Call for Presentations – 15th Reference Research Forum, 2009 (ALA Annual in Chicago)

The Research and Statistics Committee of the Reference Services Section of RUSA invites the submission of research projects for presentation at the 15th Reference Research Forum at the 2009 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago, IL.

The Reference Research Forum continues to be one of the most popular and valuable programs during the ALA Annual Conference, where attendees can learn about notable research projects conducted in the broad area of reference services such as user behavior, electronic services, reference effectiveness, and organizational structure and personnel. All researchers, including reference practitioners from all types of libraries, library school faculty and students, and other interested individuals, are encouraged to submit a proposal.

More info at http://rusa.ala.org/blog/2008/10/09/rrf/

ILA 2008

Last week I attended the Illinois Library Association conference in Chicago. There were two sessions that actually applied to Academic Libraries. They were Systemic Change Needed in Information Literacy and Academic Integrity and the College Student.

In the first session Lisa Stock, from the College of DuPage, discussed a study she conducted on how students develop info lit skills. She found a need to educate the educators and that there should be full collaboration between librarians and faculty, not just parallel work or cooperative work. Our new workshop forms are more collaborative.

The session on Academic Integrity seemed to bring up more questions than answers. The speakers were from Eastern Illinois University and Elmhurst College. They found that while there are not more students plagiarizing, students are plagiarizing more. They discussed what role librarians have in teaching students about plagiarism, citations, and use of information. They discussed how to keep students from cheating. Turnitin software was mentioned. One suggestion was that faculty need to create cheat proof assignments and not give the same tests over and over. They too said that collaboration between faculty and librarians is vitally important.

One session I attended in which I had to stand for 1.5 hours (see below) was The Customer Focused Library - Lessons Learned from Retail. This was the result of a study conducted in the Chicago area of four libraries, both public and academic. While the academic library was larger than our libraries are, there were still some things that apply to us. One of them was to keep the desk uncluttered - lofty goal for me since I do all my work from my desk. Also, look at your library from a patron's view and keep computer-generated signage fresh or it will lose power among frequent visitors.

I did attend a session on gadgets, where they had the Kindle, some phones, some battery chargers, etc. It led to my purchasing an ITouch. After all, we did step up to DSL from dial up at home last month. Now if I would just connect everything so that I can use it. :)

I wanted to get into the session about leadership, but it was full to overflowing. (I still uploaded slide presentation to Google Docs.) As a matter of fact, that happened to me in three of the sessions that I wanted to attend. I noticed that some of the very popular sessions were put in rooms that had only about 50 seats, while others were in huge rooms and had only a scattering of attendees. That was the frustrating part of my week.

I placed the handouts and PowerPoints in the ILA 2008 folder under conferences in Google.

Going to ALA in Chicago?

2009 Annual Poster Session Application Information

Chicago, IL: July 11-13, 2009

Applications for presenting poster sessions at the 2009 American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago, IL, will be accepted via the World Wide Web at:
http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/ala/

Applications will be accepted between November 1, 2008 and January 31, 2009

An application form, guidelines for applying, helpful hints, and photos of sample poster sessions can be found at the website. If you don’t have access to the World Wide Web or to email, please contact Jody Condit Fagan, Chair, at 540-568-4265 (telephone) for instructions on how to apply.

The Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians Annual Conference in Manitowoc, WI

The Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians Annual Conference Manitowoc, WI

This was a great conference to have attended. In addition to talking and getting back in touch with other librarian friends and colleagues, I had a fantastic poster session and went to some useful sessions.


Avoiding the “Librarian Nerd Loop”: Engaging Students & Creating a User-Friendly Library Environment

The librarians at Carroll College are working hard to create student-centered services by making their webpages easier to navigate and use and using chat reference extensively using Meebo in particular. What I took away from this session was that the language library instructors use should be words and phrases the STUDENT would understand. No one is going to understand “bibliographic information”, “ILL”, or potentially even “Information Literacy”.

Ways to achieve a more student-centered library service plan:

• use Meebo for online chat (the RCLS is already doing this);
• create and update usable subject guides;
• utilize RSS feeds for appropriate links.

(See slides)

I LOVE this quote:

“Geek is chic – nerdiness is not!”

Pay attention to the words I use in the library and focus on what the audience will understand. “Information Literacy” is a big concept to get across. How can this be broken up into usable segments so our students can understand them?

Improving Teaching & Learning through Instructional Partnerships: Building Relationships One-on-One

This is a really interesting project that allows instructional librarians to improve their teaching skills with the aid of a partner. The project uses reflection, discussion and observation to achieve the goals of building supportive relationships with colleagues.
(see slides and handouts)

Identify those aspects of my teaching that I’d like to work on and ask for assistance from both the other RCLS team members and from faculty members on the GB campus for suggestions, discussion, etc.

