Colorado Academic Library Association (CoALA): Summit 2014
CoALA Summit 2014
Nancy Goebel
Kara Blizzard
Kara Blizzard is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus Library. A recently graduated librarian who also possesses a Master of Arts in English literature, Kara teaches information literacy to undergraduate students in a variety of disciplines. She is performing research related to the augustana human library, exploring how listening to diverse personal narratives impacts students’ beliefs and learning.
Nancy Goebel is the Head Librarian of the Augustana Campus Library of the University of Alberta (Canada). Nancy’s strong interest in Information Literacy has led her to spearhead: thirteen annual “Information Literacy in Academic Libraries” workshops featuring high-profile international speakers; the creation of Information Literacy awards for students and faculty; the production of the DVD It Changed the Way I Do Research Period: Augustana Talks Information Literacy; credit-bearing discipline-specific Information Literacy courses; the augustana human library; and the open source Information Literacy assessment software WASSAIL. Nancy is an Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Consultant.
‘A Different Point of View’: Exploring Diversity in the Human Library
This presentation will describe the Augustana Human Library, which has occurred each academic term since 2009. A Human Library is an event that allows ‘Readers’ to engage in conversation with ‘Human Books’ who have diverse life experiences. Many of Augustana’s Human Books have experienced prejudice or discrimination, while others have significant life events and stories to tell. Topics range from addiction to physical and cognitive challenges to gender and sexuality. We will explain what a Human Library is, the process of planning and coordinating one in an academic library, the successes and challenges we have had at Augustana, how we integrate the event into information literacy practices, and the types of assessment that we perform.