Technology Petting Zoo, the Library's Innovation:When the National Defense University stopped issuing laptops to incoming students, librarians implemented a series of technology petting zoo events to inform patrons about availability of the Library's resources on personal computing devices. The team overcame technology and security issues inherent in the NDU computing environment, and used the event to connect patrons directly with the Library's downloadable electronic resources via a variety of computing devices. Through the petting zoo experience, the staff acquired knowledge and experience to better serve patrons with inquiries about online and downloadable materials. National Defense University Library Mission:Advancing education through teaching information fluency and through collecting, organizing, making accessible, and preserving recorded knowledge and the products of human creativity. Development and Implementation of the Program:Early in 2012, librarians at the National Defense University, a joint forces senior service school in Washington DC, learned that the military would no longer be issuing laptops to students. This change meant that library staff would have to become familiar with the use of library resources on a variety of platforms including laptops, tablets and ereaders. Staff would have to learn to use unfamiliar devices while also overcoming technological and security issues inherent in a military computing environment. These issues included an inability to download ebooks and the necessary software, like Adobe Digital Editions, to government computers. Other issues included the inability to purchase devices for staff to experiment with.

During Fall semester 2015, Librarians at the United States Naval Academy were faced with the challenge of migrating to LibGuides version 2 and integrating LibAnswers with LibChat into their service offerings.  Initially, the entire migration process was anticipated to take almost a full academic year; giving guide owners considerable time to update and prepare their guides.  However, with the acquisition of the LibAnswers module, library staff shortened the migration timeline considerably to ensure both products went live on the version 2 platform at the same time. The expedited implementation timeline forced the ad hoc implementation teams to prioritize completion of the tasks that were necessary for the system to remain functional after the upgrade.  This paper provides an overview of the process the staff at the Nimitz Library followed for a successful implementation on a short timeline and highlights transferable lessons learned during the process.  Consistent communication of expectations with stakeholders and prioritization of tasks were essential to the successful completion of the project.

Brianna is the Teaching and Learning librarian at the Colorado School of Mines. She collaborates with faculty to design and implement information literacy throughout the curriculum. Prior to her work at the School of Mines, she was the Engineering and Computer Science librarian at the United States Naval Academy and a contract Reference librarian at the National Defense University. She earned her MLIS from the University of Denver in 2011.

A common complaint among STEM faculty is the lack of existing Open Educational Resources (OER) to support upper class and graduate coursework. High-level courses or niche subject areas such as groundwater engineering or advanced manufacturing lack rigorous OER course material. Spearheaded by the Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines was awarded an institutional-level grant by the Colorado Department of Higher Education to establish a mini-grant program. This program, Open Mines, would incentivize faculty on campus to use OER in their courses. This paper describes the Library's role in establishing the university's mini-grant program, an assessment of the first year of awards, and lessons learned. The initial grant cycle has been assessed in various ways, including data on cost savings to students and OER usage on campus. Lessons learned while administering the first cohort of mini-grants include addressing accessibility, dissemination, and copyright concerns. This project contributes to the discussion on the role of OER in STEM curriculum and techniques librarians can use to facilitate OER adoption at their institutions.

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