Devin Savage is the Assistant Dean for Assessment and Scholarly Communication at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. Devin has been an ACRL member since 2013 and is your ACRL member of the week for July 20, 2015.
1. Describe yourself in three words: Curious, optimistic, and collaborative.
2. What are you reading (or listening to on your mobile device(s)? I’m unfortunately not reading too much for fun, but I’ve really enjoyed reading BJ Novak’s The Book with No Pictures to my son. Professionally, I’ve read a couple of articles recently that I thought were really interesting. The first was a contributed paper at ACRL from Amanda Folk “Access or Awareness? Identifying Relationships between Reference and Other Dimensions of Public Services.” The other was “Evaluating Big Deal Journal Bundles” by Theodore Bergstrom, et al, who used FOIA requests to analyze the advent of the “Big Deal” journal bundling practice.
3. Describe ACRL in three words: Active, informative, and fun.
4. What do you value about ACRL? I value ACRL’s relevancy, how active it is organizationally, and the membership’s willingness to stand up for their values. And more than anything, I enjoy how ACRL provides platforms for librarians to be both pragmatic and inspiring.
5. What do you, as an academic librarian, contribute to your campus? I feel we as librarians probably don’t do enough self-promotion about the crucial nature of our role in sustainably supporting and promoting the continual creation and refinement of knowledge. My role in assessment and scholarly communication has opened many doors for contribution at many levels – from accreditation activities to launching support for Open Education Resources. Still, some of the most enjoyable activities have come from my instructional duties as an academic liaison – there’s nothing like seeing students realize you just made their work so much easier.
6. In your own words: I love working in a field where all we do is help people. I love assisting researchers and faculty, and being a part of changing the way that students think. We are uniquely situated to be an unconditional ally to the students, and to further the mission of higher education while concurrently celebrating and promoting the accomplishments of all of partners on campus. Most of all, I love the collaborative and team-oriented nature of academic librarianship. It’s such a pleasure to get to work with such amazing, intelligent, hardworking, and passionate library professionals.
Editor’s Note: Are you an ACRL member? Would you like to be featured as ACRL Member of the Week? Nominate a colleague? Contact Mary Jane Petrowski at mpetrowski@ala.org for more information.