Program

CRIG Seminar 2021: Creativity Out of Uncertainty

The CRIG Seminar Committee presents a series of events focusing on Creativity Out of Uncertainty. The three events will include invited presentations, inspiration talks and showcase presentations, and a workshop.

Event 1, Tuesday 9 November, 10.00 – 11.45am AEDT

Creating new stories in uncertain times

Living through a pandemic has created opportunities for academic librarians to reflect on the ways they interact and contribute to their communities. This event considers library initiatives through global, community, and local lenses to demonstrate our current and potential impact on the world around us.

Invited presentation: Using the UN Sustainable Development Goals to contextualise the impact of library services

Carmel and Lyndelle will share the work USQ Library has undertaken to contextualise the impact of library services using the UN Sustainable Development Goals. They will discuss the process undertaken to engage staff in developing the Library Stories of 2020 within the context of an evidence based organisational mindset. Lyndelle and Carmel will demonstrate how this type of work can encourage reflective practice and lead an organisation to better understand and build on its strengths.

  • Carmel O’Sullivan, Director, Library Services, University of Southern Queensland
  • Lyndelle Gunton, Manager, Open Knowledge Initiatives, University of Southern Queensland

Q&A facilitator:

  • Clare Thorpe, Director, Library Services, Southern Cross University

Just ask: Small questions with big impact

Working online has taken us away from those corridor conversations and serendipitous coffee line catch-ups with academics. Here we are at home, constructing carefully worded emails, and feeling out of the loop with our academic colleagues. We always say to our students “there are no silly questions”, but sometimes we are afraid to ask our own. Is it something we should already know? Is it even our place to ask? Are we making things harder for ourselves than we need to? But what if we just asked people if we could join in? If they could do something for us? Sometimes a question with minimal outlay can have a big impact, especially in these uncertain times. Anna and Heather will discuss examples of simple questions they have asked over the past year, and how this improved their work and connections across the library and university.

  • Anna Findlay, Senior Library Learning Advisor, La Trobe University
  • Heather Tera, Senior Library Learning Advisor, La Trobe University

Apples, oranges, and a bookshelf online: using H5P to make a library collection accessible to children at the Little Food Festival Library

Monash University Library has previously contributed to the ‘Little Food Festival Library’ one of the events at the Little Food Festival, a collaboration between Monash University, Sandro Demaio Foundation, and the City of Melbourne, educating families and children about healthy food options and sustainable practices.

The festival in April 2022 will take a hybrid form. Face-to-face activities will continue, with a number of activities and opportunities for those attending virtually. Tracey and Sam will discuss their creative plans to design a virtual bookshelf, using the h5p tool, to highlight and share resources displayed at the festival.

He(5)lping out: Pivoting academic preparation and support for teaching

Typically, the Deakin Health Librarians deliver hour-long classes or individual consultations for teaching staff, in order to promote Library services and support. Issues with attendance arose as teaching staff found the session timing inconvenient, due to increased workloads and busy schedules. The Deakin librarians saw that the delivery method of information needed to shift. Discussions within the team helped to reshape the focus to promoting the Library services and support in a way that was informative, as well as light, bright, and fun! The Health Librarians came together and brainstormed imaginative ways to engage and delight their target audiences. The creative collaboration led to the development of a flexible on-demand, online H5P module for teaching staff to explore Library support areas, including copyright, reading lists, and digital literacy.

  • Lisa Grbin, Liaison Librarian, Health, Deakin University
  • Louisa Sher, Liaison Librarian, Health, Deakin University
  • Rachel West, Liaison Librarian, Health, Deakin University


Event 2, Wednesday 10 November, 2.00 – 3.45pm AEDT

Creative teaching and learning: Tales from the field

Join the CRIG Seminar Committee in celebrating the amazing initiatives to emerge in our libraries. Hear from libraries across Victoria as they detail creative approaches to the challenging environment of teaching and learning in 2021.

Unpacking creativity in academic libraries: a conversation

Join Kristy Newton and Kat Cain as they dive into how creative culture building can shape amazing academic library outcomes.

