Immersion was exhausting. You barely had time to stop and think since you were constantly engaged in activities or doing “homework.” But it was also exhilarating, because you were constantly hearing things that made fireworks go off in your brain. “Oh my gosh, we could totally do that at my library!” After being back at work for 3 hours, I’d already used an idea from Immersion for changing our student orientation program. This year we’re getting 26 groups of about 30 students each coming to the library for around 40 minutes each. My cohort leader (the fabulous Tiffini Travis) gave me the idea to break the students into groups and have each group find out about certain parts of the library and then share that information with the entire class. Brilliant! Not only does it prevent us from having to give a dry, boring lecture/tour, but it gets the students engaged in learning and acting as teachers rather than passive participants. While I loved the scavenger hunts we did for the past two years, they were a ton of work and stress for me and I always felt burnt out just as the fall semester was starting. This idea was embraced by all of my colleagues. Hot damn!

Immersion was also about breaking down one of our biggest barriers: ourselves. Never underestimate the power of denial and procrastination! I think my biggest epiphany came when we were discussing a case study we’d been assigned to read. It was about Dorothy, the first instruction coordinator at her institution, and the missteps she made in her first few years on the job. I realized when I was talking about the mistakes she’d made, I was getting really annoyed. And then I realized why. I’d made many of those same mistakes. I was Dorothy! It made me see my own role in a new light and helped me realize that I’d been avoiding some of the same things (being more involved in the University outside of the library, focusing on staff development). Those realizations really informed my action plan and will inform all of my work this year as instruction coordinator. After talking to many of my fellow program-track colleagues, I realized that I was not the only one who’d had that epiphany, so it was definitely a good experience to break down our own denial.

Another epiphany came when we took a survey to determine where we fell in our leadership orientation (structural, political, human resources or symbolic). I found that I scored very high on symbolic, which didn’t surprise me at all, because I tend to be a big picture/vision person. What it made me realize was that I wasn’t focused enough on the other areas. I wasn’t focused enough on building consensus and a sense of shared purpose amongst the members of the instruction team (while my colleagues have always gone along with my ideas, I don’t feel like I ever had the sort of buy-in that makes people feel truly committed to a project). I wasn’t focused enough on the world outside of the library and getting involved in committees and activities that could provide opportunities for promoting IL. And I wasn’t focused enough on gathering and using data to make the case for information literacy instruction. So these were the areas that I ended up focusing on in my action plan, which was the final project we did in the program track of Immersion.

By the end of Day 1 back at work, I’d implemented one of the items from my action plan. I wanted to develop a library staff development program centered around instruction. In addition to scheduling monthly instruction meetings (meetings had previously not been very regular and were combined reference/instruction meetings), I also scheduled monthly brown bag lunches to share ideas surrounding pedagogy, assessment and content related to IL. We’re going to have our first brown bag this Friday where I’ll be talking about developing learning outcomes (thanks Anne Zald for the great lessons on developing appropriate outcomes!). Given that my colleagues have varying levels of training and experience in teaching (from zero to a bit, pretty much), this should be really beneficial for all of us. I also hope it will create more of a sense of cohesiveness among members of the instruction team, since in the past we’d been very focused on our own liaison areas. We’re one of the few libraries out there that’s been suffering from too few meetings rather than too many, so I think this will be a positive change.

One of the most rewarding activities we did at Immersion was a brand new one that the Immersion faculty were trying out for the first time. They had each program track cohort plan and execute an instruction session for a teacher track cohort about planning and persuasion (basically what we’d been learning all week). It was great for us, because there’s nothing that makes learning stickier than when you have to teach what you’d just learned. It also brought our cohort together more. And it was great for the teacher track because they’d been planning out how they were going to change their teaching without considering how they were going to convince stakeholders that this was a change worth making. Also, it was just nice to come together with members of the teacher track like that and hear about what they were learning.

