This evening I got in from the South Carolina Library Association conference. I spoke there for the College and University Section on “Adapting to a Changing World: Exceptional Services for a New Information Environment.” If you’re interested in the presentation, I posted it over on my blog.
I really enjoy seeing how different library associations work, as well as their conferences. SCLA is an annual conference that is in Columbia, SC every other year. In the years that it’s not in the capitol, it rotates from being on the eastern end of the state and the western end. The conference was a little smaller than NCLA, located in one hotel, but still had a lot of participants and vendors.
I was able to meet with two of the committee members (and Mary Horton!) for dinner the evening before the conference. It was fun to hear about USC (especially since two of my fellow RITS team members went there, and Mary now works there), and to learn a little about how SCLA works. As is often the case when several librarians get together, we found that we’re all facing similar issues.
Earlier in the day, Mary gave me a tour of her new library and part of the USC campus. The library looks fairly small and cozy from outside, but there are five acres of library below ground! There’s also a lovely reflecting pool outside the building.
Today, I spent the morning preparing for and giving the presentation. We were anticipating about 30 people, but one of the organizers said they stopped counting at 60 attendees. You know you have a topic that resonates with folks when they’re willing to sit on the floor!
Afterwards, Mary and I continued to catch up a bit, and then we went to a general session luncheon. Award winning Jonathan Green was the speaker, a South Carolinian artist. He was an entertaining speaker, but equally entertaining was the slideshow of his art that ran throughout his presentation. Beautiful work!
After that, I came on back to Winston-Salem to do a little cooking for tomorrow’s RITS retreat. I had a great time at SCLA; catching up with Mary, meeting nice people, having a receptive and big crowd for the presentation, and beautiful fall trees for the drive there and back all contributed to the lovely experience. Fun stuff!
On another note, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Library101 project. It was unveiled at Internet Librarian, and I did a little bit of writing for it. If you’re interested, I posted about it over on my blog.
The Next-Gen Catalogs session was interesting since we’re using VuFind now. The talk about about a VuFind implementation and touched on the results from a few usability tests. Overall, their remarks were good, though they pointed to changes in workflow for the library staff. They also demonstrated Summons from Serials Solutions, a product I’d only heard of before this session. It was interesting to hear how they had the two systems work together.
Liz Lawley’s closing keynote (another person that I’m a huge fan of) was a fun discussion of an Alternate Reality Game that her lab created to engage young professionals and help them learn about the area. I appreciated her thorough discussion of how they implemented it and the work that went into creating a good game. Lawley pointed out that in a pilot, many people are willing to donate time and money, but they need a more sustainable model to offer the game again.
I am so glad to have attended LITA Forum for the first time. It was a solid conference: good facilities, location, schedule, programs, and people. I picked up a few things along the way, but as with any conference, a lot of my learning happened between sessions and at meals. LITA seems to really get that, leaving good blocks of time between sessions and organizing networking dinners for those who want to attend. I hope to get to attend again sometime soon! Thanks, too, to Susan. As a committee member, she played a key role in making the conference a successful one, and was busy doing things for the conference for the entire time we’ve been here.
It looks like our plane just landed, so we’re about to board. See you all on Monday!
The day started with the main reason I wanted to attend this year’s LITA: David Weinberger’s keynote. I adore his Everything is Miscellaneous as well as Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and missed him by a day at an ALA annual, so when I heard he was speaking I knew I wanted to come to LITA Forum. It was a great talk. Weinberger is a philosopher by training, is interested in epistemology, and is a technology pundit (I would even say he’s a bit of a futurist), which means that most anything he says is interesting to me even if I don’t necessarily totally agree. (Though most of the time I do.) His talk focused on a transition in Western understandings of knowledge, from a dualistic approach to a more postmodern one (my words, not his). This way of thinking is heightened in our “age of abundance” in which we have access to so much information that it’s hard to find the BEST piece of information, or even agree on what that BEST thing might be. His talk also touched on satisfaction with “good enough,” the internet as a way to find like minded people to get things done, and how it’s a survival strategy to not look at every piece of information we find along the way. The talk was fantastic: great content, interesting slides, and some jokes along the way. What more can you ask for?
Next I attended the Lighting Talks that Susan ran. They were great! The nice thing about lighting talks is that even if one isn’t really applicable to you in your given setting, you just have to wait another five minutes for the next one. I was impressed with the speakers. Some presented whole projects, some just the beginning of ideas. I was glad to hear Erik talk about cloud computing and Amazon services. There was a lot of chatter on Twitter about the different talks, and I heard good remarks throughout the day. Many suggested that the Lighting Talks might have set the bar too high for the rest of the presenters who had 70 minutes to fill.
