shinylib

Innovative Approaches: Shaking, Sharing, & Spanning

This group of presentations was the first of the sessions I attended. On the whole I didn’t find anything that I can really apply to my environment. I was pleased to see an example of how another library has used video teleconferencing to provide reference service. This has come up a few times now, but I don’t think it will work for PCC…at least not any time soon. It seems expensive and like something that is really going to work for some extra large agencies, but again not too much for us right now.

Here are my notes, slides will be available at BCR soon. Continue reading…

“Reference in the Age of Wikipedia, Or Not…”

David W. Lewis of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis was the keynote speaker for the Reference Renaissance conference. His talk was good, but didn’t inspire me the way I was hoping. Perhaps it was the style of the address: mostly using a lot of quotes from other notable thinkers in the field. I was hoping for more synthesis… slides will appear at BCR later. Apologies, my notes are fairly jumbled and you’re probably better off waiting for the slides. Continue reading…

Things to do in Denver yadda yadda

Arrived in Denver with significantly less drama than was involved in getting to Anaheim.* The Reference Renaissance doesn’t actually begin until tomorrow but today held registration and a reception, replete with mediocre snacks and pricey booze. I digress, the snacks are not the reason I’m writing.

You know I seldom wax personal here at shinylib, but I have some personal reflectin’ to do. It’s necessary sometimes.

I went out with friends and colleagues this evening for dinner and such and as always happens I tell a lot of stories. (I’m not a player I just talk a lot… a ha ha) Anyway, I was talking about experiences I have had in the recent and less-recent past and I realized (again) that I can be a total ass sometimes. This isn’t really news, but it’s a good thing to reflect on from time to time and to keep in check.

It’s interesting to me how I can leave all most of my judgments at the door when I go to work. I’m not there to stress you about anything, my job is to help make your life easier and I love that you might get to learn something new. But when I’m not on the clock? I’m like a lot of people in our profession, I’m sure: hyper critical and especially snarky about things I find less-than. The world and it’s people frustrate me and don’t behave according to logic and it makes me cranky. It’s temping to say, “Well, I’m not a librarian all the time,” and just dismiss it, but I’m not sure that I’m not a librarian all the time. I don’t shut her off at the end of the work day and leave her in my office. Maybe I should, but I don’t know how.

Anyway, I was reminded tonight that people are more apt to learn things when you’re not an ass during the delivery. Well, the message was more eloquently put, but that’s the sentiment. It’s so easy to remember this when I’m at work, but I need to work on transferring this to my personal life. I’m sure that given time it will make me less $^$%&#@$%* and that could be a good thing. Work-life balance, yanno?

That’s enough personal reflection. More later on conference happenings. Needless to say I’m going to a LOT of virtual reference sessions. That is both good and bad. Good because it’s something I dig, bad because while I’m doing that I’m not getting informed on other realms. Good things I have 2 colleagues here from PCC with me, we can share the knowledge.

*What, I haven’t told you about the near mid-air collision?! Ask me about it sometime…

experience economy @ your library

While I was at ALA I attended the BIGWIG unconference and had a great conversation with David Lee King and other unconference participants about the ideas of experience economy and community development within your digital community. For example, consider the idea of Build-a-Bear (those creepy overpriced bears that you stuff on your own). It costs so much more money to build a bear than it does to just buy a plush bear from somewhere. The idea is that people want to buy the experience, if you just wanted a bear you’d go to HugeBoxStore and buy one for 8 bucks. What you’re really paying for is the experience of choosing fur, stuffing the thing yourself, selecting your own beady little eyes, and having it all stitched together within the hour: customization. Experience economy tells us that people are in search of more than a service, more than a product. Continue reading…

Wrapping up

It’s always a bit sad to leave conference. You make new friends, see old friends, and generally have a sleepaway camp feel about the whole event. At least that’s how I feel about the time spent.

