• Identity work is key to becoming a good teacher - Often librarians look for tips or tricks to improve their teaching and magically help them become good teachers. While a big part of teaching is having different pedagogical tools and methods to draw on, even more important is discovering who you are as a teacher. You need to understand your own strengths an shortcomings and ways that you are most effective in the classroom. No two people teach the same way and the most important work a teacher can do is internal.
• Bring a skill-share mentality - Char Booth in her awesome keynote presentation briefly touched on this but I also saw it echoed and debated in other sessions. As teachers we are all in this together. We are all at different points and have had different experiences and we need to learn from one another. Instead of creating your instructional materials or lesson plans in a vacuum, share them with your colleagues. Instead of worrying about other people judging you, recognize that everyone has something to learn and has to start somewhere. By sharing our skills we can all become more effective.
• Storytelling - To be an effective presenter and teacher you need to tell stories. Stories create resonance among people and allow us to connect to the topic. They help you seem more authentic in the classroom…another human being. Information can be communicated much more effectively in stories. As opposed to simply telling people statistics about something like tides or stellar life being able to put it into a visual narrative can be much easier to understand.

I presented on using Mobile Phone Polling to increase student engagement in the classroom. The session was a lot of fun and I always get new ideas from talking to audience members.

In addition to presenting I attended a lot of awesome sessions. Some of my highlight’s of the conference include:

• Your Library Website Stinks and it’s Your Fault - This presentation by Matthew Reidsma is about web usability, focusing your web presence, and the importance of improving your library web site.
• An Introduction to Design Thinking Workshop - Paul Zenke facilitated a fun, hands-on, engaging workshop on user experience and the using the design thinking process to create solutions for libraries.
• An Introduction to jQuery Mobile: Creating Simple Mobile Webpages - A solid workshop and good resources by Brooke Bergantzel and Ian Mason on how to get started creating mobile websites using jQuery mobile (it’s really pretty easy if you know HTML/CSS!)
• Library Data and Student Success - a presentation I heard a lot about (I was presenting at the same time so didn’t see it). Some U of M folks collected pre-existing data from circ stats, analytics, workstation usage, etc. to correlate library usage with student success.

I would recommend this conference to anyone interested in library tech. The keynotes were really inspiring, especially the one from Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium. I will definitely keep this on my radar for future conferences.

Image CC on Flickr by Gregg Obst

Next month Library Journal and Temple University are going to be hosting an event called The Future of the Academic Library Symposium: Bridging the Gaps, and I am a panelist during one of the morning sessions. This is the second year that LJ has held this symposium and it seems like a great event. Not only are there a lot of great folks on the panels who I really respect and love hearing speak (like Erin Dorney, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Jenica Rogers, Aaron Schmidt, and Courtney Young), but it’s also FREE. If you are in and around the Northeast area you should definitely try to make it. Did I mention it’s FREE?

As for the segment that I am in, it is focused on people and is about strengthening the culture in the library. Here’s the brief description:

“Why can’t my colleagues tolerate change?” Don’t these new librarians realize how we do things here?” “How come the deadwood always rejects my great ideas?” “Technology? That’s the new librarian’s job.” Our academic libraries can become fraught with misunderstanding and stereotypes about our colleagues, and when the gaps grow wide they lead to organizational dysfunction. To build better libraries we must confront these gaps. Doing so requires that we engage in authentic conversation focused on creating a better understanding of each other. Once we learn to appreciate our differences, and how our organizations thrive from the mix of skills we bring to it, we an begin to bridge the culture gap.

I am really excited about my co-panelists and the topic that we’re discussing. This summer I volunteered to participate in a 25 hour intensive program about intercultural understanding at Champlain College. We had amazing discussions, watched videos, read articles, debated one another, and gave presentations. Ultimately I think many of us came to a better understanding of our own lenses through which we see the world as well as the lenses of others. After the experience I feel a lot more empowered to have conversations about different cultures and how we can go about bridging the gaps.