The Futures of Libraries is IT was more about a study of future library leaders than it was about libraries becoming IT departments. The study was of about 240 librarians about what their ideal work environment would be like and what it actually is. (For many it was different, as you might guess.) They asked participants about what in the work environment enables them to succeed and what thwarts them. It was fascinating information, and useful for institutions thinking about succession planning and about to embark on strategic plans. The study will be written up for College and Research Libraries in 2011, though there’s a preprint available now if you’re interested. (The link is over in my blog.)
My final session was a strategic planning one. The presentation was of a research project in which the speaker looked at over 100 library strategic plans. He distilled themes (both in what’s included and what topics are addressed) from the strategic plans and found that IT had important roles in all of them.
After the sessions, there was a poster session, which Erik, Susan, and I checked out. We saw an interesting word cloud display of database subjects students are searching in real time as well as some on Facebook, online instruction, and a few techier topics.
This evening I had a taskforce meeting. That’s fairly unusual at LITA Forum (in all the time I’ve been active in LITA, I’ve never had a LITA Forum meeting before now) unless you’re on the conference committee. We met because the group was just appointed and a lot of the work we’re going to do has to happen before Midwinter. This group is the LITA Change Taskforce and our charge is to “Investigate the efficiencies of the LITA organization structure and make recommendations based on the investigation.” So, since I was able to be at LITA I was able to get the background that lead to this group, information about what the current thinking is, and assignments for our next deadline. I am hopeful we’ll be able to good things.
Other than the sessions and meetings, I’ve been able to catch up with a number of people and meet several new folks. It’s been a fun and informative conference, but the time has flown by. Tomorrow will be fairly short, but then a lot of travel. I’ll see if I can get something posted before I lose internet tomorrow!
Susan did a great job of writing up yesterday! After touching down, and getting acquainted with the area, I was able to do a little work on my presentation and finished it up this morning. When I felt I had a good handle on the material, I went downstairs to the Keynote and found Susan and Erik with the video camera to record the session.
The presentation was by Joan K. Lippincott, whom I generally think is spot on, from CNI, which does good things, on “Mobile Technologies, Mobile Users: Will Libraries Mobilize?” which is a topic that is very important. The talk was a good one, and you can find detailed notes over in my blog.
I had a session I really wanted to attend after that, but also wanted to be really prepared for my talk, so I headed back up to the room to go through the whole thing one last time. The talk went well, I think. There were 20-30 folks there, and most were engaged. Some where really focused on their laptops, but when the session was over, several of the people that I assumed were occupying their time with something else came up to chat with insightful questions. I guess they were just blogging or looking at our websites.
If you’re interested in my talk, the slides are here. I’d be happy to chat about the concept as well:
So now, the conference is mostly about attending sessions! I have one committee meeting tomorrow evening, and that one should be fun. I’m sure I’ll have many more posts to link to tomorrow.
So far, my first LITA Forum has been a successful one. I’ve caught up with a number of folks, heard a good keynote, gave a presentation, had some great food, and had a good time rooming with Susan! I’ll post more tomorrow!
A hurt neck kept me from lugging my laptop around combined with a lack of reasonably priced internet anywhere near my hotel kept me off the “real” internet for much of the conference. This was the first ALA I have attended where there were days that I didn’t carry a computer, and it made for a slightly different experience. I engaged in Twitter on my phone a bunch more, and I interacted on Facebook, took notes on paper, but I didn’t have hardly any opportunities to blog. Very strange for me! But instead of pushing out information about the conference, I feel that I participated in many more conversations, and that’s something I’d like to be sure to do at future conferences.
To pick up where I left off, Saturday was a real LITA day for me. I attended the BIGWIG meeting physically for the first time. This is a group of LITA that formed around blogs, interactive groups, and wikis (hence the name), but now mostly experiments with emerging social technologies and acts as a test bed to pilot new tools. Many of us were new to the meeting group, but have been participatory online, so it was nice to put some faces with some names and connect with people I’ve been following. (…both literally and figuratively!)
Next up I had the LITA Web Coordinating Committee. I’m midway through my term in this group, and our charge is to work on the LITA website. As you might know, ALA recently went through a redesign, and LITA is following with a similar information architecture. It was especially interesting in light of the web group at ZSR, and gave me lots of food for thought.
