ARST 6950 Week 008: Reference Questions and Case Studies

Slide 1
Title
Give virus update and discuss issues with due dates. The due date policy is no longer active. Get things to me as you can but before a date I'll set soon.
Slide 2
Agenda
Go over rough agenda. No randomizer this week. We'll discuss and diagram questions together this week.
Slide 3:
Mad, Mad, Mad World
Do a mic check. Get everyone to respond on mic if possible.
Slide 4
Answering interview Questions
I've given these pieces of advice before. This is a reminder of how we should think about these questions tonight. Let's also diagram questions tonight.
Slide 5
Question 1: How would you approach encouraging new users to visit our archive?
This questions wants you discuss possible new user groups. How can you think about the institution and who might be new groups. This would be a good place to examine university mission and the job description.
Slide 6
Questions 2: How would you prepare yourself for working our reference desk? What steps would you take to learn about our collections?
This question is really about your process for understanding a collection. Things to consider would be finding aide review, ref stats review, tool review, collection/shelf reading, shadowing.
Slide 7
How would you explain the value of archives to a nonuser of archives?
There are many differnt ways to approach this question. Think back to your elevator speech assignment you did in ARST 5000. This is more how you would approach talking to someone and explaining archives to them.
Slide 8
How would you handle a researcher miss handling materials and not following use policy?
This is a question that has you explain you skills at handling difficult situations.
Slide 9
Describe how you would effectively use social media to promote our archive?
This question wants you to discuss what types of social media that you are familar with. You should know roughly what other archives are doing on social media platforms and the ways they engage with their users.
Slide 10
What’s the most effective way to give online access to collections that maintains our intellectual controls on our collections?
This is a two fold questions that gets at the tension of putting materials online for ease of access and protecting intellectual property. There is no easy way to do both. This is an example of a question that demonstrates the archive maybe more concerned about ip than use. You would need to explain the positive benefits of access. You would also need to understand some copyright law basics.
Slide 11
How would you explain to an irate patron about a portion of a collection that was restricted?
This is about maintaining cool underpressure. you don't need prior archival expirence for this. Any work experience will do.
Slide 12
What types of programing would like to see our archive begin in the future?
This could examine you programming expirence but also try to understand your creativity.
Slide 13
Case Study – No Such thing as a Free Lunch
Link
This is a case study about both no showing favorites, but also dealing with extremely controversial organization. The many issues relate to how your community would precieve your actions in this case. What are possibly scenarios where not speaking at the group would be good. What about bad?
Slide 14
Case Study – Beggars can’t be choosers
Link
This case study is about what could be called capacity building and change management. You already have a program setup, but it is not as effective as it needs to be. you don't want to lose the momentum you have, but you have to make changes. You have elments that could be worked with so how could you build on them.