Accreditation would not be possible without you!  As you may know, the peer review accreditation process allows professionals from colleges in the Western Region to consider the academic quality and institutional improvement of ACCJC’s member colleges. This peer review process is unique to higher education accreditation in the United States. Commission staff develops peer review teams from a roster of experienced educators from across the region, and typically teams include a faculty librarian. If you are interested in contributing to the peer review process by serving as a peer reviewer on a team, please visit our website to learn about the qualifications and expectations and complete the Peer Reviewer Interest Form.

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for ACCJC’s 2019 Partners in Excellence Conference: April 30-May 3 in Burlingame. Join ACCJC as a partner in excellence and explore the awesome challenge educators face as they ponder What the Future Holds. The conference will feature multiple break-out sessions for members to weigh in on what they are doing to keep higher education responsive, effective, and relevant.  Plenary speakers include Martha Kanter (formerly Under Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, former Chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, and current Executive Director of the College Promise Campaign) and David Baime (Senior Vice President for Government Relations at the American Association of Community Colleges).  

For regular updates on what’s happening with ACCJC, please visit ACCJC President’s Monthly Essay page, where Dr. Richard Winn publishes a series of conversation-starters about key aspects of ACCJC’s work as an accrediting agency. Each month, he covers such topics as the role of sanctions, the work of a Commissioner, and ACCJC’s relationship with the US Department of Education. January’s essay, Take the Fear Out of the System, highlights important initiatives ACCJC is carrying out to ensure a meaningful accreditation process, one that promotes innovation and inquiry.   

In 2017, ACCJC adopted a new mission and core values to express not only its greater purpose, but also how it cares for its member institutions. ACCJC’s Mission emphasizes working with member institutions to advance educational quality and student learning and achievement.  The mission is now also grounded by a set of Core Values: Integrity. Quality Assurance. Institutional Improvement. Peer Review.   Student Learning and Achievement. Collegiality. We know you share these values, and we are eager to work with the librarians of the California Community College System to facilitate student success.

ACCJC thanks you for your commitment to higher education and looks forward to your participation and engagement!

We have heard from many community college librarians around the state that streaming media products present a number of problems for our libraries. Licensing terms, pricing and availability of titles are all longstanding sources of frustration. Vendor sales models such as patron driven acquisition can be unsustainable in terms of cost for our limited budgets. Titles are dropped from collections mid-year just when faculty start using them in their classes.  Title counts may remain the same but we see good content lost and replaced with mediocre content. Some streaming media aggregators refuse to work with our consortium and present misleading claims about costs and affordability. The EAR committee and your consortium will continue to monitor issues associated with this developing area of electronic resources and we will stand up for your interests.  We did a review and comparison of some streaming video products about a year and a half ago which readers might find interesting.  Please read and comment on the review or the products being discussed on our website at the above link.

Speaking of streaming video collections, our consortium recently added a subscription offering for content from Media Education Foundation, they produce and distribute documentary films and other educational resources to “inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media.” More about their collections can be found on the CCL website.

We have recently heard of a new streaming video collection, the National Media Market Academic Libraries Video Trust. We hope to have an article on this collection in a forthcoming issue of the Outlook.

The EAR committee has updated its review of JSTOR.  It covers new features added to the product and will help you make better use of the valuable resources in that database. Please check it out and submit comments on our website. The update can be found here: http://cclibrarians.org/review/jstor-update

I am pleased to report that the CCL Board has appointed Megan Kinney, a librarian at City College of San Francisco as the new EAR representative for the San Francisco/East Bay region. Megan specializes in electronic resources at CCSF and is also a member of the Electronic Resources and Acquisitions Workgroup for the LSP project. Prior to her present position at CCSF, Megan was a librarian at Contra Costa College for four years.

