Take some time with this CFP; next May and November, respectively. ACRL is going to be in Indianapolis in 2013, and I challenge BGSU Librarians to get in there and ‘Imagine, Innovate, Inspire.’
Do you do instruction in libraries? Interested in submitting a proposal to a highly respected, very well run, very selective conference focusing on library instruction? Think LOEX. It will be held this May 3-5, 2012, in Columbus OH.
Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX) session and workshop proposals due Nov. 18, 2011. Full details at the conference website: http://www.loexconference.org/index.html
As Gwen and I are readying our binders, I’m getting a bit obsessed with binder styles. I was looking for something beyond the basic vinyl binder, but it’s tricky to find anything interesting in the 3″ and larger category. But, I just came across a blog post on this very topic (well, not necessarily taking the size into account): http://jdorganizer.blogspot.com/2007/03/3-ring-binders-now-we-are-12.html . Check out the Bindertek ones, in particular.
Call for proposals for ELI 2012 – due Sept 7
From their site:
“The ELI is a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to advancing learning through information technology innovation. The ELI Annual Meeting provides an opportunity for those interested in learning, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies to explore, network, and share.”
Virtual and face to face options for presenters.
http://www.educause.edu/ELI/EDUCAUSELearningInitiative2012/EDUCAUSELearningInitiativeAnnu/231227
Gwen and I spent some time finding this information for journals we identified as potentials for submitting an article. Since this is sometimes buried, this post is both a bookmark and a prod for selecting a journal and submitting awesome articles.
Journal of Academic Librarianship
Author instructions. 6 to 8 weeks to complete double blind-review. Click on the Author Information Pack at the top to get an easy to print set of information.
portal : Libraries and the Academy
Guidelines here: http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/guidelines.html
Portal makes pre-prints available online here:
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/portal_pre_print/current/
Double-blind peer review with response within 4 to 8 weeks. Declined articles come with recommendations for improvement or suggest another location for publication!
C&RL
Instructions for Authors: http://crl.acrl.org/site/misc/author.xhtml Double-blind process takes 10 to 12 weeks; after acceptance articles are published about 12 months later.
C&RL makes preprints available within days of acceptance here:
http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/recent
Preprints are posted months and months before publication–stay ahead
College and Undergraduate Libraries
Refereed, double blind peer-reviewed.
Instructions for authors here: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t792303993~tab=submit~mode=paper_submission_instructions
Journal of Library Administration
Peer reviewed.
Instructions for authors here: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t792306901~tab=submit~mode=paper_submission_instructions
Evidence based Library and Information Practice
Double blind peer review and firm decision expected two months after submission.
Submission guidelines here: http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/about/submissions
Barb Fister posted on the ILI listserv that Reference Services Review and JAL “allow authors to self-archive final versions (not the publishers’ .pdf but their final edited draft) so theoretically ALL of these articles could be OA if authors could be bothered to put their work online. Slightly less than half of librarians do this, according to a recent
(preprint!) study –
http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2010/09/14/crl-167.full.pdf+html”
We should try to do this too.
Open access options–C&RL is also open access as of April 2011.
Journal of Library Innovation (JOLI). Open access. Began in 2010.
Submission information. 6 to 8 weeks anticipated minimum review time.
Focus and scope
Library Leadership and Management
Author choice of peer review or editorial review announced in May 2011; time of review will vary. Open access.
Author instructions: https://journals.tdl.org/llm/information/authors
C&RL News
Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU) began shortly after Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX), and the two conferences have similar goals, providing a conference focused on instruction topics within libraries. WILU (pronounce it any way you like, although why loo? seemed to be the predominate pronunciation) was held this year at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Although the conference does not have a centralized permanent organizational structure like LOEX (based at Eastern Michigan University, and which also publishes not only conference proceedings but also monthly and quarterly newsletters), the WILU conference runs very well. WILU is planned by a group of volunteers each year, and this year expanded its audience to include public and school librarians as well as academic librarians; 170 librarians attended this year.
The keynote and closing speakers provided thoughtful bookends to WILU, beginning with brains and ending with heart, in the forms of “Brain Trainer” Brian Thwaits, and David Bouchard, a First Nations author of numerous children and adult books. The first set the tone of the conference by focusing on how people learn; this was echoed in several sessions I attended, including the hybrid poster/spotlight session.
