I love Poster Sessions.
The ACRL Science and Technology Section Poster Session, unfortunately, was not as centrally located as most of the sessions that I attended. The trek, though, was a completely worthwhile one.
Themed "Big Science, Little Science, E-Science," the above-linked website describes the Poster Session as follows: This program will explore the science librarian's role in the emerging conversation concerning data and data curation in scientific research with the goal of raising awareness and empowering science librarians to approach faculty members about these issues.
While ostensibly geared to other Science Librarians by providing those models, as a side benefit, there was much to be found in the way of resources for k-12 students and teachers, particularly those at the high school level. I had an especially good conversation with the presenters of "Physics Education Research (PER) Central: Expanding the Scope of Digital Libraries by Promoting Resources Through Assisting a Conference" from the University of Oklahoma who shared a model of supporting Physics and Astronomy Education via serving as the repository for conference materials. comPADRE looks like a great resource to bookmark and send on over to your Physics and Astronomy teachers. (free, but requires registration)
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Monday Highlight #1: BIGWIG Social Software Showcase 2009 (LITA Blogs, Interactive Groupware Wikis Interest Group)
I watched much of NECC on ISTE TV and attended the "Web 2.0 meet the Standards for 21st Century Learners" (AASL) with Joyce Valenza, Pam Berger, Wendy Stephens, Christopher Harris, Lisa Perez and Jeff Hastings (all on the same stage!!! with a guest appearance from David Loertscher!!!) -- to me, what was unique about the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase 2009 amusingly, was the diversity of the attendees. Because time is so precious, we tend to focus on niche events to exchange ideas with those in a similar position to ours, who best understand the environments in which we work. Being with public, academic, medical and special librarians, with a few trustees tossed in and an ALA reporter to round out the group while exploring implications and use of emerging social software was a fascinating experience. I am still sifting through the ideas that I generated as a result of hearing other attendees projects, questions, ideas and concerns. Don't be surprised if over the next few months I end up posting to the MSLA Listserv with questions related to implementing some of these...
Go check out all three links above -- NECC, the AASL session and the BIGWIG session. If you are interested in more educational technology PD, just wait until next week. EduBloggerCon - East Coast is on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009, followed by November Learning's 2009 Building Learning Communities conference.
Go check out all three links above -- NECC, the AASL session and the BIGWIG session. If you are interested in more educational technology PD, just wait until next week. EduBloggerCon - East Coast is on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009, followed by November Learning's 2009 Building Learning Communities conference.
Sunday highlight #1: Beyond Pizza: Teen Advisory Groups as Library Leadership (YALSA)
Beyond Pizza: Teen Advisory Groups as Library Leadership
The care and feeding of library advisory boards keeps many a librarian up at night. This program will cover best practices, supply toolkits, and address traditional as well as more flexible models in which teens work as advisors to the library. Librarians from public and school libraries, as well as teens involved in their library program, will offer insight to creating, maintaining, growing or rejuvenating your teen group.
This session featured both the outgoing and incoming heads of the YALSA's Teen Advisory Groups Committee! As I will be the only adult in our library this coming year, I hoped that I would be able to glean many good pointers for effectively enlisting our student volunteers. The session did not disappoint! In addition to learning about the neat (and diverse!) programs of the public libraries, a nice treat was that Courtney Lewis, the outgoing chair who chaired the session is a school librarian.
Two interesting tips:
1. She has a "course catalog" of classes from which faculty can choose a workshop that they would like to have taught to their class. They can simply look at her brochure and say the equivalent of "I'd like to book Into to Databases for second period on Thursday."
2. Since her volunteers are so well versed with library offerings, they are able to serve as informal ambassadors to suggest to faculty specific library resources (print, electronic, workshop, library personnel, etc.) to be integrated with the unit at hand.
Further resources for TAGs can be found on YALSA's TAGS page. This is a collaborative endeavor, so go and add your own!
The care and feeding of library advisory boards keeps many a librarian up at night. This program will cover best practices, supply toolkits, and address traditional as well as more flexible models in which teens work as advisors to the library. Librarians from public and school libraries, as well as teens involved in their library program, will offer insight to creating, maintaining, growing or rejuvenating your teen group.
This session featured both the outgoing and incoming heads of the YALSA's Teen Advisory Groups Committee! As I will be the only adult in our library this coming year, I hoped that I would be able to glean many good pointers for effectively enlisting our student volunteers. The session did not disappoint! In addition to learning about the neat (and diverse!) programs of the public libraries, a nice treat was that Courtney Lewis, the outgoing chair who chaired the session is a school librarian.
Two interesting tips:
1. She has a "course catalog" of classes from which faculty can choose a workshop that they would like to have taught to their class. They can simply look at her brochure and say the equivalent of "I'd like to book Into to Databases for second period on Thursday."
2. Since her volunteers are so well versed with library offerings, they are able to serve as informal ambassadors to suggest to faculty specific library resources (print, electronic, workshop, library personnel, etc.) to be integrated with the unit at hand.
Further resources for TAGs can be found on YALSA's TAGS page. This is a collaborative endeavor, so go and add your own!
My ALA '09 Wrap-up
Greetings from another First-Time ALA National Conference attendee!