CCL-EAR is still looking for a librarian from the Southwest Bay region to join the EAR Committee.  This is a great chance to help select electronic resources for all California community colleges and to network with your colleagues from across the state.  Please contact CCL President Doug Achterman or area representative Susan Hines if you would be interested in serving on this important committee.  The Southwest Bay region includes the following colleges: Cabrillo, Cañada, De Anza, Evergreen Valley, Foothill, Gavilan, Hartnell, Mission, Monterey Peninsula, San Jose City, San Mateo, Skyline and West Valley.

There is a boatload of activity right now – LSP implementation, Guided Pathways, accreditation visits, and probably 95 other things happening in your local campus world! – but take a moment to celebrate that 101 colleges have already paid this year’s CCL membership fee.

That’s amazing, gratifying, and a great sign that so, so many of you feel that CCL continues to earn your trust and be your voice. The Board, the officers, staff and liaison folks try to never lose sight of who we work for!

Not sure if your college might be one of the 13? You can check on the cclibrarians.org website by clicking on the Directory tab, and then opening Library Profiles. If the gold star is not there, check in with me via email. There could be a dozen reasons why the payment hasn’t been made! Or you might just need another copy of the invoice to jump start the payment – contact me and I can send you one by email. And, yes, checks do get lost in the mail, and Business Offices do lose track of invoices. Please let me know how I can help.

Gregg T. Atkins, CCL Executive Director

LLRPAC met for the first time this academic year on February 11.  

One of the reasons that we didn’t meet earlier in the year was that the Academic Affairs division was being reorganized (Academic Affairs and Students Services are out of their “siloes” and now one division---Educational Services) and the Library and Learning Resources Program was being reassigned to another dean.  So we say farewell to Dr. LeBaron Woodyard, who will now be managing grants that the Chancellor’s Office administers, and say hello to Raul Arambula.  Raul is familiar to the CCC community as he has been involved with curriculum issues in the Chancellor’s Office for several years (in fact, he is also covering as dean for the curriculum and instruction sections of the Division until a replacement is brought forward for Jackie Escajeda, who is now a dean at Mission College).  He is a busy person, but he has pledged to keep on top of issue that the Committee makes him aware of.

Several of the issues that we discussed at the meeting included:

• Updating of the LLPRAC page on the Chancellor’s Office website to make it more useful and informative for the field
• Setting up a review team for improvements to the Annual Library Data Survey
• Looking at additional features on the current survey tool (Survey Gizmo) or suggesting a new survey tool to the Division
• Looking at a survey for the Tutoring and Learning Assistance programs, possibly in conjunction with the RP Group or 3CSN
• Updates on the Library Services Platform (LSP) from Amy Beadle, project manager with the CCC Tech Center
• Status of the ASCCC paper on the “Role of Library Faculty in the California Community Colleges”---should be up for adoption at the ASCCC Plenary Session in April
• Status of Tutoring Apportionment (AA 19-05)
• Inclusion of Library and Tutoring/Learning Assistance materials on the Vision Resource Center.
• Advocacy for Tutoring/Learning Assistance and Library programs
• State Budget

LLRPAC Membership, 2018-19

• Walter Butler, Pasadena City College
• Dan Crump, American River College
• Herbert English, Victor Valley College
• Vandana Gavaskar, Santa Barbara City College
• Henry Gordon, Cosumnes River College
• Fred Harris, Gavilan College
• Bernard McFadden, Copper Mountain College
• Edward Pohlert, MiraCosta College
• David Reed, Cañada College
• Leslie Tirapelle, Pasadena City College
• Ricky Shabazz, San Diego City College
• Collin Williams, Long Beach City College

This spring will be the last renewal we conduct using our current procurement system, and after consulting with the CCL board as well as other librarians in our system, we determined to migrate three years of invoices to the new system once we go live later this year. Practically speaking, what this means for your library is that if you haven’t archived invoices older than 2016 anywhere locally, and you wish to continue to access records of those invoices, you should download and store those invoices now. While CCLC staff will begin using ConsortiaManager this summer, we will introduce the new system to everyone this August and September through a series of webinars and communiques. I know it’s a busy year for all of us with the migration to Alma/Primo, but hopefully this transition will be seamless, intuitive, and librarian-friendly.

