Posts Tagged 'conferences'

libraryland learning (summer edition)

Published May 13, 2012 conferences , the profession 1 Comment
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I love talking with my students, faculty, and colleagues, but sometimes I need an infusion of fresh ideas and adventures. That’s why I love summertime. Two major conferences take place in May and June (IASSIST and ALA). Plus everyone reserves the summer months for workshops and off-campus meetings. These may seem like frivolous things to an outsider (or my non-libraryland partner), but I am better able to do and more excited about my job after a fresh infusion of networking and learning.

Take for instance our workshop last week. UNCG’s Liaison Task Force has been asked to look at our liaison duties and develop a possible model for the future. The problem right now is that our workloads have increased dramatically, but we haven’t had an increase in staffing. Same as everywhere, right? Well, we’ve been talking about this issue for a while and haven’t decided anything. Luckily the task force was asked to benchmark with other schools. Rather than just calling up Wake Forest and asking them “Hey, how do you do it?” Steve Cramer called together a joint meeting with the key players from Wake Forest and liaisons from UNCG.

UNCG and WFU Liaison Meeting

The session started off with us brainstorming all of the things we do as liaisons onto sticky notes, and then Roz Tedford and I then grouped them into categories like consultations, faculty outreach, teaching, etc. Next we talked about our workloads with most tasks increasing in work time spent on them.

The category “keeping with the subject area”, which means reading key journals and staying abreast of new research, is an area in decline. Very unfortunate considering we are subject specialists too, in my opinion. I wonder if this is the area to examine in the future: a divide between the liaison (someone who does more outreach tasks or maintains gobi aerts) and subject specialists (someone who can teach upper-level classes and do in-depth consultations). This model wouldn’t be a return to the bibliographer approach; neither the liaison nor the subject specialist would be devoted to just collections. Of course you could have one person be both, but that is more difficult for the bigger departments. I guess the real key is having a flexible system rather than just assuming a one-size-fits-all approach to liaison roles.

The meeting wrapped up with a brainstorming session on what we can do about this issue. In my small group were two tech services librarians who are also liaisons. They expressed discomfort with their expanding duties as liaisons because they felt their primary job duties were suffering. This brought up the tension between specialization and generalization. At UNCG we tend to assume our liaisons are generalists who can move easily between collection work and teaching/patron interactions. It assumes someone with no teaching experience can (and should) teach. Likewise someone with no collections experience can and should do collection duties. The problem I have with that assumption is that it seems to denigrate those tasks. I am not the best collections person, I’m a pretty good teacher. I’ve been doing it for a few years now. Plus (and this is key) I’ve trained and reflected and trained more to get better at it. It is something that I see as being integral to my job so I’ve put extra effort into it. I can’t say the same thing about collections. Does that mean I can’t get better at collections? No, I can train and reflect in that area too. But then we get back to the workload/time issue. When do I get better at a skill I use sparingly? And would putting my time into collections even be useful to the library in the long run, especially if it takes time away from public services (what I do best)?

So, that is where the meeting ended. The conversation will continue this summer, but the important outcome is that we are sharing ideas and thinking through our strengths, our weaknesses, and where we have room for improvement. And that is what summertime should be about!

As I mentioned I have a lot on my plate this summer. Below are the upcoming workshops if you are interested. I will try to blog reflections on each.

May 14-16: Office of Undergraduate Research Workshop on integrating research into undergraduate classes

May 17: Business Librarianship in NC workshop

May 18: NCBIG workshop on assessing library instruction sessions

May 21: NC-LITe meeting (Library Instructional Technology group)

June 1: NCLA Government Resources Section meeting on ASERL and the Census

June 6-8: IASSIST in DC!

June 14: Metrolina Library Instruction Conference

June 22-25: American Library Association annual conference in Anaheim

And then in July I will take vacation. I will not check email. I will sit back and unwind. I promise.

Metrolina Information Literacy Conference

Published June 23, 2011 conferences Leave a Comment
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Last week a few of us attended the sixth annual Metrolina Information Literacy Conference in Charlotte. It is always a great conference and very popular with the UNCG crowd. You can read about last year’s conference and see our slides from this year.

Here are some notes from other sessions. Slides and more have been posted on the Metrolina site if you are interested.

