Tag: Conferences

Code of Conduct, Code4Lib, Lib Tech Gender, and My Vagina – Oh my!

Judith Beheading Holofrenes by Caravaggio
Judith Beheading Holofrenes by Caravaggio

 
Dear Internet,
Before I go forward, I must warn you the bloodwolves have arrived at House Rabey yesterday and I’m feeling a leetle like the above image.
This week has been insane as I prep for an author’s lecture and Q & A at the college that I organized, getting started on one of my departments accreditation process (well there went holiday break!) and a whole other load of work and personal stuff. I haven’t had time to do much of anything and I’m thankful I took Friday off or else I would die from exhaustion. Good job, me!
Before ALA’s annual conference happened this summer, several people linked me to a conversation at a public librarian Facebook group that started out with asking about hooking up at the conference and the conversation, of course, degraded from there.  I made my views  fairly well known on the topic.

Screen Shot 2013-11-20 at 11.13.01 PM

It took nearly 5 months after I started making the noise, and in ALA parlance that is ultra fast, but ALA FINALLY has a Code of Conduct in place. Huz-fucking-zah! Andromeda Yelton wrote up a really great piece on the whole process.
Since talking about my vag has become one of my favorite topics, here are other things going on this week in that area:

  • I massively updated the landing page for #libtechwomen/#libtechgender that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I’ve pulled everything I’ve written into one tidy location. If you have any links or suggestions you think I should add, let me know.
  • I’ve just put together the proposal for a Librarianship, Technology, Gender pre-conference at Code4Lib. If you’re planning on attending this year, might I suggest you sign up?
  • I’ve been approached by a in-profession magazine and a book publisher to start putting my words to print. This is SEEKRIT for the moment, but I will reveal when I can on both topics.

Now I slumber.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe:

Librarians, Gender, and Tech: Moving the Conversation Forward

"Woman teaching geometry" Illustration at the beginning of a medieval translation of Euclid's Elements (c. 1310 AD) via Wikipedia CC.
“Woman teaching geometry”
Illustration at the beginning of a medieval translation of Euclid’s Elements (c. 1310 AD) via Wikipedia CC.

Dear Internet,
Nearly a year ago, there was a small explosion over a post I had written on why men should not write about gender and technology, which stemmed from conversations that were being held simultaneously over several similar mailing lists and blog posts.  At the end of the post, I had proposed in the following to help keep the conversation flowing:

  • Donate to the Ada Intiative.
  • Start/chair an interest group for women in technology in LITA, the technology arm of ALA
  • Start a GeekGirl Dinner in your area.
  • Use Meetup.com to start/find groups in your interests (there were loads of Women in Technology interest groups on MeetUp).
  • Depending on where you work, what you do; start off-site initiative for women to have a hack-a-thon
  • Find local hackerspace communities to start a women’s initiative
  • Use professional conferences to propose panels/groups/discussions to get more people aware but also to pay it forward
  • Create a women in tech book club at local bar/coffee house
  • Donate time to do mentoring to high school and middle school girls
  • Donate to or become a sponsor for a nearby women’s conference, like GeekGirlCon

In keeping with the spirit of my suggestions, this week I presented with a load of great people on gender, technology, and libraries at Internet Librarian.
Twenty four hours later, I was publicly sexually harassed. Like I said, the irony was not lost on me.
Now that the conference is over, I am home and I have had a few days to simmer on the events of the week, I’ve decided to take up the mantel permanently on the topic. My reasoning for this is layered, but primary cause is I don’t think we’re doing enough in the profession to bring this to the forefront of our mind. I only tend to write about it when something has happened either to me or I’ve become impassioned for another and my opinion must be heard! I’ve noticed that others seem to act the same way, thus the discussion tends to dip and rise depending on what is getting peoples ganders up at the moment.
I was curious as to how others are discussing it within the profession, so here are a few examples of how we’re not addressing this topic:

