[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right. Starting with Holly, will you each introduce yourself with the title that you would like to be identified by?
My name is Holly Croft. I'm the Digital Archivist at Georgia College.
Jolene Cole, Professor of Library Science at Georgia College.
Oh, maybe I should have said that. Whoops.
[LAUGHTER]
Cold open. Fantastic.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta and this is Lost in the Stacks, The Research Library Rock 'n' Roll Radio Show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the virtual studio with Fred Rascoe and Wendy Hagenmaier. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it.
Our show today is called "There Will Always Be Teaching," which sounds a little bit like job security. CHARLIE BENNETT: Or maybe a curse. WENDY HAGENMAIER: It's both, of course.
Of course. WENDY HAGENMAIER: We're speaking today with a librarian and an archivist at Georgia College and State University who've launched a minor in Information Studies, which means that there will always be teaching, whether it's the history of information, cultural heritage informatics, or anything in between.
And our songs today are about diving into your interests, becoming your best self, and successful long term plans.
So much optimism, Fred.
I know. Do you love it? Information Studies are for everyone, not just librarians and archivists. I mean, heck, that's why we've been doing this show for over 12 years, right?
Wow.
So let's start with a track about welcoming everyone to the party.
Pal.
This is "Come All Ye" by Fairport Convention right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[MUSIC - FAIRPORT CONVENTION, "COME ALL YE"]
That was "Come All Ye" by Fairport Convention. This is Lost in the Stacks. Our show today is called "There Will Always Be Teaching," featuring Holly Croft and Jolene Cole of the Ina Dillard Russell Library at Georgia College and State University.
Holly is the Digital Archivist and an Assistant Professor of Library Science and Jolene is the Interim Associate Director for Instruction and Research Services and a Professor of Library Science.
How far back does your desire to start this program go?
Well, we started really talking about it March of 2020. It wasn't something that we knew exactly that we were going to do a minor. But then after looking at certificates and minors and other possibilities, we decided to really start working towards that goal. And prior to that, I mean, we've talked about this for years. So it probably took probably another five years before that where we were just throwing it around for a great deal of time.
Yeah, I knew it predated me. I started in 2016 here. And librarians were already teaching courses. We teach the Georgia College Year One, which is a critical thinking course. Jolene had created Research in the Age of Google. And it had been taught by the time I got here in 2016 like three or four times already I think at that point.
I was one of the first sets of librarians that was hired here, we're faculty, that had this little thing in our job description that said that we would teach GC 1Y and 2Y. And the 2Y is GC, Georgia College Year Two. And it has a global overlay. And we've never developed a GC 2Y from the library, but it does say that in my job description that I could teach that. So I came in knowing that that was something that was going to happen. I'm one of the archivists here.
So I actually wanted to develop a course that was archives focused. And so that ended up being The History of Georgia College. I put that in GC 1Y through in 2018. It has to be approved by a committee. It was voted on and accepted and I taught it in spring 2019 for the first time. So that was my first time ever developing a course. And then as Jolene said, we were thinking, what else could we do? We were teaching the GC 1Y so often.
And I always seem to get students in special collections who are either doing their English capstone or their history internship for the public history focus. Or we've even had mass comm and they call it practicum over there. That's three names for the same thing, basically.
[LAUGHS]
But the students come in and they work in special collections, and so many of them have gone on and are in library science programs now. There is an interest in our student body here in understanding what librarianship and archivy is. And with the minor, we didn't want to try to do things that they would learn again in grad school. But maybe I came in to grad school not having interacted that much with archives. I knew that's what I wanted to do.
I had worked in a public library, but the archives world was brand new to me. And there were some things that I wish I had maybe known before even starting the basic courses at the grad level. And so we thought this would be a good opportunity because there are students here at Georgia's Public Liberal Arts University that have that interest.
So you were going to teach classes no matter what? It was the minor. I always wonder is it giving yourself a lot more work? And then what's the benefit that you're looking for when you start actually creating a curricula that's all connected?
I think that's what is so important about what we were doing, because we did feel a little disjointed on our teaching. And like with me and Holly, we're in two different, quote, "departments" of the library. And so we were trying to also I think in a way bring it under one umbrella so that we were working together and that we would have a set offering. What we were doing was we kept creating these Georgia College first year courses.
And so by the point we started talking about the minor, I think we had four or five library first year courses. And at that point, we were just like, why aren't we having our own certificate? Why don't we have our own minor? And then of course, misinformation and the COVID-19 pandemic happened around that same time. And all of a sudden, faculty cared about information and evaluating and we're like, if we're going to do it, this is the time to do it.