Speaking of renewals, your spring renewal forms – for subscriptions that renew on July 1 of each year – should be available for you to download in the CCLC procurement system on Friday, February 22nd. The deadline for returning these forms to the League office is Friday, May 10th. I hope to see many of you at the Dean’s and Directors meeting in Sacramento in March. I wish all of you a great spring semester!

Respectfully submitted,
James

Laney Library is pleased to host a new exhibit from the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland (AAQGO). This year's theme is Reading. The quilts are on display thru March 15, 2019.

The AAQGO is teaching a quilt-making workshop on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 in the Library Browsing Area. All are welcome.

The California Academic & Research Libraries (CARL) is co-hosting an “unconference” program for all California Community College (CCC) librarians, paraprofessionals, and MLIS students, in collaboration with the Pasadena City College (PCC) Library.

The first UnConference specifically designed for CCC librarians was held in 2012 at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC), followed in 2013 with one focusing on basic skills at Cañada College, 2014 again at SBCC, and most recently at Santa Rosa Junior College in 2015. Remarkably, Santa Ana College librarians also hosted Summer Teaching Retreat for Librarians from 2012-2015. Since these events were so positively received, the CCC library community has been eager to have another such supportive gathering.

As part of the CARL Executive Board, Mario Macías (LA Pierce College) is coordinating this program as the “Director-at-large for Community Colleges” -- with the generosity and assistance from Librarian Danielle Rapue and Dean Leslie Tirapelle from PCC’s Shatford Library -- in order to bridge the networks of CARL and community colleges in California. If you would like to be part of the planning team, or have any feedback for the design of the program, please email Mario at maciasm2@piercecollege.edu

More details will be announced in the coming weeks!

OER in the Community College Library - Experiences from Two Librarians
Webinar
Monday, February 25, 2019 Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM 

Registration: https://ala-events.zoom.us/webinar/register/56e58d9da00777f47510d14dfea9e911 

SCELC’s Vendor Day 
Loyola Marymount University (LMU)
Los Angeles
Thursday, March 14th.
More info: https://scelc.org/events/scelcapalooza

Vendor Day is an annual gathering of more than 50 vendors, many of whom have deals and discounts in place with CCLC. It’s a great opportunity to see demos and get a good idea of what’s new in the marketplace. California’s Community College librarians are welcome to register at no cost, and registration includes breakfast and lunch that day. Please note that community college librarians are invited only to Vendor Day, which is held on the 14th, and should select only the Vendor Day option when registering. Note that the CCL-EAR committee will be meeting the following day (Friday, March 15th) on the campus of LMU.

Council of Chief Librarians Deans & Directors Meeting
Embassy Suites 
Sacramento

More info: https://cclibrarians.org/event/deans-directors-meeting-thu-03212019-1200am 

The California Conference on Library Instruction
CCLI 2019 – Reimagining Student Success: Approaches That Increase Participation, Representation, and Relevance
University of San Francisco
2497 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117
Friday, May 3

More info: cclibinstruction.org

Note: Early bird tickets cost $60 and are available until March 1 (or until this ticket type sells out, at which time regular-priced tickets will become available). 

The Makerspaces for Innovation and Research in Academics (MIRA) Conference
University of La Verne
La Verne, CA
July 10-11, 2019.

Submit proposals here (deadline Feb. 19, 2019): https://goo.gl/forms/lBf3NchJGU98pelJ3 C
Conference Registration Opens: Mar 18, 2019
More info: https://laverne.libguides.com/mira

By Mary Weppler-Van Diver, San Joaquin Delta College

As a LibGuide enthusiast and librarian serving instructors using the Canvas learning management system, I had been searching for an effective way to incorporate LibGuides into Canvas’s online classroom.Specifically, I wondered if there was a way to insert a virtual library presence into Canvas’s digital architecture, and to do so in a way that would be easily accessible to online students.   For those of us who use LibGuides regularly to curate and present information literacy tools and library resources, we know that the LibGuides platform is a powerful tool.  It’s easy to update, and offers lots of dynamic features (see Figure 1).

