Forming a community of practice can be an inspirational salve for instruction librarians looking to enhance their teaching. A community of practice (CoP) is meant to foster both sharing and learning opportunities and can invigorate and infuse teaching librarians with a new approach to our shared pedagogy and teaching skills.
In the summer of 2022, new to the profession and mid-career instruction librarians joined a CoP around the book Dear Data. Their goal became to put into practice inspiration derived from the book, particularly for teaching and learning, such as data visualization lesson plans, outreach programming around data initiatives, and library-focused public facing programming that involved all library workers, not just professional librarians.
While the CoP did benefit innovative instruction initiatives, a side-effect that was not apparent initially was the community of support (CoS) it created. This poster will visually demonstrate the opportunities and programming the CoP created for the practitioners by using data visualization techniques that were inspired by the contents of the CoP book, Dear Data. Text will accompany data visualizations that showcase how data was used to inform assumptions about instruction, library worker roles, and work-life balance. The poster will have example lesson plans, outreach programming ideas, and how the CoP led to a more inclusive workplace. The evaluation of the CoP included a survey of participants and those results will be shared, as well as future plans for the next CoP/CoS.