24 Jun 2016

CONUL ANLTC Library Assistant Award 2016: Transformational Collaboration: A reflection on the process of creating an academic poster.

Posted on Friday, June 24, 2016 by Eva Hornung
*Highly commended entries 2016*

Transformational Collaboration: A reflection on the process of creating an academic poster.

by Jesse Waters, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland  

Hello people, 

I recently had a poster accepted to the annual Health Science Library Group Conference being held in May. In this blog post I will detail the creative process, the feedback I received from other information professionals, and how said feedback transformed the project. 

The theme of the conference is the Skillset of a Health Science Librarian, so I decided I should focus on my own experience and narrowed the theme of the poster down to the Skillset of a Health Science Library Assistant. After a couple of days of thinking about the poster, I had a pretty clear idea how I wanted it to look and the message that I wanted to convey. Above all I wanted it to be a colourful, eye-catching poster that was not heavy on text. However, I also wanted to highlight the diverse skillset of a library assistant in a health science library. 

I began to think about, and discuss with other staff members, the diverse set of skills that library assistants possess- customer service, library knowledge, communication skills, research and information technology skills. I considered other skills that we possess such as knowledge of our customer needs and the physical and electronic resources available in our library. And then (yes I know it just keeps going!) I thought about familiarity with health and medicine. However, not every library assistant in a health science library possesses all these skills immediately and some are grown and developed over time. Thus, I decided to use the format of a wheel divided into three main subcategories to present the information clearly: 

Early draft

1. Skills required immediately. 

2. Skills that develop with familiarity in your new environment. 

3. Skills that develop over time.
 

With a theme and an idea for the look and feel of the poster in mind, I decided I should find a way to create the poster. With a quick Google search using the eloquent search term- 'Create poster free', I found a fantastic tool called Canva, started to play with it and was well on my way. I used Pixabay to source some images free from the chains of copyright, but as I was scrolling through tons of stock images that looked dated and uninteresting, an article that I had read way back in October meandered from my subconscious and deposited an idea that my poster benefited greatly from.


Sourced from Pixabay.

I was encouraged to use emoji`s (or at least pictures that resembled emojis which I sourced from Pixabay) from a BBC article that pondered whether emoji`s would evolve into a new language "which could compete with English in global usage" based on their popularity in modern society (Cohn, 2015). By using emoji`s, I hoped that the poster would be visual, and could be understood on a basic level by somebody without fluency in English.
When I was pleased with my poster, I sought feedback from a couple of my information-professional colleagues. I sent the file to a former lecturer from UCD and we met for coffee the next day. I was quite disappointed to hear that she found it to be eye-catching, but she originally wasn't a huge fan of the bright cartoon emoji`s I had used. I explained my reasons for using them and she advised me to stick to my guns. I then sent the file to another colleague from a health science library, and was encouraged to add more text to the poster to make it more academic in style and tone. Even though I was quite opposed to the idea, I took her advice and made a second draft which contained text boxes expanding on the duties of library assistants using information I had researched from job adverts for library assistants. The inclusion of the text boxes did not take from the visual aspects and added a great deal more information to the poster. The following image is an incomplete draft of the poster. 

Draft near completion, see finished product at HSLG Conference May 12-13.

In Beyond the Silos of the LAM's, Zorich et al state that collaboration is a transformational process (2008). I cannot recommend seeking feedback enough on any project you work on. With each person who offered recommendations or thoughts on the project, from my initial interactions with immediate co-workers to other contacts, the poster was altered slightly.  I reflected on both positive and negative comments received, and the final poster was an improved, more considered version of my original vision due to the recommendations of others. 

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1 comment:

  1. Stef o'keeffe25 June, 2016

    Thanks Jesse.. Great article and pointed me in the right direction for an upcoming poster... Can't resist a special emoji wink 😉

    ReplyDelete

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