Attendance gave me a chance to meet librarians at schools across Canada and the U.S., a great strength of this diverse conference. We face many of the same instruction challenges and had good conversations about how we are meeting them. I returned with great ideas and new approaches.
Dine-Arounds were advertised ahead of the conference for the second night, giving another opportunity to network.
As a presenter at this year’s conference, I was contacted by organizers at appropriate points in the timeline to keep me in the loop. I also appreciated the discounts on airfare offered by Canadian airline WestJet.
The conference was held on campus which helped keep the cost down, especially if you stay in the dorms. Breakfast and lunch was provided for the two full days of the conference, and a reception on the opening evening was more than enough for dinner; throughout the conference frequent snack breaks kept us fueled for further conversations.
Next year’s WILU will be held at Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta from May 23-25, 2012.
This was in AL direct recently…normally I would not repost but this came up on a recent search committee. A few people on the committee talked about how Skype will be the future of the traditional phone interview. If that’s where we are heading, start thinking about it now.
http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/ace-job-interview-skype/
Amy
From Library Orientation and Exchange (LOEX), a pretty constant call for proposals.
“Reach out to the LOEX membership and share your instruction ideas and innovations. The focus is on substantive, but practical articles, so do not miss an opportunity to share with others your interesting programs, experiences, ideas or insights. Submissions are relatively short: between 700-1500 words. Email loex@emich.edu if you have any questions. Deadline for the next issue: June 30, 2011.”
Anyone interested in working on getting some newsletter publications in this summer? Let me know…I’m a willing partner for this fast kind of stuff 🙂 Amy
Based on my experiences as a newer librarian attending the past two ACRL conferences, this one is well worth the price of admission. I found the second time around to be richer, and part of that relates to knowing a few more people in our field, running into them, and stealing them away for a quick chat or break.
Vendors! I don’t think the vendor part of conferences has come up on the blog before. A colleague not attending forwarded invitations to visit booths and hear about products, and I also received many many emails as well. Talking to some others at the conference showed me how others strategically plan their conference schedules around vendor events as well as sessions. An opportunity I missed last time by opting out of receiving emails from vendors, professional development live sessions and demonstrations can be paired with meals by certain vendors. Shorter demos are available in the vendor hall during free times in the schedule. If you want to know more about a product or publisher, this is a great time to find out immediately (and take a free pen or other tschotske, if that’s your thing).
At my second ACRL, I went to the first time attendees the first night of the conference and learned what ACRL folks want new people to know about and do at the conference (and be active in ACRL interest groups). The organizers actively encouraged networking, and clearly said if you are having a good conversation with someone, skip the next session you planned to attend and finish that conversation–you do not know where it will lead. This surprised me, but in this job market perhaps should not have. If personal connections can give you an edge, let you hear about a new opportunity, go for it. Newbies were encouraged to network throughout the conference with the goal of having conversations and gaining signatures to win a prize. For the next few days I heard these conversations so it seems to work; at one point someone joked that I was useless to her because I didn’t fit any needed categories on her sheet.
The following sessions made the strongest impressions on me and are things I would like to fiddle with in the next year; some were short presentations of technology, and some were 3 hour workshops. Part reminder and part accountability, here we go.
Cyber Zed Shed: Connecting through course guides. Some great ideas about how to use commenting features in course guides (presenter used Library a la carte) to engage students and learn their topics in their own words, without instructor intervention. This is a move I think I am ready for, and now I have an idea of how to incorporate that courses; I have targeted research methods and thesis courses to try this out in. I think this is part of the virtual conference; I would totally watch it again.
Workshops on Instructional design/making an online tutorial, and another on writing winning proposals and how to plan for presenting were also hits. Taking the time to walk through the process from start to finish and see the actual steps involved for creating a tutorial was great; working in small groups and getting my ideas out there was awesome. The reality of having all the technical design stuff done elsewhere is where the breakdown happens. Ways to make guides and tutorials accessible to different learners was extremely helpful and a big future consideration.
This post was delayed as I used the advice from the workshop on writing and giving presentations to review past proposals and write a new one for an upcoming state conference. Although not all the advice given at the workshop will apply to conferences with different criteria and expectations, the presenters were all incredibly strong and worth modeling. Presentation artifacts available here: http://acrlartofpresenting.wordpress.com/
A session on mentoring instruction librarians gave a unique perspective on how one library offers different levels of training, from one day to train the trainer sessions to an academy that spanned a semester, meeting on some weekends and putting new ideas into practice between meetings. This final idea, putting ideas into practice and reporting back, seemed the most viable to me. A paper presentation on assessing the skills of incoming graduate students was focused on how to make instruction more student focused than librarian focused. Meeting students where they are at, at any level of education, makes sense and is something that does need revisiting every few years. Our students are changing and we need to reflect on that and retool.