  • A search of “sexual harassment” in American Libraries turns up only 23results, most on opinions on events occurring in the late ’90s and on public court cases
  • A search of “gender technology” in American LIbraries Magazine turns up 27 results, much on the concentration on gender in the classroom
  • ITAL, the journal for LITA, has no results on “sexual harassment,” and two results on “gender,” one of which about the financial disparity between men and women and discussion on the roles of women in technology, which is low, in a profession where the role of women is high
  • Code4Lib Journal has no mention of “sexual harassment” in its journal, and “gender” brings up conference reports on forums on inclusion and diversity. To be fair, a lot of the big discussions happen on their mailing list, but that doesn’t entirely erase the fact there is no discussion happening in their journal
  • As far as I can find, until now, there is no known topic or panel of women, technology, or gender that have taken place on local or national forums in terms of panels, posters, or discussions at conferences
  • There was no known Code of Conduct at ALA Annual 2013, or any other ALA related conference. When I asked and asked, I was constantly told this was a “topic of discussion” stretching back for many years but no one was actively working on it because it was assumed it was not needed. Thanks to Andromeda Yelton, who rocks my little socks, and others who helped get this out of the discussion period and into the actual tangible thing. Hopefully this will be taken up by other arms of ALA for their future conferences.

Then there is always the other side of sexual harassment — the side of men being harassed by women. I had a conversation with a male librarian while at Internet Librarian who regaled me of stories of sexual harassment occurring towards him while at conferences, meetings, and the like. Now what is interesting is social convention states that as a male, he’s supposed to not only take it, but be flattered by the attention. Why are we also not discussing this?
Another intriguing thing about this topic is the fact the discussion seems to be happening all over and around librarianship, via national outlets and personal blogs, but not within the profession itself. Some good examples of these conversations that give a lot of food for thought are:

Now some of the above writers are librarians, others are not, so when I say “within the profession itself,” I explicitly mean within professional journals, organizations, and conferences.
Now this post is meandering all over the place, but lets add more on what to do to keep the conversation going:

  • Started near the end of 2012, I formed LibTechWomen with Becky Yoose, Bohyun Kim,  Andromeda Yelton, and many other awesome people as a way to create a safe space for women and their allies to talk about these and every other issue under the sun. You can find us, mainly, via Facebook, Twitter as @libtechwomen and #libtechwomen, and GoogleGroups.
  • A national summit, Leadership-Technology-Gender, is happening at the end of Electronic Resources & Libraries conference in March, 2014. Great start, but we need to keep this at  local level as well
  • Start doing panels, proposals, forums, Q&As at at library related conferences, local and specialized
  • Use this topic as a launch pad for discussion in your classes. (Thanks, Nick!)
  • Start implementing a Codes of Conduct1 at your conferences, meetings, and other large gatherings
  • Start writing on this topic on a regular basis both in personal blogs AND professional journals, most specifically NOT just when something happens
  • Push this topic on Twitter using #libtechgender

Over on my professional site, I’ve started to curate all of this into a page of its own. You can track the updates by subscribing to the tag here when I write a new article or checking the page manually or subscribing to the page’s RSS feed to get updates when the page itself is updated.
As always, I have obviously not covered everything so if you have an article, link to an already happened or upcoming panel, or whatever, please feel free to drop a comment below or contact me.
I also encourage discussion on this topic from all perspectives, as more voices the better, whether here, your own blog, or on Twitter using #libtechgender. But please keep it civil.
xoxo,
Lisa

1. I’m going to be writing more on this topic at a later date, as I think this is just as important as talking about sexual harassment and women in library technology

