Daily Archives: July 22, 2019

Save the Date: Libraries Open House kick-of party Aug. 1

By: Ali Zawoyski

The Fall Semester is almost here and so is the 17th annual Libraries Open House! Mark your calendars now for the Open House Volunteer Ice Cream Kick-Off at 3 p.m. on August 1, in Mann Assembly Room.

Come sign up for the Libraries’ biggest outreach event of the year and enjoy Creamery Ice Cream and Rita’s Italian Ice!

Not sure what it’s all about? This year’s Libraries Open House will take place on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 11-12. We expect to welcome over 3000 students to learn more about our spaces, our services, and how the Libraries can support their Penn State education.

Kick-off this great event on August 1st at 3pm in the Mann Room! Learn how to get involved, meet members of the Open House committee, and see photos from years past… all with free ice cream and Italian ice!

Questions? Please contact Ali Zawoyski at ajz12@psu.edu or Megan Gilpin at mcg13@psu.edu

Nelson and Spencer present on gamified instruction at national conference

By: Elizabeth Nelson

Elizabeth Nelson, reference and instruction librarian at Penn State Lehigh Valley, and Brett Spencer, reference and instruction librarian at Penn State Berks, presented at The Innovative
Library Classroom (TILC), hosted this year at William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in June.

Their session, “Argument Architect: Developing a Research Boardgame to Teach Thesis Development and Source Evaluation”, discussed how they created a hands-on boardgame experience for ENGL 15 students learning basic research skills. Argument Architect invites small groups of students to construct a skyscraper with a topic as their foundation and a thesis as the
cap – in between, students must choose appropriate sources from a pile of source blocks by evaluating the title, citation information, and relevant quote from each source. Groups who
construct a building with at least three source “floors” that are relevant to their topic and support their chosen thesis are evaluated by their librarians and disciplinary faculty, who act
as “building inspectors”. Students explain their choice of sources and the “inspectors” help them see potential flaws or additional questions and provide guidance as needed; groups that
pass their inspection choose from an ever-changing Prize Bucket and may immediately build a new structure for a different, contradictory thesis or using different sources. This cooperative game seeks to help students increase their knowledge in the “Authority is Constructed and Contextual” and “Research as Inquiry” frames from the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.

Attendees of the presentation learned how the game was created and had the opportunity to play a round themselves, using the real boardgame (and playing for real prizes). Overall,  feedback from attendees was positive, with requests for the game’s materials and instructions to be shared online as the most common comment.

As an additional point of interest, the session was led as a hybrid in-person/online presentation. Elizabeth traveled to the event and guided the in-person game session, but Brett was present virtually and able to participate in the presentation itself and engage with attendees during the Q&A portion. Support for hybrid presentations is still growing, but will hopefully become more commonplace as we look for ways to reduce the environmental impact of our physical travel while still participating in and developing our research through national and international venues.

Tech Tip: Microsoft rolling out new Outlook on the web beginning this week!

By: Ryan Johnson

After several months of testing with customers such as Penn State(currently a toggle exists to switch back and forth), Microsoft will begin rolling out the new Outlook on the web to its Enterprise customers beginning this week (July 22).

According to Enterprise IT (EIT) while an exact date is not confirmed, this new experience could roll out anytime beginning next week to Penn State. All Microsoft customers will be updated
by September. When the new version rolls out, you will not be able to switch back.

Read about some of the new features in the article HERE:

Some of the highlights include:

Categories: It’s now easier to identify , right from your message list. Categories make it easy to tag, find, or organize your messages. Add multiple categories to a message, add a category as a favorite, or use Search to find it.

Dark mode: Personalize your inbox with dark mode for those times when your eyes are a little tired. Don’t worry, you can “turn on the lights” when you want to read a specific email or when
composing one.

Expressions: Sometimes you are out of words, luckily, images are worth a 1,000 of those. Add emojis and GIFs to your messages right from Outlook.

Favorites: Favorite what is most important to you and put it front and center in your inbox. You can favorite a contact, a group, or a category by to them so you can have easier access and see the message count for each. Once you favorite them, they sync to Outlook mobile too!

Quickly get to the emails you are composing or reading: When you create new messages Outlook will keep a tab for them at the bottom of the reading pane, so you can start as many as you need, go back to reading a previous email, and still find the one you were writing.

Calendar Search: Now you can search across multiple calendars. Search for a person, keyword, or location and Outlook will show all the matching events across your calendars. You can also use the filters to adjust which calendars you’d like to search, or the timeframe you’d like to search in.

Quickly create events: Creating a meeting is now easier. Right from the calendar surface with one click bring the quick compose form, invite people, find a room, and even get suggested times for when everyone is available.

Focus on today: There is just so much you can pay attention during the week. In order to help you with that, we are making today and tomorrow front and center by dedicating more surface in your calendar to them so you can easily identify your upcoming events with a quick glimpse at your calendar.

Snooze an email: There are moments in which you don’t have time to properly address an email and wish it would have arrived at a different time. For those moments when the time is not right, Outlook now allows you to snooze an email for a more convenient time. When you snooze an email, it leaves your inbox and re-appears as an unread message at the top of your inbox on the time and date you selected.

Upcoming events in month view: Seeing your calendar in month view gives you a good sense of what days or weeks are busier, and now it’s also easier to keep track of your day’s events while still seeing the big picture. In month view, Outlook also shows you how long you have until your next event.