There was much more that I missed, and some of it was strategic; with the price of admission I get a full year’s access to virtual presentations that although I won’t be able to interact live, I will still be able to view and possibly have more time to ponder the ideas expressed.
Welcome to the afternoon session of the Future of Academic Reading!
Our experts today are Sue Polanka from Wright State and Amy Pawlowski from Cleveland Public Library. They’ll respond to comments from this morning and then engage in an open discussion with our attendees.
Amy worked for Overdrive, which offers the platform for most public library e-books. Now handles e-book collections at Cleveland Public.
Sue is a librarian at Wright State. Blogs at No Shelf Required (and edited book of same name about e-books, with a second part to come).
Amy: Will e-books lead to better dialogue between public and academic libraries? Since we’re all about instant gratification, what will the role of the library be when we have a 21-step process to download and read an e-book? Most of this morning’s panel members have Kindles, which don’t have library check-out options.
Sue: Right now, e-readers owners can’t do most of what they want because of publisher fears. Even if your e-reader has a browser, you can’t always get to read content meant for computer browsers rather than e-readers. Concern: e-books are blossoming, but the library is not yet part of the picure; people go elsewhere to find content.
Interactive textbooks formats like Inkling for the iPad and Nook Study are interesting new textbooks concepts, but what about accessibility issues? A lawsuit was filed recently on behalf of the blind against a university trying to replace textbooks with Kindles.
Many textbook publishers are creating a CMS-like environment for web-based textbooks. We also see a push for open access textbooks. Another angle is cheaper e-versions of textbooks as a compromise with publishers, since students would otherwise mostly buy used books and not give many new sales.
Question: Even many librarians seem not to be knowledgeable about the process of getting a library e-book onto a device with Overdrive. I gave up on it and use Adobe Digital Editions. How can we expect consumers to put up with this much hassle when buying e-book is so easy?
Amy: Overdrive uses Adobe Digital Editions itself, but it’s not clearly spelled out. It’s our only advocate for e-book checkouts for library, and publisher dealings are complex. This is our start; we’re still working out the kinks. Librarians need to take responsibility for their own education when it comes to understand how to use Overdrive.
Question: Harper Collins is limiting circulations on e-books at 26. What’s up with that?
Amy: Overdrive is caught in the middle. We have angry, boycotting librarians and desperate publishers trying to increase revenues.
From the audience: The pricing model is the problem for libraries. In the electronic journal arena, it costs less to publish electronically, but prices continue to escalate. If vendors lend libraries books, librarians will be re-buying books repeatedly. OhioLINK has worked by selling vendors on volume, and this should be our approach with vendors.
Amy: OhioLINK focuses on academic titles, which don’t have as much market outside the academic library world. If libraries say to vendors, “We won’t buy your books,” patrons will get them elsewhere.
From the audience: As faculty, most concerned about access. Access to textbooks, research, etc. Switched to open-source Sierf for textbook. Lacks things like quizzes at ends of chapters, but students seem to prefer this.
From the audience: Are e-book users already heavy readers, or are you trying to make converts? It seems most e-book users are already readers who like having an extra option.
Sue: Heard a student recently explaining that he grew up on print textbooks and will go right back to one as soon as any barriers emerge with electronic textbook.
From the audience: What does it mean to say “Turn to page 264” when everyone has a different device? How do I keep them together? Tried using Wikipedia, but it’s in flux, so it’s hard to have a standard test over it.
Sue: Many electronic textbooks don’t correlate easily with their own print versions–may have numbering, may not. Kindle just recently started using page numbes. ePub 3.1 will have page numbers but doesn’t now. Try using vetted electronic books through BGSU library rather than Wikipedia, such as Safari Books.
Amy: How do we let people know we have what they need? How do we make libraries sexy, like the iPad or Kindle?
Question: This morning, we saw two camps: annotaters and non-annotaters. What do you think about this kind of social connection?
From the audience: Sometimes students love an annotated used book, but others want a fresh copy to keep. There’s no one-size-fits-all.
Sue: I think most people don’t react too adversely to other people’s annotations. We have students now who make decisions only after consulting their social networks.
