I arrived in Seattle with great anticipation (perhaps a bit of anxiety too) and returned to Minneapolis with a renewed energy, lots of new ideas and a new sense of community among my library colleagues from all corners of the profession. If only I had another week to process everything! It is reassuring to me to know that the conference materials are available to me for another year on Virtual Conference website. One thing I did not come away with is a pile of stuff. Now, I recognize that this is my first national conference, but I have a hunch that there was a lot less paper this year than there has been at past conferences and this in part a reflection of the greening of the conference. I’m sure there is more that we could all have done to make the conference have even less of an impact on the environment, but I think we’re headed in the right direction. One question: I noticed bamboo plates were used for food but I never actually ate any of the conference food so I was wondering if these bamboo plates were reused, recylced or simply thrown?

I figured one national conference was enough for me this year, so I hadn’t planned on going to  the ALA annual conference in July. I’m reconsidering this decision, however, based on the recommendations from several of my new and more experienced librarian friends made at the conference. I also learned about ACRL’s immersion program which I had not heard about before. The deadline for this year’s program application has passed, but I will be watching closely for future opportunities now that it is on my radar.

That’s the challenge of being new to the profession, I think. There is so much to learn, so many people to meet, and so many routes one can take professionally. The trouble for me is I feel like I am interested in so much and I don’t always know exactly where to focus my energies or attention. Any other newbies experience this too?

All in all, I had a fabulous conference (Ira Glass was a perfect finale for me!) and look forward to the continued conversations. I am delighted by everyone’s willingness to share their ideas and innovations with me (and other conference attendees, of course) and hope that one day I might have an idea or two worthy of sharing at an ACRL conference. Even though I’m borderline Net Gen/Millenial/Gen X, Y, Z (or whatever you want to call it), I guess I am a bit more slow on the uptake when it comes to the technologies piece of the puzzle. I barely manage a course blog and I have yet to take my socializing to the web (am I the only one?). I guess I just don’t know when people find time to do it–but maybe it just takes me longer than everyone else. I have great respect for those attendees who were able to contribute highly substantive posts to the ACRL blog, create photo slide shows using flickr, and managed to get on board with Twitter. As for me? Here’s what I can do: tweet. tweet. tweet. (maybe by next conference…?)

thanks for listening and best wishes to y’all!

cheers, jenny:>

OK, so I still never heard how the Cyber Zed Shed got its name, but I did spend a great deal of time there in Seattle. I’ve started compiling a list of the resources mentioned at the CZS. You can find them all in my del.icio.us account.

If you want to add any more, and you use del.icio.us, please send them to me and/or tag them with #czs.

The sun has taken its leave of us, but I must say that as a first time visitor, I’m enjoying seeing Seattle in both rainy and sunny weather. Saturday was another full day, though I’ve felt less pressured than at some other conferences, because I know that much that can be re-visited later on the virtual conference site.

I camped out in the Cyber Zed Shed for a good portion of the day where there were several widget-related presentations (Sprout, Library Subject Guide Widgets, Online Info Lit Tool) that focused on portability, flexibility, and customization. In my opinion, this is definitely where libraries are headed.

I also attended a panel session, Mapping Your Path to the Mountaintop: Planning Where You Want To Be In Your Career which was moderated by Steven Bell. It was informative and inspiring and included input from the audience too. If you missed this one, I highly recommend that you check out the recorded version.

I had dinner at Dragonfish (tasty!) before grabbing a shuttle back to SeaTac for my flight out Saturday night. I will leave Seattle with a lot to think about. And really, the conference is not over, because there are several things I missed or want to review on the virtual conference site. I hoping some of the conversations will continue too.

I really enjoyed Understanding the Integrative Role of an Academic Library for Undergraduate Student Library Workers.  My first professional gig was as a circ/student worker supervisor so that is a subject near and dear to my heart.  (Now I am a crusty reference librarian whose only interaction with student workers is shaking my fist at them from the reference desk, which is even nearer and dearer to my heart.)  I think this presentation did a great job of establishing the many benefits for the students of student employment in the library and this will be a great message to take back to the PTB as budgets tighten and student jobs potentially end up on the chopping block.

