The Academy of Teaching at OSU hosts a Conference on Excellence in Teaching and Learning every year which has proved to be extremely valuable for my knowledge of pedagogy and learning. I gain a lot from conversations with engineering professors, librarians, instructional design experts and many others who each bring a particular perspective to discussions about teaching practice. This year was no different. Although there was a rich array of topics and research among the presentations, including a very interesting keynote related to social mobility and education, I am most excited to share a couple of take-aways related to research as a practice. These were librarian perspectives on research as a part of academic life and culture.

Professor and Librarian Amanda Folk, shared her work on first generation education success. What I found really interesting to think about was, as she said, "research as a writing practice." Breaking down research into its key components and rendering our conceptualizations visible makes it less overwhelming. Students who understand that there is a culture around writing, a cultural around sourcing and bibliographies, a culture around research practice, can experience their adaptation to this culture consciously. According to Folk, professors and senior scholars who recognize that academia is a "particular cultural space" can more effectively teach the practices to students who do not have as much experience with the norms of academic culture.

Head Librarian of the Mansfield Campus, Vanessa Kraps, gave an engaging presentation on how to make research fun and shed some light on the role of the Librarian at universities and in the world at large. Her focus was on information literacy and knowledge practices. She demonstrated that librarians can do much more than show researchers how to use the database. Using the ACRL Framework for research, she showed not only how to run queries in databases but how to read scientific articles critically. This framework looks at research as inquiry, breaking it down into discrete processes. Approaching research in this way takes what may seem like second nature to seasoned researchers and makes it more accessible, while also allowing experienced researches to become more aware of the multiple facets of "knowledge work." And, speaking as a researcher, it is work. . . a lot of work.