RAMS: Developing a Master Teacher Program…That Works with Michael Frye, Carl Leak, Thomas Flynn

  • RAMS is a Master Teacher Program at Winston-Salem State University Library. RAMS stands for restructure, align, measure, and success.
  • They have developed a RAMS recipe book with communal lesson plan examples for their staff. It is based on the info lit cookbook.
  • They have an interesting approach to help out people without teaching backgrounds.
  • They bring in experts on particular techniques (like Amy Harris and Jenny Dale!).
  • The librarians write a narrative assessment of a few consultations and journal entries on some library instruction sessions; these journals help with ‘observations’ in the sense that they must provide some feedback.
  • Next year they may look at librarians training each other in subject expertise.
  • This summer they are developing lesson plans for five classes not currently taught and will take those to the professors to market library instruction – great idea!

50-Minute Makeover: Creating effective library instruction for a new English curriculum at High Point University with Kathy Shields, Amy Pace, and Robert Fitzgerald

  • An overhaul of High Point University’s English composition program led to changes in the library instruction program.
  • You can check out some of their class activities on their libguide for English 1101, 1102, 1103
  • Kathy has a great keyword brainstorming exercise with bubble clouds. I need to find out from her how it works again, but I’m sure she’d be happy to share if you are interested.
  • They did an assessment at end, which was an embedded google form (in the libguide). I had no idea you could do this!
  • At the end of the semester they were able to get access to student papers and compared those classes with instruction and those without. They saw a big difference in use of scholarly etc resources versus websites across the two groups. Those without instruction used websites more frequently than library resources.\
  • Through their assessment they were able to see the holes in their instruction. Places to improve were with teaching and/or, research as a process, reading and comprehending sources and citing sources.
  •  They mentioned citationproject.net as a helpful resource on citation/plagiarism research.
  • For next semester they will create an annotated bibliography assignment for early in the semester that will use a select group of sources that are academically-inclined but not scholarly (e.g., New Yorker or The Economist articles).
  • Great discussion of the process of creating a new program!

Embedded Librarians: Looking Backward/Looking Forward with Jennifer Ballance, Dough Short, Grant LeFoe, and Amy Burns

  • Joint group of librarians from Central Piedmont Community College and Southern Piedmont Community College.
  • CPCC has a huge number of online classes – 465 classes and 11,791 students – and the library realized it needed to reach out to this group.
  • They embedded in the CMS of these online classes and created a “your” librarian button, which was an area for the librarian assigned to a particular class. To help with the project, they made embedding in one online class mandatory for all teaching librarians! Wow!
  • In the future they will do some usability tests that do not just test the interface but actually test the learning outcomes after the student takes the tutorials. SO FREAKING SMART!
  • SPCC had to use WordPress.com to integrate into Moodle because no extra space to embed. This is nice work around if not have libguides. You can see Grant’s personal page as an example. The faculty were very happy with the effort. In the future they will try to include the classes they see in person and blended courses as well in the embedding project.
  • Best practices for online embedding: 1) let students know when you will check your email and how often (e.g., once a day before 10am) – I need to do this with my class next semester!; 2) know the assignment and possibly even do the assignment; 3) send timely announcements; 4) check stats; 5) have more information on first page for assignment (not as much welcoming stuff)
  • They also gave suggestions for building rapport such as creating jing tutorials with your voice, having a picture of YOU, creating rapport with the faculty. These were all great suggestions that could even be used in an in-person embedded experience.

The sessions were all informative and fun. I especially enjoyed seeing our former intern, Kathy Shields, give her first ever presentation. Amy Harris, Kathy, and I also gave a poster presentation on our intern program. It was crazy popular and now I have a lot of emails to write!


Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians, Day 2

Published March 14, 2011 conferences 2 Comments
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Here are my notes from day 2 of the conference. I had a great time. Because the topic doesn’t quite fit with my usual interests, I probably wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t had a professional connection. But I’m glad I did. It was helpful to hear speakers talk about librarianship in terms of entrepreneurship. I would probably just call it innovation and innovative thinking, but the idea is to celebrate the rethinking of our work and the way we do our everyday practices.

Katina Strauch: from an unentrepreneur, or the creator of the Charleston Conference

  • They don’t do any marketing for conference; entirely word of a mouth
  • Stages of entrepreneurship:
    • Conviction: young and stupid
    • Idea: create your own conference
    • Concept:
      • the conference captured mood of serials and acquisitions crowd
      • exhibits are held before conference and not during
      • focus on ideas and not products
    • Venture: both conference and journal are limited liability corporations
    • Business:
      • the functioning of the business
      • she talked about the things to avoid and memories of the conference
    • Building a sustainable business:

Running an Information-Services Business Within a Large Global Corporation with Mark Pandick, IBM Market Insights

