Tribal College Librarians Institute - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Tribal College Librarians Institute (TCLI) is a week long professional development experience for tribal college

Tribal colleges and universities

Tribal colleges and universities are a category of higher education, minority-serving institutions in the United States. The educational institutions are distinguished by being controlled and operated by Native American tribes; they have become part of American Indians' institution-building in...

librarian

Librarian

A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...

s from all over the United States and Canada, normally held in Bozeman, Montana

Bozeman, Montana

Bozeman is a city in and the county seat of Gallatin County, Montana, United States, in the southwestern part of the state. The 2010 census put Bozeman's population at 37,280 making it the fourth largest city in the state. It is the principal city of the Bozeman micropolitan area, which consists...

History

The groundwork for TCLI was formed in 1989 when Kathy Kaya, a recently retired Montana State University – Bozeman reference librarian, had a conversation with tribal librarians at Salish Kootenai College

Salish Kootenai College

Salish Kootenai College is a Native American tribal college based in Pablo, Montana which serves the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Oreilles tribes. There are approximately 1,100 students attending the college; enrollment is not limited to Native American students.Prior to 1978, it was a...

about the lack of professional development opportunities for them in Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

. Kathy turned words into action and worked with the Montana State University Libraries and the Montana State University Department of Native American Studies to create TCLI. The first Institute was held in 1990 at Montana State University in Bozeman and was attended by librarians from every tribal college in Montana.

In the Institute’s 18 year history, TCLI has grown from a three to a five day institute and is currently open to all tribal college librarians, tribal college library staff, and any librarians whose mandate it is to serve tribal college students. Funding for TCLI is provided by MSU Libraries and supplemented with grants from private and government institutions. The bulk of the budget is spent on providing travel funds to participants. To date, the Institute has been able to offer limited travel funds to all those requesting assistance. While the majority of participants are from the US, librarians from New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

have also attended. In all there have been approximately 150 different participants from 50 institutions and a total of nearly 400 participants overall.

Subjects of sessions

The Institute has offered sessions on information literacy

Information literacy

The National Forum on Information Literacy defines information literacy as “...the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand.” This is the most common definition; however,...

, grant writing, collection development, Building Library Policies, digitization, preservation, Web 2.0

Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...

, government information, database training and a host of other subject areas and topics. In addition to the library related topics, the Institute attempts to include sessions on cultural topics as well. In recent years, there have been sessions on the American Indian Movement

American Indian Movement

The American Indian Movement is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by urban Native Americans. The national AIM agenda focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty...

, Navajo Code Talkers

Code talker

Code talkers was a term used to describe people who talk using a coded language. It is frequently used to describe 400 Native American Marines who served in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages...

and Ho-Chunk

Ho-Chunk

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Winnebago, are a tribe of Native Americans, native to what is now Wisconsin and Illinois. There are two federally recognized Ho-Chunk tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska....

ethnobotany

Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between people and plants....

Venues

TCLI is primarily held in Bozeman, Montana

Bozeman, Montana

: however funding was received from the National Agricultural Library in 2001 and from the National Museum of the American Indian

National Museum of the American Indian

The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum operated under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution that is dedicated to the life, languages, literature, history, and arts of the native Americans of the Western Hemisphere...

in 2006 to hold the Institute in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

TCLI 2008 was held June 9-13 in Bozeman, Montana on the Montana State University campus. The cultural theme for 2008 focused on native languages and coincided with the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

declaration of 2008 as the International Year of Languages

International Year of Languages

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2008 as the International Year of Languages, pursuant to a resolution of UNESCO. The resolution also reaffirmed the need to achieve full parity among the six official languages on United Nations websites....

2007 Institute

In 2007, TCLI was attended by 38 participants from 27 institutions, including:

External links

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