After that, Kaeley and I met up with Susan at the Art Institute for the ProQuest VIP Reception and the Scholarship Bash. We ran into Debbie Nolan and were able to catch up a bit with her, we had some food, saw some art, and it was a good time. I was able to meet up with some of my online colleagues as well to hammer out a bit of business among the fun.
I didn’t go to my 7:30 breakfast on Sunday (trying to give my neck a little rest), and instead went to the exhibits at 9:00 to get a chance to see things before my signing. When I got to my booth I saw Sarah right away! Sarah, Carolyn, Lynn, Bill, Susan, Roz, and Kaeley were the ZSR crew that came by, and a few others, too. It was nice to get a chance to talk with Rory, my editor, now that the project is complete.
My next meeting was the Emerging Leaders Subcommittee. Assuming the HRDR committee chair decides to appoint me, I might have the opportunity to participate in this group to help make the Emerging Leaders program better. It was fascinating to hear the behind the scenes discussion, and I was pleased to hear the ‘09 class had an improved experience over what much of the ‘08 class remembers. I am hopeful that this program is one that improves each year.
I raced away from that meeting to meet Kaeley at the LITA President’s program. The program was about the Dutch Boys at DOK.
They’re a fascinating trio and I really recommend checking them out. They recently released a book on their USA library tour if you’re interested in more. The Twitter backchannel was particularly fun and lively throughout the session discussing (among other topics) can you train people to be innovative and how do you know if people you’re hiring will be innovative? Following the LITA session, Kaeley and I met up with Roz, her sister, Susan, Carolyn, and Sarah for a nice Italian ZSR Dinner.
Monday morning was my first day that wasn’t scheduled from start to finish. I was hoping for lots of serendipitous meetings and I wasn’t disappointed. My first session was to see Roz present her paper, but I got to the convention center pretty early. Luckily I ran into someone I know from the ‘07 Emerging Leaders class who is also really involved in LITA. We swapped stories and found out more about what we both actually do and what our libraries are like. Our work is similar enough that I really hope that we’ll be able to collaborate on something sometime soon.
Roz’s paper was an interesting comparison of subject guide software. I found the ACRL geared presentation interesting in light of similar LITA discussions. The subject is the same, but the approach, perspective, and decision making is a little bit different. It was good stuff, and LibGuides is clearly a hot topic for a lot of libraries.
Susan, Roz, Kaeley, and I ended up at LITA’s Social Software Showcase next. This year was a bit different from years past. The program finally had a room big enough for the number of people interested in attending, but the furniture wasn’t set up particularly well for the interactive nature of the program. They rolled with it, and the overall responses were great. I was particularly glad to catch up with several online friends at the session, and we ended up having a surprise social software showcase of our own involving Google Voice, a “hackintosh,” and brainstorming about how the program could work.
Some of that group, Kaeley, and I found a little Italian/pizza place near the convention center, so we were able to grab something to eat and catch up before the Ultimate Debate program. This is the program that a few others have blogged about: David Lee King, Meredith Farkas, Michael Porter, and Cindi Trainor were on the panel and Roy Tennant moderated. It was a fun session and it’s always nice to get a chance to see everyone in real life and see folks actually interact.
One of my library/facebook friends was organizing a vegetarian dinner, so we had an adventure of a time finding a place and eventually ended up at the very yummy Chicago Diner. Of the six of us I hadn’t met any of of my fellow diners face to face before. One I interact with online (it was her birthday), two I knew of–and have been impressed with–from their online presence, and two were entirely new to me. It was great fun and really enjoyed the conversation. The day wrapped up with a great conversation on the walk back to the hotel and a bit of getting ready for the last day.
Sunday kicked off with my last meeting of the conference and my last meeting on the committee. I am finishing up my term on the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship with this conference. It’s been a wonderful committee to serve on and it’s hard to believe that it’s been four years. More than anything, I learned about how ALA actually functions from serving on this committee. We wrapped up some business, I helped out a little with the new ALA Connect, and with that my conference was over.
