I was in the midst of a particularly busy day last Wednesday when the decisions on the ACRL 2013 Conference contributed paper, panel, preconference, and workshop submissions were sent out, so it was a few hours later that I had a chance to catch up on Twitter. Suddenly my feed was full of happy tweets from librarians with accepted conference proposals, and somewhat more melancholy tweets from those who had their proposals turned down this year.
According to ACRL there were 20% more submissions for the 2013 conference across all four formats than for the ACRL 2011 Conference. The acceptance rates were 30% for contributed papers, 23% for panels, 45% for preconferences, and 39% for workshops.
I’m full of conflicting feelings about these conference yeas and nays. I’m delighted that the panel proposal I submitted with two collaborators was accepted, and it’s great to see the yea announcements from other librarians I follow on Twitter. But I was also disappointed to read the nay tweets from many librarians whom I admire. I found myself wondering what their proposals were about and whether they would have been relevant or interesting to me.
While pleased about this year’s yea I’m no stranger to nays: last time around the panel proposal I submitted for the ACRL Conference with several collaborators was rejected. However, my collaborators and I reconsidered our ideas, and in the end we reworked our panel proposal into a poster session submission which was accepted. If you’re thinking about next steps for a proposal that wasn’t accepted, you might want to take a look at some of the alternatives that Steven suggested in a past ACRLog post (retooling and resubmitting as a poster session proposal among them).
And if you didn’t send in a proposal for a paper, panel, or other session last May, remember that there’s still time to submit a proposal for a poster session, cyber zed shed presentation, roundtable discussion, and virtual conference webcast. Those proposals for the ACRL 2013 Conference are due on November 9, 2012.