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012

Live Action Sexual Harassment

Dear Internet,
It started out innocently enough.
I was standing outside of a karaoke bar with some friends, when an obviously drunk guy invades my personal space, got into my face and said, “Can I ask you a question?” I said sure and he asked how I liked his football jersey. I replied I had no comment on it. He said he liked my shirt and wanted to know if I would take it off for him. I said no. He said how much would it take for me to take it off. I replied a million dollars. He said he didn’t have that much and wouldn’t I just want to take it off for him? Again I said no, and as I was speaking started inching closer to a male friend of mine who was near me. A girlfriend who was also with me interjected and said I wouldn’t have anything to wear if I took off my shirt. Drunk guy gestured to his jersey and said I could have his jersey in trade if I wanted. I again replied in the negative while by this time, standing so close to my male friend I could feel the fabric of his clothes on my bare arms. Mr. Drunk got distracted for a brief moment and I took this as my opportunity to get the fuck inside. Bouncers figured out what was going on and started steering the guy into a waiting cab.
This all took place under the span of five minutes. Probably even less.
I’m in California for a conference; presenting on sexual harassment with the emphasis on being a woman in technology, a primarily male dominated profession. The irony of the exchange above is not lost on me.
The rest of the evening took a dark turn in my head. I’ve been in a really great space for a few weeks now and I’ve been enjoying this conference immensely. While this is the first conference I’ve attended in a long time solo, meaning I had no obvious conference buddy or TheHusband with me, I’ve not been alone. I’m seeing a lot of old friends while meeting new. I am pissed that out of all the obvious places for this could have happened, it had to be here.
Getting sexually harassed is not a new thing to me and I would argue it’s not a new thing for any woman. But in that scant amount of time, this jerkoffs attitude towards me stripped me emotionally naked and for that I am angry. I was made to feel like an object of someone’s whim, someone who could have hurt me, someone who felt I could have been bought for a few dollars. Someone who took away my power as a person.
In the beginning of the evening, the hours had flown by but now, the rest of the evening slowed to a crawl. Several of us were game on closing the bar down but all I wanted was to get back to my hotel room and protect myself. I tried to shake off the fact perhaps I was overreacting – I continued with the facade of happy go lucky: Guinness was still consumed, I still sang at karaoke, and to the world it seemed like nothing had happened but internally, I no longer felt like me but a piece of meat being appraised, valued, and reappraised again. To Mr. Drunk, who will have forgotten it by the morning, it was probably nothing. He was drunk. He didn’t mean it. He was not that type of person. He’s a married man.
Excuses will be made, by him. By me.
Once I made it safely to my room, I stripped down and took the hottest shower possible. I scrubbed myself several times over and brushed my teeth so hard, my gums were almost bleeding. When I get back to Michigan, I’ll probably throw the shirt away.
Being overly self-aware, this stripping of power by Mr. Drunk has accelerated the feeling of fragility. I’m clawing to not feel anxious, to not feel exposed, to not feel sub-human. He obviously doesn’t know my story – because why would he? I was just a random woman who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But I know my back story, I know how I struggle with my own emotional boundaries, and all of the protection I have worked so hard has now been weakened, my borders are compromised. I start to question how even my most benign of clothing choices became the object of his attention, his needs, his wants.
Some are going to read this and think,”What’s the big fucking deal? You were at a bar, some drunk asshole was a dick, you weren’t hurt physically. Get over it.” But that’s my fucking point, it IS a big deal. This has NOT been the only instance of sexual harassment that’s happened since I’ve been here. Shortly after I presented on my panel, I was out with a group of people, many who were at my panel. Without fucking fail, several of those in our group spent longer than necessary staring at my rack. Yes, I do have a nice rack. It’s pretty apparent I have a nice rack. But when I’m sitting there having a conversation with you and I’m watching your eyes flick from my tits to my face and back again CONSTANTLY as we’re talking; when it becomes clear you’re not really paying attention to “me” but the aforementioned nice rack, then any respect I’ve ever had happened for you has been stripped.
As it was, so it will be; this will be fodder for future panels, for examples and illustration purposes. The cycle continues.
xoxo,
Lisa

My #ALA2013 (Social) Schedule

One of my goals today was to get my ALA Annual schedule in somewhat manageable order before the conference next week since I knew time was going to be precious over the course of the next few days AND I didn’t want to be caught unawares when I got to the conference. After going through the scheduler backwards and forwards numerous times, adding in meeting not on the official list, and food plans, I blanched when I saw  how heavy I had booked myself. Some time slots had as little as two sessions planned, others as many as six. All of them, to some degree, equally important.
Originally, like my ACRL pre-conference post,  I was going to load up my complete schedule here and so that people could find me and I could easily have it on my phone. Until I loaded the calendering from scheduler directly into my Google calendar and wept.  (I apparently also broke Google calendar as I cannot even get it to load right now, and for that I’m sorry.)
So instead most of the below is my pre-arranged breakfast/lunch plans along with my after hours social obligations. If there is a Facebook event available, I linked to it but you should check out the fairly complete list of after-hours socials  compiled by my favorite metal head, Lauren, for all the details on the events.  As I’m leaving late Monday afternoon, my event calendaring ends around the lunch hour on Monday.
You can find me around the conference areas pretty easily: I’ll be the tall, short haired, person wearing one of my bazillion nerdy tshirts.  This is specifically important if you want one of the #libtechwomen ribbons I’ll be handing out while I’m at ALA.
Lastly, if you want to meet up at one of the social events below or on the conference floor itself, you can always follow me on the twitters.

