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Features: Commons, chat and collaboration: How we’re connecting with Millennials at Murdoch University Library

Commons, chat and collaboration: How we’re connecting with Millennials at Murdoch University Library
By Kathryn Greenhill, Emerging Technologies Specialist, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

At Murdoch University, a small multicampus university in Australia, the library offers services particularly suiting our Millennial users who spend so much time online and value opportunities for collaboration and socialization. We also run programs to educate library staff about online tools and emerging technologies that many Millennials use.

The library offers services particularly suiting our Millennial users who spend so much time online and value opportunities for collaboration and socialization.

I am passionate about helping libraries remain relevant by applying useful emerging technologies. Since this January, I’ve held the position of Emerging Technologies Specialist. Funded 50% by the library and 50% by Campus IT, this position was created to look at emerging technologies and how we can use them in the library and in teaching and learning throughout the university. My job involves staying informed about new technologies, playing with them, telling people about them, conducting workshops informing colleagues about new technologies, and suggesting project design and policy for experimental installations of new technological tools. In my new position, I provide research support to the Learning Technologies Steering Group, a body that advises faculty and staff regarding learning technologies and comprises academic staff, two students and representatives from Campus IT, the university’s Teaching and Learning Center and the library.

Now, I’ll describe some ways that Murdoch University Library is successfully connecting with Millennials and meeting their information needs while ensuring library staff are in the know about emerging technologies.

Ways Murdoch University Library connects with Millennials and educates staff on new technologies

1. We’ve created a Learning Commons
In 2007, we transformed two floors in our main library and created our new Learning Commons. In a project involving the library, Campus IT and the Teaching and Learning Center, we redesigned the layout of the floors and refitted them in brighter, more contemporary furnishings. By renovating the main library, we capitalized on the library’s status as a central, social environment on campus.

Now many services students need for their studies are within about 25 meters of the library entrance. Students can have material printed and bound by Campus Printing and Photocopying, get coffee at the small café, check out their own items, chat with staff at the Loans and Information desk or visit the Reference desk and learn about the best resources for their coursework. They can lounge on comfortable couches and read titles from the new book display, borrow from the reserve collection or get study skills advice from the Student Learning desk. Students can use the PC lab or Fast Track PCs, browse the reference collection, have university life demystified by the first-year experience coordinator or appreciate the display of art from the university collection.

Downstairs, the Campus IT service desk provides IT support. This part of the Learning Commons remains open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Here, students swipe their cards for after-hours access to IT support and a space for collaboration, plus two PC labs and vending machines for stationery and food.

2. We’re offering live online help from librarians
Since 2003, Murdoch students have been able to get live online help thanks to the service Online Librarian. This is a joint project involving Macquarie University Library on the east coast of Australia and Murdoch University Library on the west coast. The service has evolved over the past 5 years and now includes authentication via Shibboleth. Through this service, students can connect real-time with librarians and get live online reference assistance via chat.

Now many services students need for their studies are within about 25 meters of the library entrance.

In 2003, Online Librarian was launched with the slogan "Real Time, Real Chat." The service initially used Microsoft’s NetMeeting. Staff could share their desktops with students, transfer files and use VoIP chat as well as text chat. Students preferred text chat and some were deterred from the service by the need to download software. NetMeeting did not allow multiple operators or queuing of calls or produce harvestable statistics.

In October 2004, the service swapped to a chat-only client, using MSN Messenger, with a Hotmail address. Use quadrupled in the first month and continued to grow. Students were very comfortable adding Online Librarian to their contact lists and often kept a session open for several inquiries over a night of study.

MSN Messenger software also had limitations. Only one operator at a time could answer calls and so the librarian on duty had to juggle calls, dealing with several at the same time. The software limited the number of contacts for Online Librarian to 500, so new users were blocked.

In 2006, the Online Librarian project became a demonstrator project for the Kathryn Greenhill Commons, chat and collaboration: How we’re connecting with Millennials at Murdoch University Library Metadata Access Management Scheme, an Australian government project to introduce Shibboleth single sign-on middleware to Australian research institutions. The Psi Jabber client, interoperable with third-party chat clients like MSN, GTalk and Yahoo, was chosen to replace MSN Messenger. The Psi Jabber client allows routing of calls to the correct institutions based on clients’ campus logins. It also allows many operators to answer calls, so reference staff just open the client on their desktops when they are not busy and calls are evenly distributed.

3. We’re helping our community to investigate Second Life possibilities
In March 2007, the library leased a plot of land in Second Life in the Information Archipelago. This was not so we could offer library services to our clients in Second Life, as very few of them were there. Instead we aimed to give staff and students exposure to an online virtual world, allow them to explore this environment hands-on and help them consider the implications for education.

With the university’s Teaching and Learning Center, library staff used the library’s Second Life plot of land and staged a seminar and workshop series for the university community. We hosted two talks for the university community — one by me about Second Life and libraries and one by PhD candidate Lindy McKeown about her Action Learning project using Second Life. The talks were followed by two hands-on workshops, repeated several times between May and July 2007. In the first session, Creating Your Avatar, I showed participants how to create their avatars and guided them through Orientation Island. Instead of handouts, I used a wiki. The second session, Doing More with Your Avatar, involved a treasure hunt on the Murdoch Library plot in Second Life and then took participants on a group tour of an educational site in Second Life.

The sessions were booked out and momentum generated by them resulted in the university purchasing its own Second Life island in September 2007. This is a joint project between the library, Teaching and Learning Center, Campus IT and the university’s School of IT.

How are university colleagues using Murdoch’s Second Life island so far? As part of their coursework, ICT students have created a job interview simulation on the university’s island. A chemistry academic is using the island — an ideal environment for ethically staging a murder — to conduct forensic role-play. The library is staging additional Second Life workshops on the island. Potential projects include using the island to allow prospective students to get information about the university and to allow students to experiment with theatrical set design.

A chemistry academic is using the island — an ideal environment for ethically staging a murder — to conduct forensic role-play.

4. We’re collaborating with staff to acquaint them with 2.0 tools
In April 2006, the library invited all library staff to participate in MULTA, Murdoch University Library Thinking Aloud. This three-month collaborative learning project covered Library 2.0, blogs, wikis, RSS, Content Management Systems, forums and social tagging. Staff completed readings plus a set of tasks each week. They also could attend a weekly workshop. Most activities took place on a university-hosted site using a TikiWiki CMS.

This project gave staff a basic vocabulary and foundation, allowing further discussion and exploration of 2.0 tools and sites. Staff who completed MULTA were called on as mentors in 2007, when we ran the Murdoch University Library 23 Things (http://mullet23.blogspot.com). This hands-on course was a rewritten version of the Learning 2.0 course originally run by Helene Blowers at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg Counties.

5. We’re collaborating with staff to explore new technologies
In May 2007, we formed the Emerging Technology Group open to all library staff. This group meets weekly and involves hands-on training or experimentation. This group also does project work, like creating material for big screens in the Learning Commons.