ACRL 2009 in Seattle, Washington

It has been about a month since ACRL 2009 in Seattle but spring break was right after the conference and it takes a little time for all that I learn and see to sink in. I thought the conference overall was very well organized and engaging. I was very pleased about the green theme and happy to see the green practices being followed through with during the conference.

The location of the conference was excellent since it was in the beautiful waterfront city of Seattle. I did see the famous Seattle Public Library and was quite amazed and the modern architecture and design of the building. There were many patrons busy using the resources when I went in to tour it. Below is a photo I took of the "Living Room" area on the the 3rd floor of the Seattle Public Library.



I attended a little bit of all the different types of presentations. I saw a couple of Cyber Zed Shed presentations which were 20 minute presentations about how libraries are using different new technologies. Nedra Peterson, the Director of Woodbury Library in Burbank California, had great ideas to make instruction classes more engaging and memorable by using video or audio clips from popular movies or songs that reference research related topics. Her presentation was called Popculture Multi-Media and Library Instruction.

She pointed out that the emotions invoked by the media clips can help students identify with the content you are presenting which will help them remember it better. She mentioned using clips from the movie School of Rock, the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a music clip from a Green Day song. Now hopefully I can keep my eyes and ears open and be as creative as Nedra is about finding research related clips to use for my library instruction classes. Thanks for the great ideas!

Another Cyber Zed Shed presentation I saw was iMacros presented by Todd Quinn at Northern State University. iMacros extension is a very efficient Firefox extension that you can use to create a series of search steps into one click. Or in other words, it is a little program to perform repetitive, multi-step tasks on your browser. Quinn said you could use it as a poor librarians federated search. iMacros that you make can also be bookmarked on your computer or on sites like delicious and shared with others. This handout has a link to the Firefox iMacros extension and other important info to get you started using iMacros. Also, Quinn's LibGuide page at Northern State has a list of other useful tools he has presented about at other conferences. Thanks Todd!

See you all in my next post when I talk about some of the contributed and invited papers as well as panel discussions I attended at the ACRL 2009 conference.

LOEX of the West 2008 in fabulous Las Vegas

After a little more than a week of being back from the LOEX of the West 2008 conference at the fabulous UNLV, Las Vegas, I have had some time to think about and summarize my experience. Just like I went there hoping for easy wins, I also went thinking I would get some easy answers to my ongoing search for adding engaging activities or games into my library instruction courses that I teach here at Alkek. On both counts I was wrong. As far as winning, I did come out ahead, but only thanks to the awesome roulette and blackjack lessons that we were given at the LOEX reception which took place at UNLV's International Gaming Institute in the Casino Lab. As far as getting quick and easy ideas for games I could use in my instruction sessions, I got ideas to help me think of my own games or tutorials but no easy handouts.

The first Session I attended was A Library of Learning Objects: Teaching Tools to Quickly Tailor Instruction and Meet Class Needs presented by Lori Mardis, Information Librarian, Northwest Missouri State University and Connie Ury, Library Outreach Coordinator, Northwest Missouri State University.

They basically talked about project management and how to think of instruction in smaller parts that you could piece together later for fast complete sessions. They use flash tutorials made by student interns. The tutorials allowed for multiple learning styles to be addressed as well as quick ways to customize instruction sessions. The tutorials could also be used outside of the classroom accessible via the web.

Beating the Odds with the Insider's Scoop: Tips and Tricks from the Library Secrets! Librarian
presented by Jennifer Kelley, Resident Librarian, College of DuPage was a case study of Kelly's implementation of Web2.0 tools, including a blog, and other marketing techniques to increase student awareness of the library and all it had to offer.

I was happy that our library is already doing this as well as engaging in other Web2.0 activities. We have a delicious site, Facebook group, MySpace page, Flickr account and have a YouTube Channel where we post our tutorials and other vidoes. We use instant messaging for reference questions and have two blogs, the Alkek Library News & Research Help Blog and our Information Literacy Blog that you are reading right now! Needless to say, we are very into Web2.0. In fact, three of the librarians here at Alkek, including me, just presented a staff development workshop entitled Web 2.0: What is it and Why Should I Care?

More about LOEX in the next post...

Interesting new tool--Glogster

I was churning through the web looking for something new, and I stumbled on something I had never seen before--Glogster. It's a social poster site. Poster, as in graphics, and multimedia. I just signed up, and haven't made anything yet, but I can totally see using these as part of my teaching repetoire. Apparently it is supposed to be very easy to make them, even if one does not know HTML.

Now, I am probably the last person in the universe to have seen this website, but nevertheless I was so interested I just had to blog it.

I can immediately think of a few ways to use this in IL instruction:

• an assignment for students in IL classes (have students make one)
  
• a quick and cool way to make posters to illustrate concepts for each class I teach.
  

I also think it would be great as well for those who are very visual in their learning styles.

I was particularly intrigued by Cybrarian's Glogs. I think i feel inspired to go make one for next week's classes.