Friday

18:00 – ? Circulating Ideas Friday Night Dinner, (Kitty O’Sheas)
19:30 – 22:00 ALA Play (Sheraton Chicago Ballroom)
22:00 – ? ALA Dance Party (Ay Chiwowa, Chicago)
22:00 – ? STACKS! Soul Librarian Dance Party & Benefit for the Read/Write Library (Late Bar, 3534 W. Belmont Ave. at Drake)

Saturday

07:00 – 10:00 Dewey Update Breakfast  (Room N230a, McCormick)
10:00 – 12:00 ALA CraftCon (Uncommons, McCormick)
11:30 – 13:00 Innovative Customer Luncheon at ALA (Hyatt Regency Room 10CD, McCormick)
13:00 – 14:30 ALA Think Tank for Council Shawarma Meetup (Oasis Cafe)
19:00 – 21:00 Library Journal and Tumblr Present SET PHASERS TO INTERNET (Blue Frog’s Local 22)
20:30 – ? ALA Tweetup (Elephant & Castle)
22:00 – 03:00 ALA2013 After Hours – Local 22 – EveryLibrary and Librarian Wardrobe Party (Blue Frog’s Local 22)

Sunday

07:30 – ? Alexander Street Press Breakfast (Continental Ballroom, Hilton Chicago)
07:30 – ? OCLC Update Breakfast (Room E354a, McCormick)
10:30 – 11:30 RandomHouse Fall2013 Book Brunch (Room N227A, McCormick North)
13:00-14:30 Launching Online Special Collections using CONTENTdm (Adler Room 24B, Hyatt Regency McCormick)
17:30 – 20:00 LITA Happy Hour (Fado Irish Pub)
18:00 – 20:00 GLBTRT Social at ALA Annual! (Ann Sather)
21:00 – ? Biblio Follies 2nd Ed. (The Backroom)

Monday

08:30 – 10:00 CONTENTdm User Group Meeting (Room N135, McCormick)
11:00 – 11:30 ExLibris Meeting (Booth #217, McCormick)
12:00 – 13:00 The OCLC President’s Luncheon (Lakeside Ballroom (E354a), McCormick)

Conference Summary: Punk Rock Librarianship at ACRL

In April, I drove down with a colleague to Indianapolis for ACRL, the biennial national academic librarian conference. While not as large as ALA, it was definitely as overwhelming.  Since this was my first ACRL, I put together my schedule for the conference online to keep me in check and because the official mobile app was terrible.
At conferences like this, I do a lot of my best learning, sharing, and connecting while networking in social and impromptu situations over sitting in conference rooms listening to a presenter drone on.  Because there is so much over simulation, I’m going to wrap-up a few key pieces for me.

Session: Planning Programs for Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys Bookshelf

GRCC Library is a proud recipient of the MJB grant and by the time the conference was approaching, we already had one event planned, Muslim Journeys Poetry Night, which turned out to be a huge success. The MJB round table was the chance to connect with other institutions who were also awarded the grant and find out what they were doing for MJB, how they are doing it, how they were marketing/promoting it, as well as outreach, and everything else in between.  I got a lot out of this round table, and also a  lot of great resources to use for future planning of events for the rest of the academic career.

Keynote: Henry Rollins

Henry Rollins is a punk rock icon, writer, publisher, traveler, musician, actor, and activist. And that does not even cover half of his interests. Rollins was selected as one of the primary keynotes for ACRL 2013, and he is the main reason I decided to attend. Henry’s passion for protection, curation, and preserving information is contagious. He spent his much of his keynote regaling the audience with stories of his own preservation works, starting when he was younger by collecting flyers and promotions for bands he knew, saw, or played in and his love for and about archives and librarianship. Rollins’ is immensely quotable, but one of his most accurate statements in this keynote is, “Life is short. Show up and do stuff.”

Session: THATCamp ACRL

The Humanities and Technology (THATCamp) is an all day (sometimes multiple days) unconference in which the sessions are collaborative, participatory, and most importantly, small. Having attended other unconferences in the past, this type of learning and sharing is definitely on par with my literacy style over say a structured lecture or something else along those lines. Since everyone in the unconference is participating, almost everyone involved is passionate about the topic, which makes sharing of ideas much more fun. The informality of the conference allows for flexibility and spontaneity that one normally wouldn’t find at a regular conference session, which also helps stimulate the projects and allows for growth that wouldn’t necessarily come.
I participated in the MOOC sessions, which was a small (less than a dozen people) group. The idea was to create an information literacy MOOC that would or could be dropped into instructors sessions and could be completely modular. So instead of creating a MOOC that is geared for say one class or say one college, this would be a general enough MOOC that could be dropped in a community college in Vermont or a big state college in California. While we were not able to complete the MOOC by the end of the day, there was a lot of interest to continue the work long after ACRL was finished.
Below is links to tweets, Google docs, and other materials for the MOOC as well as other links of interest for ACRL.
Interesting links of note about ACRL 2013

