Scott Walter

Teaching Center Blogs

Looking for another way to engage the Center for Teaching on your campus? Try contributing to their blog. Here are a few mentioned in a message from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (also known simply as “POD”) discussion list:

Thinking Out Loud (University of Northern British Columbia)
Tomorrow’s Professor (MIT and Stanford)
Writing, Teaching, and Learning at Elon (Elon College)
LCCC – Center for Teaching Excellence (Lorain County Community College)

Is there a teaching center (or writing center) blog on your campus? If so, do you contribute? Let us know.

NPR Addresses the Future of Libraries

According to the Talk of the Nation Web site, today’s program will be entitled, “The Bookless Library.” Here’s the blurb:

Information technology changes as soon we think we understand it. We look at how libraries keep up and redefine their role. How would you design a library for the 21st century?

For those of us who working during Talk of the Nation, transcripts and audio files should be by this evening. Want to participate, you can call into the program at 1-800-989-8255, or send an e-mail to with “21st century libraries” in the subject line.

Thanks to Christie Brandau, State Librarian of Kansas, for the tip!

Registration and Programs Posted for ACRL/CNI/EDUCAUSE Virtual Conference

Program information for the first ACRL/CNI/EDUCAUSE Joint Virtual Conference is now available and it looks like a feast for the senses if you’re interested in anything related to technology and the transformation of library resources, collections and services!

Innovate and Motivate: Next Generation Libraries will be online with synchronous and asynchronous programming on April 20-21, 2006. Registration is now open (and available until April 6th). And, you don’t even have to rush to book a conference hotel room or hope for a great, last-minute air fare!

And, yes, we’ll be looking for conference bloggers!

A Raft of Award Winners

ACRL announced the winners of a number of its annual awards today, including:

Academic/Research Librarian of the Year – Ray English (Oberlin College)
ACRL Doctoral Dissertation Fellow – Jean E. Dryden (University of Toronto)
Hugh C. Atkinson Award – Nancy M. Cline (Harvard University)

These and other award winners are listed on the ACRL News page (be warned, these URLs are obscene – go to the ACRL home page if any of the links in this message are broken).

Congrats to all!

What Facebook Teaches

Or, more on being welcome at the party.

Today’s Inside Higher Education tells the story of students at Syracuse University being formally disciplined for their postings on Facebook. While you can judge for yourself whether or not free speech is being abridged in Upstate New York, it’s clear that events like this (and similar events, e.g., stories of students losing out on RA positions because their Facebook profiles suggested that they might not be the best candidates): (1) are providing students with real-life context for broadly-conceived information literacy instruction within the context of what was once-referred to as “computer-mediated communication”; and (2) might explain why students are leery of any university organization (even one as student-friendly as the library) trying to communicate with them through FaceBook (“their” space).

Two things I learned while visiting my campus Facebook: (1) there are several Facebook groups dedicated to the library (but none in an academic way);and (2) our Office of Residence Life advertises for RA candidates on Facebook (which should clue people in to the fact that they might be viewing profiles of applicants, but . . .).

Were I teaching my FYE seminar on Internet Studies again this semester, you can bet this would be a discussion topic.