I also attended Mapping Your Path to the Mountain Top, which I though was more feel-goody than useful which was not was I was expecting from that particular panel.  They showed a lot of talking head video clips and asked for a lot of audience interaction, which made it a little too “active learning” for my tastes.  Various people shared their impromptu mottoes for success and other off-the-cuff advice.  Luckily I learned everything I need to know from Ghostbusters, so my motto for success is “When someone asks you if you’re a god you say ‘yes’!”  though points would also have been awarded for “Don’t cross the streams” or “When the light is green the trap is clean.”  What does any of this have to do with your career success?  Good question.  Um, publish a lot and try new things.

The All-Conference Reception was crazy.  Once you’ve seen a few hundred librarians busting a move to Seattle WoPop… Well, there are some things you can’t un-see.  After eating one of every free food item (on principle)  and downing a free beer I descended to the Science Fiction Museum  where I basked in the aura of Kirk’s command chair, the Rocketeer’s rocket pack, and various costumes from the greatest movie ever, Bladerunner.  There was an entire room dedicated to movie robots like Robbie,  two terminators (one with the only pair of actual terminator feet ever produced!), and the most important fictional robit ever; Bender Bending Rodriguez.  As if that wasn’t enough, there was a whole other room for toy robots, at least a few of which I owned as a precocious youngster and a heap more I wish I owned now.  No collection will ever be perfect  (A complete set of Chig armor from Space:Above and Beyond but not one scrap from any version of Stargate?  C’mon!) but the SciFiMu was as close to perfect as any museum in this or any other timeline will ever get.

On Sunday I went to Subject Librarian 2.0, where I accidentally tweeted my flickr and mashed-up my tag cloud beyond repair.  Actually it was about how subject librarians should be focusing on high-level interactions with their departments while their day-to-day tasks devolve on paras and robits.  This presentation was thought provoking and it is good to have something to aspire to, but I don’t see their theoretical subject librarian existing in any widespread sense anytime soon.

The conference ended on a high note with Ira Glass, the man behind the radio program This American Life.  He did a great job of demonstrating story structure while recounting many of the recent highlights of his program.  He sat on stage with a variety of radio equipment and basically did a live broadcast which was quite interesting as well.

I enjoyed meeting everyone, learning new things, and seeing the sights in Seattle.  I look forward to meeting/speaking/ or working with all of you in the near future.  Thank you for taking the time to read my blog entries!  I hope I was able to provide a little color commentary and help you get a feel for what being here was like.  Please feel free to contact me at rperret@uidaho.edu.

Many of this year’s presenters approached interactive technologies for libraries from theoretical and practical perspectives. One recurring theme, as Char Booth, and her mother or grandmother (?) before her so eloquently put it, was that “one size fits no one.” While large, broad research initiatives published by organizations such as ECAR, Pew, and the New Media Consortium are getting a lot of attention and calling on librarians to respond to the needs of the 21st century college student, individual libraries are zooming in on their specific populations and getting dramatically different results from each other and from the broader national and global samples. Lynn Sutton of Wake Forest University and Rosann Bazirjian of UNC Greensboro replicated the OCLC Perceptions study at their institutions, and found that what mattered to their students about the library differed as much as their respective universities do, and that neither population resembled the global sample. Char Booth and Christopher Gruder revealed in their presentation about surveying Ohio University students on their web 2.0 interests and habits that their data didn’t match national averages or other universities’ samples either. The obvious conclusion, emphasized in both presentations, and which Jackie B. highlighted in her post below, is that college and university libraries need to understand their local patron cultures and design and implement services accordingly. But I think the fact that this was a recurring theme at this year’s conference begs a question, at least among those of us who are fairly new to the profession and to higher education. One can assume that, due to socioeconomic variables, there have always been differences among student populations. But can demographics/socioeconomics totally explain what’s going on today? Why do many students at one university blog, for example, while practically no one at another school does? And, in terms of increased student engagement and learning, what are the broader implications of understanding these differences?

I dropped the ball a bit yesterday and didn’t get a chance to blog – I facilitated a roundtable at 8am and didn’t stop all day. So, this will be a little roundup of yesterday and today!

One of the best sessions I went to was a paper entitled “If you build it, will they care? Tracking student receptivity to emerging library technologies”, which looked at a research survey on students’ use of web 2.0 technologies at Ohio University Library. They investigated whether undergraduate and graduate students used tool s such as Skype reference, social networking sites like Facebook, Second Life, customized browser toolbars, and text messaging.