  • Manages an research services unit within a company (IBM)
  • Challenge for company is having to move into new markets — how get reliable information for workers in developing countries
  • His knowledge services focus includes self-help tools and a knowledge center
  • No physical library – everything they do is virtual
  • Knowledge center has over 20,000 requests a year
  • Relationship managers – helping clients with projects (either topical areas or parts of the business);
  • Each year they start from premise they have no budget – they have to be self funding unit

Open Mic: Using Students to Crowdsource Marketing and Outreach During a Library Renovation with Dean Sullivan and Anne C. Barnhart

  • University of West Georgia
  • Try to get student buy-in with major library renovations
  • Did a “count the computers” contest: Had students count number of current computers and then compare with how many more would be provided by renovation. The put their number in a basket for a drawing.
  • They had fun signs about the renovation
  • Poetry wall
    • A temporary construction wall
    • For national poetry month told students they could write poetry on the wall
    • A lot of the poetry were Bible verses and then became graffiti
  • On another wall they told student orgs they could decorate parts of the wall. Went well except did have some controversial signs
  • How to survive the library renovation project:
    • Asked students to design posters and videos for a contest;
    • Grand prize was two $25 gift certificates to restaurants
    • Didn’t get many entries and not quality they were expecting
  • Lessons learned
    • Students had already given up on the library?
    • Sidewalk chalking might be another approach
    • Someone suggested the book, My Freshman Year, an anthropological study of freshman life

Tim Spalding, LibraryThing: I was eating lunch during his great talk, so no notes.

  • Basically he talked about what start-up is and his journey through the process of creating a start-up company.
  • He was pretty harsh about opacs and library vendors and our subservient relationships with them. He is right.

Lightning Rounds!

I gave a lightning round on our in-house librarian project. It went well (I think) and I had fun giving the talk. I was surprised by the number of people who a) seemed cynical about training an undergraduate student to be a first responder to library questions, and b) thought that a project like this would cause the downfall of the library. Or maybe it was just me.

I have to admit that stopped taking notes after my lightning talk, but here is what I did jot down.

Tim Rogers:

Ingrid Ruffin:

  • Talked about not wanting to be a librarian in a library
  • What are the transferable skills?
  • Creating information products for nonprofit organizations to help them isolate information about the groups they want to support

Angela Swiezy and Mary Gaylord from Eli Lilly:

  • The company needed to become more outcomes-based
  • Their research group did a workshop called “find the entrepreneur in you”
  • Created an interactive website with a bibliography
  • Created an idea board on which employees could post ideas from workshops
  • Entrepreneurs aren’t just risk takers; they are also collaborative and creative workers

Everyone did a great job! It is a good format for delivering ideas and keeping the interest levels high. The lightning rounds were a good challenge for me. I’m accustomed to presenting, but usually I don’t plan out quite as much. The lightning talk goes quickly and it is best to be prepared if you want to get your information out there (and make it entertaining). It is the first time in a while that I’ve written out my presentation and practiced the delivery.

Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians, Day 1

Published March 10, 2011 conferences 2 Comments
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The Conference for Entrepreneurial Librarians is a joint effort of Wake Forest University and my own UNCG. I didn’t get a chance to attend many sessions last time it was held (in 2009), but I’m really glad I attended today. The sessions were solid and I love getting to talk with new and old friends.

Below are some rough notes.

Mary Ellen Bates: If you haven’t heard of her (I hadn’t), Bates is a self-employed information services professional (I had never thought about this as a career!). While her session was focused on becoming an entrepreneur (mostly self-employed), most of her points were relevant to anyone who wants to create innovative practice in the library.

