Kaya van Beynen

Its been less than a year, but I am now the Associate Dean of Library Research & Instruction at the consolidated University of South Florida. So providing leadership, building a shared direction, and connecting across the three libraries and campuses takes up a lot of my focus right now. Supporting the R&I librarians is always a concern of mine. At the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses the librarian generational transition happened a few years ago and we have a dynamic group of Assistant and Associate level librarians who I try to help with their research, give them opportunities, and encourage them to think a few years down the line. On the Tampa campus, this librarian generational change is about to happen and I hope to keep everyone engaged and feeling valued while we simultaneously work towards a transition in service model.

I also work to advance the research and instructional goals of USF. In this capacity, I try to foster collaborations and build partnerships from the library to the faculty. As a complement to our research consultations, we're focused one building meaningful engagement between the librarians and faculty, increasing faculty research impact and visibility, and facilitating the integration of special collections content into the university curriculum. With regards to library instruction, we recently launched a collection of canvas-based Information + Data Literacy workshops to enrich any course with a research component. We used a shared vision and peer review as a process to unite the R&I librarians across the three campuses and build a high quality product. During the pandemic and as we move forward, they've been a great way for faculty to integrate library instruction into their courses.