The results of their survey, particularly in terms of which age/patron groups of students were using specific technologies, were a surprise to them, and illustrated the key points of the presentation: understand your local patron culture and always question your generational assumptions. Just because the literature says that students with a particular profile are using certain technologies or services doesn’t mean your students are using the same technologies, or using them in the same way. This seems a common sense point, but one that sometimes I think I forget in the rush to adopt new technologies just because a certain segment of the general population of students is using them. It was great to be reminded that we always have to ask the question – is there a need for this among our patrons?

I was so pleased to see that Robin Chase got a good turnout for her talk this morning (Sunday) at 8am. Although we were all tired, it was worth getting up on a cold and wet Sunday morning to hear her speak about what she termed ‘the anatomy of sharing’. She outlined how our behaviors need to change immediately in order to stop climate change, and talked about how we needed to move from a model of ‘everyone for themselves’ ownership of a resource (like a car) to one of sharing and collaboration (use of something like a zipcar, where you only pay for the time you use the car). She encouraged all the attendees to think about where there was ‘excess capacity’ in our lives that was not being used, and how that could be shared to reduce our consumption of scarce resources. I don’t own a car and use zipcars often, so I’m already a fan, but her talk inspired me to think about other ways I can use the ‘excess capacity’ in my life so that someone else doesn’t have to buy what they don’t really need.

For me, some of the key themes of the conference were:

• Gaming – there were some great examples of good work being done on using games in IL, and on how to improve our instruction through the application of gaming principles and techniques.

• Twitter. Don’t think I need to say a lot about this – it was everywhere. As was….

• LibGuides – looks like a really useful tool, although attending all the LibGuide sessions made me feel a little like I was being inducted into a cult.

• Literacies – what literacies can (or should) librarians help students to develop beyond IL? Karen Nicholson (McMaster Univ.), Neal Baker (Earlham College) and Shawn McCann (McMaster) gave an excellent presentation on the development of different types of ‘fluencies’ (such as media, visual, multicultural, and geospatial), and how librarians can help to support them.

• Green – I was impressed by the environmental initiatives at the conference, but I’d like us to set ourselves the challenge of being even greener for the next ACRL National Conference. Can we take a train there instead of a plane? Can we do away with printed sheets and a printed program altogether? Can we ask vendors not to create and bring so much printed material?

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful conference. It was a fantastic experience for a first-time attendee! Now I just need to go back to my library and turn some of these ideas into practice!

One of the biggest themes I’ve seen in this year’s conference is subject guides. I think there were about 7 presentatons in all.  This has been a hot topic at my university as well.  The LibGuides session on Friday was packed - standing room only.  Their presentation was great (and entertaining) so I recommend viewing the slides if you missed it.  One cool new feature they mentioned is that you can now enter your proxy URL and check a box and it will add the URL to all your links in the guides so that students can use resources from off-campus. There are a lot of templates for sharing available at http://springsharelounge.com. LibGuides has built in templates for adding RSS feeds, video, tag clouds, polls. and widgets.

I was interested to hear that OSU has developed an open source package for subject guides called Library ala carte.  It has many of the features of LibGuides.  We do a lot of open source at my library so I am definitely going to check this out.

Hi all,

This will be my last session-related post.  I went to several CZS sessions yesterday, but they’ve already been blogged admirably, so I won’t be redundant.  I made a conscious decision not to be be so gung-ho as it was wearing me out!  I was able to cram in a short time at the Pacific Science Center late yesterday afternoon.  I recommend it, especially the Tropical Butterfly House and the naked mole-rats.

Today’s post concerns the Subject Liaison2. 0 presentation.  As an accidental science liaison, I’m curious about ways I can improve my ability to interact with faculty and students of subjects I have not usually taken on (being a Medieval History guy in college, there wasn’t much call for studying Biology).  Strangely, I’ve rediscovered my interest in science (I wanted to be a scientist of some kind when I was in elementary school).  I’ll be live blogging this session.

Mel DeSart of the University of Washington’s Engineering Library kicked off the session.  Very funny use of the track from the Bionic Man - he says were not going to get that type of suggestion - no bionic liaison.  2.0 suggests a big jump or new form, however.  They are going to say where SL librarians are now and what direction we need to be moving in.