I’m looking forward to 11/11/11 in Philadelphia. Hopefully I see you there!

image from Susan Sharpless Smith on Flickr

ACRL 2011 wrapped up this past weekend and much like the last time I attended, it was a great conference. There was a lot of great content and ideas in the papers, panels, posters and Cyber Zed Sheds. There were also some excellent keynotes that challenged us to think outside of the echo chamber of the library world. But my favorite part of ACRL conferences are the people and the networking that goes on. I love connecting with smart, like-minded people who are thinking about the same problems that I am. I got a lot out of the conference and figured I would share a few of the ideas that got my mind buzzing:

Planned abandonment

One great session I attended was called When Interdependence Becomes Codependence: Knowing When and How to Let Go of Legacy Services by Katherine Furlong and Mary Evangeliste. I’ve thought a lot about the idea of dropping services, but this presentation really brought the idea home for me. Libraries often keep adding new services, but we rarely drop them. We need to examine services from time to time to see if they are still really best serving our users. The presentation drew from literature in the field of management and exhorted people to ask two big questions of their current services: “would we do this service again” and “is it still relevant?”

Image is important

Clinton Kelly talked about how to be stylish. But he also talked about why style counts. On a personal level, Kelly says that image is important because “how you dress tells the rest of the world how you expect to be treated.” This can also apply to the profession as a whole. The way we act and present ourselves will be how others treat us. If we are quiet or deferential we’ll be treated accordingly, but if we own our expertise as information professionals and assert that expertise, then students, faculty, and administrators will treat us as such.

Intentional Innovation

David Dahl, in his session Lightning in a Bottle: Managing Ideas to Spur Innovation, discussed innovation, but he didn’t use it as the buzzword that it is often used as these days. He talked about it as an intentional process as opposed to something that just happens. It’s something that can be fostered and recreated. We need to set aside time just for idea generation. He also said that there must be people who select and champion ideas or the ideas will never go anywhere. In addition, ideas come to us all the time, but if we don’t purposefully collect these ideas, we’ll lose them. Having a process and structure in place are necessary in order to consistently generate and implement useful new ideas.

There was so much awesome stuff going on it couldn’t all make it into this post, but there’s another great writeup over at Library Journal . Did you attend in person or virtually? What was an insight that you had?

image by Michael Parker on wikimedia commons

The ACRL national conference is upon us once again. If you’re going to the city of brotherly love, I’d like to invite you to come check out a panel that I am on with two amazing librarians. Carissa Tomlinson is an emerging technologies librarian at Towson University, and Catherine Johnson is an instruction and reference librarian at the University of Baltimore.

What: In the Spirit of Ben Franklin: 13 Virtues of Next Gen Librarians

Where: Philadelphia Convention Center, room 201 B/C

When: Thursday, March 31st at 10:30am

We’ll be talking about what a next-gen librarian is and what sort of virtues they should aspire to. But we won’t have the last word. In this interactive (hopefully really fun) session, we’re going to ask for your feedback and come up with other virtues together. Folks can participate in the conversation by using the Twitter hashtag #libvirtues. Here are just a couple example of virtues that we will be discussing:

Flexibility: Librarians can’t afford to be myopic or stubborn in this current environment. Things are constantly changing — not just technology but also things like publishing models. The Harper Collins fiasco is just one example. In order to be well positioned in the future and avoid becoming obsolete, next-gen librarians will need to have the ability to quickly adapt to all the changes going on around us.

Courage: Next-gen librarians are going to be folks who need to take risks. Inventing the future of librarianship won’t always be easy, and sometimes it may be scary. But in order to best serve our users, we are going to have to work on getting over the fear of failure and doing awesome things in spite of that fear.

Hopefully this peaks your interest and gets the wheels turning in your brain about what sort of qualities are necessary in the current era of librarianship. We’ll be asking audience members to propose their own virtues, so get thinking. See you in Philadelphia!

My drawing of a lesson from Parker Palmer

I’m at ACRL Immersion this week which is fortunately in lovely Burlington, VT at Champlain College. It is overwhelming and I’m meeting tons of people and getting tons of information. I’m actually squeezing this post in between dinner and yoga. I wanted to take some time to reflect on my experience so far though and share things I’ve found helpful for immersion and my career.