  • Three skill sets of info-entrepreneurs: business, professional, and entrepreneurship skills
  • Entrepreneurship is more of a mindset and not as easy to learn, but characteristics are:
    • tolerance for risk and ambiguity
    • 100% client focused; have to constantly learn what clients want now; figuring how services can be geared for your client’s needs (and not what you want to offer)
    • move out of employee mindset – or you are doing this because someone else told you to or a force is compelling you to
    • strategic perspective
    • self-confidence and self-discipline
    • self-starting
  • business skills
    • need to view self as business
      • conference attendance is part of the budget of  your prof development – think about spending money as part of the business
    • be able to close a sale
    • comfort with talking about money
    • think five years out – have a name for your company that is timeless, do not look like a start up
  • professional expertise
    • hone research skills
    • nurture your network of colleagues
    • invest in professional development
    • identify opportunities for adding value to your work (and don’t just do what is required)
  • learn to love uncertainty – embrace ambiguity; being 100% client focused means being open to anything
  • self-management – time management; never go over budget; “perfection is the enemy of good (enough)”
  • cash flow insights – watch your money and don’t use credit; price yourself accordingly
  • keep marketing self; don’t only work for one client
  • form an advisory board – mentors who can and will give feedback
  • marketing plan
    • have tangible goals (eg, I will be invited to so many presentations)
    • do simultaneous efforts (twitter and facebook and linkedin)
    • evaluate marketing plan monthly
    • fully test approaches (don’t just try) – In other words if you want to do something new, go 100% with and fully test the effort to see if it is worth your time. Even if the test is a failure, you at least will have data to know why it was a failure.
  • marketing for introverts: blogging, social media, speak in front of your clients (you gain authority in public speaking), seeing yourself as a brand
  • imposter syndrome
    • take criticism gently
    • look at self as third party
    • learn self appreciation
    • let go of knowing it all
    • don’t talk yourself into thinking everyone is thinking negatively of you
    • fake it until you make it

More information and her slides are available at http://batesinfo.com/extras/

The Library as Partner: Sustaining Relevance in a Collaborative, Student-Focused Technology Center with Heather Lambert, and Christy Groves: Great session. Very interesting and entertaining. I learned a lot not just about the Digital Media Studio, but also some project management ideas. Plus check out the No log (below). Pretty awesome idea!

  • From Middle Tennessee State University
  • Created a Digital Media Studio
  • Space includes a collaborative area with a table and white boards; roving technology assistance and research assistance; technology and research coach appointments
  • They installed open source software on half of the computers
  • Students get to vote on new open source additions
  • In the promotions they don’t talk about specific software but break it down by tasks (movie making, etc)
  • Planning process
    • Got someone from every department to be on committee
    • Communicated to entire library throughout planning process – committees would send out regular updates
    • They used a Gantt chart for timing
  • Training toolkit
    • Created a time when any staff member in library could come and practice making four projects (short 30 min sessions);
    • They put tutorials online and got a site subscription to lynda.com
  • Marketing
    • Had an amazing race with QR codes for the students
    • Also had a fall kickoff with tour of the digital media studio built in (included bowling!)
  • Studio Scribbles: their blog: students write posts with tips on using tools
  • They survey students and librarians regularly. When get feedback, they do a focus group and then change their policies or procedures within four weeks!
  • No log: whenever students have to say no to a patron, they log it in a google spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also includes the follow-up activity to deal with that No!

Business Librarians and Entrepreneurship: Innovative Trends and Characteristics with Elisabeth Leonard and Betsy Clementson: Always fun to see a former professor! Elisabeth Leonard taught my information literacy and library instruction class in grad school. She really set the foundation for my current interest in teaching.

  • They surveyed business librarians in the schools with the top ten entrepreneurship programs.
  • Nine schools participated and 20 librarians answered their survey.
  • They surveyed them to see how they fall within the self-identified categories of innovation adoption: innovator, early adopter, early majority, late majority, laggards. I won’t go into the specifics of the categories as I will link to their presentation once it is up. It does a great job.
  • Most of the respondents characterized themselves as innovators or early adopters, which is different from the way general librarians characterized themselves in a previous study (in that one most were the late majority).
  • It is a small sample but an interesting first study. Would be great to have it expanded to more business librarians or compare across subject areas.
  • Organizations need to have people spanning the  categories especially with more people in the first three groups. This encourages technology adoption.
  • Managers can influence or dampen risk-taking and innovation; they need to provide time and resources to take risks.
  • Managers need to think about the message they are sending when they talk about new changes in organizations. They also need to think about the message they are receiving from employees (are you really hear what they are saying?)

Great first day! Tomorrow is a bit jam-packed with Katina Strauch speaking at 8:15 am. Plus Tim Spalding is the lunch speaker. And I give my first lightning talk. Must go practice!

Teaching techniques galore!

Published February 28, 2011 reading Leave a Comment
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In preparation for a presentation at the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching, I read Practical Pedagogy for Library Instructors: 17 Innovative Strategies to Improve Student Learning. The book was very helpful, both for our session and my teaching. Below are some rough notes if you are interested. Some chapters were more relevant to me, so I’ve fleshed out those notes a bit. All of the chapters are interesting and I would encourage any librarian instructor to pick it up! It is definitely worth the read.

And more to come soon about Lilly! It was a great conference, but there was lots to process.

