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 started a packed day today at a 7:30am breakfast hosted by Serials Solutions. It began with an interesting keynote by Alison Head of Project Information Literacy, presenting her recent research on the challenges higher education students have in finding appropriate research. See this short video for a snippet of her findings so far. It was fascinating, and I look forward to hearing more in their report sometime after December 2009. The keynote was followed by a brief introduction to Summon, a Serials Solutions product that is currently in beta. In summary, this is NOT federated search, but a pre-coordinated metasearch index of all your library’s resources — digital and print, catalog, database, etc. See here for more details. I really look forward to seeing how this evolves.

Next, I proceeded to the cryptically named Cyber Zed Shed Theater. There I was regaled by Elizabeth Uzelac and Robin Sinn of Johns Hopkins University. They presented Integrating Search and Guides which outlined their innovative integration of several elements to create flexible, re-purposeable research guide content. Check the virtual conference area for their slides.

Immediately following was Jacob Hill of Elmhurst College who presented on Mobile Devices: Low or No-Cost Solutions for supporting mobile device users. He did a great job of illustrating how we can address this issue (rather than sticking our heads in the sand) even in tight times. See the virtual conference area for his slides too.

Friday morning’s workshop, Primary Sources: Out of Special Collections and Into the Curriculum, was led by librarians from UC Irvine and Marymount College and focused on creative ideas for using primary sources in various instruction settings. 

After discussing ways of collaborating with faculty members about primary source instruction and stressing the value of marketing one’s institution’s archival materials, workshop leaders led participants in a hands-on evaluation of various primary sources.  My group evaluated three primary sources on the history and how-to of 1980’s break dancing and brainstormed ideas about how to teach with these resources. 

This very interesting workshop ended with some of the best resources for finding primary sources and ways to assess instruction for using and evaluating primary sources.  Best resources for primary sources include WorldCat, local catalogs, History Matters (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/), American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html),  JSTOR’s new archive of British pamphlets. 

Thanks to the presenters for illuminating excellent teaching methods and theory for primary sources!

Primary Sources: Out of Special Collections and Into the Curriculum

It’s a beautiful day here in Seattle - the sun is out and the view of the mountains to the East (Cascades and Mt Rainier) and the West (Olympics) is great. Hope all those attending the conference get a chance to get outside and enjoy the view.  It sounds like tomorrow will be typical Seattle weather with rain.

This is only my second big library conference, my first being ALA last year.  This conference seems much more relaxed and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. This morning I attended the Research Services presentation and the room was packed.  I am very impressed with the technology here at the convention center. The room was outfitted with a large screen and great sound quality.  The wireless here is great, very fast and available pretty much everyone in the building. Remember the days when you had to plan for the wireless to not work and have screenshots ready for a presentation just in case?  That’s not a problem here!

The Custom Research Services session provided great information and I was surprised to find out that many of the solutions suggested were “low tech” solutions such as getting out and talking with the faculty, providing comfortable spaces for them in the library, meeting with them to discuss research needs and providing materials delivery.  It was a good reminder that technology doesn’t solve everything! There were also good technology based suggestions such as providing institutional repositories (electronic publishing), distance learning offerings and content management systems.

I’m off to the exhibits and cyber presentations. Looking forward to seeing all the new technology being used out there.

Session Description:
What services and resources are students really using? Are we putting time, energy, and money into the right programs? The staff at our small university library conducted focus groups to find out what students want and need. In this session, we will describe the entire process of developing and conducting focus group research, report findings from our focus groups, and recreate the focus group experience using volunteers from the audience.

Benefits/Objectives:

• Attendees will receive an overview of the entire process of developing and conducting focus group research.
• Attendees will learn the results of a pilot study and subsequent focus groups at a small university library, thus informing them of the types of information they might expect to obtain from conducting focus groups at their own institutions.
• Having experienced the mock focus group through participation or observation in our session, attendees will be prepared to begin focus group research at their own institutions.

Presenters:
Rebecca Byrum, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN, United States,
William Weare, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN, United States,

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Session Description:
Learn how to bait the information literacy hook and reel in your faculty. IUPUI’s recently created Information Literacy Community of Practice resulted from a collaboration between faculty and librarians. We’ll offer practical advice on the bait that’s guaranteed to get your faculty on board and lure the campus into creating an integrated Information Literacy Program.