As our college’s online course offerings continue to grow, the idea of making LibGuides available within Canvas seemed like win-win for both the library and our robust distance education program. With a little research, I found that a process was available for achieving this union, and that the end result would allow library resources to be prominently displayed within the navigation pane of the Canvas course (see Figure 2).

So how did we do it?  In summary it required some essential coordination with our Canvas administrator and Distance Education coordinator, Jennifer Azzaro. I collaborated with Jennifer to set up an LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) between Canvas and LibGuides. It really only took one week to coordinate the technical side of things with Jennifer.  After doing so, we were able to provide instructors with step-by-step instructions for adding our default LibGuide (shown in Figure 3) to their Canvas shell. This default guide features the Library’s most popular services and resources, including our library catalogs, databases, reserves collection, and virtual reference.

The more difficult, but not insurmountable, part of the project proved to be matching specific LibGuides to specific Canvas courses. This more granular task required about a week of trial-and-error testing. Eventually, with the participation of Jennifer and a few very patient instructors, we figured out how to correspond a specific guide to a specific online course by customizing the metadata within each LibGuide.

Technical Stuff

What Canvas Needs

Before Jennifer could configure Canvas to accept LibGuides, she needed specific information available within our LibGuides platform.

She needed the LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) configuration key, consumer key, and shared key. Once I retrieved this information, which is available to any LibApps admin by going to the LTI Tool Builder (see Figure 4), Jennifer could then begin the Canvas configuration on her end.

What the LibGuide Administrator Needs

Configuration on the LibGuide administrator’s side happens in the LTI Tool Builder (see Figure 5.).  This is where you find the LTI key information listed above, and this is also where you do basic configuration like choosing your default LibGuide that auto-generates whenever instructors decide to add library resources to their Canvas shell.  For more information on this part of configuration, see Springshare’s Support & Training: https://support.springshare.com/

Linking Specific Guides to Specific Courses

In order to match a specific LibGuide to a specific Canvas Course, you do the following:

• Access the LibGuide
• Log in
• In the top right hand corner of the guide, click into Guide Metadata (see Figure 5.)
• Click into the Custom Metadata tab
• Add the designated LTI tool name (ours is lti)
• Add the prefix to the Canvas course
• Make the metadata public

With the help of your Canvas administrator and your LibGuides administrator, you too can add a virtual library presence to your Distance Education program’s Canvas platform!

Open Educational Resources (OER) and free and low-cost textbooks are more than just buzz words. If faculty can actually produce quality low/no cost alternatives, it will surely help most every student. I am not the only librarian here at San Diego City College who has had the experience of watching students look at their cash then to the copy/print card machine and then back to their cash as they debate printing their paper or getting lunch, printing or trolley fare. Low/no-cost books would help.

I teach LIBS 101: a transferable one-unit course. There are several good books out there but the least expensive costs a few lunches or a couple months’ trolley budget. The need seemed obvious for an Information Literacy OER for our students, so we wrote one.

Spring break 2018 I wrote up my lecture notes into an annotated outline and convinced my colleges Nathan Martin and Bruce Johnson to be my critics. I had a rough draft for them by the end of April +/-. Nate took the first and major stab at the glossary. That was a bigger job than we expected. As adjuncts, they worked on it between reference questions and I was unable to have them work on it in summer.

The overarching approach:

• keep it at the community college level
• keep it short
• stick with the basics assuming the content would be supplemented by the depth of the class work and assignments
• write it as the class is taught in that it would cover transferable skills and not be San Diego City College specific
• write it as a text book in that it does not follow my class schedule, but makes sense as a book
• do not use a single theme or research question for all the examples in the book, but rather use a variety in hopes that variety would hold interest and/or in hope at least one might resonate with each student
• create a title that says what it is and would be easily found by librarians as opposed to some creative title such as “It isn’t Rocket Science: what you need to know about research”

So Nate and Bruce’s job was to keep me true to our approach, make sure what I wrote made sense and basically criticize me at every turn. For example, they did not like me starting sentences with, “So.” So after I thought the text was done, I had a class set printed and bound for my fall 2018 class. Extra credit was finding errors in the text or offering meaningful comments about it. I thought students would jump at this, but I only had three participate. Two found silly mistakes I should have caught myself, but one student did offer three more terms she felt needed to be in the glossary.

