2009 WAAL Conference Notes

This year's Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians (WAAL) Conference was held in Green Lake, WI at the picturesque Heidel House Resort, from April 21st through the 24th.



ALSO Co-Chairs, Amanda Kramer and Jessica Gile attended the conference and presented an informational poster about ALSO during the poster session on Wednesday night, April 21st. The poster displayed information about how and why we established the new student group, what types of activities we had already organized, and what we hoped to accomplish in the future. ALSO members John Holm and Joe Morgan also attended the conference on the 21st and Joe Morgan presented another poster about using Screencasts as a staff training utility in lieu of meetings.



Jessica received a WLA scholarship to attend the full WAAL conference, and took judicious notes of all the sessions that she attended, with the intent of sharing the information she gathered with other ALSO members. Read below for a summary of her experience:



"I planned to attend the conference sessions around three main criteria: opportunities to meet librarians that worked in libraries or departments that I was interested in; topics that I wanted to learn more about; and topics that I believed would be generally interesting to the majority of ALSO’s student members. In this way, I hoped to pass along the interesting things that I learned about current topics in the field and hopefully inspire other students to attend professional organization conferences in the future, such as this summer’s ALA conference, or the next WLA and WAAL conferences.



As it turned out, I spent the majority of my time at the conference listening to speakers presenting about transformative technology and interdisciplinary collaborative teaching and learning models. What follows is a day by day account of my experience:



Wed. 9-10:15am - IT/Library Collaboration Makes in Happen

This session was led by UW-Stevens Point librarians, and discussed their concept of an "Idea Studio." They shared their group study rooms, presentation practice rooms, group project zone, and cafe set up. It seemed to be that much of their ideas seem to be similar to what College Library is already doing here in Madison, which was exciting because it may mean that we are ahead of the game.



Wed. 10:30am - Keynote Program with Brian Mathews

Brian Mathews is the author of the blog, "The Ubiquitous Librarian." He emphasized the idea of redesigning the culture of academic libraries, and talked about how his library's multimedia room had "Mario World Art," as a nod to gamers. He focuses on giving people enough room to be creative and have the freedom to explore their skills and abilities. He listens to the feedback of his patrons and employees, and designs his library empathetically according to their needs.



Wed. Luncheon Program - David Joyce

David Joyce is the President of Rippon College, and presented a very inspiring talk about the process of good decision making leading to transformation. When one of his staff members comes up with a new idea, there is a rule that people must come up with 4 things that they like about it before anyone is allowed to criticize the idea. This creates trust and enables awareness and creativity. This is how Rippon College managed to come up with and implement the crazy idea of giving out free bicycles to all incoming freshman, in order to lesson the pressure of on campus parking!



Wed. 3:30pm - What I wish I knew about Librarianship

This panel discussion included Patrick Wilkinson, Karen Dunn, Gretchen Revie, Megan Fidtch, and Jess Bruckner. There were so many interesting stories and useful advice given out during this session, that it is difficult to know where to start. Some of the highlights included advice about acquiring management skills, visiting other libraries, joining professional organizations, understanding the different expectations of you between work and school, maintaining personal integrity, not burning bridges, mobility and flexibility, being responsible for yourself, time-management, and applying and interviewing for jobs.

Wednesday 5:30-7:30pm - Poster Session Reception

Presenting during the poster session with Amanda was an amazing learning experience. The preparation beforehand helped me to synthesize the purpose of what we had been doing all semester with ALSO, and forced me to think ahead to the future about where we saw the group going. I met so many people during the poster session and had so much fun speaking with all of them about the work that we were doing and learning about their various institutions, that by the end of the session, I had nearly lost my voice! I honestly had fun actively participating in the conference in this way, and in fact, I enjoyed it so much that I am now very interested in learning more about the behind-the-scenes planning process of large conference events in the future.

Thursday 9am - Keynote Program with Kathyrn Deiss
This presentation focused on the stages of creativity.

