A Conversation with Marijke Visser, Director of Development at the Maine State Library
Through this conversation we hope to explore ways that the Maine State Library and Academic Libraries in Maine can come together to support initiatives, cultivate collaboration, and create opportunities for growth with one another.
Location: Farber Forum
Supervising Students Summary
A poster-style summary of the "best practices" and resources responses I received to my accidental survey of MELIBS-L librarians who supervise students. Anyone who supervises student workers will gain confirmation, confidence, negotiating skills, and direction to develop their students' potential.
Presenter: Ann Morrison Spinney, Assistant Dean of Learning Resources, Northern Maine Community College
If It’s a Tool, We’ll Use It: What GenAI Can Do for Information Literacy Instruction at Small Schools
The rapid proliferation of Generative AI systems like Dall-E (for visual art), ChatGPT (for search) and Bard (for written communication) has raised alarm bells on college campuses. The character of this alarm, especially at art schools like MECA&D, so closely resembles that which roiled libraries during the advent of the major search engines that it cracks a window of opportunity. How does this recurrence of concern for skills replacement through automation prepare library staff to advocate for greater prominence in information literacy curricula? And how can demonstrating both the usefulness and the shortcomings of these tools more effectively illustrate the core concepts of information literacy?
The target audience for this lightning talk is library staff at academic libraries, especially those at small schools seeking to gain a foothold in information literacy curricula. This talk will relate experience gained with faculty and administrators grappling with the effects of GenAI (e.g. plagarism, enrollment and viability, et al), as well as in attempting to incorporate these tools into information literacy instruction at Maine College of Art & Design. Participants will come away with a shared sense of empowerment, both in recognizing the familiarity over this moral panic and in their ability to harness these tools for curriculum design.
Presenter: Erik Bobilin, Library Director, Maine College of Art & Design
Location: Farber Forum