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.

This year’s conference has been filled with enlightening and informative sessions about library technologies. The best ones, in my opinion, have been focused not just on the technologies themselves or what they can do for librarians, but rather, on what they mean for our users. This morning, I attended Lynn Silipigni Connaway’s invited talk about engaging students in virtual reference. Connaway offered all kinds of information on what makes people use (or not use) virtual reference, including a number of illuminating and often humorous direct quotes from research participants. One method Connaway and her colleague Marie Radford employed in their research was the “critical incident technique,” a qualitative method wherein participants are asked to describe their most memorable event or experience. Users and non-users alike of virtual reference most often described the interpersonal aspect of the reference experience, and indicated that a positive attitude on the part of the librarian toward both the user and the task at hand was the hallmark of a successful interaction. (Naturally, the reverse was also true.) This got me thinking about the cues according to which we perceive others’ attitudes, and how those cues manifest in the virtual environment. In the absence of body language, etc., how are we letting our users know that we truly are happy to help?

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!

I am discovering how much your conference experience depends on what you make it. My day yesterday was so different than my day today. Yesterday I was constantly going from “thing” to “thing” on my own and trying to get as much in as possible. Today I met up with some colleagues from my school in the afternoon and ended up taking a more relaxed pace- walking around and talking with people. Both days have been fulfilling in different ways. I have definitely learned more about how to navigate these conferences.

I’ve found it pretty difficult to keep up with blog posts . It seems difficult to stay engaged with the people around me while trying to think of what to say here. This is one of the advantages of micro-blogging (Twitter) at an event like this- you don’t have to spend so much time thinking about what you are going to say and how you will put it together into something semi-coherent. But both forms of blog have their purpose, I know. Some of the other bloggers have done an excellent job of disseminating information from conference sessions and presentations and I really respect that- since I have obviously not.

I’m getting ready for the last session of the day- I’m at the contributed papers on LibGuides and Emerging Technologies. Then it’s fun time tonight!

The vendor exhibits aren’t giving away much this year, but there ’s some great new technology out there.  The DLSG and Crowley booths have a lot of new scanning options including a self-scanning station.  This station allows a student to walk up to it and scan an article or book and save various parts of it to jpg or pdf and save the file to their own pen drive.  The scan quality is very high and both seem very easy to use.  DLSG also has a mobile scanning station that has a cart and small format scanner that you can connect to your laptop and it communicates with one of their large scanning stations via wireless.  Very cool!

The Bayscan and 3M booths also highlight new self-check options including new desktop designs that are light weight and look great - compared to the old school models that are huge and clunky. 3M has a new option for video that uses locking DVD cases.  When the patron scans the barcode, it posts an alert instructing the user to insert the case into a box that unlocks it.  Seems to work great when demo’d, but wonder how it holds up under usage?

Bayscan also sells hardware that hooks up to a flat-screen TV that allows you to connect to the control software over the internet to setup a library display system.  The software has many templates for display that are customizable and the price is very reasonable. I now have my technology wishlist ready for next year!