Virtual Academic Library Environment Annual Conference

2014

Conference Wrap up by

Poster sessions

With her Reference Services Committee, Maria presented a poster session on library vendor apps.

Full poster description: http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/p11-rolling-vendors-apps-librarians-leaders-promoting-easy-access-databases

Poster Sessions

With her VALE SIL committee, Amanda presented a Poster Session that addressed the need for LIS students to consider the Importance of taking courses related to information literacy.

Full posters description: http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/p09-lis-students-step-ring-academic-librarianship-becoming-best-candidate

On the other hand, the poster sessions were informative, where Maria’s poster and session address the future of vendor Apps. One poster session: Getting in on the Game: A library and Athletics Partnership, regarding the partnership between Caldwell College Jennings Library and the student athletes to form the “Cougar Enrichment Program” inspired me to add a few more elements to our scholar athlete study hall on the Newark Campus—the key is to have dedicated tutors and athletic coaches to ensure continued success. And perhaps, rename the program—send  some suggestions! –Susan

I liked the poster session, and not just because our poster received a lot of attention. Considering that I finished working on it on Thursday afternoon and owe chocolate to Prof. Fong from ID, and the VIA crew, I was elated that it all went well. -Maria

I enjoyed the variety and creativity in the poster sessions and particularly found value in Maria's presentation on Vendor APPs. -Laurie

More Posters Sessions

Poster Sessions

Although I did not stay for the entire day, I had a chance to see

the keynote speaker, Dr. David Weinberger,  and in all honesty it was rather sad—not that the co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab was heckled for getting some trivia wrong, but rather the “innovative” technology he was discussing is not innovative at all when we look at other fields outside of the library realm—it seems we have a long way to go to catch up where we could have been on the forefront of all this SEO, and other commonplace technologies. We need to demand more of our vendors as our interfaces and applications are a bit “clunky” for lack of a better word. - Susan

Keynote Speaker

During the Keynote Speaker’s presentation, I was too

preoccupied rehearsing for my breakout session, that besides feeling sorry for Dr. Weinberg being smashed by the “knowing-all” librarians, I didn’t get much form his presentation. -Maria

There was nothing that enlightening that I don’t think librarians haven’t already heard. I thought the presentation overall was a bit disjointed. I would have liked to have heard more about how his work and research applies to our academic library users and what it means for us as librarians and the future of our libraries as they exist today. -Bonnie

Keynote Speaker

Breakout Sessions

With her Reference Services Committee, Maria presented a Breakout session on virtual reference platforms

Full description: http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/b15-power-punch-virtual-reference-tools-libraryh3lp-libanswers-and-mosio

The last breakout session was the VALE Reference Services Committee panel of five librarians presenting three software programs for collecting statistics from virtual reference: Library H3lp, LibAnswers, and Mosio. I  co-presented on LibAnswers together with a librarian from Rowan. I don’t have any feedback on the presentation, but since three Berkeley librarians attended the session, I hope they will share their opinion about it. - Maria

Breakout Sessions

Bonnie & Amanda presented a Breakout session on how to create successful programming that promotes lifelong learning.

33 librarians attended their session!

Full description: http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/b04-ropes-and-away-desk-how-lead-way-lifelong-learning-through-successful-programming

The VALE Assessment Committee hosted a session on using LibAnalytics for assessment. The panel, consisting of two reps from Springshare, who showed various data sets, such as instructions stats, website feedback, foot traffic, prof. development activities, instruction request forms etc. Librarians from Montclair State and Caldwell College talked about best practices in applying the collected data. -Maria

Breakout Sessions

Session I Joining Paths: How to Become One  Two Rutgers librarians discuss the challenges of merging

two library systems – UMDNJ medical school with Rutgers University: steps toward aligning collections; licensing contracts; and access – proxy settings and over 70% duplicate content within the databases. Although no bells and whistles, I learned from this session. “Yay” Marlene and Sandra for making this merging of our collections rather seamless. - Susan

Breakout Sessions

Alyssa Valenti’s breakout session on "flipping out" the classroom

gave me a few ideas on engaging students in ONL courses. Luckily for Alyssa, she had full cooperation with the faculty to implement her ideas, including pretest and one-on-one sessions for grades. – Maria

I also attended a session on using videos to flip library instruction that was presented by librarians from Stevens Institute of Technology and a session on library chat services.   Both sessions were very interesting and I particularly liked the instructional videos that were created by Stevens.   The short and entertaining videos provided a lot of information literacy information that students could utilize at a time that was most convenient. -Laurie

Flipped Classroom

As I tweeted during this presentation, the coolest thing about the Stevens Tech videos was how they used free stock video from archive.org during their videos to capture the users attention, rather than just looking at the text on a white screen.  See Getting Starting With Your Research Videos here: http://www.stevens.edu/library/research/tutorials

My second favorite idea learned from this presentation was theu se of a full-time MLS student/techy intern to help with creating the videos which sometimes can be a very long and time-consuming process.

