Erin Dorney

Due to the unexpected passing of a family member, I will not be attending the ACRL 2011 Conference on-site in Philadelphia this week. However, I will be attending the virtual conference in full force, including blogging about the live webcasts and even presenting online. While I am disappointed to miss the in-person interaction with my academic library colleagues over the next few days, I look forward to participating electronically and connecting with many of you over Twitter, Facebook, and the virtual conference website.

As a reminder, the virtual conference website is open to anyone registered for the virtual conference AND everyone who is attending on-site in Philly. Conference material will be archived there for up to a year later, so face-to-face attendees can go back at any time and watch the webcasts they may have missed. Slidecasts (recorded PPTs with synched audio) from every contributed paper, cyber zed shed presentation, invited paper, and panel session presented in Philadelphia will be posted to the virtual conference site a few days after ACRL wraps up, so they can be accessed as well. Handouts can already be downloaded, for attendees to preview before sessions.

I want to thank my co-chair Scott Vine from Franklin & Marshal College as well as our entire ACRL 2011 Virtual Conference Committee for their hard work on organizing an excellent slate of online programming for Thursday and Friday. I am honored to be presenting “Personal Branding for New Librarians” with Kiyomi D. Deards (www.libraryadventures.com / @kiyomid) and Bohyun Kim (www.bohyunkim.net/blog / @bohyunkim) on Thursday at 10:30 AM EST. Maybe I’ll see some of you there!

What are your plans for ACRL? Is this your first time attending?