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Last Friday, Joy, Kyle, and Lauren took a trip to the Triangle to visit with instruction librarians at NCSU, Duke, and UNC-Ch. It was a great day for us, and we really enjoyed getting to know our colleagues doing similar work from across the state.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the visits is the diversity of approaches each institution took, rooted in their own community culture and needs. NCSU is doing amazing, cutting edge work with active learning and technology enhanced teaching. Duke has clearly integrated itself into the larger institutional mission of giving all undergraduate students experience doing research with faculty. UNC-CH is redefining what it means to work with first year students and with instructors as they plan their assignments.

We’re all facing scalability issues, and issues of how to balance increased teaching loads with all the other things librarians are asked to do. And we’re all happy to share the things we’re doing to try to help others benefit from our work.

It really was an excellent day and we found a lot of information that will help us in our own strategic planning refresh. If you have interest in chatting about it, stop by the instruction cave! And if you want to see what these other libraries are up to, check out the slideshow!