ACRL Conference Notes + Selected Tweets
Building a Dream Team: Library Personas in the 21st Century Library by Lynda Kellam (Data Services & Government Information Librarian at UNCG Jackson Library), Jenny Dale (First-Year Instruction Coordinator and Reference Librarian at UNCG Jackson Library) and Lauren Pressley (Associate Director of Learning and Outreach at Virginia Tech)
- 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (read this)
- What do I do best that other people cannot do as well? Those are my competencies/persona.
- What do I spend time on that other people could do or do better? Try to ignore, minimize, or outsource those things.
- What is your professional persona? How do you incorporate different personas into a future-forward organizational structure? Try to organize “functional specialties” in a diverse team approach.
Hire on soft skills, train up on job responsibilities @laurenpressley #acrl2013
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Erin Dorney (@edorney) April 11, 2013Library Publishing and Undergraduate Education: Strategies for Collaboration by Stephanie Davis-Kahl (Scholarly Communications Librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University), Michael Seeborg (Professor of Economics at Illinois Wesleyan University) and Isaac Gilman (Scholarly Communications and Research Services Librarian at Pacific University)
- Use students to peer-review submitted articles and write critical reviews of articles once they’re published to help them learn about scholarly publishing and become part of the process.
- “silos belong on farms”
- Teaching students how to package information will help them think critically about the information they encounter/consume
- Gilman created a journal publishing for-credit course that was then expanded into a publishing minor program that explores both traditional and emerging forms of publishing (sounds awesome!)
But are we just recreating a broken system of publishing and pushing that onto our students by introducing this model? #acrllibpub #acrl2013
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Erin Dorney (@edorney) April 11, 2013Hacking the Learner Experience: Techniques and Strategies for Connecting with your Instructional Ecosystem by Andy Burkhardt (Emerging Technologies Librarian at Champlain College), Lauren Pressley (Associate Director of Learning and Outreach at Virginia Tech), and Brian Mathews (Associate Dean at Virginia Tech)
- What do we need to start, what do we need to stop, and who do we need to work with?
- William Perry, 1968, big in student affairs (look up)
- Kolb, experiential learning, think about the cycle – where are you and where is everyone else in the room?
- Think about who students are through information – make it personal and relatable.
- Legitimately learn together – not sage on the stage but also not guide on the side.
We don't want to create information finders. We want to create lifelong questioners @vonburkhardt #acrl2013
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Erin Dorney (@edorney) April 11, 2013The Mother of all LibGuides: Applying Principles of Communication and Network Theory in LibGuide Design by Carol Leibiger and Alan Aldrich (Associate Professors at University of South Dakota)
- The average subject guide takes an experienced librarian between 8-20 hours to create.
Hidden Patterns of LibGuides Usage: Another Facet of Usability by Wendy Wilcox, Gabriela Castro Gessner, and Adam Chandler (Access Services Librarian; Research and Assessment Analyst; and Electronic Resources User Experience Librarian at Cornell University Libraries)
- Studied 637 LibGuides using stats from Springshare and bibliomining to log user location.
- 70% of guide usage was by non-Cornell affiliated users (who is using them – other librarians I guess? Are we all just looking at each others’ guides?)
- Number of tabs in the guides they studied ranged from 1 to 19 (…WHAT!).
- Is it even important to know who is viewing our guides (my opinion, yes).
The Art of Problem Discovery by Brian Mathews (Associate Dean at Virginia Tech)
- If we just keep doing what we’ve always done but a little bit better, we miss out on growth opportunities.
- What is our total landscape?
- Don’t sell products or services – help people address the needs they have/their jobs.
- What if we scrapped all existing library services (no legacy services), identified the tasks of our communities, and rebuilt new services around those needs? What would the library look like? (This was probably my favorite idea of the whole conference… I really wish I could do this somewhere. Maybe I should just do it conceptually and then see if I can get anyone on board with the idea).
- Invest in other people’s problems.
- We can’t just be louder (YES. I feel like this is always an issue with library marketing. People seem to think if we just put up more and larger posters around campus, an initiative will be successful, when in reality it has to be more strategic… and the right message).
- Librarians as problem developers/problem designers.
- Disrupt intentionally.
- Just read the whole paper, people.
"Dude... We can only solve the problems that we know about" @brianmathews yesssss #acrl2013
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Erin Dorney (@edorney) April 12, 2013Love your Library: Building Goodwill from the Inside Out and the Outside In by Adrienne Lai (Emerging Technologies Librarian at North Carolina State University Libraries), Lia Friedman (Director of Learning Services at UC San Diego Library), Alice Whiteside (Librarian & Instructional Technology Consultant at Mount Holyoke College), and Char Booth (Instruction Services Manager & E-Learning Librarian at Claremont Colleges)
- Cultivation, communication, collaboration, context, camogogy (camouflage + pedagogy) = outreach
- Pull children’s books from your education section for stress-relief events
- Sneak teach!
