post-conference reflections

Accessibility and Universal Design: A report on the BTAA Library Conference

This month, along with several others from my library, I was able to attend the Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Conference. Every year, the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) chooses a topic of interest to libraries, finds experts and organizes speakers, and holds a conference on that topic. This year, the conference was about accessibility, and since one of my secondary job responsibilities is accessibility, I had the opportunity to attend. This was my first BTAA conference and my first conference that didn’t offer breakout sessions, so I was excited to see how it would play out.

There was a keynote each day, from Jay Dolmage and Amelia Gibson. Both were fantastic. Dolmage began by discussing the design of buildings, including libraries, with several examples of buildings designed around stairs. Though there may be a ramp or elevator available, it is not the focal point of the building. Of course, then, we must ask, “Why?” Why is universal design not prioritized? Why is universal design not the norm? Taking the buildings as an example, Dolmage then moved on to discussing universal design in other contexts, especially with regard to teaching and learning. Dolmage stressed the importance of “positive redundancy,” ensuring that there are multiple modes of engagement, such as having information for a lecture in slides, in a handout, and in an electronic form.

Amelia Gibson touched on similar themes as Dolmage, such as the existence of internalized ableism that must be identified and worked against. Gibson advocated for moving beyond ADA requirements and instead focusing on meeting individual needs, beginning with the premise that anyone who is at a school is there because they can succeed and that it is our job to help them succeed. Gibson also discussed the fact that identities, including disability identities, are intersectional. This means that challenges can be even greater for people of color who also have disabilities. Gibson asked us to consider the various reasons that people might not seek information or help from a library, citing cases where potential library patrons have faced ridicule for their child’s behavior because their child was on the autism spectrum, or cases where black patrons have been thrown out of libraries. For some people, concern about being in library spaces is real and justified.

Finally, a point brought up by both Gibson and Dolmage and throughout the conference was how often people with disabilities are asked to disclose their disabilities and how detrimental this is. People with disabilities should not be asked to disclose their status; instead, we should be creating inclusive spaces that do not retroactively try to account for disabilities but instead are designed to accommodate various needs right from the beginning. For example, there is no need for publishers to require an individual student disclose their disability before an accessible version of a document is supplied. Electronic publications could be accessible from the start or, if remediation is necessary, the extra step of disclosing a disability does not need to be mandated. There are also numerous reasons that people might not disclose their disabilities, be they financial (getting diagnosed is expensive) or out of fear of repercussions. Again, designing with accessibility in mind is key.

This brings us back to the idea of universal design. These principles can be applied in any library space, from making library instruction more welcoming to people with a variety of learning styles to working with vendors and publishers to ensure that content is readable not only for screen readers but for users who want to change the font size or color to suit their own needs. We cannot make everything completely accessible immediately; in many cases, accessibility will be an iterative process, with changes made over time. However, we can strive to bring principles of accessibility and universal design into our own individual practices as librarians to begin making changes today.

Overall, I found this conference extremely worthwhile. I often find myself a bit untethered at conferences, unsure how to choose which sessions to attend from a long list and drawn in several different directions because of all my different interests. This conference provided a more concentrated experience and, because of the more focused theme, there was enough time and space to delve into library accessibility in more detail than I’ve experienced in other conferences. Now it’s time to refocus, take what I’ve learned, and find more ways to incorporate accessibility into my work on a daily basis.

For more on universal design, get started by looking at the UDL guidelines website.

Read more about the BTAA’s e-resource testing initiative.

And check out the conference hashtag, #BTAALib19, for more on the conference.

Reflections after the Association for Asian Studies Conference

A few weeks ago, I attended the Association for Asian Studies annual conference. This conference has been a staple of my repertoire since I started library school, because along with all the usual scholarly panels, there are also several meetings of librarians. With two years under my belt, I was excited to approach this conference as a professional, voting on CRL global resources projects for the first time, and actually representing an institution instead of just coming along for the ride to observe discussions.