One of the things I loved best were the variety of group and individual experiences. Sometimes we were listening to a lecture in a big room. Sometimes we were participating in small group discussions/activities. Sometimes we were doing individual work. Sometimes we were molding stuff with clay and doing skits wearing snorkeling gear. Sometimes it was just the 30 program track participants sharing their experiences. I feel like I’ve built such a wonderful network of instructors and instruction coordinators whom I know I will learn much more from in the future. I absolutely loved working with my cohort; we are all dealing with diverse and complex situations and it was really nice to discuss this stuff with people who are equally passionate about user-centered info lit instruction. I really hope to keep in touch with these inspiring professionals.

If you do instruction at your library and have the opportunity to attend Immersion, I’d highly recommend doing it. I’ve been to plenty of conferences and have come out with great ideas, but I’ve never felt so changed by anything else. It was wonderful. Thanks to Randy, Anne, Beth, Craig, Tiffini and ACRL for creating such a memorable experience for us!

The Unconference will take place Friday, June 25, 2010 from 9am-4:30pm. So what are you waiting for? Go sign up! You’ll be guaranteed at least one day at ALA that is full of learning, great discussions and WIN!

One of the commenters on my post wrote “where is a David to take down this Goliath?” In my mind, what we really need to take down this Goliath is another Goliath; specifically, a Goliath made up of a lot of Davids. Pretty much all libraries are members of consortia of some sort; local, regional and national groups dedicated to advocating for and supporting their member libraries. If these aren’t the groups that should be fighting unfair or unethical practices of vendors, I don’t know who should! It’s only in large numbers that we can actually make a difference in scholarly publishing.

We’ve certainly seen major Universities doing it, since it seriously impacts their bottom line. Back when I was in library school, I remember when a whole bunch of big schools like Cornell, Harvard, etc. boycotted Elsevier journals in response to bundling of journals, exorbitant pricing, and an unwillingness to negotiate fair deals. In addition, their faculty Senates made statements suggesting that faculty not support journals with exorbitant pricing by not publishing in them or serving on their boards. When we’re being faced with unfair deals or unethical behavior from publishers, we should get our faculty members involved too. We have three members of the Society for Military History on the Norwich faculty. I contacted them last week, as I thought they might be able to exert pressure on the Society. If faculty drop their memberships and stop publishing and serving on the boards of journals like this, the journals will have little choice but to change their practices (not that I think that will all happen, especially with historians rather than scientists, but one can dream, right?).

I’m not an expert on what consortia do by any stretch of the imagination, so maybe those of you with more experience can answer this. Are our consortia exerting pressure on vendors when they do things like this? I know the consortia we belong to get us discounts with vendors (and mainly seem focused on group discounts and training), but do they fight vendors when those vendors do things that are harmful or exploitative to their member libraries? I see that an International Coalition of Library Consortia exists and that they’ve made some statements about issues in scholarly publishing, but they’ve made so few over the years in light of the huge number of issues libraries have grappled with. Looking at the mission statements of a few consortia, they talk about group purchasing and a single point of contact for dealing with vendors, but I see nothing about actively advocating for member libraries.

So, if the consortia don’t fight for us, who should? ALA? ACRL? I always hear about how ALA has such a strong advocacy arm, but it seems to be all about advocating for libraries in the national and state governments, not with scholarly publishers and content providers. It certainly makes no sense for us to form separate organizations to advocate for libraries in this realm when we have these consortia that have relationships with publishers and are supposed to be negotiating with them on our behalf.

More important than making our dissatisfaction known to our vendors is to make our dissatisfaction known to the organizations that are supposed to represent and advocate for us. We are much more powerful in large numbers than we are alone, and we joined consortia in the first place to band together for our common good. It’s not just about getting deals and taking classes on cataloging and Web 2.0 technologies — it should be about collective advocacy. And if the organizations we give money to are not providing that for us, then we should pressure them to do so. Because we will not be able to create real change in the scholarly publishing and library technology landscape unless we act as a group.

