ACL - the rest of the week

Monday
- Morning pre-conference on Information/Learning Commons. I'd love to work more closely with some of the other departments in the college and create spaces that are more group oriented. The latter we'll have to a certain extent when the library expands. But we just don't have much space to physically invite other departments into the library. Maybe we'll do so co-programs at some point.
- Afternoon pre-conference. Library 2.0. As I've heard about in other 2.0 sessions--lots of slick stuff going on out there with the social networking sites. The downside is that it takes active work to keep a library's portion changing and interesting. With a shortage of full-time staff, I don't see it happening this year. Maybe we'll be able to do a blog updated by our student workers or something.... (P.S. I met the speaker for this workshop at lunch.)
- Met my mentee Dawn. (They pair up first time attendees with returning volunteers.) We had a great chat at the intro meeting and through supper. We had chances to talk a couple of more times through the week. I really enjoyed getting to meet and know her.
- Evening welcome reception at the James Quincy home. We were trying to figure out the relationship between John Quincy Adams and James Quincy. We were told that JQA's maternal grandmother's maiden name was Quincy. My guess is that they are first cousins once removed.

Tuesday
- Keynote speaker Em Claire Knowles. Spoke on mentoring within the profession followed by a panel discussion.
- Attended presentation on Indexing. Sometimes I think this would be something that might be fun to pursue--becoming a free-lance indexer. Most times I decide I probably don't have the personality for it.
- Library tours in the afternoon. I went to visit the Simmons College library. They had a 3-year re-build/renovation project that was just completed a little over a year ago. Very impressive. Much larger than I'll have to work with for several years! Went out to lunch and stopped for ice cream on the way back to ENC. Got back well after dark.

Wednesday
- Presentation on teaching information literacy to faculty. Very interesting their experience where all faculty were required to "certified" in information literacy or not get a contract.
- Vendor and Poster session. MG had helped me put together a poster on our move to closed stacks last summer and adding seating. Had a steady stream of people by for the first hour asking questions.
- Skipped the first presentation after lunch to work on my own presentation for the next afternoon.
- Presentation on information literacy instruction to distance students. Ended up being almost as much about the faculty as the students. They did use Camtasia and a webconferencing set-up.


Thursday
- Keynote speaker Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing. Much fun! I have had one student asking for the PHC Library to use LibraryThing with our catalog. If I had the time to investigate it better, I might. It's truly impressive the amount and detail of information available just with so many people adding their little bit. Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well on a smaller scale, so you have to have a type of monopoly--everyone plugged into the same system--to make it effective.
- Presented on Search Engines. (Slides posted on an earlier post.) I think there were 20+ attending. Had some feedback and questions from the audience as we went, which I enjoyed. Some afterward commented that they enjoyed it and found it beneficial. (The latter still surprises me a bit.)
- Presentation on the library website redesign at Nyack College two years ago. Since I've been teaching information literacy classes for Nyack's DC campus, I wanted to see how they ended up with the website they have. I really appreciated learning about the process behind the redesign. After the presentation, I spoke with Mick (presenter and librarian at Nyack). When I identified myself as teaching the classes for them, he was very pleased to put a name with the face. In some ways, I wish I would've identified myself earlier and spent a bit of time with the Nyack librarians (had at least 3, I think 4 there) during the week.
- Evening cruise of the Boston harbor. I got some pictures, but my camera batteries were dying. Beautiful! The cruise was 6:30-9:30, departing from Quincy and returning there. But the ship's home is in Boston. So after the cruise, they let anyone who wanted ride the boat back into boston. There were 40-45 of us that road the boat back and then walked through parts of Boston before taking the T back to ENC. We stopped at a little 24-hr Italian bakery. Walked through the Holocaust memorial. Stared up at the Old North Church. Wandered past Faneuil Hall. Made it back to ENC around midnight.

Friday
- Up at 6:20. Packed and dressed to catch a 7:30 shuttle to the airport. Landed back in Virginia about 12:30!