Here are the slides from our panel presentation at ACRL 2013. Lauren made them and they are quite beautiful and ducky. And the whole session was super fun to prepare. A big thank you to John Jackson, Kirby McCurtis, Nicole Pagowsky, Erin Sapienza, Amy Harris, Leo Lo, Molly Keener, Steve Cramer and Joan Petit for their amazing videos.
Archive for the 'conferences' Category
Personas and Beautiful Duckalicious Slides
Published April 17, 2013 conferences , the profession 2 CommentsTags: acrl, personas
Goodbye #acrl2013 We had fun and learned a bunch.
Published April 13, 2013 conferences Leave a CommentTags: acrl, upper level students
ACRL 2013 was a blast. I don’t remember too much about 2009, but I’m sure that this one is always better. I presented a bunch, learned a lot, ate too much, and (re)met some AMAZING librarians. So definitely winning.
Here are the slides from the Friday workshop with Jenny Dale if you are interested. I think it went well.
#ACRL2013 day one and data on the run
Published April 10, 2013 conferences , the profession 2 CommentsTags: data
ACRL has kicked off to a fabulous start. Katharin Peter from USC and I gave a pre-conference workshop called “Data on the Run” and I’m pretty sure it was a success. The participants seemed happy with it. I’m always nervous about pre-conferences because I want people who are paying to get their money’s worth, so we worked our bottoms off to develop the materials. The only down side was that we ran a bit close on time, but we just had so much to share. I wish now we had suggested it as an all-day workshop. Maybe next time.
If you are interested, here is our Data on the Run libguide and most of our materials are embedded. We had some activities not mentioned, but just email if you are interested. I’m really proud of my data library instruction slides activities!
So, ACRL is alive and kicking. Here’s to a great two more days!
Data Nerds Unite!
Brace yourself Indianapolis, the librarians are coming #acrl2013
Published April 9, 2013 conferences , the profession Leave a CommentTags: acrl, presentations
I’m heading off to ACRL 2013 in about 7 hours. First I must teach and meet with students and all the other wonderful things librarians do. If the winds and weather are with me I will be in Indiana tonight and presenting tomorrow morning. This is my second in-person ACRL (we did the virtual conference in 2011) and I am super stoked. It is like ALA, but all about my type of library. I will miss my public library peeps though. They can throw a hot party.
ACRL!!!!
Here’s what I will be up to. I’ll share the presentation materials when we are finished. Have you seen anything I absolutely must attend?
Wednesday, April 10
9 AM: Presenting a pre-conference with Katharin Peter called Data on the Run (And yes, you should say that to the tune of Band on the Run)
Dinner with the gals
7 PM: ACRL 101 – Come learn about LPSS and DIG!
8 PM: Battle Decks! Imagine, Improvise, Inflict: Get Inspired or Die Trying – Oh Fun Times with a capital T.
9PM: Tweet up!
Thursday, April 11
8 AM: Presenting Building a Dream Team: Library Personas in the 21st Century Library with Lauren Pressley and Jenny Dale
10:30 AM: Emotional Intelligence and the Winds of Change in Academic Libraries or Librarians as Partners: Moving from Research Supporters to Research Partners or Reference Service at an Inflection Point: Transformations in Academic Libraries
12 PM: ACRL Focus Group
1 PM: Hacking the Learner Experience: Techniques and Strategies for Connecting with Your Instructional Ecosystem or Once a Library Ambassador, Always a Library Ambassador! Using Peer Mentoring to Integrate the Library into the First-Year Academic Experience and Beyond
2 PM: Meeting with World Bank rep and poster sessions
3 PM: From the Periphery into the Mainstream: Library DIY culture(s) and the academy
4:40 PM – Henry Rollins Keynote
Dinner and reception after reception after reception. Good times.
Friday, April 12
8:30 AM: Creating a Culture of Assessment: Determinants of Success
9:00 AM: Presenting Higher Learning: Effective and Engaging Information Literacy Instruction for Upper-Level Students with Jenny Dale
1:30 PM: Brian Mathews Paper or Data Services: Making It Happen
2:30 PM: Poster Session
4 PM: Coffee with DIG and LPSS
Dinner! (because a girl simply must eat)
8 PM: All Conference Reception
How does your personality match up with your job?