Chapter 1: how teach makes difference in what students learn; “Effective instruction demands the use of many strategies.” (pg 2)

  • direct instruction (objectivism): present info effectively and efficiently; behavioral change is ultimate goal; demo of databases is example of behavioral direct instruction; using analogies (compare this database to online searching) is cognitive instruction;
  • Use of instructional objectives is major contribution of behavioral theories (“planning for outcomes can make a difference in your teaching”)
  • tailoring to different learning styles is example of cognitive style – students are active, but the focus is on teacher shaping classroom to elicit desired behaviors
  • acrl info lit competencies: develop research plan, identify keywords/synonyms, select controlled vocab, construct and implement search strategy and search
  • student-centered learning (constructivism): focus on the situation in which student in which student is engaged (pg 5); focus on students learning by having students interact with each other; social justice component

Direct instruction (objectivism) examples:

Chapter 2:

  • cephalonian method = students are given color coded cards with questions to help them guide (in a way) the library tour. They are called on through the “tour” to ask certain color categories while the librarians are presenting a powerpoint of the “tour”. The tour is held in a lecture hall.
  • the cards are color coded for different categories of info (blue = basic info, yellow = recommend reading, red = services & facilities, green = misc)
  • PowerPoint slides correspond to the cards (but this would be great for prezi)
  • Process: played music at beginning, hand out cards, ask students to stand and ask question based on colors; asked questions at end of session to test crowd knowledge
  • my thoughts = could be easily adapted to a variety of sessions, the planting of questions may seem artificial but students often don’t know what questions to ask us. This way it is guided but interactive. I may try this in my residential college session in the fall.

Chapter 3: universal design for learning – use different teaching strategies to reach diverse groups of learners

Chapter 4: clickers; used in a plagiarism session

Chapter 5:  brief lecture followed by library research game; good discussion of how she implemented the game and the questions she asked. While I wouldn’t ask the same questions, they provide fuel for creating your own.

Chapter 6: transferability of concepts learned in instruction session.

  • instruction sessions emphasize concepts and transferability;
  • metaphor helps with understanding;
  • first asking students what they have done already re research; next use google for searching;
  • they use guess the google game in class to help with thinking about keyword brainstorming (http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/)

Chapter 7: teaching with stories/analogies

Chapter 8: jigsawing

  • cooperative learning – using small groups to reinforce student learning;
  • subset of wider idea of collaborative learning;
  • refers to this article as good one for LI (http://www.libraryinstruction.com/active.html);
  • they used half-jigsaw because of time constraints;
  • half-jigsaw = divide students into groups; teams given info resource to explore and basic instructions and tasks; students present to the class on findings; assess entire class with short exercise on what they learned from group presentations (keeps students focused on what groups are presenting)

Student-centered learning examples
Chapter 9: peer-led criteria creation

  • peer-led discussion groups to develop evaluation criteria for an “information text” (adolescent non-fiction);
  • gave students a “graphic organizer” with guided questions;
  • REALLY COOL!

Chapter 10: the imaginary undergrad

  • Because effective researchers are process-driven and not tool-driven (!!!) how to get students to think like they do?;
  • she creates an imaginary undergraduate with the students and then asks them for research topics for the students;
  • for the research process she asks them to come up with the process and use the computer to see if it works;
  • works best in small classes (6-9 people!) and upper-level students with general need to focus on research process (and not need to know about specific resources);
  • really cool approach but would it work in our one-shots? not so sure.

Chapter 11: personality tests

  • uses a short modified meyers-briggs personality quiz to teach boolean logic (called discover your perfect career which no longer seems to be on monster.com!);
  • asks students to raise hands if they match AND conditions based on their personality tests versus OR conditions (seems a bit convoluted to get to this activity);
  • next translates that to the library databases; then translate the library database to google search logic

Chapter 12: plagiarism tutorial

  • super cool plagiarism module in a info lit credit course (I’m going to use this with Ashby);
  • peer interviews, find the plagiarized text on google, paraphrasing exercises with hands-on group activity;
  • each activity took a week’s lesson

Chapter 13: Wikis and instruction

Chapter 14: Library session based on amazing race (for the equivalent of a UNS tour); involved chaos and running (my faves!!)