  • Twitter search #ACRL2013
  • THATCamp ACRL 2013
  • ACRL 2013: a first timer’s review in five words
  • Crowdsourcing an information literacy MOOC: a twitter story
  • Librarians Are Punks Too
  • Storify: Henry Rollins Keynote
  • Storify: Henry Rollins Keynote
  • Open Educational Resources
  • #ilmooc
  • GoogleDoc: ACRL THATCamp MOOC

Conference Summary: MLA Applied Technologies & Trends Workshop

On Friday, May 10, I had the pleasure of presenting at MLA Applied Technologies & Trends Workshop, If you caught my show before, at Library Tech Conference, you may notice some similarities. The presentation I gave at MLA is updated with a lot more content  and recent revisions as well as I even have a checklist put together that I PDFed for people to use that I promised to have for people back in March.
Since I was one of the last persons to present, below are my notes on the other presentations I attended along with links as appropriate.

Keynote: Good For Whom? 

By Matthew Reidsma / Grand Valley State University
Why are decisions made for design not carried over to digital tools? Meaning, why do we apply strict questions to physical items but not to digital ones.

  • Functional: How does it function?
  • Behavioral: How do behaviors change?
  • How to do it?
    • This is where most people stop.
    • These are internal questions, that we ask ourselves on everything.
  • “The library world has been fa too gullible, far too willing to regard any technical advance as a service advance.”  – Jonathan D. Lauer & Steve McKinzie
  • Human: How does this affect human experience?
    • Need to think more about the person who comes into our library, less about what we’re doing about them.
    • How do people FEEL?
      • How you treat people is more apt than what you did or will do. For example, if you treat a customer nicely, they will tell maybe 1 or 2 people. If you treat them badly, they will tell, on the average, nine people about their experience.
  • “User experience isn’t about expert intuition, it’s about expert listening.” – Whitney Hess
  • External questions: How to find how these technologies  are going to affect not just people, but work flows, and technologies themselves.
    • Adding the human element
  • A way forward: Ditching the label maker
    • Prioritize users over process
    • We could be reactionary (train industry of people to undo the work of crappy vendors) or say to the vendors, “Makes this easy to use.”  Demand it to be easy to use.
  • Prioritize users over processes

Resources/sites mentioned

Session: Cloud & Mobile Computing 4 Your LIbrary Resources & Services

By Michael Samson / Wayne State University

  • All the Google products, all the time
  • Chromebox / Chromebook instead of using vendor specific hardware
  • Hardware: Android (Nexus 4, 7, 10)
  • Tools / apps / gadgets
    • Creating custom search engine for faculty for their interests
    • Ability to share content via Google drive (presentations, documents)
    • Cloud is the new mainframe
  • Creating an entire workflow of tools in the Google cloud

Session: Sharing Technology Skills with Patrons and Colleagues

By Scott Skowronek / Lansing Community College

  • Uneven distribution of technology skills across staff and faculty
  • Creation of Tech Guides
    • 4 student staff per semester
    • Empowered to seek out and assist
    • Customer service focused
    • Roving support
    • Employee traits & Responsibilities
      • Keep the interactions time short (15 minutes) and then escalate
      • Know the GRCC core systems
      • Record each interaction (to identify peak times and keeps statics)
    • Training
      • Identify the “Big 3” technical problems and train the guides on these first. Example:
        • Blackboard problems
        • Forgotten passwords
        • Attaching files to emails
      • Find the technology pain points
        • Ex: Printer jams
      • Work with staff strengths
      • Collaborative training
        • Using iPads with Google docs to  train and track problems, seamless synching and updating
      • Encourage guides to Google for problems
    • Logistics
      • One tech guide on shift at a time
      • 3 hour shifts
      • Tech guide iPad
      • Peak hours
    • Pitfalls
      • Morale issues
      • Patron problems and problem patrons
      • Shift switching and absences
      • Staff technology ability
  • TechSnippets
    • Presentations that contain 10-15 minutes of content, open to faculty/staff
    • Maybe schedule 15 minutes  for discussion after
    • Schedule midday – more people on campus, this is when departments break for lunch, etc
    • Discuss single technology or a cluster of similar
      • Dropbox (Google Drive, iCloud)
    • Discuss singular concepts
    • Feed them!
      • Get a $100 convention oven, make cookies!
      • Use cookies to lure them into your lair
    • Marketing
      • Multiple channels
      • Multiple reminders
      • LibCal for sign-up and contact
      • Target a specific audience
  • Resources for ideas for Tech Snippets