Published March 27, 2013 conferences , the profession 4 CommentsAmy Harris, library instruction coordinator extraordinaire, talks about how her personality lines up with her job.
You should tell us for our library persona presentation at ACRL! Jenny Dale, Lauren Pressley, and I are presenting at the ACRL 2013 national conference on the idea of library personas. We became interested in the idea after learning about “core competencies” or the tasks you can do most effectively and efficiently and tend to do with the most passion. We see these core competencies as a key part of our library personas, or the personalities we bring to our library work. You can read more about our session or check out some blog posts we’ve written on the idea, here and here.
We want to bring together a variety of personas, but as there are only three of us, we need your help! Please send us a short (under 2 minutes) video describing how your personality matches up with your work in the library. These are meant to be informal, so grab you iPhone and get busy. If you don’t have the ability to record yourself, please let us know and we will try to arrange an alternate.
Please send your clip to me by April 5 or comment if you have questions. We want you and your library persona!
What is your library persona?! We need YOUR help!
Published March 13, 2013 conferences , the profession Leave a CommentTags: acrl, videos
Jenny Dale, Lauren Pressley, and I are presenting at the ACRL 2013 national conference on the idea of library personas. We became interested in the idea after learning about “core competencies” or the tasks you can do most effectively and efficiently and tend to do with the most passion. We see these core competencies as a key part of our library personas, or the personalities we bring to our library work. You can read more about our session or check out some blog posts we’ve written on the idea, here and here.
We want to bring together a variety of personas, but as there are only three of us, we need your help! Please send us a short (under 2 minutes) video describing your library persona. These are meant to be informal, so grab you iPhone and get busy. If you don’t have the ability to record yourself, please let us know and we will try to arrange an alternate.
Please send your clip to me by April 5 or comment if you have questions. We want you and your library persona!
What’s up Seattle?! You ready for the librarians?! #alamw13
Published January 16, 2013 conferences Leave a CommentTags: alamw13
My friend and I were talking earlier this week and mid-conversation I realized that I will be on a plane leaving for ALA Midwinter next Thursday. OMG! So many errands to run! So much stuff to pack! So many pdfs to read! So many nights out to plan! But, I am a librarian. We know how to put on a good conference (and, yes, I have academic conferences to compare it to). No matter if I forget my toothbrush, I will have a great time. This one is super exciting because a group of my friends finally took Patrick Sweeney’s advice and got an apartment.
If you are interested, here’s where I will be. Thank goodness Midwinter is a bit of a break, but it is still busy. What are you doing at ALA MW?
ALA Midwinter
Thursday!
- Nighttime: ALA Think Tank Meet up
Friday!
- 10:00 am – 12:00 pm: Tabling for Courtney Young for ALA President! Come keep me company and learn about this awesome lady!
- Afternoon: GODORT Steering, ACRL Leadership Council, GODORT programming meeting
- Nighttime: GODORT Happy Hour! LITA Happy Hour! Dinner with Friends! Emerging Leaders Party!
Saturday!
- Morning: ACRL Law and Political Science Section is getting crazy. Come visit us at 10:30 am!
- 12:00 pm: Ignite ALA!
- Afternoon: Random programs. Maybe some NMRT. Maybe some ULS. Who knows where the LMK will go.
- 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm: Come hang with the Numeric Data Interest Group at Caffe Ladro near the convention center. We will talk about awesome data stuff.
- Nighttime: NMRT social! Credo social! Someone else’s social! Dinner with Sage! After Hours Party!
Sunday!
- Morning: Maybe some yoga? Maybe catch a little Alexander Street breakfast? Maybe sleep?
- 8:30 am: Just Ask: Defining and Advocating for the Reference Librarian (I’m really excited about this session. Sounds great.)
- 10:30 am: LITA’s Top Tech Trends!
- 1:00 pm: LIRT’s Library Technology Challenges: Woes and Wows
- 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm: Tabling for Courtney Young for ALA President! Yes, she is awesome!
- Nighttime: Meeting up with some WMS peeps! Young Turks Reception! Hijinks!
Monday!
