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:>

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.

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!

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.

This was my first time attending an ACRL national conference and unfortunately I was only able to attend for a couple of hours due to a family emergency.  I am a LIS student in my first semester at SJSU and work full-time WSU Libraries as a paraprofessional.  This conference was an excellent opportunity for me to network and understand the issues that face academic and research libraries across the nation, to find out what the hot-button topics in our specific field really matter.  Unfortunately, I was not able o explore those topics to my full satisfaction.  However, I am reticent in the idea that I will be able to come back to the ACRL’s website after the conference and peruse the goings on and follow up on those topics I missed. 

For the one aspect of the conference I was able to attend, the poster presentations on the morning of Friday, March 14th, I will say that it was intense.  My experience could not have been better, my team member and I were busy the entire session with questions about Edentity, assessment, and e-portfolios!  Every question led to more questions by attendees and with each question there was an exchange of information that benefited us all, every participant gained something from the interactions and it was a thrill!  So I would like to thank all the poster session attendees and poster session organizers of the Friday morning session, you are all awesome!!!!

For everyone interested in more information about the poster presentationa my teammate and I gave, I will have more information posted to the virtual conference site.  Thanks again ACRL-Seattle attendees!!!!!

Kind regards,

Brian McManus

bmcmanus@wsu.edu

Green Pledge

The ACRL’s Green Component Committee for the ACRL 14th National Conference makes me proud to be a librarian! At this panel presentation, members of the Green Committee shared their experience planning a green conference, the first one for ACRL. As they mentioned, Seattle is a great place to start this trend, as the “green” opportunities here are more widespread and more accessible.

The efforts this committee made went far beyond the usual recycling containers. Their process included surveying ACRL members for conference attendees’ environmental priorities, creating a planning wiki called The Big Green Wiki, collaborating with other conference planning committees such as the Local Arrangements for information about sustainable businesses, and marketing/educating attendees and participants to their options for an environmentally-friendly conference experience.

This type of goal inspires all sorts of support. Over 80% of conference registrants signed the Green Pledge at registration, and received a green watermark on their conference badge. Seven exhibitors committed to being green, and information about them is on page 78 of the conference schedule. A volunteer created a Google map mashup with locations shown of the local sustainable/local restaurants and businesses. Presenters reduced the number of their handouts, or eliminated handouts altogether.

Some of the specific actions the committee took with this conference included efforts to reduce, reuse, recycle in various ways. Paper usage and waste was significantly reduced through the use of the Virtual Conference. Handouts and presentations are posted online, accessible to conference registrants. I appreciate this not only for the environmental aspect, but the access to simultaneously scheduled sessions that I couldn’t attend. It gives me the opportunity to virtually be in multiple places at once! Another reduction in paper came from the conversion of press kits and binder manuals for vendors from paper-based products to online documents. For the conference-related paper that was printed, soy-based ink on recycled paper was used, and the printer didn’t charge any extra. The cost of “going green” for this conference was less in some areas (A Lot less paper), more in others (bamboo plates and corn forks), and some costs were the same (printing).

Food scraps and leftovers are being handled in a way I’ve only seen at my hippie friends’ houses: Composting! Surplus food from the kitchens that wasn’t needed (and wasn’t unwrapped) is donated to FareStart. Vendor giveaways left over will be donated to local charities, and leftover vendor books are donated to Better World Books.

The committee members emphasized that communication and marketing through multiple outlets helped ensure the success of the green initiatives: website, wiki, newsletters, articles, emails, and word of mouth. For planning our own green conferences, events or meetings, it’s important to get membership initiation and drive, association buy-in and support, and formalize plans via a committee. The Green Committee plans to document their experience and efforts for next year’s committee, and hopefully we can take what they’ve done back to our own events to spread the word.

To hear more, come listen to the invited Green Speaker: Robin Chase (Sunday morning 8 am Sheraton ballroom). She’s the former CEO of ZipCar, now head of GoLoco.

Go Green!

Just like the other bloggers, I can hardly believe how fast this conference seemed to fly by.  It’s early Saturday evening and I have just had the chance to catch my breath.  This afternoon I went to a panel session titled Mapping Your Path to the Mountaintop: Planning Where You Want To Be In Your Career with Steven  Bell, John  Shank, Brian  Mathews, and Lauren Pressley.   Bell encouraged adn moderated the conversation between panelist and the audience.  The audience (of all ages) was encouraged notto compare their careers to others in the library world.  Instead, audience members were encouraged to come up with a motto that would reflect their individual goals and strategic plans.  Through a series of questions, panelists and audience members were encouraged to think about where they are going and what they want with their career.  The interactive panel provided lots of audience participation and an opportunity to share ideas on the different aspects that contribute to a career: strategic plan, presenting, publishing, innovation, entrepreneurship, and future plans.  I think that the panel can be best summarized by saying: be fearless, volunteer for as much as you can, learn new skills or technologies when presented to you and talk to your colleagues - you never know where your next opportunity might be.  We were encouraged to take some time to think and come up with a motto that can help guide us in our professional development.