Benefits/Objectives:

• Participants will acquire practical suggestions to begin Information Literacy Program planning in their libraries.
• Participants will gather valuable strategies to attract and partner with faculty and other campus stakeholders to develop the Program and introduce it to faculty.
• Participants will learn effective strategies for locating opportunities to expand the Program across campus.

Presenters:
Kathleen Hanna, IUPUI University Library, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Polly Boruff-Jones, IUPUI University Library, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Jaena Hollingsworth, IUPUI University Library, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Bill Orme, IUPUI University Library, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Patricia Wittberg, IUPUI Department of Sociology, Indianapolis, IN, United States

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Session Description:
A consortium of eight liberal arts colleges is collaboratively pioneering a Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository (LASR) to share the scholarly and creative work produced on their campuses. LASR includes a shared repository and a portal that harvests and aggregates content from this repository and other digital asset management systems that are used by participating institutions. Panelists will discuss the history of LASR and the best practices and technological solutions that the group is implementing.

Benefits/Objectives:

• This panel session aims to share ideas and receive feedback related to the collaborative work of LASR and challenged attendees to think about how libraries can support the dissemination of various types of scholarly communication.
• In addition to learning about the work of LASR, attendees will learn about a technical solution for building a consortial repository and learn about a technical solution for aggregating digital objects and related metadata through a dynamic portal or interface.
• Attendees will see an example of a policy and best practices framework for a digital scholarly or institutional repository

Presenters:
R. Cecilia Knight, Grinnell College Library, Grinnell, IA, United States
Samuel Demas, Carleton College, Northfield, MN, United States
Michael J. Paulus, Jr., Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, United States

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Session Description:
Academic library outreach efforts centered on Information Literacy and library resources in lesson/assignment design have been developed, but these still fail to result in an authentic teaching experience or content ownership for the instructor. Two Colorado State University-Pueblo faculty members will discuss a pilot outreach initiative in which a professional learning community was created using two existing and viable programs to both disseminate instruction on incorporating information literacy into assignment design and sustain the program.

Benefits/Objectives:

• Attendees will analyze their place-based situations in order to recognize which departments and feeder schools could be contacted to create successful, sustainable collaborations and professional development activities.
• Attendees will generate a brief action plan of next steps in order to begin planning collaborations at their home institutions.
• Attendees will leave the session with a list of recommendations and best practices for this new model of outreach.

Presenters:
Courtney Bruch, Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo, CO, United States
Katherine Frank, Colorado State University-Pueblo, Pueblo, CO, United States

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Session Description:
The MIT Libraries recently completed a successful advertising campaign that challenged students to solve puzzles using library resources. The advertisements were informed by feedback from several sources, including surveys and focus groups. Results included a stronger connection with puzzle-minded students, increased usage of the library resources featured in the ads, and new ideas about reaching out to students. Discover how a sharper picture of a target audience can lead to improved outreach efforts.

Benefits/Objectives:

• Review user feedback from a variety of sources in order to develop a more effective outreach campaign.
• Examine different advertising options in order to identify better strategies for reaching students.
• Enter the puzzle world at MIT in order to learn how non-traditional methods can be a great way of engaging students and raising awareness of library resources.

Presenters:
Mark Szarko, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
Stephanie Hartman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States
Mathew Willmott, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States

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Session Description:
This interactive panel discussion will look at how librarians at two similar institutions are “casting a net” to create Beyond the Basics Services to support student and faculty research. Florida State University and University of South Florida recently reorganized their reference departments in order to provide more customized services for graduate level and faculty research. Panelists from both schools will engage participants in identifying new ways to customize research and outreach services at their institutions.

Benefits/Objectives:

• Participants will discuss strategies for learning about faculty research and how to support that research
• Participants will identify new roles that librarians can assume in the process of supporting and customizing research services for their constituencies.
• Participants will explore the relevance of library as place for serious/scholarly research

Presenters:
Susan Ariew, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States
Gloria Colvin, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Marcia Gorin, Florida State Unversity, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Cheryl McCoy, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States
Matt Torrence, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States

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