Of course for the larger passages I quoted, I sought out permissions to use. One very good passage I wanted to use was out of a well-known academic journal. The author could not provide permission and sent me, of course, to the publisher. It would have taken several months to get the permission so I went a different way. I found a nice piece on a professor’s website and a little more in an interview he did with a school e-paper. They were quick to respond with permission so I used their work. When I asked for permission, I mentioned that it would be an OER and explained that the quotes might be used in other documents. I found that many of the university websites I used said they fell under the Creative Commons “Share and share alike” license. Perhaps if I had taken a sabbatical to do this, I might have pursued more difficult-to-obtain permissions. But in retrospect, for our students, I think it was a fine choice.

I applied a Creative Commons “share and share alike for noncommercial use” so all educational institutions may use it. hope you will check it out and pass it on to your colleagues. Although Bruce and Nate’s input was extensive, we do welcome yours. Let us hear from you. Here is hoping it is useful. 

Information literacy: basic research skills by Carol M. Withers. A textbook for Library 1, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License 

Sparking Joy

New Year’s resolutions are my soft spot. I love to make them, I love to hear resolutions from friends and family, and I try to hold myself accountable to them for as long as I can (with varying degrees of success). This January, my husband and I (along with many, many others) started binge watching Tidying Up on Netflix with religious dedication and madly adopting Marie Kondo’s principles. Heaps of clothes appeared on our bed and we rapidly sorted them into piles (keep, donate, mend), we purchased square and rectangle drawer boxes from Ikea to hold our neatly folded socks, and I brought stacks of books (yes, books) out to our little free library. 

I am particularly struck by Kondo’s dedication to the idea that if possessions don’t spark joy you shouldn’t keep them, and in 2019 I am applying this principle to both my home and my work life. I can fully attest that my tax records do not spark joy but I am keeping them. However, as I take inventory of both my personal and professional life, I am prioritizing and making more space for activities that spark joy for me. 

One professional activity that sparks the most joy for me (and for many others) is Open Educational Resources (OER) advocacy and assisting faculty on my campus to find and convert their textbooks to ZTC (zero textbook cost) materials or OER. Why? Many of the skills that we have as librarians--search, discovery, curation, organization--are assets that can be applied directly to helping faculty find suitable OER for their classes. Additionally, if we want to make community colleges truly accessible and equitable for all students, then we cannot ignore the role textbook costs play as barriers to student access and success. 

Getting Started

Until about two years ago, I knew very little about OER. A former vice president of instruction forwarded me and my librarian colleague, Jenny Yap, an email about a grant opportunity to promote OER to faculty through professional development. We applied for the grant and got it. Then we applied for a ZTC planning grant and got that, too. Then we actually had to start doing something.

Starting from scratch, we went to our reserves collection and looked at circulation records--not surprisingly, many of our high circulating textbooks also had high price tags attached to them in the bookstore. When I looked into our book expenditures, I noticed that we often spent approximately ⅓ of our books budget on refreshing and maintaining reserves, which felt unreasonably high to me. 

Within a few months after learning about OER, Jenny and I hosted our first introductory OER workshop. We had pizza, we had a PowerPoint, and we had a handout about where to start looking for OER. Twenty-five faculty came--which is a good turnout for our campus. There were many false starts and dead-ends as we navigated through the best ways to promote OER on our campus and thoughtfully shepherd our faculty to adopt OER and ZTC materials. Without getting into the weeds, here are several recommendations I would make to librarians who are spearheading or thinking about spearheading an OER initiative on their campus.