Session: What to put on that new TV in the lobby

By David Hytien & Britain Woodman / University of Michigan

  • Content
    • Creative Commons content
      • Youtube. Vimeo, etc
      • From NASA, NOOA, White House, Internet Archive, Flickr
    • Content from various places like the above, plus student content, staff content, and public content available on campus, found content
    • RSS feeds
  • Logo
    • Recommend size is 1080×1920
    • Transparent
    • Should be png or gif as they are lossless
  • Videos
    • Create in iMovie, drop movies and logo just created
  • Resources

 
 

Librarians as Doctor Who: A Wrap Up of C2E2

Dear Internet,
A coulpe of weeks ago, after many months of planning, myself and nearly a dozen of my closest friends met up in Chicago to hook up for C2E2 to present on best practices, programming, and more for graphic novels in libraries, have karaoke good times, and other fun shenanigans.
Overall, as a conference, C2E2 rocks the fuck out of all the other conferences I usually attend. The registration price is super inexpensive, it’s close by, we get work with great people like Toby who acted as our liaison to ALA, we get to meet new people from the Internet, and we get to have a lot of fun while doing our jobs. THIS Is what makes being a librarian awesome. From a comics and pop culture experience,  I also love C2E2 because everything is easily accessible, the guests are approachable, and the panels are excellent. This conference is a win-win situation all around. And the city itself ain’t too shabby either.
The cherry on cake this year? Several of us cosplayed as Doctor Who.

CMMRB Doctor Who
L-R: 11 (Kristin), 4 (Julie), 10 (Carolyn), Donna Noble (Sarah), Rose (Val), Captain Jack (Beth), 9 (me)

Hilights from C2E2, including vines and more:

x0x0,
Lisa
Credits: Me (Instgram, Vine), Kristin (Instagram, Vine), Val (Instagram, Vine), Carolyn (Instagram, Tumblr), Beth (Instagram), Julie (Instagram), and Rob (Instagram, Vine).
 

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2003, 2012

My #ACRL2013 Schedule

I do not plan what I’m doing while I’m at a conference. I usually just register for the conf, show up, figure out what I want to do on the fly, and then head home. My interest in a particular conference is usually thematic base OR I know people I respect/admire are presenting, so where I go is kind of all over the place.
ACRL piqued my interest because one of my future husbands, Henry Rollins, is keynoting. (INORITE!) So while I attempt to contain my fangirl squeeing, I started seeing people on various social networks post their schedule for ACRL. I couldn’t figure out why people were doing this until I sorted that it probably has more to do with how terrible the My Planner site is (it’s “mobile friendly” but there is no desktop version – it’s just amplified in a browser. There is also no app) then anything else.
My website does responsive mobile rendering of my blog and unlike My Planner, it’s super easy to read. So for my edification, here is my schedule for ACRL. Yes, there are some conflicts. Yes, it will more than likely change.
And you’re attending ACRL this year, you should definitely come by and say “Hi!”

Wednesday

Drive from Grand Rapids to Indy
04:00 – 05:45PM
Opening Keynote, Geoffrey Canada (JW Grand Ballroom 1-6)
05:45PM -07:30PM
Exhibits Opening Reception (ICC – Exhibit Hall)
07:00PM – 08:00PM
First-time Orientation/ACRL 101 (ICC – 104-106)
08:00PM – 10:00PM
Battle Decks! – Imagine, Improvise, Inflict: Get Inspired or Die Trying (ICC 109-110)
09:00PM – 12:00AM
ACRL Think Tank Tweetup & Social! (The Slippery Noodle)

Thursday

10:30AM – 11:30AM
Game on! Creating Video Game Collections at Academic Libraries (ICC 109-110)
10:30AM-11:30AM
“‘You Have Stephen King? Really?’, Or, The Role of Popular Reading Materials in Academic Libraries” (ICC Exhibit Hall)
01:00PM – 02:00PM
Visual Literacy in Action (ICC 109-110)
Planning Programs for Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys Bookshelf (ICC Exhibit Hall)
Hacking the Learner Experience: techniques and strategies for connecting with your instructional ecosystem (ICC Wabash 2-3)
11:30AM – 01:00PM
Innovative Customers Lunch – Indianapolis Marriott Downtown (Marriott Room 8-10)
03:00PM – 04:00PM
What’s in a Name?: Information Literacy, Metaliteracy, or Transliteracy (ICC 125-126)
04:20PM – 06:00PM
Keynote, Henry Rollins (JW Grand Ballroom 1-6)
06:00PM – 07:00PM
Henry Rollins Book Signing (JW Grand Ballroom Lobby)
08:00PM – ?
LibTechWomen meet-up at ACRL 2013 (Scotty’s Brewhouse)