- Special Collections pop up library in Art & Design building- bring it to them
- When they opened a new building, had students take photos of library spaces and tag them on Instagram. A program fed the images to digital displays within the building (after moderation) and some will be preserved in the archives. Over 1700 photos already. Students like seeing the student-perspective (DO THIS AT MILLERSVILLE).
- Put a Q&A board away from public service points for privacy and then post pictures of answers on social media.
- Full-sized librarian cardboard cutouts for visibility when not at a desk/office.
- Google outreach map with different locations for events, hanging things, tips. Helpful for student employees (yup, do this).
- Slides / Handout (“steal with joyful permission” – Char)
If students r creeped that we reply to them on twitter, it's a perfect sneakteach opportunity 4 them about social media #acrl2013 #makerlib
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Erin Dorney (@edorney) April 12, 2013ACRL 2013 Conference
I’ll be at the Association of College & Research Libraries 2013 Conference Wednesday through Saturday (April 10-13). Thought I’d share my tentative schedule here in case anyone wants to catch up before/during/after a session. I have lunches and Friday night dinner open if people wanna meet up! Comment, text me, tweet or DM @edorney to get in touch.
I’m presenting with some of the other Lead Pipe Editorial Board members on Thursday at 3 PM about #diylib culture. We’d love to hear your thoughts before the panel session so we can incorporate a variety of perspectives. Check out our recent editorial for all the details. Hope to see you there!
Wednesday, April 10
8 PM – Battle Decks! – Imagine, Improvise, Inflict: Get Inspired or Die Trying
Thursday, April 11
8 AM – Building a Dream Team: Library Personas in the 21st Century Library
9 AM – Meeting with Lead Pipe Editorial Board members
10:30 AM – Library Publishing and Undergraduate Education: Strategies for Collaboration
1 PM – Hacking the Learner Experience: techniques and strategies for connecting with your instructional ecosystem
2 PM – Poster Session
3 PM – From the Periphery into the Mainstream: Library DIY culture(s) and the academy
4:20 PM – Henry Rollins Keynote
Dinner with Lead Pipe Editorial Board members
Friday, April 12
9:30 AM – Poster Session
11 AM – Contributed Papers: “The Mother of all LibGuides”: Applying Principles of Communication and Network Theory in LibGuide Design/Hidden Patterns of LibGuides Usage: Another Facet of Usability/The Unobtrusive “Usability Test”: Creating Measurable Goals to Evaluate a Website
1:30 PM – The Art of Problem Discovery
2:30 PM – Poster Session
4 PM – “Love your library”: building goodwill from the inside out and the outside in
8 PM – All Conference Reception
I’ll probably be blogging at some point since this is my first time attending ACRL. Anything you’re looking forward to?
currently
listening // to get disowned by hop along, sports by modern baseball + npr.
watching // twin peaks + audrey hepburn.
reading // snowflake/different streets by eileen myles.
wanting // this sleeping grizzly bear bean bag + these baby skull earrings.
working // on signage for the new library, summer plans + a new writing gig (details soon!).
writing // blackout erasure poems from an old ornithology book.
thinking // about letting go of the life i’d planned to embrace the life in front of me.
What are you guys doing?
(inspired by Kara at I Just Might Explode)
Books I read in 2012
2011 was the first year I tracked my reading and it was around this time last year that I set the goal of reading an average of 3 books per month in 2012 (for a minimum of 36 books). I’m happy to report that I exceeded that goal and read a total of 46 books! Check it:
You can learn more about the titles on my Goodreads page. According to 5-star ratings, my favorite books were:
- O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
- Pretty Tilt by Carrie Murphy
- The World According to Garp by John Irving (also the longest book I read last year)
- Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories by Charles Bukowski
- The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm
- The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading by Eileen Myles
- Driftwood Valley: A Woman Naturalist in the Northern Wilderness by Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher
- Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
- Nature I Loved by Bill Geagan
- Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry About Nature by Lorraine Anderson
- Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002 by Sharon Olds
- Kindred by Octavia Butler
I read over 11,000 pages! What did you read in 2012? Any reading goals or books you’re looking forward to reading during 2013?
How to improve your visual aids for presentations
One of the things I love about my job is making connections. Sometimes it’s a connection between individuals and the information they need. Sometimes it’s a connection between two people who can help each other. Sometimes it’s a connection between a person and a unique opportunity. Recently, I was able to connect a two colleagues: a librarian from Mansfield University and a professor at Millersville University. The result was a chapter on visual aids for Public Speaking: The Virtual Text, a free online public speaking textbook.
I love this project—Creative Commons-licensed, well-written by authoritative speech professionals, an alternative for FAR too expensive communications textbooks. Really, what’s not to like?!