When we did do the minor and proposed it, we ended up taking some of those GC 1Y classes that were already approved through the college and moving them to the minor. So we already had our electives as part of that. And then we kept our two GC 1Y, my original, and then we kept Holly's as our two offerings. Because we're obligated by the University to teach at least one section a semester of those first year programs.
It gives us more flexibility as well because when we're doing the GC 1Y program, we are creating something within a bubble and having to report to certain, I don't know, qualifications or whatever you want to call them where in the minor we have a lot more control of what we do and what our learning outcomes are and what we can do with students. So all of that together I think also stirred us in that direction.
One of the things about teaching the GC 1Y's is you learn how much paperwork goes into that core curriculum coursework here. There is so much stuff that I turn into the registrar. I'm teaching this semester and so it's fresh in my brain. Making sure that they have the midterm grades, making sure that they know if we've had students that have been absent too much, and then having to have an attendance policy that doesn't really exist for upper levels like it does for core classes.
I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what it's like to not teach a core course. [INAUDIBLE] interesting.
And is there a reason that you went with a minor rather than a certificate?
We did. I don't know if I can-- Holly can jump in if she remembers exactly why. I want to say it had something to do with the Hope Scholarship and credit hours. Or there was some kind of hang up that we were like, yeah, that won't work for us because if we can't take certain types of students, that's not going to work for us. Was that it, Holly? Because I know we talked about that.
That was part of it. And I think it's easier to do a certificate if you have a major as well. The minor also fit because there is no major in information science here. And you can create a minor for a brand new program easily, we found out. I mean, there are hoops, but it wasn't as bad as I think we thought it was going to be going in. CHARLIE BENNETT: Speaking of hoops, was there a particular hoop that stands out that was different than building a course?
I mean, I'll be honest, I feel like the library has just the idea that you're coming from the library gives you more hoops to jump through [INAUDIBLE]. Because every time I talk to the registrar and I'm like, how do you think this is going to go over? And she's like, it just depends on who's sitting at the table that day. And that's frustrating, because then you're at the whim of faculty opinion of what you do.
And of course, we've had faculty on campus say you have no business being in a classroom. And then we have faculty that 100% support us and are so excited about what we're doing. And so it's really a mixed bag. The hardest thing maybe for us was we had to design some, because we didn't have a really solid structure of how things approved through our college, like our library. Whereas other departments go through a department group.
Then they go through their college or curriculum committee and then they go to the University curriculum committee. Where we were just like, all right, we can just jump to the last step. So maybe we had a little less hoops. I don't know. But we were lucky that we had a lot of people sitting at that table that day that did support us. And we did a lot of ground, grassroot, hey faculty, this is coming. This is what we're working on.
We even offered multiple departments if they wanted to work with us and cross list classes. And so by the time we got to that table, I think everyone knew it was coming, and so that helped to.
We'll be back with more from Holly Croft and Jolene Cole after a music set.
File this set under ZA3075.A76.
You just heard "Solid Gold" by Red Cross and before that, "New Thing" by Trixie Mattel. Songs about going for the new thing and plans for success coming to fruition.
Maybe that's redundant. I mean, does anyone ever plan for failure and that comes to fruition?
Often people plan for failure, Fred. You know that.
I guess so. CHARLIE BENNETT: You're a pessimist. We're speaking with Holly Croft and Jolene Cole, an archivist and a librarian at Georgia College and State University who have turned their teaching into a minor in Information Studies. CHARLIE BENNETT: So can you tell me a little bit about the actual designing of the minor? What were your concerns? What were your questions for yourself when you started laying out what these courses would be?
When we first developed the minor, the Information Studies was based off of a model from Keene State College. And so I worked with them in the minor that they had developed. And of course, there's similar programs and BA programs across the country. So we kind of did just a feel for what they were offering and then we went from there. So that's how we kind of came up especially with our first two core required classes for the program.
So the Introduction to Information Studies and then a History of Information. And then from there, a lot of it, again, was developed from the classes we'd already had personal interest in with the GC 1Y program. And then of course, archives came in and they had a lot of their own ideas. And that's where Holly developed some of the more specific classes as well.
So we have a cultural heritage concentration in there. And it's not like a real concentration. Just there are some suggested courses. That naming is very specific because in the past, our history department has offered an archives minor. Those courses are not taught by anybody, but they are on the books as history courses.
Wait, those are dead classes that just-- zombie classes with no brain in them?