Friday

08:30AM – 09:30AM
THATCamp ACRL 2013 (1) (ICC Wabash 1)
11:00AM – 12:00PM
THATCamp ACRL 2013 (1) (ICC Wabash 1)
11:00AM – 12:00PM
“The Mother of all LibGuides”: Applying Principles of Communication and Network Theory in LibGuide Design (ICC 125-126)
12:00PM – 1:00PM
EBSCO’s Academic Luncheon (Indianapolis Marriott, Marriott Rooms 5 – 10, 2nd Floor)
01:30PM – 02:30PM
Mapping the Motor City’s Cinema: A Collaborative Digital Humanities Project (ICC 107-108)
01:30PM – 02:30PM
THATCamp ACRL 2013 (1) (ICC Wabash 1)
04:00PM – 05:00PM
THATCamp ACRL 2013 (1) (ICC Wabash 1)
04:00PM – 05:00PM
Quest for Engagement: Innovative Library Instruction with Games-Based Learning (ICC 123-124)
04:00PM – 05:00PM
Using Data Visualization web widgets to Improve the Institutional Repository User Experience (ICC 120-122)
04:00PM – 05:00PM
When Social Media Fails to Inspire: Transforming your library’s social media presence (ICC 120-122)
08:00PM – 10:30PM
All-Conference Reception – Indiana State Museum

Saturday

08:30AM – 09:30 AM
Queering the Library: What are YOU doing to serve your LGBTQ community? (ICC 107-108)
09:45 – 10:45
Waking the [Digital] Dead: A Continuum Approach to Digital Initiatives (ICC 101-103)
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Summary of LibTechConf 2013

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Library Technology Conference, which is held at  Macalster College in St. Paul, MN. As I mentioned at the beginning of my talk, I did not know LibTechConf (as it is affectionately referred to) existed until last year, when several people I professionally admire were prepping for their talk that year. After some research, I found it was highly regarded, specially curated, and previous LibTechConf conferences had a wealth topics that were  often not repeated elsewhere  The content was not a regurgitation of the same stuff, different conference (or year) you may see with larger conferences.
I’m thrilled to have been a part of it this year.
Wednesday
Keynote: Virginia Eubanks – Can Tech Serve Social Justice?
Eubanks, Internship Director of the Women’s Studies Department at University at Albany and co-founder of Our Knowledge, Our Power, gave an impassioned talk on the use of technology in the realm of social justice. She explored the idea the digital divide is not just a barrier between person and tech, but it is also a barrier and a preventer to getting services and needs that many existing without making a living wage were getting access to. Eubanks also discussed how companies, in the US and elsewhere, took advantage of impoverished areas to find workers for their factories and exploited them for cheap labor. In addition, some of these companies would train their employees to work within various areas of the company, but instead of investing more education or training to promote them, the workers were often fired or laid off due to outsourcing or job consolidation.   If interested in more of Eubanks’ work, check out her book Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age
Session: OMG! My metadata is as fresh as the Backstreet Boys
Short, but sweet, session on using Google Refine (which recently changed to OpenRefine a few days before the talk) and Freebase to clean up dirty metadata. Examples were given of how robust the products are and how to best utilize them
Session: Websites are for people
Highly informative session that makes the bold statement: Libraries should not be building or designing websites for supposed library needs, but should be building  for the library’s patrons/community/users needs. The presenter walked us through how user design and experience (UX) is not just for websites, but for everywhere and everything  in our world.  He gave examples of these outside the digital world experiences such as the badly designed parking meters that give conflicting instructions to directional information at walk-up restaurant counters that force the person to make too many choices in order to order food and pay for it.  He then tied these back to user design for websites and how the same mindset is seemingly applied. “Library websites are too complicated.” And he’s right.  After the talk, I started seeing user experience problems everywhere. My current favorite example is on the way home from the conference, the terminal as MSP had a large display built to emulate an app that was available for you to download on your smartphone. The problem is they don’t illustrate it’s just a demo and not usable, so you walk up and start mashing your fingers against the glass to get information and see that it won’t do anything.
Session: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Institutional Repositories
My presentation!
Session: Digital Preservation = Enduring Access
This isn’t what I quite thought it was going to be. I was looking for more information about on plans, techniques, and tips and it turned out to be more of a “This is what we’ve done, this is we may do.” It felt really like an intro class to archives and digital preservation, which would have been fine if it had billed itself as that, but it didn’t.
Thursday
Keynote: Kimberly Bryant – Founder, Black Girls Code
Just like Virginia Eubanks, Kimberly Bryant’s talk was passionate, engaging, and brimming with lots of good information. Bryant talked about the formation of Black Girls Code, with the purpose of getting women into tech as well as engaging them, and getting them to start taking chances in technology. While discussing the early days of BGC, Bryant was pleasantly surprised to find it was not start-ups or colleges that would help, but it was  libraries that would become the place for BGC meetings, programs, and workshops. BGC started out with intent to bring its messages to under represented areas (underscoring much of what Eubanks was discussing in her talk) and it has grown. There is now discussion to start similar groups like BGC for other underrepresented populations.
Session: Copyright, Licenses, and Fair Use: What’s Up With That?
Here’s the first thing you should know:

