Beth's NCLA 2011 Summary

I attended my first NCLA conference in Hickory, NC in early October and enjoyed networking with some awesome librarians from around the state - meeting folks I only knew only virtually, connecting with amazing distance learning librarians at our new NCLA Distance Learning Interest Group meetup (which I co-chair w/ Angela Whitehurst from ECU) and meeting newbie librarians that NC is lucky to have!

I was thrilled to teach a half day pre-conference session with Lauren Pressley (WFU) and Amy Archambault (UNCG LIS grad student) called Everybody Teaches: Creating effective online e-learning experiences, check out our wiki for details. It was an engaged crowed of over 30 folks from all different types of libraries around NC and we shared a lot together in the 3 hours (which easily could have been all day!)

I also gave a fun presentation with Mendy Ozan (UNCG MLIS grad '11) demonstrating various tech tools from our libraries' Instructional Technology Toolkit which she helped me initially research to create. The internet went down (of course!) right at the start of our session. Though we had screen shots of the tools, the point of the session was demonstrating how they work so easily so we were thrilled that a gracious attendee (DE librarian at WSSU - Melinda Livas you rock!) offered her hot spot for us to use so we were able to demonstrate tools such as Urtak, RTM, Tungle.me, to name a few (don't know these tools? check them out in the toolkit!) I also did a poster session on the Toolkit - posters a great way to get feedback while chatting with people about your project.

I attended a few interesting sessions too. One from Wake County Public Libraries on The Art of Capturing Ideas: Internal Crowd-sourcing. They developed a website (using ideascale) calling it 'wcpl ideas: share - vote -change' where staff could post an idea, others can vote on it and/or comment, and if its get 20 votes in 30 dates then it goes into "review" either will be process and happen or be closed but with an explanation of why on the website. Helps staff feel they have a voice and place to suggest ideas, all staff can participate by voting, and it helps with transparency of why we "do or don't" from administrations to staff. They had 22 ideas implemented in the first year and 76% of staff participated. Check out their presentation.

Another session I enjoyed most of was from the Center Creative for Leadership on Your Leadership Brand - What Image Do You Present to Others? the interaction was nice, lots of discussions, as she had us all pick these cool visual cards that we thought represented our leadership style; in small groups we discussed what others thought when they saw it to realize various perspectives looking at the same thing. We were to connect that image to what we do now for work and then come up with 3 words to be a brand tagline. We discussed our brand presence which is not really what you look like as much as how you act in various situations & with various people, and how you show yourself on your resume/cv, in interviews and on social media sites - both when looking for job and on the job. The conversation went on the job seeking tangent for a while (since so many students looking for jobs were in the room!) but it was worthwhile conversations and thoughts. One thing I learned was you should add your accomplishments to your resume not just a job description. Check out her presentation.

More NCLA presentations are available now on slideshare.net/ncla2011