The conference goes by so quickly... I've been able to sort through my bags and handouts, to start to look at my notes and to begin to integrate all of the conversations and sessions in with my other thoughts about the conference and how I plan to use all that I have learned. That means that I'm now ready to blog!
This is the biggest tech-savvy conference that I have attended. As Kathy mentioned, twitter was a big thing. I wasn't able to keep track as well as I would have liked, but even following tweets and backchannels to the extent that I was able to certainly made for a richer experience within sessions and more streamlined experience overall.
I took a few minutes to read over everyone else's posts to the blog before posting. The wealth of offerings meant that there was a wide variety in the sessions that your MSLA en Mass bloggers attended. It was fantastic to be able to see the conference from some other perspectives and itineraries! This afternoon, I hope to be able to share from some of the sessions that made the greatest impression on me.
I'll leave off for now with the pre-conference advice, "Five Tips For A Better ALA Conference Experience" from SteveB on the ACRL site.
The conference goes by so quickly... I've been able to sort through my bags and handouts, to start to look at my notes and to begin to integrate all of the conversations and sessions in with my other thoughts about the conference and how I plan to use all that I have learned. That means that I'm now ready to blog!
This is the biggest tech-savvy conference that I have attended. As Kathy mentioned, twitter was a big thing. I wasn't able to keep track as well as I would have liked, but even following tweets and backchannels to the extent that I was able to certainly made for a richer experience within sessions and more streamlined experience overall.
I took a few minutes to read over everyone else's posts to the blog before posting. The wealth of offerings meant that there was a wide variety in the sessions that your MSLA en Mass bloggers attended. It was fantastic to be able to see the conference from some other perspectives and itineraries! This afternoon, I hope to be able to share from some of the sessions that made the greatest impression on me.
I'll leave off for now with the pre-conference advice, "Five Tips For A Better ALA Conference Experience" from SteveB on the ACRL site.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Record Attendance?
The final count of ALA Annual attendees is 28,941. I believe that's a record - and a real surprise in this economy - but a testament to the popularity of Chicago as a conference venue.
I hope this bodes well for the MSLA conference - October 4-5 in Sturbridge!
I hope this bodes well for the MSLA conference - October 4-5 in Sturbridge!
Conference Presentations and Handouts
ALA has posted materials from the annual conference sessions at http://presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
This collection will probably build over the next few days.
This collection will probably build over the next few days.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
A Whole New World
I've been home for a couple of days and have begun to process all of the experiences and information from ALA Annual . This conference resulted in some paradigm shifts for me: I finally "got" Twitter and learned that it really is a good mode of communicating valuable information in real time. I tweeted several of the sessions I attended and got positive feedback on my L4L Training4Trainers tweets (#aasll4l) from one of my MSLA colleagues: "Great stuff! Keep it coming!" I was also flattered to find that my tweets made Library Journal's Pick of Top ALA Tweets on Saturday AND Sunday. If you'd like to read other attendees' ALA conference tweets, search on Twitter for #ala2009.
I also learned that you can sometimes catch sessions that you weren't able to attend. LITA (the Library and Information Technology Association, a division of ALA) had two offerings on the Monday schedule that looked interesting, but I missed the first one, Top Technology Trends, because I didn't allow enough travel time. I was thrilled to learn after I got home (via another attendee's tweet), that the presentation was streamed on UStream.
The second LITA session was the President's Program, Make Stories, Tell Stories, Keep Stories. It left me curious to find out more about DOK, a library in Delft, The Netherlands, whose mission is to be the most innovative library in the world. Three DOK employees toured North American libraries in 2007 and produced a popular video about about gaming libraries. I was intrigued by their humor, fresh vision for what libraries can be, and innovative uses of technology.
These programs were so thought-provoking that I'm considering become a member of LITA. Membership is open to anyone interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers, and I think joining will help me to see what's coming up around the bend so I can try to foresee what this will mean for school libraries.
There were so many experiences packed into four days at Annual - and I've only written about a few here - that my mind is still spinning with all of the possibilities for our profession. I'd like to thank MSLA for allowing me to attend these national conferences where I can learn from and share my love for school libraries with brilliant colleagues from across the country.
I also learned that you can sometimes catch sessions that you weren't able to attend. LITA (the Library and Information Technology Association, a division of ALA) had two offerings on the Monday schedule that looked interesting, but I missed the first one, Top Technology Trends, because I didn't allow enough travel time. I was thrilled to learn after I got home (via another attendee's tweet), that the presentation was streamed on UStream.
The second LITA session was the President's Program, Make Stories, Tell Stories, Keep Stories. It left me curious to find out more about DOK, a library in Delft, The Netherlands, whose mission is to be the most innovative library in the world. Three DOK employees toured North American libraries in 2007 and produced a popular video about about gaming libraries. I was intrigued by their humor, fresh vision for what libraries can be, and innovative uses of technology.
These programs were so thought-provoking that I'm considering become a member of LITA. Membership is open to anyone interested in leading edge technology and applications for librarians and information providers, and I think joining will help me to see what's coming up around the bend so I can try to foresee what this will mean for school libraries.
There were so many experiences packed into four days at Annual - and I've only written about a few here - that my mind is still spinning with all of the possibilities for our profession. I'd like to thank MSLA for allowing me to attend these national conferences where I can learn from and share my love for school libraries with brilliant colleagues from across the country.
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