Library Loop

Library Champions at WHELF conference – What Makes a Good Reading List

You might remember this blog post Library Loop - LibGuides at King’s College London from September 2023 about a Library Champions project led by myself, Kathryn Corrall, Jane Picciano, Karen Driver and Emily Beach. 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to repeat myself. Although related, this blog post is about a presentation we and 2 of our students gave at the WHELF Reading List conference in March of this year. 

What did we talk about?

Our reason for being there was to talk to them about the project, but our focus was slightly different this time. It wasn’t so much about the project itself as the impact of the work: what we’ve done, what we’re going to do, and what we found challenging during and post project in terms of delivery and implementation of our recommendations. Most importantly, students had contributed to the presentation and were there to deliver it alongside us. 

We included a lot of Mentimeter interactive quizzes and polls in the presentation and found these worked really well. 

Different Perspectives

We spoke in our previous blog post about how doing this work also forced us to consider our own bias baggage ™, and we touched on this in our talk. 

Jane and Karen spoke about how, as Senior Library Assistants in CDD, they had not ever thought critically about reading lists as their focus was on purchasing. Of course they had opinions about the age of texts, diversity of voices and how often the lists were updated, but didn’t do a deep dive into the ethos of the lists or why academics may have chosen particular resources. A surprising discovery they hadn’t considered was the effect of reading lists on student wellbeing, which has led to a more critical mindset when undertaking acquisitions reviews. 

From my perspective as a Collections Liaison Librarian, I admit I was prepared for our students to have little to say about reading lists! Sometimes it seems like it's all encompassing to us in CDD - communicating deadlines, answering enquiries about why we don't have certain things or when titles will be in or why it isn’t available electronically – but our NSS and PTES results are good, and the reality is we don’t receive a lot of complaints. So our students having so much to say, and in such an unprompted way, did surprise me. 

But the most important aspect of our presentation at WHELF was undoubtedly our students. 

Our students

2 students worked with us to create and deliver our presentation: Kathryn with pre recorded slides, and Alisha who joined us in person. 

Kat was a postgraduate student studying the MA Arts & Cultural Management, and described her experiences of reading lists throughout her course. You can listen to her slides below:

Alisha was an undergraduate Biosciences student, in her second year when participating in the original project, but now reaching the end of her studies. She decided to talk about her experience of participating in the project, and the impact of reading lists throughout her studies. I’ve transcribed her talk below:

Coming into the project was an opportunity for me to get involved in the student voice, but also to try and make a difference to not only understanding what reading lists are, but the impact they have. I knew my own perspective, but hearing from other people in different faculties was important. I wanted the staff involved in creating reading lists to know what students expect of professors and module leads. 

I’m also student representative for my faculty and my degree programme, so a lot of this was already discussed in prior meetings and I came in with a rounded understanding of what people wanted – at least in my faculty and programme.

Naturally, as you progress through the years the expectation changes. In the first year it’s the foundation, preparing the groundwork for your entry into the field and getting a holistic understanding. And then, as you progress onto second and third year it becomes much more independent. 

My experience of reading lists in the first year is that it wasn’t something I was exposed to at all, largely because we weren’t encouraged to use it. It was just something there that might be helpful but with no expectations to use it. As I moved into second year the focus shifted where you were expected to read it, but how can you read when you haven’t been taught how to? There are so many papers, there’s so much research, so many different formats out there that supplement your theoretical knowledge. And then all the jargon that comes along with it. The transition from first to second year was very overwhelming. 

I’m in third year now so obviously it’s a little bit different. You are exposed to more, but at points you still aren’t given a clear structure of what to read. Voicing this to Charlie, Kathryn and everyone else was so important, because it was a chance not just for me, but all of us as students, to push that forward and ensure staff can really understand how damaging it could be, but also how beneficial it could be if they made these changes. 

I feel like after being involved and hearing other viewpoints and seeing actual changes – because some modules have taken a more structured approach to reading lists now – I’m nearly done in a month or 2 but moving forward I know others will benefit from these changes that are going to be made. 

What the audience thought

Our audience was made up of library and information professionals, predominantly from academic libraries. This was in the forefront of our mind when preparing our presentation, and we wanted to ensure the audience would remain engaged and come away with new information and ideas. Our aim was to centre the student voice, and to embed as much interactive content as possible. 

I think they liked it:

“The King's session was particularly useful and I loved the rigor in which they did their project and the results they found!”

“The 3rd year bio-sciences student from Kings was impressively articulate!”

“…the KCL presentation was one of the best I've ever seen - professional, friendly and very engaging. I hope they will get this feedback :)”

What we’ve taken from it

Working in a team of 5 to prepare and present at a conference was a new experience for me. And while it could have ended up being a Too Many Cooks situation, the outcome was positive in terms of the spread of work and building ideas collaboratively. 

Student participation in the creation and delivery of the conference presentation was very impactful: certainly from an audience perspective, but also in providing our students with new experiences (the process of writing and submitting a conference paper, preparing and delivering a talk/workshop/poster to a large, external audience). 

For Jane and Karen it was a new experience and involved stepping out of comfort zones (especially when it came to Zoom), and developing new skills. Most importantly, the knowledge that they could do it, which they can and they did! Amazingly, too. 

If you’d like to talk to any of us about it – the project, WHELF, working with students, presenting in Zoom (wait no, we can’t help you with the last one) – do get in touch, we love a natter.