ACRL Conference

Last week, we attended the ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle. The programme structure is similar to IFLA's, where you have several sessions running concurrently and you get to tailor your conference experience to suit your interests.

I chose only papers to do with digitisation, Library 2.0 and the Digital Library.

Here are some points of interest I picked up:
The Library catalogue needs to function like Google. Students/staff aren't interested in thinking about what the library has, where it would be and how it might be organized. They want a search box to type in their search terms. University of Nebraska-Lincoln started addressing this by linking to all collections (traditional, digital, unsorted manuscripts…) through their catalogue. They've now progressed to providing one search box on their home page for all library collections.

EVERYONE uses CONTENTdm. Seems to be a standard here. One library has customized the interface to suit their needs, as they say it is weaker than other tools in terms of image display and for teaching uses.

I went to a number of presentations on Twitter for Libraries, Facebook and other social networking sites. Two papers stand out – those from Joseph Murphy of Yale University. He is interested in developing standards of practice for librarians using these tools. Also, staffing and workflow are a consideration. Although these tools are free through the web, they cost in terms of staff time.

A number of librarians have conducted studies of their student populations regarding how they use social networking sites. The need for these studies emerged from the realization that libraries were playing with these services and offering them without really knowing whether their students wanted them. (“If you build it, will they care?”) An overwhelming response to one of the studies regarding how students use Facebook for their academic needs was that they are not interested in getting to know the librarian (eg – through a Facebook Profile), but are very interested in having library applications via a Facebook Page.

I found out about 3 sites which can help with widget-building for our web page: Sprout http://sproutbuilder.com/, Widgetbox and Wix

Two presentations focused on the relationship between the Library and IT staff. The Library built relationships over time with IT staff by frequent face-to-face meetings, collaborative projects and serving on IT search committees. An interesting point was that merging isn’t necessarily the best option and that retaining the culture of each unit is important.

The presentation called “Subject Librarian 2.0” was very useful in terms of getting the ‘big picture’ and finding out what we should be aiming for. We can no longer think of our success in terms of how many resources we have. We now need to think of it in terms of the human element: how successful are our students/faculty? How productive are they? How much progress are they making? This talk also included this inspiring list of the skills we should have:

• Rigor
• Commitment to research and development
• Continuously assessing and evaluating services
• Marketing content and capacities
• Political engagement
• Able to manage projects
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Deep subject/technical expertise
• Leadership/inspirational
• Clear sense of mission
• Self vision
• Adequate base of knowledge
• Strategic positioning - are you clear about where you're going?
• Commitment to continuous improvement

WOW.