Jim Neal, the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University

• Providing an administrative perspective on subject librarianship.
• SL needs to be considered in the larger context of where Academic libraries are heading.
• Academic librariesare still going to be “fundamental infrastructure” for modern academic institutions:  legacy, infrastructure, repository, portal, etc.
• SLs help us respond to user expectations: content, access, convenience, new capabilities, cost reduction, participation, individual productivity, individual control and organizational productivity.
• Core responsibilities:  selection, acquisition, synthesis, navigation, dissemination, interpretation, understanding, use, application, archiving - all in support of teaching and learning.
• New responsibilities (old ones are not enough):  libraries as consumers, intermediaries and aggregators, publishers, educators, r&d, entrepreneurs, policy advocates. - transcends Information Literacy.
• Expectations for the SL:  commitment to - rigor, r&d, assessment and evaluation, marketing skills, political engagement, project dev and mgmt, entrepreneurial spirit, resource development, leadership, deep subject or technical expertise.  We can only be successful if we build this capacity in our libraries.
• Need clear sense of mission, self vision, base of knowledge, strategic positioning, continuous improvement.
• Feral Professionals (raised by wolves - not necessarily one type of academic degree - not even necessarily MLS ) - Professionals with diverse academic credentials, wide range of new professional assignments, professional roles of support staff and students.
• SL relations to patrons:  servant, stranger, parallel, friend, partner, customer, team - the last three are the ones that need to be developed.
• Subject Librarians must enable: social networking, collective intelligence, permanent beta, authorship revolution, software as service/not product, artificial intelligence/expert systems, library as participation/not information. - not just “find” but “mine” information.  We need a higher level of “professional maturity” to deal with the 2.0 (and, ultimately, 3.0) environment.
• Complexity, ambiguity, flexibility, perpetual assessment, challenges to powers that be, low tolerance for management by cliche, erosion of boundaries and inflexible structures.
• Users want us to be:  authoritative and virtuoso, authenticated and secure, appropriate and pertinent, accessible and virtual and omnipresent, achromatic and advocative, audacious and attentive, assimilative and virtuous.
• Must evaluate our work in terms of “human objectives.”
• Overall, a pretty densely packed presentation - thought provoking and a bit disturbing at the same time.

Karen Williams of the University of Minnesota

• She agrees wholeheartedly with Neal.
• Everything they do supports and advances higher education. Different from public services, which has little relevance outside of the library space.
• How do we make the SL 2.0 model happen?
• Position Description Framework:  scholarly communication, teaching and learning, digital tools, outreach, collection development & management, fund raising, reference services.
• “Nothing is static anymore in our universes.”
• “Teaching and learning” does not refer to “bibliographic instruction” or info literacy - it’s beyond that.  UM wants to move beyond the old “guest lectures” model.
• Scholarly Communication is the focus of her talk.  Very dense slide - she will upload them to the appropriate place for people to read.
• They form “collaboratives” at Minnesota - everyone participates “very broadly.”
• Staff dev and support:  experts, environmental scan, resources & tools, templates, action plans - toolkit created so no one has to start from scratch.
• Recruited advocates from faculty in other departments.
• Launched their Institutional Repository with collections already loaded so there were no empty links.
• A system view:  constituent behaviors, library vision/mission/goals, position descriptions/realistic jobs, individual goals, knowledge/skills/ability, staff education, resources, performance evaluation.
• Have moved away from collection dev activities by using approval plans more heavily to free up liaison time. Also will scale down time spent at ref desk.
• Create a “risktaking” environment; you have to celebrate failures as well as successes.

Kara Whatley, Head, Coles Science Center at New York University 

• She put out a plug for the Science Information Literacy Wiki.
• Draws from: her work at NYU and other sources.
• The Holy Trinity:  Reference, Instruction, Collectin Development
• Reference:  virtual, in-depth consultations, collaborative/team reference (use VR, blogs, etc.), data reference.
• Collection Development:  on-demand purchasing, focus on “medium rare” items, collecting new media, relying more heavily on approval plans.
• Instruction:  course-embedded librarians, effective assessment, instructional design techniques.  Shift our teaching to make sure we are really providing effective instruction.
• Expanding roles:  engagement in knowledge creation, embedded librarianship, technologist, grant writing, communicator/politician.
• New twists on old skills:  mediation (”middleware” - connector between patrons and info); organization of information - tagging and metadata; preservation of info - data, new media; event planning/programming (need to find ways to get people into the library, since the collections are being used mostly virtually).
• Development of new skills:  “Just do it!”; technology competency and training; continuing education opportunities - small conferences, summer institutes for practicing librarians.
• Things to consider changing (either by curtailing or strengthening):  multi-desk reference service, firm ordering as we know it, stronger partnerships with campus IT, sharing common needs across librarians, going mobile.

