WISE+ Students present at SALALM LIII

New Orleans, Louisiana, May 30-June 3, 2008

Several students from the WISE+ sponsored course, Librarianship for Latin American Studies, Iberian Studies, and Latina/o Studies, participated in a roundtable discussion focused on the course at SALALM LIII, the fifty-third annual conference of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM). The course was taught by Anne Barnhart, Librarian for Latin American & Iberian Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, Chicana/o Studies, and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a LEEP course at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The roundtable discussion, entitled "LEEPin' Latinamericanistas! Instructor-Student Reflections on the Online Latin Americanist Librarianship Course," featured reflections from students on various aspects of the course. One student presented a tour of the course interface and the various features of the Moodle courseware. Several students fielded questions from the audience regarding the experience of taking the course online in a synchronous format, a topic which garnered a fair amount of interest. Another student spoke about her experiences in the course as someone who is hearing impaired for the benefit of librarians in the audience who may not have encountered hearing impaired students in their library instruction classes, in the past, but may in the future.

Several roundtable participants remarked on the practical course exercises, particularly those that they had not encountered in previous classes, such as an indexing assignment, institutional profile, reference consultation, course-tailored bibliographic instruction exercise, and review essay. Some students had already taken a collection development course or a reference courses in the past that required them to evaluate resources. However, they had not had the experience of writing several separate lengthy evaluations of different resources on a related subject area, then scaling their evaluations down to the typical word limit of published reviews. Other students commented on the probable impact which specific assignments and exposure to a myriad of professional activities routinely undertaken by librarians actively engaged in the profession would have on their own professional lives in the future. For example, one student indicated that she is far more likely now to readily agree to write review articles, serve as an indexer for resources like HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index), undertake committee work in professional organizations, and engage in similar activities as a consequence of taking the course. Another student made observations about the attitude of solidarity and spirit of collaboration fostered among the students by the instructor through assignments and course activities (including working together on a course wiki), and the potential for that to carry over into their professional lives.

Finally, there was broad consensus among the roundtable participants that the course provided a fairly holistic view of librarianship, particularly academic librarianship, and that the opportunity to learn from and engage with a variety of practitioners from around the country at different types of institutions that the course afforded was invaluable. The conference was an excellent networking opportunity, attendance at the roundtable was nearly standing-room-only, and a great time was had by all the students who were able to attend SALALM.