Yep.
No no.
So I didn't want to step on toes in case one day in the future the history department picks that back up. Probably the history faculty would find that funny. We also have a Museum Studies minor here that is done through our art department. They do cover other kinds of museums, but it focuses on art galleries and museums. And a lot of the students they have taken in, funny enough, are from the history department. And the history students don't necessarily want to work in an art gallery.
So that's been kind of interesting too. I also didn't want to go steal them, but I also knew that the history students had a broader focus and they were interested in becoming archivists and going into public history programs. And so cultural heritage was the word that fit. We have several courses. I'm teaching a Cultural Heritage Informatics course in the spring. And that is a scary title for, I guess, undergrads until they understand that I'm not going to make them classify things.
But it is a concentration that you can now get at American University and a couple of others that does set folks up to be art librarians, but also working in museums as librarians as well. And we are going to include archives in ours because that's what I do. And so that's the very first one that I recommend that they take. They can also take a course in archives and climate change just to see how that's affecting cultural heritage sites around the world of different types.
And then I have one that's not in the cultural heritage concentration called The Politics of Information. That has to do with my background. But it's really more about the economics of information and how information is filtered all the time by somebody before it gets to you and why that filter is there and who puts it on. So those are the courses I designed. Jolene has a couple too that are really neat. One of them is in cultural heritage.
Yeah, I'm really excited about the Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells, Your Story, Archives And Collective Memory.
Oh wow.
So I'm going to take almost like a popular culture kind of spin to it as well. So we got Hamilton. We got Outlander. And just kind of exploring the give and take of who does get to tell your story, right? Who gets to keep that record. So we're going to look at the power of information and that concept. So the kids are excited. They like the title. So that's the selling point, I think, and some of those history majors got real excited by that one.
But none of these students are in a Information Sciences Library School at Georgia College, right? And do you think that they are trying to figure out if they want to go to one elsewhere? Or is this really just to support other professions that don't have as strong a backing to make up for the fact that the archives classes in the history department--
Are dead?
Are just ghost ships.
So we have had at least two to three of our library students, library assistants, go on to library school. Not all of them are becoming archivists, of course, but mine do. That interest is there. Students don't quite know how to do it. And I think given this minor, that sets them up for grad school. Information goes well beyond information science. I think a lot too, one of the things that I need to focus on are computer science program.
I get a lot of interest from students who are working for Serve, which is our tech support, I guess, and IT. They take the job. They come up here because our computers are constantly doing something wonky or I've done something wonky because I'm the digital archivist. I'm responsible for a lot of the problems here. And so when they come up, they're like, what is this place? And they see the forensic equipment that I have and they're like, wait, you know how to do digital forensics? I do.
There's a good opportunity I haven't really explored. And I could create courses that would hook on to computer science too. So the interest I think goes beyond just kids who are going to go to library school. It'll hook into some different majors here too. And the cultural heritage informatics is specifically that so that it is an umbrella for students who are also interested in going into public history and museums too.
Even though I'm not trying to steal from our Museum Studies minor, we might be a better fit if they're really interested in a house museum or something.
We'll be back with more all about the minor in Information Studies at Georgia College and State University on the left side of the hour.
All right, want to try one more? And this time you say it.
Hi, my name is Kieran. You are listening-- wait.
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
You are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
Today's show is called "There Will Always Be Teaching," featuring an interview with Holly Croft and Jolene Cole about the Information Studies minor at Georgia College and State University. As often happens, Marlee had a post interview question that we'd like to share with you all.
Favorite student question in class.
[LAUGHS]
So mine can get funny. And generally it's something so obvious. Like who is the president now of the college? Just random things. They expect me to know on a dime everything that ever happened here also by the day and date.
Mine would probably have to be something on the conspiracy theories, because every semester there's always a student that comes and they're dead set that that conspiracy theory is true. And then they'll argue with you and then, again, it goes back to, I thought this is what we were learning in class and making me seem a little like a failure. But those are always the most fun. So I think I had the student one semester that's come about the car companies.
They're all keeping the cars that can run on water away because of, you know, I'm not going to make the money and then the gas companies won't make money and fun stuff like that.
Mine also, I should have thought about this earlier, I always get asked every semester about Cookie the ghost. So we do have a ghost at Georgia College. Her name is Cookie.
File this set under BF637.H4D28.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You just heard "Help You Ann" by The Lyres and before that "The More I See You" by Chris Montez. Songs about delving into what interests you and helping others.