Anyone with an upcoming presentation who is considering using visual aids (Midwinter, ALA, and ACRL librarians, I’m looking at you) should take a moment to check out Chapter 13: Visual Aids. Sheila has great advice on:
- Identifying when and how visual aids will enhance a presentation
- Identifying the different types of visual aids
- Identifying effective and ineffective use of visual aids
- Applying basic design principles to slide design
- Identifying best practices to incorporating visual aids in a presentation
I’ll be keeping these tips in mind when I work on my upcoming presentations—no more crappy slide decks! Seriously, give it a read. You can download each chapter as a PDF in color or grayscale. Share this resource with anyone interested in public speaking!
These are things that are happening
March
On March 12th (2 PM EST) I’ll be co-presenting “Stealth Librarianship: Creating Meaningful Connections Through User Experience, Outreach, and Liaising” with Kiyomi Deards and Bohyun Kim. We’ll be talking about relationship-building and how user experience research, outreach, and stealth librarianship can be used to create meaningful connections within the campus community. The class size is limited to 60 participants, so register now! And let us know if there is anything specific you’d like to see us cover.
April
I’ll be in Indianapolis from April 10-13 for the ACRL 2013 Conference. It’s my first ACRL and my first trip to Indiana. On the 11th I’ll be presenting on a panel with some my fellow Lead Pipe editors:
From the Periphery into the Mainstream: Library DIY culture(s) and the academy – In October 2008, In the Library with the Lead Pipe published its first article. Additionally, numerous groups have been hosting unconferences, infiltrating SXSW, and more. The culmination of do-it-yourself (DIY) activities points to a growing DIY culture that is permeating academic libraries. Find out from some of these DIYers what DIY library culture has inspired in academe, and how these innovative enterprises tie into our scholarship, instruction, and advocacy.
May
I was invited to present a session for academic librarians at the Pennsylvania Library Association Lehigh Valley Chapter Spring Workshop on May 23rd at Muhlenberg College. I’m trying something a little different (modeled on a session I saw Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches do in November 2011) and will be bringing in some students to discuss the library:
A Crevice or a Chasm? Investigating the Disparities Between Experience and Expectation – How wide is the gap between what students expect from the library and what they experience? Hear from four current college students about why, when, and how they use (or don’t use) the library. Audience members will have the opportunity to pose their own questions to the panel following this facilitated conversation.
June
My first conference abroad! A joint proposal I submitted with two colleagues was accepted for presentation at the 5th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries being held in Rome June 4-7 at “La Sapienza” University. Does anyone have international travel tips for me? I’ve never been outside the US, so this is big & awesome news!
One Website to Rule Them All: Meeting the Needs of Students, Faculty, and Librarians – Most academic library websites have three main audiences: students, faculty, and librarians. While there are additional audiences (including non-users, community members, staff, and parents), these three groups spend the most amount of time on our sites. Libraries risk losing credibility and customers if these three main audiences do not have a good experience on the site. While each of these groups has a different set of needs and expectations, many academic libraries do not have the freedom, time, or skill set to develop a distinctive website for each user group. Our challenge, therefore, is to create a single website that meets the needs of each of our individual user groups without sacrificing continuity of design, quality of information, or consistency of navigation for one group over another. This presentation will highlight the opportunities and challenges of building an academic library website for students, faculty, and librarians. Each speaker will address one audience and will highlight various qualitative measurements which attendees can recreate at their home institutions in order to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of their websites to make targeted improvements.
How is your spring looking? Anything you’re looking forward to? If you’ll be at any of these events, make sure to say hello!
Image CC BY-SA 2.0 courtesy of fsse8info on Flickr
Poem “January 26, 2011″ published in Birdfeast Magazine
At the beginning of September I learned that my poem “January 26, 2011″ was accepted for publication in issue four of Birdfeast Magazine. Birdfeast is published quarterly and features a “feast” of 10-20 poems in each issue. They publish “…your loudest pieces, and your quietest ones. Your strangest and your most gentle.” I absolutely love the way Birdfeast presents itself electronically in terms of its site design. It was one of the things that made me want to submit there. If you submit work, you probably know exactly what I mean when I say there are some online journals out there that look absolutely horrendous. I know that literary journals (including ejournals) are a labor of love, but come on now people. Birdfeast is where it’s at in terms of minimalist design & great use of color/images. It allows the work to take front stage.
Another reason I decided to submit to Birdfeast is because Duotrope (y’all know about Duotrope, right? If not, get on that!) has this nice feature where you can look up a particular journal title and then see:
- Work submitted here was also submitted to…
- Users accepted here also had work accepted by…
When my poem was accepted at Curio, I checked Duotrope for other places work by Curio authors was accepted. Lo and behold, Birdfeast was on the list. It’s an easy way to learn about new journals to read and places that might mesh with your particular style for submissions.
This poem is particularly meaningful to me because it’s about my friend’s mother who has since passed away. I have incredibly fond memories of growing up and playing in their house when I was younger (all the way through high school). The last time I got to see her, in winter of 2011, she still beat my ass in a game of Skip Bo! The poem is short, possibly my shortest ever. I think it’s a good parallel to the brief lives we lead.
Thanks to Jessica Poli (Founder and Editor-in-Chief) for selecting my work for inclusion in Birdfeast.