I also wanted to approach this conference thinking about librarianship more broadly and how subject librarians interact both with the world of their subject and the world of librarianship. At least in my areas, I sometimes feel like I’m splintered off from the rest of the library world, focusing on regions outside of the United States and languages other than English, which sometimes bring with them different challenges than what the rest of the profession in the United States might be facing. I wanted to make sure I paid attention to all facets of my librarian identity during this conference.

This year also happened to be the fiftieth anniversary of the Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia, which meant an extra celebration and a lot of reflection. Many librarians, including me, presented on some aspect of their work, either highlighting unique collections or discussing collaborative relationships between institutions both in the United States and abroad. We also honored retiring and past members, which was a good history lesson for me: there’s a lot of work that’s been done already for me to build upon. I appreciated this introspective and retrospective time, as it showed me all the things that have been done and helped to inspire me to do things like work harder on building my own library’s collection. I’m now thinking about might make the collection here unique and how I can help in that process.

A good portion of all my meetings also focused on looking outward. Even if we’re dealing with materials from our subject areas, we still encounter the trends seen throughout librarianship. For example, an increasing demand for electronic materials means that we had discussions about everything from digitization initiatives to projects collecting electronic journals from South and Southeast Asia. It was exciting to hear about everything that was going on, and a little intimidating as well. A big lesson from my year so far has been that I need to be involved but that I also need to be selective about my involvement. When I hear about all these initiatives, I want to participate in all of them, if only to learn more about them. There were definitely times during the conference when I had to sit back and remind myself that I can learn from the sidelines, at least for now.

Finally, there were also discussions about more unique concerns for area studies librarians, such as support for cataloging in languages other than English. With problems like this one, which seem so specific to a certain subset of librarians, it might be useful to take a step back and look at librarianship more broadly to see what solutions there might be. One thought that particularly interested me was to work on training librarians within the countries of origin. While we did not follow through on this discussion, it does take me back to broader questions I’ve had recently about collaboration and how collaboration that crosses geographic lines can be accomplished. We’ve managed it in other projects, can we manage it in realms such as cataloging as well? What considerations—such as indigenous systems of organizing information—do we need to take into account? I don’t have the answers yet, but I’m trying my best to crosspollinate what I learn in subject-specific conferences with what I learn in library-specific conferences: I’m very excited to see what new ideas and potential solutions ACRL’s conference will bring.

What sorts of conferences do you regularly attend? How do you leverage information from conferences that aren’t focused on librarianship?

A Collective Kind of Conference

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Mollie Peuler, eLearning Librarian at Central Piedmont Community College.

I recently attended my first Collective Conference in Knoxville, TN and found the two-day conference a valuable and—dare I say—fun experience.

If you’ve not heard of the Collective, the event promotes itself as a non-traditional conference with an emphasis on hands-on learning. Consequently, it features a lot more practical ideas and applications and not as much theory and abstraction as at a more traditional conference. When talking to my supervisor about attending this conference, she (genuinely!) exclaimed, “Oh, please go and bring back all of the cool ideas!” Yes, you heard that right—cool. How often do you hear about a scholarly conference being cool? Legitimately, the Collective is cool. Here’s why.

Networking

Ahhhhh networking. Even if you’re not actively job searching, it’s always a good idea to connect with other library professionals and share ideas and experiences. From start to finish the networking and camaraderie was so natural at Collective—it wasn’t forced, or a soul-sucking drag, or tedious. In part, this was because networking wasn’t simply a block of time or something you had to force yourself to do between sessions or in the line at the lunch buffet. Rather, cooperative work and time for getting to know colleagues was thoughtfully woven into every aspect of the event. Almost every session I attended involved sitting at a round table with other librarians and working out problems together or creating videos as a group or some other interactive activity. The fact that we were collaborating allowed for natural and meaningful interactions between attendees.