Create an online meeting: We’ve updated our backend to more closely reflect your organization’s online meeting policies. Depending on what services you are enabled for, you will see 1 of 3 options: i) A drop down menu to “Add online meeting” where you can select between a Skype or Teams meeting, ii) a toggle to create a Skype meeting or iii) a toggle to create a Teams meeting.

Join an online meeting from the event peek: Joining an online meeting from the place where you keep track of your day should be easy. And now it is, just go to the meeting event and you can join in one click right from the event peek.

See attendees’ responses to a meeting: You can now easily identify who is invited to the meeting and see everyone’s response. We’ve added a quick summary in the event peek and in
the full meeting invite attendees are grouped attendees by their response. If you use the event peek, you can see attendees’ details if the meeting has less than 3 attendees or a summary of
responses if there are more.

Tasks now sync with To-Do: The new Tasks experience now syncs your tasks with To-Do and across some Office apps like Planner in your “Assigned to me” list. Do you flag emails to remember to follow up on them? Now when you flag an email, it will be created as a task in its own “Flagged email” list in To-Do!

“Site” Seeing with DAWS: Regular updates about UL’s website

By: Karen Hackett

Current Feature: Web Content Platforms and Authoring Workshop

I-Tech’s Discovery, Access and Web Services Team (DAWS) is pleased to share web project updates through a series of blog posts on the University Libraries’ staff site. The goal of the posts, scheduled to be published once or twice per month, is to showcase our web development and content work, as well as share pointers to related resources. Once a post is published, it will be shared through Library News.

Our latest post features a collaboration between DAWS and Library Learning Services. We’re excited to announce that we’re teaming up to present a newly created workshop:  Web Content Platforms and Authoring. The workshop will be held on August 13, 2019, 10:00 a.m. – noon, in Foster Auditorium and on MediaSite. Topics include web content strategy, our primary web content platforms, how to provide content for each platform, and best practices and guidelines. We look forward to seeing you there!

Missed our first posts in this series? Make sure to check out:

Do you have a topic you would like to know more about or feedback you would like to share? Please feel free to contact us by sending your comments and questions to website feedback. As always, we welcome your input, and we look forward to sharing our updates and work with you.

Customer Service Tip: The best phrases for taking ownership of service failures

By: Jeff Toister (submitted by Carmen Gass)

Customer service often involves solving problems we didn’t create.

Our colleagues make mistakes. A defective product, a late shipment, or a billing error can all send fuming customers in our direction. Sometimes, customers themselves cause the issue.

We’re expected to take ownership of these situations, represent the company, and help customers feel better. Yet it’s tempting to deflect ownership when the pressure is on.
Read more here.

Events: July 22

Summer 2019
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.

promotional poster - Secret Lives of Girls and Women

Jan. 28-Sept. 1, 2019, Exhibit: “The Secret Lives of Girls and Women” Eberly Family Special Collections Library, 104 Paterno Library. Through the examination of books, letters, hand-written diaries and other archival materials, The Secret Lives of Girls and Women exposes a wide spectrum of feminine mysteries. The exhibition includes many hidden or concealed aspects of female life found within beauty secrets, secret languages created by women, literary secrets, social taboos and more throughout history. On display during Special Collections Library hours.

The Future is Now, exhibit graphic

Mar. 11-Sept. 26, 2019, Exhibit: “The Future is Now.” Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library. Highlights from current and forthcoming equipment and assistance available to support students’ academic success from the Libraries’ Media and Technology Support Services and Adaptive Technology and Services departments.

Monday, June 3-Tuesday, Aug. 13  Summer Scholarly Communications Workshops. Students, faculty and staff, join Ana Enriquez, scholarly communications outreach librarian, for communications workshops that cover topics such as open access, copyright and fair-use policies.Workshops take place via Zoom and in various locations across Penn State’s campuses. Registration is free but required for all workshops by clicking on the links provided.
Thursday, June 20-Friday, August 23, 2019 Research Travel Awards winning “brown bag” presentations. Seven informal, one-hour lunchtime presentations offered by traveling researchers on a variety of topics, hosted by the Eberly Family Special Collections Library.  All presentations are open to the public and take place in Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library.
Friday, August 2, Library Data Days. A full day to learn about different approaches to working with data, the data we collect, how it’s used, and how it informs our decisions. use of data in decision-making. This Library Assessment and Metrics Council event is open to faculty, staff, and administration from all campuses. Register HERE.
Wednesday, August 7,Docunight: Iran Via Documentaries.On the first Wednesday of every month, Docunight features a documentary film about, around, or in Iran, or made Iranians. All events are open to everyone, and all films have English subtitles. Co-sponsored by the Iranian Student Association and the University Libraries. 7 p.m. in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library, University Park.
Tuesday, August 13, Public Tour: Secret Lives of Girls and Women. Curated free tours of the Special Collections exhibit “The Secret Lives of Girls and Women” will offer background information and provenance to the books and objects on display, as well discussion about the their meaning and importance. Registration requested. 10-11 a.m., 104 Paterno Library on the University Park Campus.
Monday, August 26, First day of fall 2019 semester.
Wednesday, September 4, US-China College Art Summit. Five panels will discuss the current state of art education at institutions of higher education in the United States and China.The summit promotes the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and experiences of leading art educators from the U.S. and China, through dialogue, group exhibitions, and professional development programs. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library, University Park.

Please submit event information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via its Staff Site request form and selecting the “Library News blog article” button.