ARLD Day 2013 -- April 26, 2013

The 2013 ARLD theme was Changing Collections: Advocating for Our Future. The keynote speaker, Jenica Rogers, Director of Libraries at the State University of New York at Potsdam, spoke directly to that topic. Her experience with ACS was the platform for the discussion, but not the point of it. The economics of collection building need to change was a thrust of her talk, as well as the idea that as librarians we need to participate and be active with our industry partners (i.e., publishers, vendors) to alter the models to fit our needs and realities. She kept coming  back to the idea that as librarians we need to think about what we want to do as professionals and why we do what we do.

The first breakout session  I attended was lead by John T. Butler, Associate University Librarian for Data & Technology at the University of Minnesota. He was introducing the Digital Public Library of America, and specifically Minnesota's Digital Library as part of that work. He described this venture as an "unprecedented aggregation of free content" and reiterated the DPGA is a metadata repository,not a content repository. It's designed to be a reflection of what is in libraries across the country, and is all about accessibility to content vs. housing it. Definitely want to keep an eye on this: dp.la

Flipping the Classroom: Checking for Flops, lead by librarians from Macalester College, rounded out the morning sessions. They talked through their use of Google apps, part of their assessment plan, and a citation tracking assignment they used in library instruction.  I liked that they established "success criteria" as targets for assessing some specific information literacy skills (e.g., 90% of student groups completing an in-class activity during FYS will be satisfactory or better on a rubric). They also talked about another assessment tool (Research Practices Survey) they give to their students; I believe it was usually on a 3-year rotation.

Session three was focused on using the tools in Google Drive. I have been using aspects of Google Drive for a number of years as a collaboration tool with colleagues, but this presentation talked about how to use it with students. I learned that some colleges/universities  in MN are "Google App" schools meaning they use the Google Drive suite of tools instead of Microsoft Office, so students all have a Google account and are familiar with the tools. I liked the idea of using it for a research consultation. The example was if someone asked for assistance on a certain topic, the librarian could do some research ahead of time and put some search terms, results, etc. in a spreadsheet and use that as a teaching tool during the research consultation. It was also allow the students the opportunity to "take" that spreadsheet and add to it. They also talked about using the Google Form option instead of SurveyMonkey.

The final session of the day was the "Lighting Round" where six different topics were presented in short segments: Adding VideoGames to your Library? - videogamecat.com ; Leveraging Library Resources: Accessibility in Your Online Learning Management System - idea of creating a more-focused Library widget to offer faculty to use in D2L ; Highlighting Undergraduate Work Online - UofM, Morris, is starting an undergraduate online journal to highlight student work (BePress Digital Commons is what they are using for the institutional repository) love this idea! ; Into the Bright Sunshine of Human Rights: Accessing the Legacy of Hubert H. Humphrey Through Digitization - talked through the process used to digitize text files of HHH ; Reference Collections: Do Libraries Need Them? - UofM, Duluth needed to create space so worked through a process to evaluate their Reference Collection and ultimately reduced their Reference Collection by 57%; Personal Archiving - they mentioned that the Library of Congress has a good starting site for exploring personal archiving.