ALA Exhibitors and My Notes

Saturday:
SIRSI/DYNIX: big crowd there huddled around to hear Stephen Abram talk about the Social Library and 2.0. Since I have been attending the Sirsi/Dynix Institutes online, I was anxious to hear him in person. This guy is amazing...his mind is clicking fast, he talks fast and yes ! I do think he can keep up with all the newest, greatest, latest. He is the first one to look you in the eye and comment on what is wrong with us that eveyone over 25 doesn't get it about Myspace, Facebook, Bebo. He urges us to get our "textheads" into "nexthead" and by the way, watch Spiralfrog from Universal (and it will be free). 80% of all college and university students have a social networking site like Myspace and Facebook. Look out for libraries in Second Life...get an avatar and join in the fun in Infoisland. If nothing else, subscribe to Stephen's blog: Stephen's Lighthouse http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/

p.s. and I am *not* a Sirsi customer...

oh yes, maryann...check out Yub, Zack Mortal in Second life, Schoolrooms, Eastern University's gaming interface, Hennepin County's link from Myspace

Also spent time with Overdrive, Booklist online, and others....but I *must* get to sleep so I can get back to the Sunrise session on Transforming the Future: 20/20 Foresight!

Exhausted (but happy) at ALA...Saturday night 1/20/2007

Today is Saturday and after I arrived late last night after the CJCLS dinner, I fell into bed and was fast asleep. I woke at ten to 6 and since I wanted to be back at the conference center by 8 for a motivational speaker, I was up, had the coffee pot on and was in the shower by 6. I am staying with Jeff's cousins in Puyullup which is about an hours drive south of Seattle.

Sue Ershler was the first speaker in the Sunrise speaker series. She is is an author as well as a business person and with her husband, was the first husband and wife team to reach Mt. Everest. husband-wide team to reach the top of Mt. Everest.

Ershler tells the story of her "goal" to climb Mt. Everest and Learn how to achieve goals that seem overwhelming through vision, focus, risk-taking and commitment. Now those of you who know me well know first that one summer I read about 6 or 7 Everest stories AND that I am always up for a motivational "shot in the arm." Sue was an engaging speaker and if I ever thought (in my dreams) that I might want to climb Everest, after hearing her speak I decided that vicariously living isn't so bad after all! Just the thought of crossing the cumba ice fall on 60 eight foot ladders strung together, well, if you know me, it just wouldn't happen. I have a hard enough time getting the Christmas lights up!

I liked the three P words Sue used for her goals: Project, Prepare and Persevere.

Project: establish a clear vision where you are going. Once you have the right vision, it drives all the activity to get there. 100% commitment = 100% productivity Focus on writing your goals to help you project your vision. Burn it into your brain!

Prepare: Break it down into managable tasks...little pieces, step by step. When she started out on the Everest climb, her husband encouraged her by saying that each day we will climb, and at night we will rest. Then we will climb a day, a rest. When the day was hard, they focused on a shorter term goal ans some days, it was as "manageable" as one step, then another step. She commented that when we project and prepare that we are truly "ordinary people who can do extraordinary things." Wow! that sounds like the Shatford Library staff!

Persevere: Push through the pain and the pain won't last...but the satisfaction of moving toward your goals will be there . William Durant (founder of General Motors) said it well:
William Durant: Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you going to do now and do it.

As Sue said, we all have our "seven summit dreams." As Robert Collier said:
You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish -- if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

Community and Junior College Library Section dinner

It was great to reconnect with people in this section listserve and then, some old friends. This is one of the great things about ALA that aside from the meetings, there are so many informal opportunities to get together and share our common experiences. I saw Dave Dowell from Cuesta, Bernie Fradkim from College of DuPage, Cary Sowell from Austin Community College and ellen sutton from College of Du Page. I finally met Kenley Newell from Santa Barbara College. I enjoyed having dinner with Stacey Nickell from West Kentucky, Mary Lou Sutton from the Keystone Library Network in Harrisburg, PA and Rebecca Schreiner from Morton College (Cicero, Ill.), ...and she is very interested in a resource like Content dm for the Western Electric collection. Very fun evening!