Yesterday I went to the ACRL Science and Technology section (STS) program on innovation in science learning and the ACRL President’s Program. The President’s program speaker, Dan Ariely, was really interesting. So much so, in fact, that I was motivated to buy his new book. I’ve never really done much thinking from the behavioral economist perspective and his talk was quite fascinating. For me, the biggest Ah Ha! was related to the idea of free and what that means to people. Dan suggested that if a person buy’s a gym membership, but fails to use it, you motivate them to come back by reminding them that they are ripping themselves off each month for $__. In the library environment we tend to remind people ad nauseum that what we are providing is free. So, rather than emphasizing that the students have access to x number of databases for free, we need to emphasize that x  percentage of their tuition is spent on databases and they are in fact wasting $__ by not using them. Or something that that effect, he does a much better job with it.

Ironically, this is similar to something I do in the classroom all the time—and I was worried I was doing it wrong. I tell students all the time that our resources are incredibly expensive, certainly not free, and mostly paid for by them. I just don’t emphasize that they are losing out in a financial sense if they don’t use them.

The STS program was interesting although I felt that Felice Frankel, the first presenter, did not have anything for me that I could apply in the library or classroom. She’s the author of several books and is a well-known scientific image creator/photographer. It seemed the session was largely intended to promote her new book of scientific images. The imagery is stunning, don’t get me wrong, and even the concepts around science instruction. I guess I was just missing the bits on science and IL instruction—on a community college library budget. Here’s what there is from my sparse notes… Continue reading…

notes from Anaheim

Just a quick note from Anaheim to say that our ACRL 101 program went off without a hitch. I am so pleased and proud of the work of all of the Emerging Leaders in my group. Planning a national conference program was a totally new thing to me but I think it’s a skill set that I can really get a lot of mileage from.

Had dinner with Kevin and Sara Ryan last night. That was a blast. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and my lack of dinner company when Kevmo came through with the plan to meet at the Hilton. Sara and I have crossed paths a few times at conferences but never actually hung out. Holy mess, I hope to put in more face time with this powerhouse sometime. Our blends of ridiculous hilarity mesh very well…and there were $9 potato chips!

After dinner and assorted hijinks we parted ways about 10:30 last night…and I promptly got really lost and end up walking all over hell and gone. After uttering the words, “I don’t get lost at conferences too often,” I suppose it’s what I get. In either case I have some gnarly blisters to show for it.

There really haven’t been any groundshaking (for me) sessions just yet. Today I’m off to check out a program on the future of face to face reference and then some research into reference services. After that, it’s an ACRL membership advisory committee meeting and presentation (by me, eek).

Webvisions podcasts

Webvisions podcasts are now up at http://www.webvisionsevent.com/wp/?p=65. And on that note, I’m too lazy to finish those session reviews. Email me if you want my notes. (:

Webvisions: Design is in the details

These guys win my award for best presentation slides of the entire conference, no contest. Sadly I can’t give them the same award for polished verbal presentation, but you can’t winnem all, eh? I wasn’t really sure whether the schtick about forgetting who was presenting which slides was authentic disorganization or a poorly executed attempt at humor. In any case…

Design is in the Details, presented by Bryan Veloso and Dan Rubin focused on how the tiny details are what distinguish a good design from a great design. You can check out the entire presentation at their site, Design is in the Details.The presentation focused on the essentials of good design feel: layout, type, and pixels.
Continue reading…

Webvisions: Hacking the enterprise with social media

DL Byron is nothing if not a nut. He’s the geek behindTextura Design,and the co-author of Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business. He runs the srs bike culture blog, Bike Hugger and does cool stuff like host Twitter giveaways at conferences. To be clear, I like any dude who starts a presentation by encouraging the audience to do epic shit. Although I didn’t really get all of the aspects related to hacking the enterprise, DL did give a decent seat-of-his-pants overview of 2.0 social stuff, peppered with such phrases as “Yeah, you gotta pursue your vision — stuff you love, and rock it hard.”
Continue reading…

Webvisions: Blogging for a living

Blogging for a living: Taking your skills to the next level

Jim Turner, founder of Bloggers for Hire and creator of the Genuine Blog (a “Daddy blog”) spoke about the challenges and triumphs of blogging professionally. He suggests that there are significant differences between those seeking to blog part-time and those looking for full-time professional blog-writing gigs.
Continue reading…