ALA with a baby is certainly different. I didn’t stay out late or go to as many events as I would have liked to. I felt really torn between librarian/speaker/blogger Meredith and mommy Meredith, and it felt kind of weird when those worlds collided in Chicago. There were some moments where I really felt socially awkward — especially when I got my award at the LITA reception. But it was still a lot of fun to learn things, take part in discussions, and see some people who are very dear to me. The programs I took part in all went really well and I was happy to see that I hadn’t lost my ability to give a presentation. I was on two panels about Library/Web 2.0 that both looked at the trend retrospectively in terms of what we’ve learned, what we’ve accomplished, and whether or not 2.0 has met its promise (whatever that promise was). This really meshed well with what I’ve been talking and writing about the past year (why 2.0 initiatives have failed at libraries, what institutions need to do to position themselves to implement 2.0 tools, etc.) so it was fun to take part in a discussion of these topics with some really smart people. It was obvious from the comments after both presentations that a lot of people have implemented 2.0 tools that have not had the ROI they’d hoped for, and others have implemented 2.0 tools without really considering whether they are a right fit for their intended population.

The Unconference on Friday went so well (in spite of the fact that it was planned by two women with babies)!!! Everything flowed nicely throughout the day and the discussions people had were really interesting and rich. Things just seemed to fall into place on their own and the people we had there were so interested, motivated, and fun! We got lots of positive feedback from the attendees. Jim Rettig even showed up at lunchtime to see how it was going and to say hi to the attendees. I feel grateful to have been given the chance to help blaze what will hopefully soon be a well-worn trail for ALA — it’s exciting to see the organization experimenting with new models for conference participation. Michelle and I will be doing a survey for the participants on their experience, so we’ll be sure to share those results later on. You can read coverage of the Unconference here, here and here and you can check out what was discussed in the backchannel and on Twitter here.

Other than destroying my shoulder, it was a really awesome conference, though I am definitely looking forward to putting my whole self into conferences when Reed is a bit less dependent on me. It was hard to balance the two.

And for those of you who want to see what you missed out on at the conference (whether you were there or not since no one can be everywhere!), check out this awesome project by Heather Devine at Flex Your Info. I had the pleasure of meeting her briefly on Monday and seeing a new LIS grad creating a valuable resource for the ALA Conference brings back memories of my own experience four years ago.

The thing I’m most excited about is seeing the ALA Unconference that Michelle and I dreamed up almost two years ago become a reality. A lot has changed for Michelle and myself in that time (like we both have babies now!), but our commitment to the development of new and unique learning opportunities hasn’t. It’s been exciting to create something like this within the structure of ALA and I’m grateful to Jim Rettig for allowing us to make this happen as part of his Presidential initiatives. We’ve got a great group of participants and some really interesting discussion topics that they suggested and voted for. I’ll definitely report back here on how it all went!

Here’s my schedule so far for my time in Chicago:

Thursday
Arrive with baby, husband and a lot of luggage. Collapse at my in-laws’ place in Lakeview and hope I wake up long enough to iron my clothes.

Friday, July 10
9:00 am – 5:00 pm – ALA Unconference, Hilton
6:30 pm – Dinner with some librarians I greatly admire

Saturday, July 11
1:30 – 3:00 pm – Life After 2.0 – A panel presentation with myself and some awesome folks like Helene Blowers and Lori Bell! McCormick Place West, Room W-190b
Other than that, I’ll be spending the rest of the day with my niece and nephew who are meeting their new cousin for the first time.

Sunday, July 12
Not quite sure yet what I’ll be doing in the morning
2:30 pm – LITA Awards Reception, Hotel Intercontinental (I’m getting an award! Eep!)
4:00 pm – LITA President’s Program
5:30 pm – Blog Salon – I’ll be there showing off my little bundle of joy

Monday, July 13
1:30 – 3:00 pm – The Ultimate Debate: Has Library 2.0 fulfilled its promise? – Another panel presentation, this time with myself, Michael Porter, David King and Cindi Trainor. McCormick Place West W-181
Dinner with my husband enjoying prime dry-aged beef and lobster mac and cheese. We don’t have stuff like that in Vermont.