With this conference, my terms on COSWL and the Women’s Studies Section Instruction Committee both end. I had later appointments to a few LITA groups, so that’s carrying me forward to the next conference. Over the last four years I’ve learned a lot about ALA from COSWL and WSS, but I have also learned that you have to really focus on one or two aspects of ALA if you want your energy to make an impact. I am choosing to focus my energy on LITA. I really feel that there is potential to make positive change there that can provide real-world examples to ALA about some of the changes that might make the larger association more relevant in the 21st century. (That’s my soapbox, at least. ) I might focus on Emerging Leaders as a secondary area since positive work there will influence people who will potentially be in positions to make change within the larger organization.
This ALA had been a particularly good on for me. It was great fun to room with Kaeley and to see so much of the ZSR group along the way. The preconference went really well, my discussion group had great conversations, and the booksigning wasn’t even too stressful! But even more importantly, it’s been filled with great conversation and great people and I’m feeling more reenergized than I have been in some time.
ALA snuck up on me this year, despite falling later on the calendar. This year is also a big one for me, as I had both a pre-conference and a book-signing on my calendar.
Kaeley and I flew in and are rooming together. We ran into Elisabeth Leonard and Beth Bernhardt at the GSO airport, and found out we were all staying at the same hotel. We were able to put our heads together for a remarkably smooth and quick trip from O’Hare to the hotel, with an exciting train ride along the way.
Once in town Kaeley and I checked in to the hotel and conference, walked around Millennium Park a bit, and practiced for our pre-conference. We got out for a late dinner at a cute grocery/cafe, and came back to rest up for the big day on Friday.
We practiced some more Friday morning before grabbing a quick lunch and heading over the the pre-conference hotel. We both agreed that a pre-conference is a long enough presentation that you really can’t practice very easily until you’re at the hotel with nothing on your calendar. Carving out three and a half workday hours would have been impossible, and running through a few times on a weekend would eat up a whole day! But once we were in Chicago, with nothing else scheduled, it was easy to fit in a few run-throughs.
We proposed our topic over a year ago, so it was nice that it was a more or less timeless one: Instructional Design for Librarians. We tried our best to model what we were teaching. We had a full house (we think 53) and the three and a half hours went by more quickly than we thought they might. The group was great and we got very positive feedback, which was really nice and rewarding.
Afterwards we headed to the LITA Happy Hour where we met up with Susan. It was a perfect way to unwind from the pre-conference, and we chatted with a few other LITA folks. After that we headed out from the LITA Happy Hour, had a leisurely dinner on the river, and came back for a fairly early night.
Saturday has been a big LITA day for me, mostly in the same hotel. First thing this morning was the Joint Interest Group and Committee Chairs meeting for LITA. The meeting is designed to keep LITA leadership in the loop for association news. I really like being at the table for the discussion. Some of the interesting news from the meeting: LITA membership is down slightly, but that is common when ALA raises dues (which it did). A majority of LITA membership is in the southeast. LITA’s working to “modernize the workflow” of program proposals, so this should get easier. If you have something techy to talk about, I bet there’s a way to do it with LITA. (Let’s talk if you do!) After the meeting I was able to connect with the person that needed to find out a bit more about my interest group for our renewal, so I was able to straighten everything out and we’re good for renewal.
After the chairs meeting, my LITA interest group met. This group is the Distance Learning Interest Group. Lauren Ray (of NC, but now in Seattle) co-facilitated and the discussion went really well. I bet we could have continued chatting if we all weren’t scheduled right away.
Now I’m sitting with REAL internet for the first time in days. I’m wrapping up a few things I needed to post online, and I’m headed to the LITA’s BIGWIG (Blogs, Wikis, etc, not actualBigwigs) group for the first time ever. Since it was formed I wanted to be part of it, but my calendar has always been packed so I’ve only participated virtually. It’ll be nice to actually be there. This evening holds a few receptions, so I’m hoping to cross paths with some ZSR folks at some point soon!
I am constantly impressed with Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology. I’ve been paying attention to them for a few years, but really became a fan after attending last year’s showcase. The showcase is really for the Duke community, though they’re kind enough to invite those of us who do this type of work, too. The presentations are all by Duke faculty for Duke faculty, focusing on really cutting edge or interesting ways of incorporating new technologies into the classroom. I normally feel really up on this type of thing, but both times I’ve come away with new ideas. The keynote is normally (at least based on the past two) a nationally known innovator in educational technology.
From the sessions I attended there were two main themes of the day:
There is a benefit to having the “real world” view student work.
Providing audio feedback allows you to give students more feedback.