Chapter 15: Electronic portfolios as assessment tools

Chapter 16: Students presented their research findings in a movie format; talks about implementing the session and using technology in instruction

Chapter 17: Great chapter on creating an experiential instruction session/experience for ESL students. Asked students to fill out a matrix that compared the American library with their home library according to certain questions (e.g., How do you check books out?) (pg 165)

Chapter 18: Students created their own zines as part of a course on inequalities. The zine creation led up to a traditional research paper, but the students indicated that they felt better prepared for the research process. Pretty nifty!

the girl down at the library is so funny…

Published January 8, 2011 work , writing 1 Comment
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I’m back. I haven’t posted in a while simply because I couldn’t. I had neither the time nor the words. Now we’ve hit 2011 and I have to decide whether it is worth keeping this blog. I will have more time to write this year and some really awesome things are coming up in libraryland (and lyndaland). I like to write and a few people seem to read it, so why not. In the words of the Everybodyfields, it’s so good to be home…

As for a quick 2010 recap, here’s the newsflash.

  • I got married, bought a house, and moved. While our house rocks and the wedding was tremendous fun, those activities take up a ridiculous amount of time. Not doing them again anytime soon.
  • In 2009 I was contracted to write a book with my friend Katharin Peter introducing non-data librarians to the wild wonderful world of data reference and data instruction. As you can imagine, this project took up much of  2010. The book will be published in March 2011, so if you are curious look for it in your local academic library (hopefully). Since finishing this book in October (although I’m still working on the index), I haven’t had much interest in writing anything, even piddly little blog posts. Mostly I just wanted to sleep. I seem to have gotten over that, but I have promised myself I will never again agree to a book project. Let’s see how long that promise lasts.
  • I had some major swings in liking or disliking instruction in the fall. Some classes, especially with upper-level and graduate students, were kick ass. A couple were the most depressing and distressing experiences of my young life. (Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration). A goal for spring is to concentrate on mixing things up more in my lower-level political science sessions. I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to rethink the same boring stuff I’ve been doing forever and I’m starting to bore myself. Wish me luck on this one.
  • Libguides were introduced and I am in love. They are easy to use, accessible from anywhere, and do really cool things. When we first started with them, I thought I might move away from creating guides for each course. It hasn’t happened yet because I really like embedding my instruction activities into the webguide. I asked polisigh students what they think and only heard positive comments. So, I think this was a success and have to thank Amy Harris and Jenny Dale for getting our library to buy them.
  • Research consultations are the new black. OMG, I’m so not kidding. I’ve always kept good track of my consults, emails, chats, etc (because I’m an ocd data librarian), but my 2010 goal was to document fully my personal research/reference interactions. And, lordy, it has been through the roof. Certainly I’ve not had as many as our business librarian. Still to go from 1 personal chat in spring 2010 to 8 in fall 2010 is awesome!  And those were just the chats I actually picked up (I had a few at 2am on days I forgot to turn off my chat client, but I don’t count those). Also a good number of political science students feel very comfortable just walking into my office and asking “quick questions”.
  • Traveling is fun and I traveled a lot (for me) in 2010. ALA midwinter, ALA annual, computers in libraries, IASSIST were the main conferences I attended. My data conference, IASSIST, was fabulous and informative as always. The ALA conferences were also good for networking and stepping out of the academic library world. I developed my own skills through the Emerging Leaders Program and its projects. I couldn’t justify going every time though because I had difficulty seeing how attendance would directly help my users and my position. But, this may be a side affect of burn out more than anything else :) After a year of relatively little travel (2011), I’ll probably be itching for more in 2012.
  • What does in-house librarianship mean to me? Well, I’m still figuring it out, but I’ve been working on a pilot program where I serve as the “in-house librarian” for our Warren Ashby Residential College. In the fall this meant holding office hours (rarely attended) and working with the faculty in the college (more productive). I also trained a student who lives in the dorm to work with library resources. In  the spring we are going to develop the program a bit more by putting my information in all of the ARC syllabi, doing short presentations, and giving a full library instruction session in at least one class. I also realized we were missing a bit of the virtual aspects of “in-house librarianship” and created a libguide just for ARC students. If the polisigh students are willing to ask questions through chat, then maybe the ARC students would be up for it. More to come soon I am sure.

Beyond committee work and all the other usual things, this was my 2010. Some exciting things are coming up for 2011: the book’s publication, a chapter in the works, IASSIST in Vancouver, some new instruction sessions on the books, and the development of our in-house librarian program.  Let’s see where the road takes us…

Mingling with librarians in Charlotte @ #metrolinaIL10

Published June 17, 2010 conferences Leave a Comment
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This week a few of us UNCG-ers went to Metrolina’s 5th Annual Information Literacy Conference at Johnson and Wales University. Metrolina is the professional library association for the Charlotte area. It is always a great conference, and a great venue for meeting old friends and making new ones.