Tuesday, July 14
Nothing planned — will probably walk around Wrigleyville with Reed and Adam.

The online conference that’s coming up is the ACRL Virtual Conference. This is the virtual component of ACRL’s National Conference which takes place next month in Seattle. I’m on the ACRL Virtual Conference committee, though I can’t take any credit for the coolness of this online conference. ACRL has had a virtual conference component for many years, though in the past, it didn’t offer a lot of bang for the buck — usually a few virtual talks and access to the conference community for networking and conference handouts. This time it’s very different. ACRL has contracted with a company that will be capturing the audio and slides of every presentation, and offering them as a movie at nearly the same time that the live session is going on (with just a tiny delay). This means that people registered for the virtual conference will be able to access every single presentation at the live conference. In addition, there will be live virtual presentations that are completely unique to the Virtual Conference, organized chat discussions, events in Second Life and more!

Attending the ACRL Virtual Conference will only set you back $165 (if you’re an ACRL member); a lot less than the physical conference, especially when you factor in travel expenses. And if you’re already registered for the National Conference, it’s FREE! For those who would love to attend ACRL but just don’t have the funds, this is a terrific opportunity to benefit from the knowledge being shared in Seattle without leaving your office.

The ACRL Virtual Conference committee is actually offering a Webcast kickoff event this week that anyone interested in social software, research and education should definitely be interested in:

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 – 1:00 – 2:15 p.m. CST
(11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PST | 12:00 – 1:15 p.m. MST | 2:00 – 3:15 p.m. EST)
The Virtual Conference kicks into high gear with a new feature for 2009 – the Kick-Off Webcast! On Tuesday, February 17, the Virtual Conference presents Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry and E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, giving an invited presentation that can be seen as part of the Virtual Conference. Take advantage of this opportunity to interact in real-time with this expert in e-learning and “open science.”

Jean-Claude is someone who has really inspired me with his use of social technologies and gaming in the classroom as well as his research on the potential of social software in improving research. More information about registering and the features of the Virtual Conference are available on the ACRL Conference website.

The other awesome online conference I was involved in was the Iowa Small Libraries Online Conference. In places like Iowa, small library can take on a meaning totally different from ALA’s definition of what a small library is. The libraries targeted by this conference tend to be really small and without the resources to send its library staff across the state to attend a conference. So, instead of having a conference that only libraries with sufficient funding could afford to send staff to, the regional library associations in Iowa created an online conference that any interested librarian could participate in. They capitalized on their WebJunction membership and used the Wimba web conferencing platform. It was just like any normal conference with live scheduled presentations. They even had a virtual exhibit hall where attendees could chat with vendors!

I had the pleasure of giving the keynote presentation at the conference. As someone who has done gazillions of webcasts using just about every platform imaginable, I was really impressed with how well the conference organizers supported attendees and speakers technologically. Things went extremely smoothly and given the professionalism and preparedness of the organizers, I would assume that it continued that way throughout the day. I was absolutely touched that they sent me a little care package with chocolates, socks, a mug and hot cocoa so I’d be cozy and comfortable during my talk (that has to be the most adorable speaker’s gift I’ve ever received). But much more than that, I was so proud to be part of a conference that made professional development accessible to people who may never have been able to get to a national or even state conference. Associations that have lots of rural or small library members should definitely take a lesson from the wonderful people in Iowa who made this possible.

I’d originally wanted to make the ALA Unconference a hybrid f2f/online experience, but most people on Jim Rettig’s advisory committee felt that we should focus on the in-person element. In hindsight, I think they were right. As it turns out, the Unconference is going to be located in a hotel that may or may not offer wireless Internet access (or Internet access at all — I have no idea since we don’t even know what hotel it’ll be in). Given how difficult it can be to get really reliable wireless access at an ALA Conference we could have ended up creating expectations for an online component that we simply could not deliver on. And while the online/offline balance for the Top Tech Trends meeting at Midwinter was brilliantly executed to allow for maximum participation from all (kudos to the tireless organizers of that!), the online components integrated into that same panel actually ended up being a distraction at Annual. While I’d love to do a hybrid Unconference in the future, I’m glad other folks talked us out of it this time around. I’d hate to have created something that would have served to show ALA that Unconferences are not a good model for them.

