Saturday morning began with ACRL 101, which was my Emerging Leaders project. Outgoing ACRL president Julie Todaro led the membership meeting. She emphasized the content ACRL is putting out there, especially in the many wikis in progress. Incoming ACRL president Erika Linke talked about advocacy and emphasized that it’s not just legislation. Mary Ellen assured us that they have been listening to feedback. We wanted online learning opportunities and they’ve increased those opportunities. The ACRL conference will also have an online component. The membership component ran a little long, but they did a great job of getting it back on track for the ACRL 101 section to still allow a half an hour for meeting with section representatives at the end. The PowerPoint will be available on the New Member Wiki.

Conference Materials

• Podcasts for WebVisions 2008
• Social Software Showcase 2008
• Recent Library Presentations
• 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online

Technology

• 10 Emerging Technologies from MIT
• WorldCat Search widget for WordPress

Life Skills

• Giving and Receiving Feedback

Reference

• How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author

Professional Development

• Extension

Cool things other libraries are doing

• Breaking stereotypes
• 50 Tips and Resources to Implement User-Generated Content In Your Library

Cool things other libraries are doing

• smiling library people

Learning from outside the field

• Why You Shouldn’t be Afraid of Customer Reviews

• Web Sites for Reporters “It’s an interesting view into the research world of other information pros.”

Marketing

• Online Marketing for Academic Libraries

Just interesting

• How to Take a Mini-Retirement: Tips and Tricks from Timothy Ferriss

I’ll be one of the panelists at the ACRL President’s Program at ALA this year (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions). After watching a Google talk where the speaker took questions from the audience by going back and forth between people at the microphone and questions on a screen that were being texted/emailed and also after reading about different library events where people twittered throughout the program, I suggested and got the ok to attempt something similar at this program.

The program will begin with Dr. Ariely’s presentation, followed by a normal Q&A, then the panel discussion. The idea is if you have something to contribute in the flow of the discussion, you can text it in. I’ll be monitoring the texts and will try to fit what I can into the conversation when appropriate.

On the most bare bones level - I have a text plan on my cell phone and anyone who wanted to participate could just text me, but what are my other options? We’re looking into whether the room has wireless. If so, I could monitor a twitter account on my laptop rather than my cell which would help view more than one at a time. I’d rather give out twitter information than my cell phone number to a huge room of people, but since it’s already limited to only people who know how to text, do I want to limit it further to only people who twitter? Are there other options I’m not aware of?

A big one this week as I’m getting caught up from Intersession…

Cool things other libraries/ITS are doing

• The Space Is the Message: First Assessment of a Learning Studio
• Starbucks asks for Feedback (see comments for the library example)
• Kid Book Reviews on StoryTubes
• Office hours
• mobile versions of library web sites

Teaching and Learning

• Education: Learning to Change
• Social Media in Plain English

Fun tools

• xtimeline: create your own timeline
• Dipity: a timeline creator & more

Food for thought

• Architecture of Participation Taps into “Cognitive Surplus”

TLA is making the 2008 Second General Session program with speakers Roy Tennant, Joe Janes, Karen Schneider, and Stephen Abram available on the TLA website. This extraordinary panel really stimulated thinking about the transformational process; and with the speakers’ permission, we are disseminating this valuable content. You can find a six-minute excerpt of their presentation at http://www.txla.org/conference/conf.html or can contact Randy May (randym@txla.org) for instructions for downloading the full 80 MB file.

Unfortunately the hosted WordPress doesn’t seem to like the code to embed this, so here’s a picture.

Retaggr found via What I Learned Today…

Please consider celebrating Pride month at your library. A book display would be an easy and simple way, as would a resources page on your website linking to local activities. Thanks to Self Check for reminding me.

Thank you Denver Public Library (Pride ‘08 Page), Oakland Public Library (Pride Page), Las Vegas-Clark County library system (Pride Page), and others that reach out to and value your GLBTQ patrons during Pride month and year-round. I’m not sure you know how wonderful it makes us feel, and what an important service it provides–not just to those who are out and attending your events, but to those who are struggling with their identities and may never attend a Pride program. Thank you, thank you.

Technology

• The 100 Best Products of 2008 from PC World
• The 100 top Web apps for 2008
• Shrink-O-Matic: Batch Image Resizer
• Compfight: The Perfect Flickr Image Search Tool

Work-Life Balance

• The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee

Cool things other libraries are doing

• Arlington Heights Takes Learning 2.0 to the People