• Take time to reflect – That’s what I’m doing right now. Here at Immersion I try to squeeze in precious minutes to reflect on what I learned and what it means to me. But this should be done at work to. Reflect on what you’re doing. Take a step back and look at the big picture. Take time to just think and not necessarily be creating something. Have your students in class reflect too. That’s where ideas can be born and meaning can be found.
• Real experts don’t sit at a desk, they talk to people in the world – I got this from a great video we watched about the design company IDEO. You can theorize all you want, but the real information is out in the world. We make assumptions about students all the time, but rarely examine them or ask their opinions. I know I want to take more time talking to students about assumptions or just observing people when I get back.
• The people you surround yourself with make a difference – Immersion is tons of work and it’s easy to get tired and less engaged. But the people here are a self selected group. They’re people who wanted to come to improve their teaching. The other Immersionites are engaged, participating, or even asking me questions. They push me when I’m tired and help make me better. If you surround yourself with engaged, curious, dynamic people it helps you to be better and improve.
• Stay passionate, keep things fresh – Burnout happens. I’ve only just celebrated my second year of librarianship, but over time things can get stale and you can become burned out. You need to work on keeping your passion alive. Keep your teaching or your job fresh. Try new ideas often. Try out some different technology or slides in the classroom. Experiment and be willing to fail.

There is tons more I’ve taken in still have three more days. I highly recommend Immersion to anyone though. And for people who have attended or are currently attending I’d love to hear other things you’ve taken away or advice you might have.

flickr creative commons from Honou

Everyone loves stories. Whether it’s your children listening during story time, your mom reading a mystery novel, your dad reading the morning newspaper, or your friend telling you about their crazy weekend, stories grab our attention, help us relate to others, and transport us into new situations.

Stories can help convey your message in a way that a simple relation of facts cannot. Listening to Ira Glass, of This American Life, deliver a keynote speech this year at the ACRL National Conference made me realize how powerful stories can be. The way he works is that he relates a narrative with a certain direction and breaks it up every now and then with a bit of insight or something with emotional meaning. The story doesn’t even have to have a specific point or moral, just a direction.

Narrative is powerful because that is what our life is—a giant story. It goes in a specific direction but we’re never sure what is going to happen next. There is also (hopefully) some meaning and insight thrown in along the way. This is why everyone easily relates to stories and they’re a large part of any culture.

I listened to business consultant Stephen Shephard talked about something similar last week at a conference called Leadership in a Connected Age. He said that to be an effective leader one needs to create a vision for the future of your organization so remarkable that people can’t help but ask “what can I do to make this a reality?”

This is very similar to telling a story. You’re crafting a vision of a possible future that people can relate to. Rational arguments are important, but they don’t have the power of a well fashioned story. Whether it’s a vision of the future or a spy thriller, their power lies in that we put ourselves in those situations. That is why our heart races a little at horror movies. You identify with the person getting chased by zombies.

Therefore, the story should not be overlooked. It should consciously be used as a tool in your personal in professional life. You can use it to lead as in Shephard’s idea of a vision for the future. You can also use it to market your services to users. Tell the story of what you are doing. Make a video, use social media, relate what you or your institution is accomplishing by using narrative.  Your users will feel that much closer and be able to relate better with you and what you’re trying to achieve.

One of the keynote speakers Steve Shepard has some really useful ideas about how to lead and create the future for your organization. If you want to learn more about his ideas I would urge you to check out some of his articles (especially the one on The Reverse Engineered Future).

He gave a great quote by Alan Kay. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” This was primarily the theme of what he was talking about—creating a believable, exciting vision for where your organization.  Then it should be easy to get people to follow you and build momentum. The other quote he gave was from the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will take you there.” It is essential to have a clear vision to be able to innovate and stay relevant.

He also discussed the power of harnessing the crowd. He gave the example of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. You would always want to ask the audience over phoning a friend. Crowds are smarter than individuals. Use this to your advantage, and don’t underestimate the power of crowds.
You don’t always want to be a part of the crowd though.  Shephard said, “That warm sensation of everything going well is just the body temperature at the center of the herd.” It is also necessary to get out there and take risks. Create an environment in which failure is welcomed. Failure is the only path to innovation, and without innovation organizations become irrelevant.

There was also a lot of discussing about different social media tools. Cathy Resmer hosted a great session where she outlined a number of tools and best practices. But as Elaine Young a professor here at Champlain college states, “not everyone is using social media.”

This is very true, and it is important to keep in mind when engaging your users. Sure you’ll want to use some social media tools to engage your patrons, but also have some low tech options. Sit down and talk to a group of your patrons. Have conversations where they are. Use all the tools at your disposal, even if that tool is just a phone or you asking someone in person for feedback.

The 2009 ACRL New England Chapter conference was entitled Are you being served? Customer satisfaction and library service. I believe this theme of customer service  is becoming increasingly important, not only in libraries but in business as well.