  • Kat Cain, Manager, Digital Literacy Programs, Deakin University
  • Kristy Newton, Digital Literacies Coordinator, University of Wollongong

Breaking Canvas: Practice-based research for creative practitioners

For creative, practice-based students, translating practice into words can be challenging. These University of Melbourne librarians formed a cross-disciplinary team to collaboratively create a Canvas module to assist students with finding resources to help them build research skills in visual art and design. As research is rarely a linear process, the module is designed for students to choose an area that interests them, or work through each page - whatever they prefer. This presentation showcases the result and details the creative collaborative process.

  • Sarah Charing, Ruth McConchie, Sophie Kollo, Julie Cohen (all Liaison Librarians) & Norm Turnross (Liaison Support Librarian), The University of Melbourne
    Cross-disciplinary team of five Liaison and Liaison Support Librarians from Architecture, Building and Planning, and the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at The University of Melbourne.

“Spotlights on Success” workshop series: Supporting students in uncertain times 

The Learning Hub team, part of La Trobe University Library, delivers academic skills and language programs and services to help students achieve academic success. A current and burning question for the team is how best to support students who are suffering from flagging motivation and exhaustion after nearly two years of remote learning.  In the face of these challenges and uncertainties, and with limited ability do much significant forward planning, the team set about developing an innovative workshop series, to be delivered within weeks of the initial planning phase.

The new program, “Spotlights on Success”, is a series of eleven new workshops, designed to support and motivate students in the lead-up to exams and final assessments. The program features daily ‘short, sharp’ lunchtime workshops of 30 minutes duration, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. Workshops are facilitated by Academic Skills and Language Advisors, Counselling, and Library staff, and incorporate La Trobe’s Peer Learning Advisors (PLAs), who provide that all-important student perspective during the Q&A.

Central to the planning and vision for the program were the team’s student-centred, evidence-based approach, creative design, and effective, targeted comms. This presentation reports on the series development and implementation as well as the learnings from this process.

  • Anna Bailey, Manager, Learning Hub, La Trobe University
  • Dr Zoe Thomas, Academic Skills and Language Advisor, Learning Hub, La Trobe University
  • Freya Whaite, Academic Skills and Language Advisor, Learning Hub, La Trobe University

‘Searching the Library for literature reviews: how does a librarian do it?’ – a retro exemplar

‘Searching the Library for literature reviews: how does a librarian do it?’ is an exemplar designed this semester for final year undergraduate and Masters students at Swinburne University of Technology. It is a PDF of an exhaustive first person narrative, demonstrating how to create and build search strings for a final year/capstone project, in order to comprehensively locate information for a literature review. Acknowledging that many students (if not the wider population in these Covid-19 times!) are suffering ‘Zoom fatigue’ and are probably fed up with videorecorded learning content, a decision was deliberately made to choose an older method of presentation for this explanatory material, as a way of assisting students in these uncertain times.

Miro the Hero

The motivation required in an online fatigued environment has been more demanding than ever. With the removal of face-to-face teachings, needing to restructure sessions and keeping students and presenters engaged, new creative skills are being learnt by all. Having discovered an online platform with a musical timer and the option to leave anonymous comments during an activity, allowed for a different creative approach to engaging and motivating students, therefore helping to interrupt the online fatigue. This session will be a demonstration of how the creativity of a platform breathed some fresh air into online workshops.


Event 3, Friday 12 November, 10.30am – 12.00pm AEDT

Duck, Duck Zoom: Why do people run from my breakout room?

Come along to this workshop to experience creative ways of connecting and learning that emerged in our lockdown-impacted work lives. By using uncertainty and the potential of digital engagement as a stimulus, discover how to transform and reimagine traditional activities to showcase the capabilities of online environments. 

Join the CRIG Seminar committee for some relaxing, silly, and fun Friday feels. It’s all about gaming and connecting with your library colleagues. Apart from enjoying yourself in collaborative game-playing, take home tips and tools to use in your own digital team meetings or that can strengthen online teaching engagement.