I feel much more optimistic this year about the growth of online conference opportunities than I did last year. And as budgets shrink and professional development funds become scarce, I hope more organizations will consider creating online conferences — if not as the main event, at least as a component of a F2F conference like ACRL. Because it’s likely that far fewer of us will be able to jet off to Seattle or Chicago or Boston or DC next year and conference organizers will have to be creative to keep their own revenues up.

So, Michelle and I are planning what we hope will be an awesome Unconference at ALA Annual this year, and registration for the Unconference just opened today. The Unconference is a full-day event which will take place Friday, July 10th from 9am – 5pm. Registration is free and lunch is included (you do need to be registered for the general ALA Conference to participate though). The unconference is limited to 75 people only, and we’ll open up a waitlist when the number of registrants goes above that. The reason for the size was partially related to cost constraints, but was largely because we wanted to make sure the discussions at the unconference could be more intimate, giving everyone an opportunity to have a voice and participate.

Attendees will collaborate online prior to the Unconference to identify topics they’re interested in presenting to the group or facilitating a discussion about. Everyone will be both teacher and learner, discussing the topics they’re most interested in.

There will be two types of experiences at the Unconference:

1. Presentations that last 7 minutes with 5 minutes for questions/feedback. Presentations will either be about a project an attendee has done that they think other librarians would be interested in or an idea they have for a library-related project that they’d like feedback on from the audience. There will be 10 of these presentations throughout the day.
2. Group discussions that last 50 minutes. There will be 10 different discussion groups going on during each of three discussion periods and no more than 10 people can participate in any discussion. The goal of this is to allow everyone to contribute to the discussion.

Each individual attending the Unconference must either suggest a presentation they would like to give or a discussion topic they would be willing to facilitate. We will then take all of those proposed topics and have participants vote on them. This will take place approximately six weeks before the conference. Those seven presentation topics and thirty discussion topics that receive the most votes will be the ones offered during the Unconference.

There is no specific limitation on the topics that can be discussed at this unconference as long as they’re in some way related to librarianship. They can run the gamut from services to children to cataloging standards to issues in reference services to bleeding edge technologies and more.

I’m really excited to see how this model will work, especially within the structure of ALA Annual. I think it’s great to experiment with new participatory models within the framework of Annual and I still believe that positive change is possible within ALA. It just doesn’t make sense anymore for the topics discussed at a conference to be decided more than a year in advance (I think I was asked to speak at Annual 1 1/2 yrs in advance!!!). The Social Software Showcase has been an inspiring breath of fresh air at Annual and hopefully this will be too. I also love the idea of just about everyone playing an active role — whether they are speaking, facilitating a discussion, or just taking part in that discussion. The format for unconferences is so flexible and allows for a lot of variation in how it’s designed. Not only should it be a good learning experience, but it should be FUN!

If you’re attending ALA Annual and are interested in the opportunity to participate in discussions on topics you’re interested in (or maybe even present!), register for the Unconference. We hope to get a really diverse group of people at the Unconference, not only the folks who are into hot bleeding-edge technologies. This is truly meant for everyone.

We’re also looking for two people to help us make sure things run smoothly with the registration, voting for topics, and the Unconference itself (we already have one fantastic volunteer, Steve Lawson, who is an unconference veteran). Past experience with planning unconferences or conferences would definitely be a plus. I’m not 100% sure that I’ll be able to be there for the Unconference with the new baby and all, so we want to make sure to have other fantastic helpers just in case. If you’re interested, drop me an email.

Hope you can join us for this awesome unconferency goodness!