Before delving into my session notes, I want to give a huge shout out to Metrolina. Instead of giving conference attendees a lanyard or some other throw away, they gave $1000 to the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. Great idea! More conferences should follow that example. Believe me, I have plenty of lanyards now.

The keynote session was a talk by UNCG’s own Dr. Clara Chu on information literacy in a multicultural context. She argued for using information literacy skills to support our critical engagement with the world especially in regards to multiculturalism. Her talk was great because it found the commonalities between information literacy and critical pedagogy. I read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress many years ago with the intention of being a polisigh professor. Although I am not constantly in a classroom, in a way my current profession fits better with hooks’ approach to education. My purpose isn’t to impart knowledge, but to provide the means for developing knowledge. Dr. Chu’s talk made me want to reread critical pedagogy and rethink my approaches to teaching!

Appropriately enough, after Dr. Chu’s talk, Amy Harris, Jenny Dale, and I did a mini-workshop/ presentation on adding interactivity to the classroom. It was appropriate because interactivity is not just about group work, but also about distributing power across the classroom by drawing on the preexisting knowledge of students. The attendees seemed to enjoy it even though we made them get up and walk around! Here is our Prezi (designed by the masterful Jenny Dale!).

After lunch I session hopped a bit (sheepish grin). Jeri Langford and Valerie Freeman from Johnson & Wales University were preaching it by telling attendees to engage with faculty on their own turf. Basically, we need to get our butts out of the library. They were a good presentation duo because one was a librarian and the other was a professor.

Jason Setzer and Amy Baker of Davidson County Community College Library presented on their Blackboard-integrated info lit game. My favorite part was the Squeaky Clean Smack Talk Forum–a discussion forum in which players can smack talk each other (cleanly).

Finally, I finally learned how to create those snazzy mobile library websites in a session with Michael Winecoff from UNC Charlotte and Beth Martin from Johnson C. Smith University. You should check out their great website on creating mobile sites.

I missed many more great sessions including Rosalind Tedford and Molly Keener of Wake Forest University talking about the use of documentary film in info lit classes (COOL!). The presentation powerpoints should be available soon from the Metrolina website. If you haven’t been to the Metrolina IL Conference, it is definitely worth a visit next year. It is an inexpensive but information rich venue for all NC and SC instruction librarians. Way to go Metrolina!

And so it begins…

Published January 13, 2010 conferences 2 Comments
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Tomorrow I leave for my first ALA midwinter. The build up has been lord of the rings style epic. It has definitely been long. Applications for the Emerging Leaders program were due way back in the summer and announcements weren’t made until well into the fall. My inbox has been inundated by vendor solicitations for almost two months. There are more receptions and lunches and breakfasts than there are hours in the day.

I’ve certainly been to busy conferences before–Computers in Libraries is pretty much non-stop madness (and other things). But the ALA meet-ups seem particularly daunting. I have to figure out the Boston public transportation while navigating a new city while trying to decide which meeting or reception or showcase might be more exciting/fun/informative while, oh yeah, reminding myself that I might need to sleep some and eat more than pub food and beer. Whew! I’ll need a vacay after all that.

But, I am looking forward to the madness. I’m especially excited about our Emerging Leaders group. We’ve been connecting through Facebook and Twitter for a month or two. I love seeing the personalities emerge virtually through the intertubes; from our event planners, Librarian JP and Darcel Jones, to my roomie, Tara, to Justin, the man on a tattooing mission, it seems like a fun and diverse bunch. I have a good feeling about this.

So, for now I sleep. Tomorrow it begins. See you all in Boston.

10 Reasons Why I’m a Sucker for a Good Conference

Published October 3, 2009 conferences , the profession 2 Comments
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Our state library conference as well as my first virtual conference, ICPSR’s OR meeting, are next week, and I am as giddy as a kid on Christmas Eve. Certainly no conference ever lives up to expectations (even Computers in Libraries), but I love attending them (I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it!). In the spirit of mad conference prep, here are my top 10 reasons why I love conferences. Feel free to add your reasons!

10. Travel: This has less to do with attending conferences than with getting to conferences. I’m the rare bird who loves the process of traveling. I love the build up and preparation, the early morning departures and the late night arrivals. I love the waiting and the movement. Granted, I once loved air travel a lot more, but a large part of me is excited about the process of traveling and nothing more. Conferences simply give me a destination.

9. Swag-bringers: When I first started attending conferences, I didn’t really take interest in the vendors. I don’t enjoy taking things I don’t need and I especially don’t need post-it notes or more pens. (Sarah Glassmeyer, a University of Kentucky law librarian, once suggested they should give out Advil, which is brilliant truth.)