- Morning: GODORT membership meeting
- 1:00 pm: The New Stacks: The Maker Movement Comes to Libraries (I’m curious how the maker movement might apply to academic libraries, so I want to attend to learn more.)
- My flight doesn’t leave until really late (10ish) and I have a red eye back home. I don’t do this often (maybe once or twice). Any tips for surviving the red eye (and teaching the next day)?
Those are my plans for ALA Midwinter. Good times and more blogging to come!
Wrap it up and stick a bow on it: ALA 2012, Part 2
Published July 18, 2012 conferences Leave a CommentTags: ala annual, data, godort, lpss
June was a blur. An absolute blur. It started with IASSIST 2012 in DC, a week of data, beer and cows (long story), and ended with ALA 2012. Basically ALA Annual conference morphs for me every time I go. My first year was awful because I didn’t know many people and I couldn’t find a niche. The second time things started to change because I was in the Emerging Leaders program. I knew more people and was starting to find a place. Last year I worked for Against the Grain as a reporter and went to sessions I would have never attended on my own and learning tons. This year I was still writing for ATG, but I didn’t have time to attend a lot of programs. Why? Because I’ve started working more closely with a few groups, especially the ACRL Law and Political Science Section.
This is why I call it the grown-up ALA. I barely had time to visit the exhibit hall and the one time I was able to look for ARCs I was actually supposed to be at the ACRL conference table (I was lost, but eventually found it), so the whole ARC controversy is lost on me. I also could barely attend a program that wasn’t related to my section or round table. I attended some great receptions, but often that was the only time I could catch up with old friends or meet anyone new. Don’t get me wrong; I much prefer this ALA to my first, but it is a fundamentally different beast now. That being said, it is really difficult to condense my activities into a pithy post, but here are the highlights of my ALA Annual 2012.
My official kick-off for ALA was the ACRL Leadership Council on Friday where I was able to meet some of the ACRL leadership and learn about plans for the next year. I am the incoming convener for the Data Interest Group and the incoming Vice-President for LPSS so this event will become a new “must attend”. My unofficial kick-off is always the Emerging Leader Poster session and I love seeing the projects. Here were my a few faves:
- Team C: Professional Development for Online Instruction Librarians (Yes, please. I would love to see this as an ongoing project that follows up with their recommendations. We need it!)
- Team I: Promoting International Innovation (I’m biased on this one because the team included Amanda Click, my first practicum student. She rocks! And so does their project!)
- Team H: Video Game Review Criteria (Not just for public libraries! This is a great tool for selecting video games for any library.)
Along with most of the government information world I attended a launch workshop on the new interface for ProQuest Congressional. If you want my notes, just email me. They are switching the interface in August, but no final date yet. Oh exciting!
I tried to attend a few of the data sessions like the LITA Presidents’ Program, The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Research, Digital Scholarship and Implications for Libraries. It is nice to see more data-related sessions at ALA, but I wish the groups could collaborate more. For instance, DIG would love to collaborate with anyone interested in data issues. With the upcoming conference changes (fewer program slots), we are required to collaborate. So get with us.
This year’s DIG meeting was great and covered some of the major topics in the data world. It was nice to talk about data issues beyond just research data management though. There are many other issues that data librarians need to think about (licensing issues and proprietary software being just two). We decided at this meeting to pool together some of our resources, such as data collection policies, and make those available to others wanting to support secondary data. I’d basically like to have something to update the Numeric Data Products and Services: A SPEC kit, which is starting to get out of date.
My last big event was the ProQuest breakfast for GODORT. This was the first year I could attend the breakfast and it was fab! The speaker was Julian Bond, a former President of the NAACP and a civil rights movement figure. He was invited to celebrate the History Vault’s The NAACP’s Major Campaigns. His presentation reflected on his life as a leader of SNCC and included a large number of photographs of him with other leaders. Such a great speaker!
The conference closed out with my first ever ALA Battledecks! I plan to stay until Tuesday now just to see this. Quite a good time. My favorite didn’t win the judges’ prize, but got the audience favorite. I have to give a BIG shout out to my fave boybrarian John Jackson who threw his name into the ring, was chosen, and did extremely well! So proud! Someday I want to get up the courage to compete. Hmm, maybe Las Vegas!
