Facilitating awareness of the library at AUIS: An interdisciplinary interview project

This project aims to increase faculty awareness of, and interaction with, both the library and the gender studies center at AUIS. Informational interviews, conducted with faculty, is our vehicle for this goal. We want to share our results, both the challenges and successes, along with the modifications, of this project.

Interaction between faculty and the library at AUIS (the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani) is minimal. Faculty also overlook CGDS (the Center for Gender and Development Studies). To address this problem, CGDS and the library have teamed up to conduct informational interviews with faculty. The interviews, now underway, solicit information about potential faculty interests in scholarship and teaching, especially regarding gender. From these interviews, faculty will participate in best-practice sessions, held in the library. These faculty will become library spokespeople, seeing the library as a center of learning and teaching. Information gathered from the interviews will allow the library staff to streamline material of interest to the faculty. What attendees can take away: Modeled on projects of larger universities such as AUC, our project was modified for our smaller size and limited resources, and as such will interest other smaller American Universities. Incorporating gender into teaching and research will interest all American Universities. We will have gathered data and drawn conclusions about the project’s outcomes, enough so as to recommend implementations (with modifications) at other institutions. Our presentation aims to be directly relevant to all three main audience groups (librarians, faculty, and technologists), and promotes collaboration across these professional roles.