Category: ACRL News

For ACRL announcements, events, etc.

ACRL/Harvard 2006

ACRL has opened registration for the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute 2006. Reviews of earlier Harvard programs have been strong, and this year’s program again promises participants the opportunity to explore their own leadership style and to critically evaluate how well-positioned their home institutions are to meet future challenges.

There are a variety of leadership development initiatives now available to librarians, including regional programs like TLA’s Tall Texans, IT-infused programs like EDUCAUSE’s Frye Institute, and programs designed to prepare leaders for specific initiatives, including information literacy instruction, and scholarly communication. And, of course, there’s Senior Fellows. I’d be interested to hear from program alumni what they gained from these programs in the area of leadership and, for those who have attended more than one, how they felt the different programs complemented one another.

An addendum: given all the resources dedicated to these programs, it’s also worth asking how effective they have been in terms of actually helping to prepare the current/next generation of library leadership. I remember some work that Mark Winston did some years back tracing the career trajectory of Snowbird alumni, but haven’t tracked any similar studies that may have been done of regional program alumni, etc.

ARL/ACRL Announce Scholarly Communications Institute

Building on the successful professional development model found in programs like the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute and the Institute for Information Literacy Immersion program, ACRL will be teaming up with ARL to provide an Institute on Scholarly Communication in July 2006. From the brochure:

“As a participant in this 2.5 day immersion program, you will become fluent with scholarly communication issues and trends so that you are positioned to educate others on your library staff, engage in campus communications programs and other advocacy efforts, and work collaboratively with other participants to begin developing an outreach plan for your campus.”

No information yet on program faculty, but applications aren’t due until April 1, 2006, so there’s time for much more content to be delivered. Mark your calendars!

Open Access Comes to C&RL

ACRL has announced that content from College & Research Libraries will be made freely available on the ACRL Web site six months after publication, and that back issues from 1997 – are already available.

This is welcome news to those of us who have been calling for ACRL to provide leadership in this area for the past few years. I have to believe that our message to faculty about the need to commit to open access alternatives for Tier One scholarly journals can only be made more effective by being able to demonstrate that our own professional association has made that same commitment in regard to our most highly-regarded, peer-reviewed journal. It would be nice to see other leading LIS journals make this same commitment, but it was absolutely imperative that ACRL do so, and I’m excited to see that it has finally happened.

I’m also happy to see that the announcement clearly articulates ACRL support for author self-archiving of material published in C&RL. I had to do some digging myself earlier this year to determine ACRL policy on this issue as I was preparing to place a paper that I presented at the ACRL meeting in Minneapolis into our institutional repository (KU ScholarWorks). Lots of good news in this announcement!

Plan Now To Join ACRL’s Virtual Conference

As a regular participant in and proponent of virtual conferencing I was excited to see the announcement from ACRL about its “first-ever” Virtual Conference offered jointly with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) and EDUCAUSE. Being that 2006 is an off year for ACRL National Conferences this affords a great opportunity to join in an academic library conference without leaving your library. The conference theme, “Innovate and Motivate: Next Generation Libraries,” will explore how revolutions in technology impact academic librarianship and higher education. That seems quite appropriate for a conference in a virtual space.

The conference will take place April 20-21, 2006 in a LearningTimes Online Conference Community. If you have participated in any of ACRL’s online workshops or the virtual conference sessions that ran simultaneously with the 2005 Minneapolis conference then you are already familiar with the LearningTimes online environment. If you are curious about participating in a virtual workshop or conference in the LearningTimes virtual setting, you have an opportunity on November 10 to give it a try. On that date, at 3:00 pm EST, the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community is hosting a webcast on “Powerful Powerpoint” that will feature Kris Wiemer, instructional designer, providing ideas and tips on creative ways to improve PowerPoint presentations for better teaching.

Here’s a tip for participating in a virtual conference. Treat it like a real conference. Don’t expect to be at the library getting your regular work done while you jump in and out of virtual programs. You’ll be distracted and it will detract from the quality of the experience. Instead immerse yourself in the conference. There will be plenty of ways to join in an interactive experience. Another tip – equip yourself with a good headset. I’ve participated in dozens of virtual session and I always wonder why librarians come to participate without one. With it you can talk to the rest of the participants and presenters and be more engaged in the program. A good headset is under $30.

You can find the complete text of the Call for Participation, including track descriptions and the online submission form at: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/virtualconference.htm. Submissions will be accepted through January 6, 2006.

I’ll be posting more about this conference between now and April 2006.

Start Your Engines People

It’s official. The “Call for Participation” for the ACRL 13th National Conference, to be held in Baltimore from March 29th to April 1st, 2007, is now available. From the official site comes this description:

The ACRL National Conference offers a forum for an exciting and energizing exchange of ideas on research, practices, developments, and visions in the field of academic and research librarianship. The conference theme, “Sailing into the Future – Charting our Destiny,” recognizes that coming together with other bright minds during the national conference gives many of us a chance to discuss, think, and dream about the future for our libraries. We believe that—as in past conferences—this forum serves as the compass and map to sail beyond our major challenges and truly chart our own destinies.

This call for conference proposals will also appear as an insert in the November 2006 issue of College & Research Library News. I’m looking forward to being there and blogging some sessions.