I needed a couple of years in my job to realize the importance of the swag-bringers. You can ask them anything. Instead of having to send a long complicated email about how to do/fix/understand something, you can just make a list prior to the next conference and they will answer. And they reward you with swag. Actually they like you better if you ask questions before taking the swag. I think you get even better swag. Be nice to your swag-bringers; you will learn lots.

8. New places Oh yes. You know we all skip out on that least interesting session to go sight-see. The last day of Computers in Libraries is always a ghost town because everyone is packed into the Washington Monument. As a presenter, I’ve been dismayed by last day light attendance, but it is a fact of life. That’s why we like to go to conferences in interesting places and not in Hickory, NC. Oh wait…
I kid, I kid.

7. Old Friends: I should be a better friend and not use conferences as a means to meet up with former classmates and colleagues, but we are all busy people. And conferences are by far the best way to meet up with your BFF librarians from your past. In addition to catching up, you have plenty of fuel for discussion–from that awesome session to the crazy vendor antics at the bar to your crazy antics after the bar…

My favorite tactic is for everyone to spread out and attend different sessions. Even if I get the snoozer, my friends will have lots of exciting stuff to tell me about the other sessions. Plus, I am notoriously bad at picking sessions. If you go to a conference with me, don’t ever let me pick the sessions. You will regret it. Anyone have any great tips for choosing the most awesome session ever? Please let me know because I need some.

6. New friends: I love meeting new people especially those in completely different jobs from mine. Hanging out with your polar opposite provides invaluable perspective and insight. After listening to public library problems, I’m always a bit more comfortable with the relatively secure position of the academic library. You certainly realize how petty or stale the debates can get in your own world. Plus, these new friends often become old friends, especially if you attend the same conference frequently (Hello, Computers in Libraries).

5. Discussions: Maybe my Generation X age is showing through here, but I’m not a huge fan of listserv discussions. Or maybe it is my Millennial tendencies because I tend to lose track of the topic being discussed (even with gmail so nicely threading things). Or maybe I feel like I am wasting time reading a discussion about the new APA when I need to be planning the class I’m going to teach in 5 minutes.

I don’t know, but I certainly prefer bringing these discussions to conferences and having them in person. One of my favorite experiences at ACRL this year was being in a focus group discussion with other librarians under 35. It was brilliant because we were told to let it fly and we did. Because no one was taking tabs on who said what the ideas were free and the criticism was constructive. While in most of my experiences these discussions have been informal (usually a group in the back of the bar at 2:00 am), I have high hopes for the future of round tables, discussion groups, and unconferences. They all seem to have the same goal of getting people together to just talk.

4. Learning: My boss probably would like this higher in the list, but if you read the rest I think you’ll understand why it is number four. I love to learn about new things and while formal conference sessions can be hit or miss sometimes, it is undeniable that I learn a tremendous amount when attending a conference. From small groups to the exhibit hall to formal presentations, conferences are about the creation and dissemination of information. I certainly love that.

3. Rejuvenation: I appreciate my students, faculty, and colleagues, but at times I need a break from all of them. The beautiful thing about conferences is being able to recharge and refocus on your profession. A political science faculty member once told me never to check my work email during a conference. His reasoning was that you need the time to rejuvenate your interest in your field, to step back and learn and to remember the things that made you excited about the profession in the first place.

I have yet to follow his advice (although I set up an away message) because I worry that a patron may have a question only I can answer. But I am getting better at it. Luckily the web version of our crummy email system is at times uncheckable. At least that way I don’t have to feel guilty about allowing myself freedom and time to think.

2.Community: The past two years I have attended the annual conference for the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology, the primary conference for data librarians and archivists. A common refrain of attendees is “I love being surrounded by people who understand what I do.” Working in a niche position like data librarianship can be somewhat isolating especially when your colleagues don’t understand your work. Conferences can provide that community and support.

1. Bringing it all back: After it is all over, we need to bring it back to our libraries. I firmly believe this. To support the process of bringing it back our library has a Professional Development Blog and conference attendees provide informal brownbags. Sometimes it can take a few months to get your blog entry posted, but eventually is better than never. In addition to formal dissemination, it is our duty to convey information in informal ways. If I hear a great idea about another library’s use of twitter, then I need to let my colleagues know. This sharing of information is how we ensure that our libraries develop and adapt to the future.

Well, those are my reasons. Any others?

Oh, if you are attending the NCLA conference you should blog about your sessions. Contact information is available on the official blog. If you aren’t going, you can follow the events there or check in here!

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