Today's show is called "There Will Always Be Teaching" about the minor in Information Studies at Georgia College and State University. Our guests are the instigating information professionals at the college, Holly Croft and Jolene Cole. What's happening to you professionally while you're working on these classes? You're thinking about different paths or you're going after subjects that maybe you weren't going to go as deeply into to make classes. What's going on for you?
A lot.
[LAUGHTER]
We have a lot going on. And as Holly said, she wears so many multiple hats and as do I. And so it is requiring us also to do a deep dive into areas that we have backgrounds in but never had time to solely focus on. So on top of all this, yeah, there's a lot of research. I'm spending a lot. EBay account has got a lot of good use.
Wait, explain that just a little bit.
I can't help myself. I keep buying teaching resources. And so both me and Holly attended Rare Book School at UVA. Our professors just had these wonderful artifacts to work with. And I kind of want to mimic what they did with us in class and do that with my students. And so of course, I had to go on and buy all the antique newspapers and different types of antique books to show them. Sitting on my desk I have a bunch of almanacs from the 1800s through the 1960s.
Also on eBay this morning I bought a printing press. So we have the copper presses with the different images. I think they're nature images or something. So I got five of those to show them like how everything used to be printed in the papers or how they were printed in the books. There's been a whole lot going on on trying to prep for these classes and learning more. And we've been continuing our education by taking those courses. I mean, Holly's been to the one in California and UVA.
I plan on applying for a fellowship up there again this year in hopes to just-- it's learning how to teach these types of classes and bringing them back to campus. And I'm getting my EDD on top of it.
Oh wow.
I am writing my-- finishing up my dissertation at the same time. So we've been quite busy.
How many courses do you offer at a time? And is it up to you to ensure that students are following a sequence or how much administrative oversight do you have?
We set it up that we, the library as a whole, will offer three classes a semester currently. So it's not horrible. One will be our first year course that we're kind of required to do through the University. And then kind of between me and Holly at the moment, one of us will teach either one of the intro required. So we have two required and they can take them in any order and then one of the electives each semester.
And so this spring, we're offering the history of information and the cultural heritage. So one elective, one required, and there's no sequence. And so there's not a lot of oversight on that. The most oversight I think is just making sure that they take all their required, which I think comes at 15 hour credit hours, and then they complete the minor.
You all act as your own advisors, your own minor advisors?
We did a lot of marketing and working with the actual advisors and trying to explain to the actual advisors what we are and what we're doing and who would work best for this type of program. We've stayed after work with the history department and we went trying to talk to them about everything in the program. So all the history majors knew what was going on. And then we've made some advertising.
We showed up at some of the career fair days or just academic-- they have an academic day where everybody gets together, all the disciplines, and they kind of go there and sell themselves. But I think it'll be a slow start, but I'm hoping that it'll pick up and we can have a steady group of students that are interested.
So you said both in my conversations with you before this interview and also in this interview things we wished we had known in grad school. And so you're thinking about students who are not library students exactly. You're thinking in terms of grad students. Can you talk about what that is? What did you want to know when you were a grad student that you're trying to get these students to know?
So we're kind of weird here at Georgia College. When you come into special collections, if you are a student, we don't require that you have an appointment. They can just show up as long as it's open hours. I know that does not work for most places, especially places bigger than here. I have taught some of our Colonnade students. The Colonnade is the student newspaper. They come in and need stuff all the time. I've taught them to scan.
So some of them actually, I've known them a couple of years at this point, can walk in, get our old Colonnades, come scan them, and go put them back. And that's just not going to be something that happens anywhere else. And so some of our students actually have quite a lot of access to materials here. And they get to work with materials in a way that other students don't. We always are supervising. I know when they're coming in or they would never just go get it without asking me first.
But like I said, I realize that's highly abnormal. My experience with special collections as an undergrad at the University of Georgia in the late '90s was very different from how even Georgia operates today. So I had to have permission from a professor to even go into Hargrett so that they would know that I was coming. It wasn't like I could just set up an appointment. They were really, really, they watched me like a hawk. And they have some really, really cool things there.
So I completely understand. But also that's not how Hargrett is today either because we believe a lot more in access and making students feel comfortable. I felt super out of place. So it was really kind of an interesting thing that I wanted to work in archives after that being my one experience with one. And again, they are not like that today at all, not even a little bit. So we've changed a lot as a field. And I want students to feel comfortable when they come in here.