From the audience: Some topics are more “egalitarian” than others. For instance, David Foster Wallace’s works lend themselves to both scholars and regular readers trying to help each other out. Otherwise, I don’t want other people’s annotations interfering with my reading.
Question: Device preferences?
Sue: I own all the e-readers but read on my laptop. I also don’t read fiction now; no time. Like to use the iPad as a single device, rather than carrying around a stack of laptop, tablet, e-reader, phone.
Question: What can an e-reader do that a print book can’t?
Sue: 24/7 anywhere access. They don’t have to come in. Enhanced e-books can have audio, video, games, etc. built-in. iPad has many ehanced children’s book applications. Textbooks can have social elements, quizzes, etc. People always expect e-books to be cheaper, even though all these features cost money. Amazon’s pricing is really devaluing the development money that goes into them.
From the audience: Works because of sheer volume. Loss leader, too–eventually price is bound to rise.
Sue: There is an academic aggregator that, like Haper Collins, caps. But at 250.
Amy: One book, one user means that a large library buys multiple copies. Now we’ll have capping on top of that. It will interesting to see how collection development changes; will they buy fewer copies up front to save purchasing dollars for later? At the end of the day, I don’t think Harper Collins will see much difference in library sales.
Question: People are willing to pay much more for amazing apps, so maybe enhanced books should be marketed more as apps.
Amy: Is it a book anymore? No one knows where this is going. Remember Rocket Books, very early e-books? Very big in public library space for a while, and now no one has heard of them.
Sue: We’ll have completely new devices in five years.
Amy: We should be buying and circulating e-readers, showing people options.
Question: How did you pick what to get for Wright State e-readers?
Sue: Chronicle of Higher Ed publishes what students are reading. I took those, eliminated political books, and bought those. Also, required reading for first years and community read, and some classics. No academic titles. Buy in e-readers in packs of six; Adobe Digital Edition lets you use the license six times for one account.
From the audience: Do you buy the same titles in print?
Sue: No. E-readers circ for seven days and can be renewed if there are no holds. Readers are in catalog, with named of device as title and loaded works in notes field. E-readers are our sexy right now; why not bring them in?
Amy: Remember when we started putting PCs in public libraries, and some librarians were like, we don’t do that? Now that’s one of our mainstays.
Sue: We don’t allow downloading of new titles. Device is connected to your credit card, so you can hook it to a disposable credit card to get around that. Duke University will take requests and download title as you are checking out device. They also do full OCLC cataloging records.
Question: Is checking out Kindles allowed?
Sue: No one has been reprimanded. 🙂 Overdrive has been trying to come up with a certified e-reader for library use that accounts for multiple users. When that comes out, it will probably become the device of choice for public libraries.
Discussion
Sue: Has anyone charged their mind about e-readers?
From the audience: Should have one just to stay informed, as a librarian.
Amy: The e-ink likely matters more to people older than college students, whose young eyes don’t care. Which is another good reason to let people try them out.
From the audience: I prefer the backlit Nook Color, because I can adjust colors to what is easy on my eyes.
From the audience: Deep readers vs. people who like the hyperlink experience–even among adopters of e-readers, this is a strong divide.
Sue: Quote: “I don’t want my book to tell me I have email.” Quote: “After the 3rd-graders played with the enhanced books on the iPad, they wanted to keep reading.”
From the audience: Do you see publishers releasing enhanced and regular versions of books?
Amy: Some children’s books are. Textbooks could be.
From the audience: Can you choose your dictionary on an ebook?
Sue: Usually come with three or four. You can also buy one and make it your default.
From the audience: Do you see stacks of e-books being handed out in classrooms?
Sue: Already happening!
Amy: One-to-one is the language; one device per student.
From the audience: How do you get the content on every device?
Sue: Power of six! You get six devices per account, and there’s no magic button yet to sync them all up.
From the audience: Vinyl records come with a digital copy; maybe that’s the future of print books.
Sue: Many libraries buy this way from publishers, in bundles.
Amy: Backing up, what do we want these e-books to do? Cater to current users or bring in new ones?
From the audience: I read a lot more, in spare moments. I’m a reader getting more.
Sue: Several times, people have mentioned reading in small bites. Daily Lit sends out a little bit of a book every day for people like you.
A Library Writer’s blog Dolores’ List of CFPs ProfHacker Academic Writing Librarians