Feeling so fortunate for the opportunity to attend ACRL in Baltimore, especially to meet my fellow ACRLoggers face-to-face! With a plethora of conferences and development opportunities, it can be hard to justify attendance at a conference most people perceive as out of scope for a technical services librarian. In a technical service-focused session I attended, one librarian introduced herself by qualifying for the audience that her primary library association was ALCTS (Association of Library Collections and Technical Services). I too have found some excellent development resources in the ALCTS community and established some professional scholarship there. But I’ve never felt my particular brand of technical services quite fit here. This librarian’s certainty in her professional community had me pondering my ACRL conference experience and what sets it apart. [cue: David Byrne*]
How did I get here?
What is my conference?
Who is my community?
Most colleagues think I’m crazy, but I love ALA! The community and the conference. I love the size. I love the ability to experience perspectives from all different kinds of libraries and all different parts of a library. I love the chance to talk to vendors and (now, as a parent) the abundance of affordable souvenirs. As a librarian responsible for budget matters, though, the timing of this conference becomes problematic, as it usually falls during our fiscal close. So, although its provides good service opportunities, and the broadest professional network, this is not usually my conference.
NASIG (former acronym for North American Serials Interest Group) was probably the first specifically-focused professional community that really spoke my language. I could dive deeper into world of serials librarianship, vendors, and systems in order to solve real work problems. Similarly, as I became an e-resources librarian, ER&L was (and continues to be) one of my favorite professional communities for those same reasons. Besides the added perk of being in beautiful Austin, TX each year, it also offers that user experience focus I am always seeking as a bridge from technical to public services. Both these communities see themselves as part of something bigger, despite the specialized name and audience they tend to attract. Even so, the familiarity of a such specialized-focused conferences can at times be a crutch for broadening my perspective.
Hard as it may be to justify to my peeps here at home, I’m pretty sure my conference, my community is ACRL. I say that not just because I blog here, and it’s more than just because I work in an academic library. I do confess, it is in part resonant with Carla Hayden (ACRL Keynote and Librarian of Congress) declaring: “You all have the hippest conferences!”
ACRL Baltimore was only my second ACRL conference. I first feel in love with ACRL 2015 in Portland, realizing it has a similar and unmistakeable “part of something big” feel as ALA, but with a greater chance of running into people I actually know. I like ACRL because the language of research and academia is both familiar and challenging; the user focus I crave is meaningful and accessible; and I am often stretched in other areas, like leadership, political advocacy, and transforming shame into action. I think (also like ER&L) I appreciate how this community of librarians challenge the norm. As StevenB wrote of 2011’s conference, ACRL takes risks. Carla Hayden also recognized this, noting with appreciation that the conference was kept in Baltimore given all that was happening within this community.
ACRL librarians seem risk takers in their own right. They want to make a difference in what is otherwise perceived as an unchanging, institutionalized academia. This year’s call for proposals asked for representation from the technical services perspective, perhaps challenging the perception that ACRL is overly-focused on scholarly communication and instruction. Part of justifying my own attendance alongside all the other faculty who more obviously call this their conference their home means giving fresh eyes to how these issues matter in technical services and visa versa.
My strongest takeaways from this year’s conference were not scholarly community and instruction, but data analysis and visualization. Opening keynote speaker, David McCandless, provided interactive, fun, complex, and thought-provoking data visualizations. He explained why information is beautiful and also necessary at this particular time in our society. I was surprised that this beauty, even in the most concerning analyses, felt primarily (and strangely) soothing. That sense of calm resonates with McCandless’ assertion that visualizations allow you to simultaneously absorb and understand massive amounts of information, rather than become overwhelmed by it. McCandless spoke our language when illustrating how easy and accessible the starting point is to such complex beauty — it begins with questions. What do I want to know? What data might tell me about that? What can it reveal? Building on this keynote, I attended other sessions on communicating real value with data. More than just making pictures from data we are asked to collect, I saw how concerted, beautiful design in visualization allows us to ask new questions.
I found “my peeps” are the ones always asking and welcoming questions. ACRL allowed us to inquire a lot about equity and inclusion in our academic spaces. Sessions and speakers offered perspective on this from the lens of scholarly access, to how we meet diverse instruction needs, to how we understand biases in our own scholarship, to service to our patrons, and in our personal and professional relationships. Roxanne Gay, gave an amazing keynote and Q&A session to challenge my thinking on this. Others, especially (I worried about) those chastised by #acrl2017 twitter afterwards, will hopefully see that challenge themselves and remain open to keep seeking too.
De-centering oneself as a white person is a threshold concept I finally *got* in witnessing @rgay handle Q&A after #acrl2017 keynote.
— Lisa Hubbell (@lisahubbell) March 31, 2017
While uncomfortable, sure, that chastising (and don’t miss this other recap too) demonstrates how the ACRL community challenges not just the institutional norm, but each other, individually. I just find that refreshing. It is a reminder that we definitely aren’t perfect, but we are always, must always be learning.
@rgay was new to me, but I’m in! Excuse me while I go read all the things. #acrl2017
— Tamara Rhodes (@NexGenLibrarian) March 23, 2017
We do honor and openly appreciate each other publicly as well! “Your peeps” was how final keynote speaker Carla Hayden acknowledged the various applause and shout-outs librarians received in the Q&A portion of her keynote. So refreshingly approachable and energizing, her keynote challenged me to be more aware, to remember to explore the “more to everyone’s story”. How she described the key factors motivating her to accept the position as Librarian of Congress reminded me of the necessity for transformation, while remaining true to ourselves and our service mission as librarians.
There is so much more to share from this conference — on technical services and public services interdependencies, on interlibrary loan and SciHub, and on important leadership and organizational management issues related to resilience, gender, and innovation. Watch for another post (either here or or on my own blog ) on these soon!
*Corrected misspelling with sincere apologies to the singer and his fans for the editorial slight.