings. Other signs show that the project has significant effect on teamwork and collaboration.

In Data Services in the Age of Scalability and a Pandemic, Peace Ossom-Williamson, Hammad Khan and Isaac Williams discussed how they use online resources and strategies to build awareness and make their trainings and services scalable. Likewise, they described how this translated into an asset during the COVID-19 transition to online-only interaction and as COVID-19 data informed behavior. As higher education institutions in the United States began to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by moving classes online, emptying residence halls, and authorizing remote work, academic librarians were tasked upon helping students and instructors with migrating to an online learning environment. What stood out was that data librarians already had a digital presence. This presentation offers insight into how a Research Data Services department offered web services in a collaborative environment for accessing data, providing data archiving support to researchers, and promoting data literacy. Hammad and Isaac each also contributed lightning talk sessions on the topics of Enabling Successful Partnerships and Projects (slides) and Developing Data Literacy through Experiential Learning (slides), respectively; the recorded lighting talks video is also available.

In Preparing for Pandemonium in a Pandemic: Implementing Virtual Library Engagement, Laura Haygood and A.M. Serrano highlighted their successes and failures fostering community and engagement using Microsoft Teams, including staff meetings, social events, and pedagogy-related office hours. In March 2020, as we were all transitioning to classes online, UTA Libraries realized we had unknowingly prepared for this scenario as early adopters of Microsoft Teams, a now widely used collaboration tool. Once the University moved online, the Libraries leveraged an already trained staff to use this application to promote immediate and long-term engagement with each other, as well as stakeholders across campus. Laura and Ann provide best practices for using Microsoft Teams and describe how training faculty and staff about its possibilities allowed for interactive engagement and relationship building across campus.

Michael Barera, University and Labor Archivist, collaborated with his former Texas A&M University-Commerce colleague Preston Livingston to present a poster entitled Disaster Relief in an Academic Library Archives.  Based upon their experiences and lessons learned from a water disaster at A&M-Commerce in fall 2017, Barera and Livingston presented a poster with an “immediate aftermath checklist” and a “preventing a future disaster” checklist aimed at summarizing the key takeaways and lessons learned from their first-hand experience with a water disaster.  The main points of the poster included whom to call after discovering a water disaster, how to effectively triage materials affected by the disaster, and the use of dehumidifiers and monitoring relative humidity to both remediate the effects of a disaster and help prevent a future disaster. A recording of the poster session is available.

The Cross Timbers Library Collaborative Conference is made possible each year by volunteers and donations from across the region. Thank you to the following organizations for their contributions to this year’s CTLC Conference: Texas Digital Library, Texas Woman’s University Libraries, and The University of North Texas Libraries. Librarians at the University of Texas at Arlington wish to thank and give recognition to these volunteers and sponsors.