Preparation - Time Off - The Spark - Selection - Elaboration

1. Define the problem/opportunity
2. Brainstorming* (Rapid Idea Generation)
3. Widen your attitudes and frames of mind

*Types of brainstorming: Silent Brainstorming, Visual Brainstorming, Brain Writing, & Body Storming

CREATIVITY KILLERS: "We can't," "It won't work," "We tried that before," "We don't have the money," "They won't let us," and "What if it is not successful?"

More information about these concepts can be found at kathyrndeiss.pbwiki.com.

Thursday 10:30am - Collaborating to Create Academic Research Tools
Amanda Manteufel & Jim Jonas from UW-Madison's MERIT Library, formally CIMC.

This presentation was about two new academic research tools that had been implemented by CIMC staff, a dissertation calculator, and a directory of Education Publishing Information. I thought that both tools were really useful, and wished that similar tools would have been available to myself when I was working on my first Master's degree in history. I can also see that the dissertation calculator could be used on a smaller scale to help undergraduate or master's level students manage their time for semester-long assignments and projects. I think that both of these tools will be well received and have the potential to benefit other departments and libraries across campus as well.

Thursday Luncheon Program with Joe Foy - "Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture."

This speaker discussed the three orders of people's foundations of political knowledge:
1. Knowledge through direct experience
2. Knowledge learned through news outlets
3. Knowledge mediated via popular culture venues.

It was the third order, popular culture, that the speech was focused on. How young people today get much of their news and understanding of how politics work from shows like the Daily Show and the West Wing, and how the lines between our fantasies and the real world are becoming blurred. He emphasized that we, as librarians, need to meet people where they are instead of fighting it. It was refreshing to have a session a little bit outside the traditional realm of "librarianship" and to then be able to apply that information to what we do in the profession.

Thursday 2pm - Fake it until you make it with Government Documents

Official Universal Portals for finding government document information include http://www.usa.gov/ and http://www.wisconsin.gov/.

Nancy Mulhern from the Wisconsin Historical Society and MIchael Current from UW-La Crosse both use Google Uncle Sam a great deal too.

For statistics, go to http://www.fedstats.gov/ to search for statistics by topic, geography, and agency in the US government.

Finally, they both encouraged librarians to refer patrons to government document specialists on their campus (such as themselves)!

Thursday 3:30pm - The MacGyver Library: Amazingly Useful Stunts You Can Perform with Ordinary Objects

This was a very entertaining session about all the neat tools and gadgets that we can use in academic libraries in the transmission and storage of information. Such items included smart phones with all of their "apps"; Ipods; Screen Capture software; Youtube; FlipCams; Kindle; podcasting; rubber keyboards; solar panel chargers; and there was even a session on how to build your own smart board using a Wii remote!

Friday 10:30am - But I'm Not a Techie!

This session introduced free and subscription software applications that could be useful to academic libraries such as pbwiki.com, wikimatrix.org, wetpress, WINK, and Jing. This session was not only useful because it showed the benefits of each of these tools and what could be done with them, but it also showed us where to find them and what to consider before using them. It really broke down each of these tools and explained which you would use in given situations.

***
The conference went by far too quickly and before I knew it, it was time to head back to reality. I left the conference feeling full of hope and anticipation. I was eager to share what I had learned with my colleagues, and I was excited to see how the information that was shared at the conference might influence the libraries in which I worked on the UW-Madison campus. I met so many wonderfully amazing people, and I am now eager to maintain and build upon the network of local librarians that I was introduced to at the conference, with the hope of continuing to learn from them and share information. I think that was the most valuable lesson that I took away from this year’s WAAL conference; I have now witnessed first-hand the importance of working together in a collaborative environment and sharing ideas with the common goal of locally advancing the field."


The next WAAL conference will be held in Milwaukee next spring. As more information is released, it will be posted on the ALSO website. All ALSO members and any SLIS students interested in academic librarianship are encouraged to attend.