I am totally down with theme number one. This is why I try to put so much of the courses I work with online in public places. This is one of the reasons I avoid traditional learning management systems (like Blackboard). Point two is new to me. Though I love multimedia, and think of it a lot for student assignments, I hadn’t thought about all that it could provide by incorporating it into my grading. I have a few FERPA related things I want to work through (for example, I would assume spoken comments are FERPA encumbered, so do we have to keep those off the network?) but I definitely want to find ways to incorporate this. It actually reminds me a bit of the old-school tutor model, where you could have conversations with students (or, at least, more conversational feedback).
Out of the showcase came a few things I want to try:
A syndication plugin for a blog, rather than using FriendFeed, for my next class
Voice comments in lieu of written comments
Another theme for me, though not a major theme of the showcase, was that information management issues are increasingly intertwined with educational technology issues. Again, this is one of the reasons why I tend to think that librarians are in an excellent place to lead here. As faculty start having questions about archiving, indexing, and preserving the scholarly material created by a class, librarians are in an excellent place to be able to answer them.
Great stuff, and certainly worth the drive! I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re up to next year.
Last week I attended TRI-IT, representing the library. Tri-IT is an informal group of people who work with instructional technology in Triangle and Triad universities. It’s a mix of people, from IS departments, from teaching and learning centers, and from libraries. Several of the Wake Forest University ITGs attended as well.
Blogs, wikis, and podcasting are still hot topics, as most of the sessions I attended focused on these tools. I participated in a panel discussing how different departments in different institutions address educational technologies, so I spoke on our support of our blogs, wikis, and podcasts, and talked about the cycle of experimentation, piloting, supporting, and hosting that we’ve developed for instructional technology.
The highlight of these meetings, for me, is the round-robin report, where each institution talks about what they’re working on. Most everyone talked about the economy and its impact on their work. Some are restructuring how they approach their work to streamline their services. Most are working with Blackboard 8 as well as piloting open source course management systems like Sakai and Moodle.
It was a good day, and I was glad to hear what everyone was up to. It was also nice to connect with some of the UNCG library folks in attendance and see other familiar faces. Duke said they’d host next time, so look for another report in the fall!
That doesn’t look like a whole lot, though so here’s the story :
Saturday started bright and early with a Roundtable that I co-facilitated with Lauren Ray of the University of Washington. The topic was Learning Objects, how they save time and can allow us to provide better service, and how collaboration between institutions and within them can help in their adoption. I felt like we had the internal collaboration down in the RITS group, and had good tips to share based on our experiences. Hopefully, those of us at the roundtable will collaborate ourselves… we came up with a few big-picture ideas that sound fun and useful.
Next up I participated in an ACRL Focus group for people under 35. It was a good session, focused on the changes that we’re expecting and are comfortable with, as well as things that could help improve the association and conference experience. Important questions when really useful, informal, and free professional networks are popping up online!
After that I heard a paper about assessment to innovation for interdiciplinary collaboration and knowledge sharing. Important stuff, and though the program was informative, I got in a minute late and knew from the beginning I want to read the paper to get the full story.
My panel was coming up, so I went to sit and prepare a bit when I ran into Molly Keener! We chatted for a while, which was fun. It’s always amazing to me how often you only chat with some of your local colleagues at conferences across the country. We’re going to have to get coffee in Winston-Salem sometime!
My panel was “Mapping Your Path to the Mountaintop.” Steven Bell organized the session, and he, John Shank, Brian Mathews, and I were on the panel. The session was about strategic career planning, but early on Steven was wise to begin discussion about how to make the session more interactive and interesting to the people who would attend. We had an audience of about 300 people, talked for short pieces, showed videos of other librarians who spoke for short bits, and made space for audience contributions. Afterward, people said very positive things. There is a very kind write up on The Sheck Spot. Somethings for me to keep in mind in the future, as so many of my professional talks are much less participatory.
Roz’s Google Docs talk was next on my agenda, so I went to hear hers. It was a very good introduction, with ideas for both people who had never heard of Google Docs to those who have already been using it for a while. She also got a laugh when “shushing” the audience.
Roz, Susan, Mary Beth, and I were navigating our way through the convention center when we ran into Jim Galbraith. It was good to catch up and see what he’s up to. I was sad to miss the WFU dinner, but was happy to be able to catch up with a friend from high school (and a Wake grad). And we all finished the day back at the Experience the Music Project and the Science Fiction Museum.
This morning I missed a session on information literacy assessment tools (so I’ll be listening to it on the virtual conference site) so that I could go to a session on User Experiences. Two of my co-panelists were on this panel. It was a great talk. Informative, interesting, and it made great use of slides.