This panel motivated me, especially since I was presenting a CyberZed Shed presentation on Facebook right after it.  I’ll admit it - I was nervous.  It was my first presentation at a large, national conference.  Halfway through my presentation though a thought struck me.  My peers are listening to me and they want me to succeed because what I have to say contributes to the profession.  The thought whizzed through my mind but I’ve had the remainder of the afternoon to think about it.  For anyone else out there considering writing a blog, submitting a proposal, or creating a survey: be fearless.  This echos the discussion from the Mapping Your Path to the Mountaintopsession earlier.  We all get nervous and we will all face rejection at some point, but it is worth the try.  After this afternoon’s activities and thoughts, my motto might be: be fearless.

…that’s what it’s like for a first-time attendee. And I must say, I don’t know how my roommate and the other first-time attendees who are also presenting or facilitating or working/volunteering do it…especially when I am here just trying to keep up with everything!

To borrow from Sherman Alexie, I saw first-hand a glimpse of what he referred to as “Librarians Unleashed” last night as I attended my first “sponsored event” of the conference: the Gale Gala at the Space Needle. The location for such an event couldn’t be beat, the food and drink were plentiful, and the energy was lively, to say the least. I couldn’t help but wonder how much $$$ such an event must cost. And then I couldn’t help but think about my community college’s teeny tiny budget (which is getting teenier and tinier as I write) and how maybe if/when next time I am invited to such an event I might politely ask if our Library could get a discount on the Gale databases we purchase annually instead. Doesn’t that sound like a more sensible exchange? I mean, if a good product/publication exists, I’m going to purchase it regardless of whether the company offers me some kind of perk in return–after all, I’m in librarianship not pharmaceutical sales.  All I expect is an affordable quality product accompanied by satisfactory customer service and as long as the content continues to support the college’s curriculum and/or the library’s collection needs, I am satisfied. I would like to think I will continue to feel this way for years to come, but who knows. Maybe I’ll one day find myself asking “what’s in it for me” before making a decision about purchasing something for my library’s collection. I hope not. So I’m not sure what exactly I learned from this experience (or all the free swag I was offered in the Exhibit Hall), but I can’t help but critically reflect upon it and wonder what the value is in being pampered by companies who turn around and charge my Library an arm and a leg for their products.

So, last night Sheman Alexie rocked the house! I hadn’t laughed so hard since meeting the Emery-Pratt robot (see earlier post for more on that). But one thing I noticed at the keynote that was totally NOT funny was someone taking a mobile phone call and proceeding to have 5 minute conversation in the ballroom as Mr Alexie was being introduced! I was completely shocked and disconcerted (and from the looks of others around me, I wasn’t the only one). It’s one thing for an 18-year old first-year college student to mistake the library as an appropriate place for a phone conversation, but I would like to think that anyone attending this conference would understand that it is just not good etiquette to do such a thing. But wait! It gets even worse. So, today at the final invited paper presentation “I would sort of appreciate a little more understanding:” Engaging Net Gen Students in Virtual Reference, I actually witnessed this happen again. This time, however, the woman taking the call didn’t even bother getting up from her seat. As Mary Kate or Ashley Olson from the Full House days might say, “How Rude!”

But to prove that I’m not just another annoyed librarian, I will share at least a few more positive experiences…

Today I attended my first (and only) round-table discussion. I joined a small group discussing how to improve/increase delivery of online library services to distance students. I learned our little community college library is perhaps a bit behind (or below) other institutions in what we offer, but we are certainly being innovative in our own way and are doing what we can with the limited resources/budget we have available to us.  I enjoyed the discussion and now I know what to expect and perhaps in the future I could even propose my own round-table discussion…?

While I attended and learned something from all of the poster sessions, the most memorable presentation for me was Library Secrets!:… I loved the originality and creativity of this poster.  According to this conference the whole world is tweeting, but I highly doubt my urban community college student body is doing much with twitter. Even so, I really appreciated the innovation behind the various library/library services “presence projects”  (some people call this “marketing,” but I like to use the terms “visibility” or “presence”) Jennifer Kelley presented on behalf of the College of DuPage. Her library MOO cards are exactly the kind of Guerrilla marketing project I can take back to my campus and pitch as an idea as it is a very practical approach to reaching our students…especially in a time of deep budget cuts!

One shot from “Library Secrets!” poster presentation

I concur with Sarah’s post from earlier this morning–I am competely impressed with many of our fellow bloggers’ seemingly limitless energy in being such prolific bloggers. 

Even though I packed with meticulous expectations for the conference, nothing could have prepared me for the whirlwind of the past few days.  This may be the first free second I have had…that being said, my thoughts on what I’ve experienced so far will be more of a reflection than a “report.”  I’ve really enjoyed reading the other bloggers’ play-by-play on many of the sessions, but at this point on Saturday night, I am going to reflect on my main takeaways so far.

First of all, I did not expect to be so inspired by so many different speakers.  I am usually not incredibly inspired by large keynotes, but both Rushworth Kidder and Sherman Alexie managed to do this.  Even more so, Richard Sweeney’s talk a the Scholarship Recipients’ breakfast was like balm to the burn out I have been experiencing regarding teaching Millennials (even though I am one!).  I am definitely taking back a renewed feeling of the significance of what I (we) do.

Finally, the two workshops I participated in today and yesterday (User Centered Design and Beyond the Entertainment Factor) gave me a few ideas that I will implement in my classes, beginning Monday morning at 8:30 when I return to my classes.

The conference is far from over, and I will report back on the last night of festivities as soon as possible.  For now, I’ll just say–this is by far the best library conference I have ever attended, and I am so grateful for the chance to have done so!