Tag: conference

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SLA All Sciences Poster Session

The All-Sciences Poster Session at the SLA 2009 conference was amazing.  Although not all of the posters represented cutting edge work,  I came away with several ideas to improve instruction, assessment and research collaboration at my institution.

Titles, authors and some abstracts for the session can be found here and here.

SLA 2009 Conference
SLA 2009 Conference

The first poster to get me thinking was from Brian Winterman and Jacquelyn Petzold at Indiana University,  “Desperately Seeking Science: Guiding Lower-Level Biology Undergraduates from the Textbook to the Bench through Focused Information Literacy Education.” They described a library instruction program for freshman biology students that had them looking at information resources starting with their textbooks, moving through online resources, encyclopedias, and and ending up at the peer reviewed literature. This was done over the course of the semester and was deeply enmeshed in the course content.  Since one of my summer projects involves developing some instruction content for freshman biology, this was great timing.

Another useful poster discussed the results of a faculty survey trying to discover what collaboration tools researchers were using.  (“Optimizing Intellectual Workflow: Which Collaborative Platform Works for You?” By Jay Bhatt, Dana Denick, Peggy Dominy, and Tim Siftar; Drexel University Libraries).  To summarize: they aren’t using any.  I can’t recall all the details, but most survey respondants weren’t using any of the new collaboration tools (2collab, Connotea, even Google Docs).  Many respondants indicated that they were still emailing documents as their only form of version control.  Since we are looking at ways to encourage collaborative research, I wondered if perhaps the library might be able to support faculty collaboration by introducing them to some of these tools.  In order for these tools to work, they need to fit in with the normal workflow of researchers.  A workshop might be able to introduce faculty to some of these tools, in order to see if any would work for them.

One of the wonderful things about poster sessions is the ability to really talk with the authors and ask detailed questions in an informal setting.  One of the bad things about poster sessions is when 12 other people want to talk with the same author you do.

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Embedded librarianship

The SLA session on this topic presented some information by 2007 SLA Research Grant recipients David Shumaker and Mary Talley on what an embedded librarian was, and was constitutes best practices among those who have successfully implemented the idea.

Presentation slides are available on David’s Blog, “The Embedded Librarian“.

I think this is what we are trying to do at my library – right now, we’re working on the “integrated library instruction” part, but I think we end up doing more than just instruction.

After identifying programs that were highly successful and those that weren’t successful, the researchers were able to identify common characteristics of successful programs.

  1. Successful programs promoted themselves – by word of mouth, by print advertising and other methods
  2. Successful programs evaluated themselves – have their numbers (documents delivered, workshop attendance, classes taught) increased?  Are they getting a good return on their investment?
  3. Successful programs offer a variety of services including in depth research, co-teaching with faculty, data analysis, ILL document delivery.
  4. And importantly, successful programs have strong management support – librarians have the freedom to set up these special services, user have the support of their management, and everyone has a strong commitment to continuing education

The program at my library has some of these characteristics: co-teaching, assessment, word of mouth advertising, and strong support of management.  We need to work on other aspects such as other types of advertising, and brining together multiple services.

It is great to see some real analysis of what practices can make a program successful.

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What a difference a baby makes

My baby
My baby

On a normal conference morning, my alarm would wake me up, I would shower and get dressed, have a quick breakfast and head to the convention center.  Today was not a normal conference morning.

With my baby in tow, I was awakened by her hungry fussing an hour before I would otherwise have awoken.  I fed the baby, changed her, used my breast pump, and played for a little while before my mom woke up.  After getting about we ate breakfast while trying to get the baby to nap at the same time.  Then I left the baby with my mother and headed to the conference.

My presence at this conference is only possible because my mother has graciously agreed to come to DC with me and babysit while I’m at the conference.  Hopefully next year, when I’m not nursing, it will be easier for the baby to stay at home with her Dad.

My mother’s presence is necessary because this conference does not provide a child care center.  This surprises me, especially since other professional conferences (including those in male dominated fields) often provide on site care (for a fee).

The one thing missing from this conference is those chance conversations at dinners and receptions and other informal gatherings – when I’m not in a session, I am heading back to the hotel to feed my little one and take care of her.

As a result, I get to hear about evening receptions and tours via twitter, instead of attending myself.

I am grateful that my mom is retired and excited to help me out for the week: I wouldn’t be here without her.

I wish this conference (and others) would offer more support for mothers with young children.  They are often at a point in their career when they could use all the benefits a national conference has to offer but cannot take advantage due to the challenges of conferencing-with-baby.