Six Tips to move from OER Dabbler to OER Advocate

Educate yourself

OER is about as straightforward as most acronyms in the California Community Colleges--which is to say that it’s not. The landscape is constantly evolving with new materials coming on the scene regularly and new platforms emerging as fast as you can say C-ID. Because of this, I suggest that you start out by joining the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER) mailing list. Although this is a nationwide list, the resources shared and questions posed are mostly relatable to California Community Colleges. Lurk for a little while and then dive in with your own questions--the group is incredibly supportive. In addition, sign-up for one of the ASCCC OER Webinars offered this semester or view one of the archived webinars on CCCOER. If you are still hungry for more, consider attending the OpenEd Conference in 2019 to be inspired by leaders across the country who think deeply and act loudly on the issue of open access and open pedagogy.  

Find your campus allies

In all likelihood, there are probably several faculty on your campus already using OER or ZTC in their courses. You should be able to find them in your class schedule by searching for classes that have no textbook cost associated with them. Another suggestion is to reach out to faculty through an e-mail or department meeting visit to see who is already using OER and find out what they are using. One of the biggest influences for many faculty to convert to OER is through recommendations from colleagues in the same discipline, so if you can find an “early adopter” who is willing to help you advocate, you might consider recruiting them to join your cause. In addition to faculty, staff and administrators can be allies as well--so be sure to include your accessibility folks and deans in the conversation. 

Go for low hanging fruit

To make the biggest impact, consider targeting courses that have robust existing OER and multiple sections on your campus, so if adoption occurs across sections you can show big cost savings. For example, at Berkeley City College, we had a lot of success with promoting OpenStax books to our chemistry and history faculty. You can also look at the Cool4Ed course showcases for courses that have C-ID numbers to see what faculty across the state are adopting. 

Search and discovery = strategy and curation

When you first start searching for OER (or teaching another librarian/instructor to search) treat it like a reference interview. Find out what types of material the person is looking for, what they are currently using, and what their timeline is for finding material. Then come up with a search strategy and start looking through some of the tried and true OER search engines and repositories. Feel free to use this handout I created to start that search. Consider curating lists or suggestions for faculty to search themselves, or create a LibGuide as a starting point for faculty. 

OER is an opportunity to exercise intellectual and academic freedom

Once in a while, when I’m giving a workshop on OER, I will hear the argument from an instructor that they don’t want to be told what kind of materials to use for their classes. I spin this argument: OER is an opportunity to move away from canned material you find in textbooks because most creative commons licensing allows adopters to remix, adapt, or change material in ways that best suit their audience. If you don’t like an image or an example, replace it. If you want to swap out chapters between two OER texts, you can. This seems to be more powerful than just accepting the publishers interpretation of your subject matter. 

The “E” in OER is equity

Well, not really, but the heart of OER is equity for our students, and building OER into initiatives and plans that address equity (Guided Pathways, AB 705) is a key to moving it forward. A big question right now in the OER community is how to make our work sustainable after grants run out. It is integral that we make OER a ubiquitous part of conversations around student access and success. We’ve become complacent to the idea that college textbooks are expensive and students must shoulder the burden of those costs. When you are in meetings about educational master plans, Guided Pathways, AB 705 and equity, consider framing OER as an issue of equity and request that professional development funding be set aside so that faculty can have the time and incentive to make their courses as low-cost as possible for students. Make it part of this year’s resolutions. Trust me, it will bring you joy! 

Heather Dodge is Head Librarian at Berkeley City College.

The Rio Hondo College Board of Trustees appointed Mike Garabedian, Dean, Library and Instructional Support, to begin on January 28, 2019. Garabedian earned his MA in Literature from Northwestern University and his MLIS from UCLA, where his focus was special collections and archives. Following a three-year stint in the rare books trade in Los Angeles, he served as the Collections Management Librarian at his undergraduate alma mater, Whittier College, for nearly ten years. Since September 2018 Garabedian has consulted as the Shared Print Program Manager for the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium, helping to develop the policies and procedures that govern and structure the group’s nascent shared print monographs program, which is the first of its kind in the West.