Assessment of Academic Library Effectiveness Using ACRL Standards for Continuous Evaluation/ACRL workshop with Bob Fernekes and Bill Nelson

Ferneckes and Nelson provided an introduction to the 2004 Standards for Libraries in Higher Education, provided some suggestions on how to apply the standards and provided some collaborative team table discussions on using the standards (by type of library). Workbook participants received a copy of their workbook called Standards and Assessments for Academic Libraries: A Workbook

Highlights:
Translating core values, vision, mission, and strategy
Linking to campus-wide values, vision, etc.
Exposure to a variety of methods of assessment using the workbook
Documentation of outcomes and assessments and linking back to the college-wide agendas
Challenge: “demonstrate ways in which library users are changed as a result of their contact with library services, resources and programs, and assess student learning and impact.
Use your established “culture of evidence” as defined by Bonnie Gratch-Lindauer
Prepare for next accreditation visit using regional standards, ACRL standards, SLO assessments .
Refer back to the established baseline (or establish one if not already developed)
Ideas and actions generated from this workshop:

! Idea! Work with Leslie to design an “automatic” SLO rubric at the point of the faculty request of the instruction session…then have students login and do a pretest..ask for email and then do end of session AS WELL AS end of semester evalution.
! Pull out the original presentation to the Board of Trustees and re-do the peer comparisons in state and out of state
! Krista….When doing a survey, start with the outcome that you want to measure…
! Use accreditation standards or ACRL standards to determine outcomes.

To share: Accreditation based outcomes chart on Library Effectiveness (handout #3)
LibQual…spend time in the exhibits looking at it…
Use first paper (in a portfolio as a pretest) to demonstrate progress of student with citations, resource use, writing ability, etc.
Solinet/Cal Shepard Customer service and assessment mthods…excellent presenter
READ and become aware of the professional association accreditation info for voc-ed areas like paralegal, rad tech, nursing, etc.

General observations: It is interesting to come from a six month period of working fairly exclusively with new technologies and delivery systems (Web 2.0 and social networking software, blogs, wikis, podcasting, anytime/anywhere thinking) to a traditional standards-based assessment evaluations where peer evaluations and ratios of resources/traditional services to enrollments are evaluated. With a whole new generation of students using web-based resources, it will be interesting to see decreases of circulations and increases of search hits, web hit rates, etc. How we evaluate use of programs. resources and services by digital natives will determine dramatically the movement of our institutions to where these users “live.”

Afternoon session consisted of discussion groups where we shared out mission and vision statements and worked on assessments. Not that helpful to me since it was similar to other workshops I have been to. I felt that PCC is ahead of the game in this arena.

ALA Midwinter meeting, Seattle

Friday morning and I am heading from Puyullup to Seattle for the ACRL preconference on assessment. It seems whenever I arrive in Seattle and walk out into the cool air, I feel like I am home. It is beautiful here and the abundance of trees is such a sharp contrast to the "desert" of Southern California inland areas. It is hard to believe that last week I was in the Anza Borrego desert for an orienteering meet (and so in love with that desert) , and now I am in the cool (ok...cold!) northwest. Ok...I am fickle!

Forecast is for much rain today but at least it has warmed up today so there is *no* snowstorm. It has been a harsh, cruel winter here...or as a canal friend of ours (Wendie) described it -- "brutal!"

My tentative schedule is: (some conflicts so it will depend where I am and how easily I can get there!)
ACRL pre conf on assessment (day long seminar)
CJCLS dinner Friday night
Social networking: best practices for libraries (OCLC sponsored, Saturday morning)
Exhibits, exhibits. exhibits...
Transforming yourself: Reaching new heights/ Sue Ershler (Sunrise program)
Stephen Abram-- Social library 2020: 2.0 in action (SIRSI booth seminar)
Your firefox can do that! (SIRSI booth seminar)
Fish (ALA President's program)
Transforming the future: 20/20 foresight/Bob Treadway (Sunrise program)
Content dm success stories
OCLC update breakfast
Social bookmarking
Next gen portals: the 2.0 ecperience
CJCLS all committee
Content dm users meeting
Digi solutions: NDNP and beyond

Exhibitors I don't want to miss...
Don’t miss Exhibits:
1713 blogger badge
2002 READ poster (get CD on READ from ALA store)
2015 OCLC
2519 Sirsi
2615 Knowledge café
To check out:
Overdrive
ICT
Dual monitors for reference desk

I have also registered as an ALA blogger...how fun!