So, that was my ALA. Again, a fab conference with many great sessions, meetings, and conversations with new friends and old. Looking forward to an equally wonderful 2013. How was your ALA? Anything particularly exciting?
Wrap it up and stick a bow on it: IASSIST & ALA 2012, Part 1
Published July 12, 2012 conferences , Uncategorized 1 CommentTags: data, iassist
I’ve been slow about writing conference wrap-ups! I guess it is because my summer conferences are pretty much back-to-back with IASSIST at the beginning of June and ALA at the end. The other issue may be that my conference experiences are changing. I’ve been spending less time in programs and more time in meetings. I called ALA the “grown-up version” this year because I spent so much time in meetings and much less seeing celebrities and partying. Ahem, I mean networking.
IASSIST 2012
IASSIST is the data professionals conference and it kicked off with two mega-meetings of the Administrative Council on Sunday and Monday. I’m on the Administrative Council by virtue of being a co-chair of the Professional Development Committee. My work on Prof Dev focuses mostly around creating workshops for the annual conference while the other chair is really into the big picture ideas like, “Where is IASSIST going? Who is IASSIST anyway?” We play to our strengths as I sometimes get frustrated with big picture discussions and tend to gravitate more to project development.
However, IASSIST needs to consider big picture ideas now because so many people are interested in data. We need to capitalize on t
he momentum to make a place for ourselves in the data world. Take this for example: while we were holding our meeting, the LITA Forum 2012 announcement came out, and the program is entitled “A New World of Data”. Some of the sessions look like they would overlap with IASSIST with a library focus. I don’t think the issue is necessarily competition, but rather how the organization communicates that we are a broad umbrella for all types of data professionals from librarians doing data discovery to DDI specialists to data archivists. How do we communicate more effectively with LITA and others who are working with or interested in data? It’s a quandary.
As always there were many excellent sessions and lots of good conversations. Here are the highlights from just a few.
Julia Lane, Senior Managing Economist, American Institutes for Research (AIR) kicked off the conference describing a project to build a data system to bolster a science policy data infrastructure to support better reporting on nature and activities of R&D efforts. The project is based on three principles: activity should be based on need; need to leverage existing data; and use 21st century methods. You can see the outcome of project at http://readidata.nitrd.gov/star/
Jen Green, Nicole Scholtz, and Samantha Guss talked about collaborative models for robust data support by comparing the University of Michigan’s new Clark Library, New York University’s Data Services Studio, and Yale’s Center for Science and Social Science Information. All three use the information commons model to try to support more complex needs of data users. In addition they are able to bring together data librarians, statistical support, and IT computing assistance into one area. I would love to see something similar at UNCG, but we don’t quite have the user volume to support such intensive use of a data-related area. Great models for other libraries though!
Carol Perry and Michelle Edwards at the University of Guelph talked about having a Researcher Day in which researchers on campus can gather to have workshops on data management and talk about their data needs. This helped to launch a working group that focuses on research data management.
On the final day, Stuart Macdonald from EDINA at the University of Edinburgh presented on the AddressingHistory project. The project brings together historical Scottish Post Office Directories and historical maps. Beyond being one of my favorite presenters ever (Scottish accent and funny guy), I’ve been seeing this project slowly developing since IASSIST 2010 at Cornell. It is great to see an end-product. I was also really excited to see that they are starting to support augmented reality, which would appeal to a wider audience. I hate to see efforts like this whither because of lack of use simply because they are too esoteric or academic. With an augmented reality app the site could appeal to people more generally interested in the history of Edinburgh.
IASSIST is a great organization and conference because it is small and a close-knit group of data heads. It is quite unlike ALA where you can get lost in the shuffle at times. It is also awesome because the conference planners really like banquets on boats. This year’s was cruising the Potomac. Sweet.
Next post will cover the wild and wonderful world of ALA. Stay tuned for Part 2.
Why I love the ALA conference and its attendees…
Published June 18, 2012 conferences Leave a CommentTags: ala
Because of awesome crowd-sourced things like a list of places to eat and have fun. And a volunteer made map of where the parties are.
I’ve attended a lot of conferences both in librarianship and in another field, and never have I seen such enthusiasm and helpfulness. Man, I love librarians. You people bring it!