Creating a Library 2.0 Presence Without a Web Programmer
This was an unexpected bonus session as I was going to attend a concurrent one. The NWTC library has created a dynamic web page and subsequent library subject guides within 3 months using a fantastic product called LibGuides. I’ve already shared this with Emily, and the RCLS is looking into this product. It’s beautiful! (see slides)

I’ve already shared this web product with Emily. I am looking at how other libraries use this as well to create the most dynamic and usable website we can

Library Instruction: Using Effective Marketing Strategies to Ensure Successful Outcomes
Library instruction is not understood in general. What we do is not understood by faculty and by staff. Faculty have assumptions as to library resources and its services. This intriguing session was about how librarians market our resources and services and how we promote ourselves in different ways. Some suggestions I and the rest of the RCLS team might be able to use are:

• the elevator speech
• focus primarily on the audience’s needs
• posters – K.I.S.S.
• the lingo changed to something the audience can understand: “Research-ology”, “Information Navigation 101”
• Creating a Marketing Plan for the RCLS!

I am looking at how I market workshops and other items on campus for the short and long term.

Report from the beach... FLA Conference

The 2008 Florida Library Association Annual Conference that I went to last week was really good. Not nearly as much “conference fatigue” as I experience at some of them! Of course, just being at the beach helped :-) The theme for this year’s conference was leadership.

I attended the following sessions and can post more details, if anyone is interested. I also have handouts from most of the presentations and a few presenters provided links to online versions of the PPT. Just let me know…
• The Future of Academic Libraries
• “Pls hury it up thanks!!!” Interpersonal Communication in Virtual Reference
• Dealing with non-productive staff! How to train, transfer or terminate ‘em!
• Beyond the Basics- being a leader in providing customized research services for faculty and students
• Technology is easy, people are hard: leading technology shifts in libraries
• Going the distance, meeting the need: using video teaching and teleconferencing technology to enhance library instruction services

My poster session went well (IMO). Unfortunately, they didn’t advertise where we would be- but we did get quite a bit of traffic for mine on Thursday. I marketed more like a vendor- borrowed a Ras table cover from Admissions, free pens & pencils, and CANDY, in addition to my handouts. A lot of people asked “Where’s Rasmussen College?” which gave me the opportunity to talk about the college, library system, and the CD/faculty collaboration experiment I started (emailing the program-specific lists & the form to try and increase input/documentation). I also had the opportunity to talk to a few library students, which I like always find fun.

The exhibits were alright. Stopped by Polaris for another look at the staff end; didn’t get a chance to get over to TLC but we know we like them :-) I have flyers for Wilson Web’s Current Issues in Health and Ovid’s Nursing FT Plus. The Wilson database looked very user-friendly in terms of the interface and results- particularly for 2 yr students.

Internet Librarian 2007

"Information Today, Inc. returned to Monterey in 2007 to present the 11th annual Internet Librarian – the ONLY conference for information professionals who are using, developing, and embracing Internet, Intranet, and Web-based strategies in their roles as information architects and navigators,Webmasters and Web managers, content evaluators and developers, taxonomists, searchers, community builders, information providers, trainers, guides, and more."

I so would have loved to have gone! Lots of Web 2.0 topics. I've been following a number of library blogs about the conference, and now presentations have been posted. Enjoy perusing!

• Information Discovery & Search
• Public Libraries
• Web Design & Development
• Strategies & Best Practices
• Learning: More than Teaching
• Enterprise Trends
• Organization & Roles
• Virtual Worlds & Libraries
• Gadgets, Gadgets, & Gaming!
• Search Engines
• Content Management (CM)
• Digital Libraries, Systems, Operations
• Games, Videos & Libraries
• Mashups and Gaming: Leveraging Social Phenomena
• WEB 2.0 -> LIBRARY 2.0
• Information Literacy and 2.0 Technologies

Greetings from Green Bay!

My name is Karen Eckberg, and I'm the campus Librarian at the Green Bay campus. It's the first RC in Wisconsin and as of today, there are approximately 35 students on campus. My job is three-fold. I'm the campus librarian, the Success Strategies instructor for 2 residential classes, and the Success Coordinator until we grow and they hire a full-time one. My first day was October 1st, and it's been a whirl-wind for the past month!

My background is in music, and I am a classically trained cellist and vocalist. I play in the Green Bay Civic Symphony, the non-professional orchestra in town. I went to graduate school at UW-Madison (my hometown) with the intention of becoming a music librarian, but the ones I met were all snobby (no joke!), so I broadened my scope to bibliographic instruction in the academic library. My first position out of graduate school was at Northland College in Ashland, WI, as the Reference and Instruction librarian. It was a fantastic for me, but it is a dying community and finding a position for my husband was not possible. So we moved to his hometown of Green Bay 6 years ago.

Another enjoyable, rewarding job in the library field was difficult to find, but I did work briefly at the library at UWGB, and then, most recently, at NWTC (the tech college) as grants specialist for the past 3 1/2 years.

I'm so very thrilled to have this opportunity and I look forward to meeting you all! Thanks to those of you who have already waved in Wisconsin's direction! And a huge THANKS to those of you who assisted in whatever way in getting this library off the ground, from collection development to cataloging!

The GB campus is slowly getting online, and we're involved in a number of cooperatives with other academic, public, school and special libraries. The highlight next week is introducing Rasmussen College at the Wisconsin Library Association conference which is located here in Green Bay! I've included pictures I've taken of the library. Enjoy!
















You might have heard what Green Bay is famous for. GO PACK GO!