Finally, while disheartening, it was also good to hear that other institutions struggle with getting faculty on board with the library assignment and the purpose of librarian instruction. Their idea is to have the students view the videos before arriving at the class instruction session. They’re still working on getting 100% cooperation. -Bonnie

Flipped Classroom

Flipped Classroom

Don’t Flip Out - Flip Your Classroom! Using Hybrid Information Literacy Instruction to Get Your Students “Into the Ring” – Alyssa Valenti, Raritan Valley Community CollegeAlyssa talked about three situations where “flipped classroom” techniques could be used for Info Lit instruction, and gave examples of two of those classes that she’s done at RVCC.One-Shot “Mini-Flip” focuses on subject-specific resources. As an ice-breaker, the students are given different flashcards that represent about 5 databases. She first briefly reviews a familiar Db (Academic Search Complete) and where to find the others, which is like the pre-work part of the Mini-Flip. For the active “flip” part, the class breaks into groups based on their flashcards, and investigates their databases; then they teach each other, by presenting a live demo, showing the subjects covered and features they discovered to the rest of the class. Alyssa walks around, offering tips and "secrets" about each database that should be pointed out when the group goes up. She does have a longer class period for this – 80 minutes – so she can give them at least 15 minutes for the group work and 5 minutes for each group to present. –Vicki

** To read the rest of Vicki's wrap up of this breakout use this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KOJVMrKMF2N-5A_iNbgTxg6Lgxd-_

rRl7s7Ih9T3KA/pub

During their session, Rider University provided a practical,

budget friendly and exciting way for other libraries to consider promoting their services by creating short videos starring Rider students. Most of these videos were created by their work study students. Librarians and students worked together to develop the script of the videos. Most of these videos were created with a simple flip camera and camtasia. -Amanda

We can do this and we should.  Loved these videos!Great idea in having students describe library services. –Bonnie

You can view them here:  http://guides.rider.edu/trlm

Short Promo Videos

Our presentation was very well received. I think part of the

reason was because it wasn’t so “academic” in nature but more of the fun part of what we do with our programming and reaching out to our communities. This is often talked about among school and public libraries, but not so much within the academic library community

How we came up with our idea: We have never collaborated before decided we should use our creative minds and submit a proposal together for the VALE conference.

PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART at VALENJ Annual Users

Conference 2014 (Bonnie)

We started talking and decided since both had been

so active in programming on our campuses and campus-wide events we should present on all of the “cool” things we have done and teach other how they can have successful programming at their colleges. From there we came up with our hypothesis “Off the Ropes and Away from the Desk: How to Lead the Way for Lifelong Learning Through Successful Programming” which turned into our program flow and gave examples for each:

PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART at VALENJ Annual Users

Conference 2014

  1-How to Create Meaningful Programming That Instills Lifelong learning: 

Think of the Various Literacies (i.e. Digital, Consumer, Arts & Culture..) in order to come up with your program idea

2- Once you have come up with your idea, you must reach your community beyond our library walls  (i.e. participate in campus club, community service day)

 We stated that this is what will allow you to forge relationships with students and departments and faculty

3- Collaborate with Other Departments that you have gotten to know on your campuses  (i.e. Career Services, Academic Support, Tech Services)

4-How to Reach a Diverse Population of Users (i.e. Evening, Commuter, Online Students)

5-Method of Delivery for your Programs (i.e. Book club on Facebook, Google Hangouts)

PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART at VALENJ Annual Users

Conference 2014

  We concluded that “As academic librarians, we have to think beyond

your daily tasks: We can no longer can stay behind the desk and wait for our community to come to us.  In order for libraries to continue to thrive, especially in the current digital age where we continually have to justify our value to our community and our stakeholders, it is now OUR job get off the ropes and way from the desk, out into the ring in order to become the leaders in our college communities.“

  applause!

PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART at VALENJ Annual Users

Conference 2014

            -Especially when presenting with another person, practice the flow. Who is speaking to

what slide, how is the slide presenter going to be passed back and forth or is one person going to advance the slides? Where will you each be standing? Will each person sit while the other one talks or will you both stand and go back and forth?

            -Write a script to go along with your slides. Practice it. By the time you present it you will not need it.  If you do have notes, print them or write them on hard card stock paper or note cards so as not to be distracting when flipping through your notes.

            -Get into the room early to see what the setup is like. In our room there were tables and chairs set up that were not in view with the projector.  Also the projector did not go on and we needed technical assistance. 

            -A great idea is to have the laptop facing you so that you can see the slides that your audience is looking at with you having to look up at the screen to see where you are.

-Bonnie

Helpful Tips for Presenting at a Conference

This year I decided to join the VALE Conference

Planning Committee. I really wanted to know what it takes to put a conference together and I wanted my voice to be heard in terms of what librarians are looking for from these conferences.

The experience was enlightening and really helped me understand how these things get put together. I strongly encourage all of you to get involved next year! -Amanda

Committee Work

While serving on this committee I learned:

Everyone has an idea to bring to the table and all ideas will be considered

The selection of the programs are at the mercy of how many submissions we receive. This year we accepted every proposal because we had just enough to fill all the times slots.

It is not that time consuming of a task to take on. The committee only met twice in person and then communicated via email after that.

The themes of the conference stem from the trends in our field.

The survey forms really do get looked at and sometimes the overwhelming suggestions get taken into consideration.

-Amanda

Committee Work

It was a pleasure to see so many current and past colleagues presenting at

the conference. –Susan

Note to Vale Conference Planning Committee- please do not try so hard with naming the Conference! Winter or Annual conference should suffice! – Susan

First: the weather. It’s quite risky to hold this Conference in January. If I wasn’t presenting, I would have turned back after I saw on the dashboard display that my car had no traction. -Maria

The only way to increase the quality of these breakout sessions is for more librarians to submit proposals so that the conference committee can be more selective. -Amanda

Final Thoughts

NJ Librarians- Consider joining a VALE

Committee

Go here for more information on the committees

http://www.valenj.org/committees

Until next year…..