Technology and Design

A large portion of the sessions I attended were related to technology and/or design. This isn’t surprising; these types of sessions appeal to me as an eLearning Librarian. Even so, the offerings of the Collective were very fresh and highly relevant to attendees with an interest in both instructional technology and instructional design. And if you’re not interested in these areas, there were plenty of other sessions on social media, space planning, and digital scholarship, to name a few. A few highlights:

360 Degree Videos Made Easy
360 degree videos, also known as immersive videos, are video recordings that can be simultaneously viewed in every direction. In the past I had been intimidated by the technology, but Pete Schreiner from North Carolina State University libraries provided a hands-on workshop featuring a quick overview of 360 video resources including what software to download, best practices documents, and story board templates. The introduction to 360 was quick but thorough. Attendees then broke out into small groups using provided cameras, software, and laptops to create our own 360 videos. It was a lot of fun! I can’t wait to dive in deeper and create my own 360 videos for my library.

Give Your eLearning Objects the Beauty Treatment in a Flash
Juliene McLaughlin and Melanie Parlette-Stewart from the University of Guelph packed SO much into the one-hour session. I am the type of person that ruminates for far too long on design decisions. I want everything to be perfect, and I’m not naturally a quick decision maker. This session introduced a quick and collaborative design and brainstorming method for creating and/or redesigning learning objects such as videos and infographics. Three minutes may not seem like a lot of time to come up with 6 design ideas, but it forced me out of my comfort zone.

Knowledge, Reputation, & Image: Crafting & Communicating a Professional Brand
I believe Ashleigh Coren and Chanelle Pickens, from West Virginia University, began their session by stating that they were not experts, but that they simply were sharing “what worked for them.” This type of rhetoric was weaved throughout the conference: the idea of trying something new and sharing what was learned. This session inspired me to finally create the online professional website I’ve been meaning to work on for some time. Using journaling and short writing activities, attendees were able to brainstorm and practice creating artist’s statements. I kept my notes and know these activities will come in handy when I get to that point in my own professional website process.

Value

It can be difficult to budget in one more conference; after all most of us have limited professional development budgets. This conference is worth adding to your list. I’m not sure about other previous years, but the 2017 conference was $80 for two days. In addition to two days of outstanding learning opportunities, a few meals were also included as well as a vendor event with a complimentary drink and some fabulous conference swag. What stands out the most to me is the offsite catered dinner. The Collective crew provided transportation (in a multi-colored love bus!) to the venue where there was live music, a delicious catered creole dinner, and bar that included two drinks for each attendee. It was a fabulous opportunity to continue conversations from the conference during the day.

Location

If I HAD to pick one challenge of the conference, I would say that due to the constant collaboration and engagement, you may find yourself tired and in need of a recharge before conference end. Fear not—Knoxville provides plenty of opportunity for this. While I enjoyed grabbing lunch and hanging out with other conference attendees, when I reached my point of needing to unwind I very much appreciated wondering the streets of Market Square on a lunch hour. There are plenty of shops, restaurants, and bars all within walking distance. A few of my favorites include Union Ave Books, Chesapeake’s Seafood House, and Juice Bar Market Square.

Final Thoughts

This was the third iteration of the Collective Conference, and other attendees that have attended each year tell me that it has gotten even better each year. I’m hoping to attend next year, but for now I’m looking forward to applying the skills and knowledge I gained to my professional work. I’m currently working with a team of librarians to build an online learning module that will eventually be embedded within BlackBoard, and I’ve already been able to apply the Universal Design for Learning Principals and the Simplicity Design Cycle tool that I learned about from one of the sessions.

As I write this blog post, I realize it’s actually a challenge to fully describe the Collective experience. I suppose all I can say is, if you’re interested in a conference that is a coming together of the coolest and most cutting edge librarians planned by a team of librarians who thought through every detail from start to finish, I highly recommend the Collective.