If you’re not a lawyer and you’re giving advice on copyright issues on campus, you may get in trouble for practicing law.

Second thing you should know, First sale rights could be applied to EVERYTHING: Used cars, after-market products, even library lending.
A recap of this really informative presentation should be best be presented in links that were relevant to the talk:

  • Center for Social Media: Fair Use
  • Fight Copyright Trolls
  • Ruling of Cambridge University Press, Oxford  University Press, and Sage Publications vs Georgia State University
  • Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (Not legal advice.)
  • Buffy vs Edward

To see more what people are saying about LibTechConf, check #LTC2013 on Twitter.

Naked Librarians: ALA 10 Unplugged. #ala10 (Part I.)

I made several of these shirts in several different colors for the #ala10 conference and wore them all weekend. The QR Code does indeed work.
I made several of these shirts in several different colors for the #ala10 conference and wore them all weekend. The QR Code does indeed work.

Holy. Cats.
After much hemming & hawing, I made it to D.C. this past week for the American Library Association’s annual convention (or known in Twitterland as #ala10). Geeks, by the way, have NOTHING on the librarians ifyouknowwhatImean.
Now that the conference is over, there have been a trickle of posts coming out of the blogosphere about various libarians’ experiences with #ala10. A few worth mentioning are: I’ve been a passive fan girl of Andy Woodworth for some time now as he’s been super helpful in helping me with that murky area between the ending of my SLIS program and being thrust out to the world of librarianship with only a single arm floatie to prop me up. Andy wrote a breakdown of of the conference, specifically talking about social media advocacy. What I took away from this was, “STFU. You’ve got the tools, now USE THEM.”
P.C. Sweeney also wrote up his experiences for the PLA blog, which captured some of the spirit of the conference. While not a blog post, I DID ran into (almost literally) to one of the creators of Crave Libraries on the exhibit floor (and also scored a few cool buttons FTW!). Advocacy, awareness and grassroots-esque ideas while not heavy on the sessions list, were definitely huge topic of conversation at the dinners and social events.
A knockoff of my Moo cards that I printed at home since I forgot to order new batch before the conference. These were also a big hit at #ala10.
A knockoff of my Moo cards that I printed at home since I forgot to order new batch before the conference. These were also a big hit at #ala10.

The second thing I want to tackle before I going my observations on the conference (and because I know how wordy I am, this will be a two part post, with the first discussing the positive and the second post why ALA (and by extension, most librarians) are still huddling in the 19th century) is the plethora forwarding and retweeting of a blog post by Bobbi Newman that she wrote last year called, Why I’m over people Twittering Conferences, Meetings.
A year ago I would have been nodding my head vigorously and shaking a fist while proclaiming, “Right on, sister!” but having attended three separate conferences within the last year, I can only respectfully disagree.
Here’s why:

  • If you’re Twittering, you’re not paying attention – multitasking is a myth The problem I have with this statement is that it’s flat generalization across learning and theory styles. Statistically, I do much better cognitively if I took notes and in lieu of having a pen/paper or my netbook with me, tweeted the information for later user. I also am a much better visual learner so I need something to connect the aural with the visceral. This also doesn’t take into account those who have smart phones (and thus there is an app for that productivity if you’re sans your netbook) or those with just text only options, so texting at leas to their Twitter accounts may be the only way to keep notes.