They'll be more comfortable with the whole process because they know, well, this is what's going on when the archivist goes away. I know the space, what that looks like in the back, and I know what they're doing. And they bring me the materials. And even as they get to use the stuff here, I explain when you go someplace else, this is how it's going to be. But them having the access here I think gives them a comfort level, or at least I hope it does, for using archives in the future.
I just want to add that on the most basic level, if I think back to when I was a history major in college and I didn't know what I wanted to do. Everyone's like, if you're not going to teach, what are you going to do? I didn't know about library school. I didn't know that people went and got master's degrees in these things. I was a first generation student. I never thought that I would even go on to get a master's degree, let alone a doctorate degree. I was an archivist and an MLS student.
And so I remember going and doing an internship in college and they're like here, help us organize these archives. They didn't have an archives. It was just a room full of stuff. And I just made an Excel sheet and like I was like, here's a list of everything that you have. I didn't know what they meant. And they didn't know what they meant, so it was fine. But then I went to grad school and I was embarrassed. Like oh my God, I can't believe I did that. That's not what they meant really at all.
And so it's really just introducing people so they're not like me where I was just kind of, wow, this is all new. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Our guests today were Holly Croft and Jolene Cole of the Ina Dillard Russell library at Georgia College and State University.
Holly is the Digital Archivist and an Assistant Professor of Library Science and Jolene is the Interim Associate Director for Instruction and Research Services and a Professor of Library Science.
File this set under VAS8793.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That was "My Best Self" by Half Waif and before that "Best Self" by Devon Levi. Songs about being your best possible self.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show was all about the minor in Information Studies at Georgia College and State University. We talked about classes and teaching and some other stuff. But I'd like to finish the show by asking the show crew about their favorite or a favorite class that they've taught, whether it's a one shot, a for credit, or something entirely different.
So yeah, way back in the day many years ago, I had a really good experience collaborating with a corporate records manager and a public librarian on this workshop that was for other information professionals about personal digital archives and personal digital archiving. And it was just really fun to bring together those different perspectives on the records continuum and motivations that people might have to preserve their own records.
So that was a super fun collaboration and I learned a lot from those people. So I learned a lot through the process of putting something together to teach to others. How about you, Fred?
The one that comes to mind is a class that I actually taught with you, Charlie, back in 2014. We took on a semester long class called GT1000. It's the freshman seminar class. You learn all about what it's like to be a college student and to fit in on campus. We decided to create this class in a way that the final project would be a radio show that we broadcast at the end of the semester. It was so much fun to do. We didn't have very many students, but that was actually kind of nice.
We could kind of just all sit around one table just sort of like a really fun committee meeting every week and talk about what it's like to be at Georgia Tech.
It was the only time that's happened.
And plan for this radio show. We've done it a few times since then. But that first year when we were really figuring out what we wanted to do for the first time and getting the students into it for the first time, that was a really memorable class for me. I enjoyed that.
I have to agree with you, Fred. So if I leave that one behind, the whole GT1000 experience, I guess my favorite course for multiple reasons has been GT2801, which is a minimester intro to podcasting that I've done, sort of the culmination of all of the one shot instruction in the workshops and the writing and the audio editing fiddling around that I've done. Tried to turn it into a one hour for credit course that I taught I think four or five times.
I've had some really great groups of 10 or 12 students going with me deep into how do you make a podcast. And it's exhausted me and I don't think I'll teach it anymore, but I'm very glad that I did. Like many things. OK, roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech, cha cha cha, Library written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier.
Today's show was edited and assembled by Charlie, who's thinking about going back to school.
Whoa. Yeah. Think on that carefully, Charlie.
I never do. Legal counsel and a desktop printing press were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Holly and Jolene for being on the show, to Jenny Towns for suggesting the show, to the Georgia College and State University for just being themselves, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Find us online at lostinthestacks.org and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week's show is called "All The President's Stuff," which makes me super nervous with the election season and all its discontents and everything. I just can't even believe we're doing a show about it. FRED RASCOE: Luckily I think it's a different kind of president.
Oh. Oh, like library stuff, yeah. OK, never mind.
Good news, right?
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Time for our last song today. Everyone interested in information literacy, that's librarians, archivists, or otherwise should always be challenging themselves and looking for ways to do more to improve our ability to find, evaluate, and use information. So let's close with a song about keeping your eyes looking up and ahead as you try to find the right path. This is "Searching With My Good Eye Closed" by Soundgarden right here on Lost in the Stacks.
Oh, my youth is fading in. Turn it up, everybody, when you hear the screaming start.
Charlie loves him some Soundgarden. Have a great weekend, everybody.
This Is My Good Eye.