After that, we had the great fortune to see Ira Glass speak. But before, the organizers had set up a slideshow of pictures, tweets, blogs, etc, all tagged with the official acrl2009 tag. It was great fun! I saw a bunch of my friends on the big screen and my Flickr ACRL album page was up there for a few seconds!
But the real show was Ira Glass. He gave a beautiful talk. He discussed the research process for his show, how to use narrative to make a point, and he declared war on the Topic Sentence format of writing. He’s good at telling stories (as This American Life listeners/viewers know), and he’s good at it on stage. He started with the lights down, just talking. He used that to make a point about intimacy and attention, but then broguth up the lights. He talked about using suspense and drawing in your audience. He had me rethinking how I give presentations and try to make points. Great stuff all the way around.
Now, I have some work type stuff to do, and some friends from past lives to meet. I’m supposed to write up the first time experience for ACRL, so I’ll try to finish that. The flight leaves in nine and a half hours, so I’ll most likely see you all on Tuesday.
ACRL has been a great conference for me. It’s amazing to be at a conference without any meetings, where the entire focus is on learning and meeting people. I’m looking forward to trying out some of what I’ve learned, and getting in touch with some of the people I’ve met. Good times!
Whew! It’s been a great day. As always, detailed notes are in my blog, and you’re getting the conversational perspective. If you want details, here they are:
This morning started out bright and early with the breakfast for scholarship winners. It was a great talk on Millennials, and focused on how libraries will need to change to meet the needs of incoming users. Richard Sweeney spoke from the perspective of University Librarian, researcher, and father of two Millennials. He clearly uses his research when putting together his presentation. It was informative, and active (even though there were over 100 people in the room. Lynda Kellam from UNCG was there, so it was great fun to catch up with her. Everyone was friendly and it was a great program.
After that, I went to a session on peer evaluation of teaching. I’m really interesting in assessment of instruction, and though peer review is stressful, I wanted to know how that works and how people use it to improve. The librarians at the University of Alberta have worked hard to create a program that minimizes stress for the observer and observed to truly give people feedback on their work. They’ve done their research, and their program looks good, particularly for their institution.
I headed to the convention center where I saw Roz, Mary Beth, and Wanda. It sounds like everyone’s doing interesting things… I’m loving all the blog posts. Though exhibits stress me out, I headed there next to wander through. They’re much smaller than the ones at ALA, and much more manageable. I saw the LITA people, which was fun. The Cyber Zed Shed (just for tech talks) was on the other side, so I sat for a while, charged up my battery, and saw how that type of programming works. I also ran into the organizer of my panel, and we chatted a little about what to expect.
The next session on my agenda was on focus groups, and it was really good! The presenters actually ran through a mock focus group as the majority of their presentation. When they explained their plan, I was not sure what to make of it: I normally hate anything “mock.” But after seeing the whole session, I think that it was great. The mock focus group clearly explained the process in a much more interesting and engaging way than just talking about it. On the way out I ran into Molly Keener who is presenting tomorrow during the same period that Lynn, Roz, and I are up.
I can’t come to Seattle without a vegan hotdog, so I took care of that at lunch, and when I got back into the convention center I ran into Lynn for the first time. Finally, in the afternoon on Friday, I had seen (or text messaged) all the WFU folks here!
I’m trying to catch at least one of every type of presentation here, so luckily, next up there were two papers on assessment. I went in, was scouting for a good seat and possible outlet, and then found Wanda! The papers were very good. The first was on findability of assessment information on websites and the second was on creating comprehensive assessment plans.
Next on the agenda was the Keynote by Sherman Alexie. Having missed the first one, and having heard amazing things about Alexie, I headed straight over and got a good seat near the front. Lauren Ray, organizer of my Roundtable in the morning and fellow Distance Learning Interest Group leader, was there, and we watched together. The talk was amazing: interesting, engaging, funny…I adored it. He clearly knew how to butter the audience up, though. He started up with how “there are thousands of hot near sighted women here!” and talked about his love for librarians.
Now, charging my battery a bit before the Chair’s reception. I think this reception is for people presenting at ACRL and I’m going to meet up with most of my panel people there for last minute file loading on our computers.
Tomorrow is my big day, with my roundtable and panel. I checked out the room where the panel will take place and it’s BIG. More on that tomorrow!
![[cupola]](/zsr/img/cupola.jpg)