At nearly the same time, I noticed on the LISJobs Forums that Rachel Singer Gordon was looking for “Career disruption resources.” She specifically cited this Career Disruption Assistance Program from SLA (which looks like it’s just for DC Chapter members). The program offers mentoring and reduced dues for people who’ve been laid off. It made me wonder how many organizations in our profession are doing the same thing.

I don’t want to pick on ALA (especially since I don’t think they’re the only organization ignoring this), but I do pay dues to them and all I’ve heard from them with regards to the fiscal crisis is about their own finances and the finances of libraries. The ALA-APA has always seemed to me to be undersupported and underpromoted, to the point where I don’t even feel like I understand their role vis à vis ALA. The simple fact is, if a dues-paying member is out of a job, the chances are good that they will not continue to be members for long if they don’t feel supported by their professional organization. Were I unemployed, I’d be pretty offended to be asked to pay the same amount that fully-employed library support staff do. At least students only have to pay a student rate, but for how long will they be willing to do that much if they can’t find a job after six months, a year, two years? I hope that we’ll see the ALA addressing this crisis in terms of not only libraries, but librarians and library workers, and what we can do as individuals to protect our jobs, cope with layoffs and find new jobs in this tough economy.

There’s an opening at NCSU that involves working directly under her to develop innovative access services at the library. The idea of working with Mary is so tempting that I’d almost be willing to leave my new and rather awesome job for this position, but things are finally falling into place this year with library instruction and the opportunities for change are way too good to pass up. However, that wouldn’t stop you from applying for this Associate Head of Access and Delivery Service position at NCSU, a library that is already doing so many innovative things and will be building a new library over the next few years. If you’re looking for a job where you can really effect change in public service, this would be perfect.

I’m still trying to figure out if I have anything to write about my time at ALA (or that would be politic to write in a public forum). I had a great time and managed to create a schedule that didn’t completely exhaust or overwhelm me, but this conference just didn’t seem to have the energy that others did. And that may just have been how I experienced the conference, but I’ve heard the same from a few others (with the exceptions of a few events like the Social Software Showcase). Still, it’s always a pleasure to see my friends and colleagues and share interesting ideas. I always come from conferences with great ideas, but it’s usually more from talking to people instead of from going to sessions. Is that something I really need to fly across the country for?

Here’s my schedule so far. Adam and I are staying at the Marriott right by the Convention Center, which is a nice change from last year when we were a zillion miles from the Convention Center in DC. I’m covering the exhibit hall again for American Libraries so that means lots of time chatting up vendors and eating free twizzlers and peanut butter cups.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Arriving Thursday afternoon
Dinner with the hubby

Friday, June 27, 2008
12:00 PM – 3:00 PM: Mover and Shaker Lunch
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Jim Rettig Advisory Committee Meeting
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM: Web Junction Member Reception or perhaps dinner

Saturday, June 28, 2008
Spending the day covering the exhibits for American Libraries with my intrepid editorial assistant/husband.
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM: EBSCO Academic Libraries Lunch
7:00 PM: Dinner with a friend
11:00 PM: Facebook Librarians After Hours @ Pop the Cork Wine Bar (if I’m conscious)

Sunday, June 29, 2008
8:00 AM – 10:00 AM: Readex Breakfast (I’m giving a talk called Academic Work is Social: User Generated Content in Support of Research and Learning)
Lunch: No plans, but will probably eat lunch early-ish so I can get to the TTT nice and early.
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM: LITA Top Technology Trends
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Bookcart Drill Team Championships (covering this for American Libraries)
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM: OCLC Blog Salon
Afterwards: ???

Monday, June 30, 2008
Morning: Check out of hotel
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: ACRL National Conference Committee, Virtual Conference Subcommittee Meeting
Lunch: No plans
Spend a bit of time at the exhibit hall
Leave for LAX for red-eye to NY.

I’ve had pretty low expectations of my conference experiences the past few times and they’ve actually ended up being pretty darn great. Here’s hoping for more of that since my expectations are rather low this time around as well.

Hope to see you there!