The session was good, moving from more complex abstract considerations to a more concrete example of how subject librarians work.  In the end, Whatley’s presentation was, perhaps, more useful for a CC librarian, since we need practical, practitioner advice.

As I watched big wet snowflakes fill the Seattle skyline this morning, I knew my original impression of the conference had held true: this is a year to be flexible, to take a look at my environment and then work within it. I took a few things out of my laptop bag to make room for my hat and gloves, and headed over to the convention center for a final morning of mental caffeination.

This list of the top 3 things I’m going to take home from this conference might be a little premature–I’m starting this draft halfway through a session on 21st century fluencies, and we’ve still got Ira Glass to go–but I want to make sure I can get it posted before I hope the bus back to Seatac. 3 is a bit of an arbitrary number–it could have been 5, 10, or 50–but in honor of the twittergeist, I’m going for brevity. So:

3) Condense the message, focus the service

What can we say better with fewer words? What can we do when we don’t try to give everyone the world but strive to give them the piece of it that they need now? I went to sessions and saw numerous posters on ways to customize library services for our users as individuals. This certainly jives with my own experience of librarianship. I’ve had the most success working with faculty when I simply ask versions of the questions recommended by the librarians of IUPUI as they foster IL collaboration: What do you want your students to be able to do? What do they need to know to do this? Rather than jumping in with a definition of IL, focusing on the needs they perceive makes me look useful, not like one more time drain.

Similarly, when working with students, they don’t need to know every skill in the toolbox, right now. Focusing on their assignments, on getting them hands-on experience with the one or two tools they need right now ensures that they get something out of the time they’ve spent in the library. 

It takes a bit of a leap of faith to do less–to let go of the fear that we aren’t preparing everyone for everything they might face–but our users appreciate precision.

2) Virtual availability changes everything

I loved knowing that ACRL had made a commitment to recording all of this conference’s presentations and making them available online for the next year. That made it a lot easier to feel good about making choices in an atmosphere of abundance. I knew that I wasn’t missing out, I was prioritizing the sessions that worked for me and my friends’ schedules. When it doubt, I decided in favor of the chance to socialize and network, knowing that I could review the presentation I thought I wanted to go to later and go ahead and try something new that I could talk about with my buddies today. This made my experience much more relaxed and fulfilling. It also gave me the chance to explore Seattle a little more, visiting the public library and the Richard Huge Writers’ House to see how literature lives in this city.

1) Things work best when you find a way to be yourself

Being at this conference has made me much more confident about being myself and a librarian at the same time. I’ve looked around every room I’ve been in, and I’ve always seen someone else just like me. We’re listening, Facebooking, blogging, chatting, checking email, and loving it all. I’ve gone to presentations by librarians who are introducing MMORPG’s to undergraduate instruction and librarians who’ve found ways to revitalize the classic reference desk. Our libraries benefit when we seize on the ideas that excite us, whatever they are.  It’s fun to realize that however bizarre your interests seem in one context, you have a peer group out there somewhere. I think it’s also important to think about what each one of us can add to each other’s strengths. Librarianship needs all of our ideas, so it’s our job to find a way to bring every single thing we individually can to the table. Ways of thinking, ways of planning, ways of communicating, ways of discovering new ideas–when we give each other supportive work environments and respect that we all accomplish our goals in different ways, we give everyone permission to be themselves. That not only feels great, it works.

Session Description:
Investigate the use of ePortfolios as an interactive and dynamic tool for evaluating student employees. With the collaboration of three additional campus units, the Washington State University Libraries implemented an ePortfolio initiative to facilitate assessment, while providing student employees with a means of marketing their academic and work experience.

Learning Objectives

An understanding of how academic libraries can use and promote ePortfolios for employee assessment. An appreciation for the obstacles and pitfalls of implementing an ePortfolio requirement. Tips for communicating the power of the ePortfolio for self-reflection and the building of a professional Edentity.

Presenter(s):
Brian  McManus, bmcmanus@wsu.edu
Washington State University 

Gabriella  Reznowski, reznowski@wsu.edu
Washington State University