The morning worskshop I attended was presented by Sara Laughlin, and it was called Tools for Understanding Your Customers. It was a hands on workshop in which the participants learned different ways to find out information about who their customers are and what they want. She broke down market research into six approaches:

• Survey
• Existing Data (yours and others’)
• Interview
• Focus Group
• Observation
• Comments/complaints

We were able to look at these approaches in depth and recognize the pros and cons of each. Understanding your patrons is key to serving them well. Libraries need to use marketing tools just like other businesses so they can know and tailor their service to their patrons.

The annual business meeting followed lunch at which I was recognized for being awarded the ACRL National Conference Scholarship. This scholarship allowed  me to attend both this conference and the ACRL National Conference in Seattle, for which I am truly grateful.

The afternoon consisted of a plenary session in which all the people who attended different sessions brought their findings and questions together to share with the group. They also used Twitter to enhance the session and projected tweets onto the big screen, which I thought was an excellent addition to the discussion.

I found Anne Washburne‘s insights to be the most helpful. She said that “people are forgetting how to be nice to each other.” Customer service is about treating people with kindness. But this also applies in your workplace. She stated that anyone can be a change agent, just by owning their work environment and being positive. This means not going into work making excuses and complaining but coming in purposefully everyday and realizing that everyday you can make a change. I know I was a little inspired.

The conference wrapped up with a social hour which I thought was very beneficial. I was able to meet a lot of different people from around New England who are doing some pretty cool things. I also may have volunteered for helping to get a stronger ACRL-NEC presence in Northern New England. I know that even in the Burlington area we have five colleges and we do not collaborate as much as we should. I would like to see a stronger cohesion and simply more conversation among us simply because I think we can learn a lot from each other and it would allow all of us to serve our customers better.

I have found Twitter to be really useful for conferences in terms of both networking as well as a perpetual awareness tool. By searching for the #acrl2009 tag on Twitter Search I was able to see what other people were thinking and doing in the conference. I could even see the thoughts of people who were in the same room as me attending the same presentation and have a discussion twenty chairs away without being disruptive. I can see why Twitter is growing so fast.

The all conference reception held at the EMP/SFM. There was a lot of awesome music paraphernalia as well as enough sci-fi and robot artifacts to keep any geek drooling. But there were also massive amounts of librarians dancing. I know from my grad school experience at UW-Madison that librarians are not afraid to do max partying, but I wasn’t sure if it was a universal certainty. It clearly is. Librarians are people too. Despite the stereotypes, they like to have a few drinks, cut loose, and dance just like everyone else (albeit in a slightly dorkier way).

Sunday morning I attended a panel session on User Experience called If Fish Markets Can Do It So Can We hosted by Steven Bell, Brian Matthews, and Valeda Dent Goodman. I think it opened my eyes a bit. Libraries are often too focused on their stuff (books, databases, etc.) and not the user experience. Sure we have lots of stuff, but if it is difficult or annoying to use, people are just going to use Google instead. We’re not just selling our stuff, we‘re selling the experience. In a lot of cases the experience is the product.

Coffee beans are dirt cheap, but Starbucks charges three bucks for a cup of coffee. The coffee itself doesn’t cost that much. Starbucks is adding value by selling the experience (hip music, nice atmosphere, etc.). I hope to think about this more in the future and ask myself: what is the experience of our users and how can we improve it?

The final conference event was the closing keynote speaker Ira Glass. Once again, I had never heard of him (I feel like I live under a rock), and once again I was astonished. I love finding out new things and hearing new people’s ideas.

Glass was an excellent choice to close the conference. His format was similar to his radio show where he would inter-mix him talking with segments that he has done and offering the audience insights. The overall theme was about storytelling. Glass discussed how stories have action and then a little nugget of insight, repeating over and over. It also has to feel like it is going somewhere. It doesn’t matter where, just somewhere. This is what builds suspense and makes for good narrative. This is what Glass does on his show.

I think this idea of being a good storyteller is important to many different people, not just radio hosts and journalists. Facts make sense if laid out in a rational way, but if couched in an interesting story, they become more memorable and the audience develops a better emotional connection to them. Telling a good story can help you sell ideas or teach students. It is an extremely beneficial skill to have and I hope to work on my own storytelling ability.

I listened to the This American Life podcast on the plane and have likely found another piece of information with which to overload myself. I look forward to collecting together all that I have gained from this conference whether it’s new ideas, new contacts, or fresh perspectives and begin using them to improve both myself and Champlain College.