2008 Off-Campus Library Services Conference Award Winners
Congratulations to Paul Betty and Susan Shepley
Paul Betty
It is an honor to be able to present at the Thirteenth Off-Campus Library Services Conference, and I am looking forward to the chance to meet and exchange ideas with academic librarians from around the world. I am the Distance Learning Librarian at Regis University in Denver, CO. This is my first professional library positions since obtaining my MLS degree from the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2006. My position has many responsibilities including on-site and virtual library instruction, reference work, and collection development responsibilities for the Catholic Studies, Jesuitica, and Religious Studies collections. I work primarily with graduate and undergraduate adult distance education students taking courses online or at one of six branch campuses in Colorado. I am continually exploring new technologies and pedagogies in hopes of better serving our student and faculty population. These efforts have included creating, managing, and assessing a series of Flash based library research tutorials made available to our patrons via the library website. It has been my privilege to lead several workshops on creating animated library tutorials in Colorado, and to have authored an article for the Colorado Libraries magazine on the same topic. Working in this medium has also lead to collaborative work with librarians and faculty at Regis University and other institutions. Recently, this has included participation in the Animated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS), originally begun by members of the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries in Canada. I’m pleased to announce that participation in this project is now open to all librarians, and invite you explore the project wiki.
On a personal note, I am a native of Denver, CO and enjoy nearly all the recreational opportunities that the nearby Rocky Mountains offer. I have a bachelor’s degree in Religion from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH and I currently serve as secretary for the Colorado Academic Library Association. Despite its relative proximity, I have never been to Salt Lake City and look forward to great conference!
Susan Shepley
Susan Shepley is the Distance Education Librarian at SIAST (the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology), a technical college with four campuses located across Saskatchewan. She is based at the Wascana Campus in Regina. Susan completed a M.L.I.S. from the University of Western Ontario in 2006. She also holds a M.A. in History from the University of Waterloo, and a Honors B.A. in History from King’s University College in London, Ontario. Prior to moving to western Canada in April 2007 to begin her first professional librarian position at SIAST, Susan completed a work term at the University of Guelph Library and has held various positions in public libraries, museums, and community archives.
As Distance Education Librarian at SIAST, Susan works to support the needs of distance students and faculty from a range of diverse programs; everything from nursing to welding. She is also an on-campus librarian, doing instruction, collections, programming, reference and research. Some of Susan’s other research interests include the information-seeking behaviors and learning styles of post-secondary students and their impact on library instruction, as well as the ways that library users interact with the space around them. Susan is excited to be attending her first OCLS Conference, and is honored to be one of this year’s Conference Award recipients.
Requirements for this award
The Off-Campus Library Services Conference offers a comprehensive award to a librarian or prospective librarian who meets the following requirements:
- has never attended an Off-Campus Library Services Conference
- must either be a library science student interested in distance education or a librarian who has worked less than two years with off-campus students.
- must prepare a presentation and paper about a current off-campus/ distance learning topic. .
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