Professional Development

Roz, Susan and I started out the day with the “Chocolate, Wine and Waterfalls” tour. The tour was populated with two buses full of librarians, so I guess there were plenty interested here at the conference. (The tour of area glass blowing facilities, didn’t make it, however.) It was a fun and engaging tour of the region. I’ve been here to Seattle several times since both of my sisters live here, but hadn’t ever done a real organized tour combining these three fabulous things.

Roz and Susan sat together on the bus with me on the seat behind them so I had an opportunity to meet a librarian who sat down next to me. His name was Nigel, originally from Belfast, who used to work at Notre Dame, and now works as the Univesity Librarian at Franklin College in …wait for it…Switzerland! He was very easy to talk to, but somehow we never got around to sharing stories of challenges in libraries, aside from the economic situation, which is truly worldwide. Over lunch, we discovered he had worked with Caroline Numbers, and wrote her a letter of recommendation before she came to Wake Forest. Small world.

I think that Susan’s pics will tell more of the day than my words will, but aside from the fact that the tour was very rushed, (they planned too much, but needed to get back to the Conference Center in time for the Keynote speaker), it was well done. Expect some chocolate on our return!

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the keynote speaker, Rushworth Kidder. He was filling in for Naomi Klein, author of No Logos, and I had been looking forward to hearing her speak. We all agreed after Kidder’s speech that he did a good job. He clearly defined the problems of our time as attributable to a lack of ethics more than the result of economics or politics. He galvanized us to continue to cling to our ethical roots, and honored the profession of librarianship several times in his speech.

From there, we went to the Exhibits floor where I met up with several former colleagues from Wayne State. We had dinner at the hors d’oeuvres table. Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest.

I arrived in Denver, CO on Friday afternoon.After I unloaded my luggage at the hotel, I had dinner with Susan, Lauren C., and a couple of our Elsevier reps.On my way to dinner, I was happy to find a Starbucks near my hotel.

On Saturday morning, I went to the ACRL-Science and Technology Section All-Committees meeting.I am a member of the Membership and Recruitment Committee, and we discussed plans to create an ACRL-STS New Members wiki page, which would provide helpful information for those who are interested in joining a committee or becoming a chair of a committee.We also discussed plans to organize the New Members Breakfast, which is held every year at the ALA Annual Conference.

On Saturday afternoon, I attended the ACRL-STS Hot Topics Discussion Group.We discussed Assessment in the context of instruction.This topic has been on my mind lately, as I am planning to teach my second semester of LIB220.I shared my experience teaching LIB220 with my colleagues, and we had a lively discussion about various assessment techniques. I’m happy to share if anyone is interested in hearing more about what we discussed.

Next, I attended a discussion group on Embedded Librarians sponsored by the ACRL Heads of Public Services Discussion Group. One of my colleagues made a good point that Embedded Librarianship can inform our collection management decisions. They also provided a selected bibliography of publications about Embedded Librarians, and I will be happy to share this bibliography with others if anyone is interested.

On Sunday, I went to the Exhibits before my second committee meeting.This year, I am serving as Chair of the Scholarship Committee of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA).Every year, the Scholarship Committee selects a librarian to be sponsored by APALA in the ALA Emerging Leaders Program and awards a $1,000 scholarship to a graduate student in library school.More information on the APALA Scholarship is available at http://www.apalaweb.org/awards/scholarship.htm. I have served on the APALA Scholarship Committee since 2005, and I have really enjoyed working with my colleagues on this committee.

I stayed at the Curtis Hotel, which was a unique, fun hotel.It was great rooming with Lauren P. at the conference, and we were able to grab dinner a couple of nights.On Saturday night, I had dinner with Steve and Lauren P., and we also ran into Debbie Nolan after dinner. It was also nice seeing snow again this winter in Denver.Overall, it was an enjoyable, productive conference.