Library Assessment Conference

Terry Brandsma, Sam Harlow, Armondo Collins & I attended the recent Library Assessment Conference in Houston TX.  There were many good posters and presentations and the slides are all on the conference website.

The opening keynote from Paul Jarvis Heath was very good and a recording isn't on the website but his slides are on his speakerdeck page. (see Dec 5).  He talked about design thinking and how it can be applied to libraries.  A few key points:

• People don't always say what they need
• Designers use ethnography
• Suggests "co-design" workshops to get patrons' values and desires
• Take your time designing space and move purposely
• Consider everything as an experiment rather than permanent
• Don't ask if they like x or y but what do they need in useful spaces

Attending ALA Midwinter? Register for OCLC Events

Here are the details for OCLC's events at ALA Midwinter, if you care to register and attend:

From OCLC:
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There's still time to join our OCLC programs and events at ALA Midwinter as we connect conversations across our community. Our key events at ALA Midwinter—all taking place in the Colorado Convention Center—include:

 

• A Linked Data Roundtable (Saturday, 10:30 – 11:30am) will feature MJ Han from the University of Illinois who will discuss how linked data sources improve Emblematica Online user experiences and digitized special collections.  Plus, Jody Williamson from the Library of Congress will provide an update on BIBFRAME and Sara Newell from OCLC will discuss our latest work with three library partners to prototype a new suite of linked data services that will improve library data and visibility. 
• An OCLC Products and Services: Key Initiatives and Insights session (Sunday, 1:30 – 2:30pm) will be led by Mary Sauer-Games, OCLC VP of Global Product Management, and members of her product management team.  This session will provide insights into what’s new and upcoming with OCLC products and services and will include light refreshments. 
• The very popular OCLC Research Update (Monday, 10:30 – 11:30am) will feature discussions about recent and upcoming collaborative projects, pilots, and published reports from OCLC Research, including the Research Library Partnership and WebJunction programs.
• OCLC product conversations (5 times each day on Saturday and Sunday) in the OCLC booth will be led by OCLC subject matter experts on discovery, web visibility, open-access content, Tipasa for resource sharing, and shared print.

 Register for these events online at oc.lc/alamw18. Please also visit us at OCLC booth 1216 for product demonstrations and answers to your questions. 

Southeastern Library Assessment Conference

I attended this conference in Atlanta last week.  Librarians from Georgia Tech, Georgia State and Clayton State have organized this conference three times in the off year of the "big" Library Assessment Conference. Assessment librarians just can't wait two years to get together!

Some noteworthy presentations included the keynote, Ann Emery, who has her own analytics company.  She had an excellent presentation on data visualization.  I also liked a session from Southern Illinois U at Edwardsville on international students.  We probably need to learn about about our foreign students' library needs.

I didn't get to attend a session on assessing first year information literacy but it looks very interesting.  Instead I went to one on strategic planning from UT Knoxville where they talked about keeping the organization focused on their plan and the tools they used to do so.  Very helpful!  I also presented on strategic planning the next day.  I used a new tool (to me)  -- Mentimeter -- a polling app I learned about from Sam Harlow via Jenny Dale.  It's wonderful!  Much easier to use than Poll Everywhere. 

All the presentations are here. 

Charleston Conference 2017

Some notes from last week (but with an emphasis on the unofficial business info track we have been developing).  --Steve

https://liaisonlife.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/charleston2017/

LJ: Five Trends Changing Higher Education That Librarians Need to Watch

Interesting column from Library Journal's Stephen Bell:

Five Trends Changing Higher Education That Librarians Need to Watch | From the Bell Tower

In short:

1. 21st Century Transcripts
2. Move to Microcredentials
3. Tuition-Free Higher Education
4. Analytics on the Rise
5. Librarians as Campus Leaders

See the full article for details.

GCEC 2017 in Halifax N.S. (Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres)

I attended and spoke at an entrepreneurship education conference in Halifax two weeks ago. Details at https://liaisonlife.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/gcec2017/ .  --Steve

Society of American Archivists annual meeting report

From July 23 through 30, I was in Portland, Oregon for the 2017 Society of American Archivists annual meeting. Much of my time there was spent in SAA Council meetings or meetings of sections and committees to which I'm the Council liaison.

The week started with a day-long Council meeting on July 24. At that meeting, we:

• Issued a statement on Concerns about 2019 Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, which was shared via the SAA website, social media, and an all-member email. 
• Approved a petition to form a new section, the Independent Archives Section. 
• Discussed the results of the Membership Committee’s Survey on Barriers to Participation in SAA and agreed to utilize the analysis during their strategic planning session at the November Council meeting. 
• Discussed the procedures and criteria for component group funding requests and agreed to review a revised draft at the July 29 Council meeting. 
• Approved SAA support for two International Council on Archives documents, the Principles of Access to Archives and the Basic Principles on the Role of Archivists and Records Managers in the Support of Human Rights.

On Wednesday, in addition to attending a number of section and committee meetings, I along with my two fellow first-year Council members organized and led SAA's annual Leadership Forum. This Forum brought together leaders from component groups across the organization to discuss collaboration, cooperation, and strategic planning. Thanks to lots of focused pre-event publicity (and promises of candy and buttons for attendees), we were very excited to have nearly 70 attendees at the Forum -- attendance in past years hovered around 20 or 30. Post-event feedback was extremely positive, and we plan to use what we learned as well as the feedback received to revise and update the leadership manual portion of SAA's website in the coming year.

Other less exciting but equally important Council responsibilities throughout the week included meeting with vendors to thank them for attendance and solicit feedback for our 2018 annual meeting in Washington, D.C., and attending the annual SAA business meeting on Friday afternoon.

While I wasn't able to get to many educational sessions due to Council responsibilities, I did attend (at least in part) three really strong sessions. Those sessions focused on email archiving, diversifying the archival record, and/or community archives. In particular, I was interested in one session focused on ways in which universities have enabled students to do intensive research into university history (and specifically underrepresented aspects of university history) through fellowships or projects in the archives. This session tied in nicely with some of the work we are doing with our 125th anniversary student researchers, but it also reinforced the importance of supporting this type of work on an on-going basis.

On Saturday, after our 7:30am Council meeting, we hosted The Liberated Archive Forum, which aimed to bring together archivists and community members in conversation over issues of documentation. The Forum was a departure from the typical annual meeting structure, and we were all very excited to see strong attendance.

And, with the end of the annual meeting on Saturday at 5pm came the end of my first year on SAA Council. Now I feel I have a better grasp on how the organization operates, I look forward to the remaining two years of my term!