by I was quite excited when I heard this conference was being held at Brock and it turned out I had reason to be – it was a great conference and I’m still digesting it. One of the exciting things for me was that the conference was diverse – there were gamers, non-gamers, game designers, professors, teachers and librarians, all thinking about the same types of things in slightly different ways. The conference was a great start at collaboration from different spheres and I loved hearing from so many different points of view. As with most conferences, there were too many sessions to choose from for an one time slot. The keynote speakers (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, James Paul Gee, Denis Dyack) were thought provoking (I’ve left my notes at work and will post details of sessions later). As usual, conversation was great – this is where I find I often get the most from the conference. I was lucky enough to sit with Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), Mark Bell, James Paul Gee and a number of other interesting, well-thought attendees for supper. Needless to say, I went to bed with lots to think about. I hope to attend this conference again.
conferences
CLA in St.John’s
This was my first visit to Newfoundland, a visit that was far overdue. The city itself was great. I didn’t attend much of the conference but I did present, run a couple of meetings and attend others. As you may remember from my shameless plug, I presented at CLA on Second Life. I was part of a talented panel (Donna Bourne-Tyson, Denyse Rodrigues, and Nancy Collins) and my portion was on virtual reference. I spoke on my experiences in the Info Island virtual reference project and touched lightly on our recently launched McMaster virtual reference pilot project from our building on Cybrary City. I will likely post some more complete thoughts on the project when it’s done. The session went well (kudos to all presenters) and we had a much bigger crowd than expected (always a pleasant surprise). I’m hoping our powerpoint and handout will be online soon.
Shameless Plug
I spent my recent research leave concentrating on some Second Life projects I have on the go. With only a couple of weeks before one of them is due, I thought I would put out a shameless plug. I will presenting at the CLA conference in St. John’s this year. I am part of a panel session entitled “Second Life: Virtual Reference & IL Librarians with Wings” and I will be sharing my virtual reference experiences in the virtual world. So, if you’re planning on going to CLA, please say hello.
Also, as AGIIG convenor, we will be having our annual meeting at CLA, so check out the AGIIG blog for more details.
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the Next Quarter Century
This was probably the most controversial session I attended, but forecasting is often controversial. David Lewis outlined what he thought would occur over the next 25 years.
- we need to finish the migration from print to electronic, particularly reference collections and journals and start planning for move to ebooks
- retire legacy collections (ie. put jstor journals in storage)
- create diversity of user study spaces
- reposition information tools, resources, and expertise – be where the students are (google), embed librarians – less routine interaction and more technology and personal relationships, provide new services for research and scholarship
- move from purchasing material to curating content – this will be the result of open access scholarship, partons will be less reliant on local collections. Lewis predicts that while we spend 80/20 on material purchase and content curating, this will change to 40/60.
While this may seem difficult to achieve, Lewis believes it can be accomplished. He stresses repositioning oursevles and change our service model. He sees a hybrid model of librarian/technologist/instructional design with skills including teaching new information skills, develop and manage information support systems and building collections of curated content. This transformation will take some time to achieve.
Other thoughts included meeting the needs of the undemanding before addressing those of the demanding. I’m not sure this is possible, as the demanding are often the impatient ones who will make life difficult. Another point was to watch what patrons are doing rather than asking them. This makes more sense, as patrons often don’t realize what they want and asking puts them on the spot.
Horizon Report
Alan Levine, Bryan Alexander and Cyprien Lomas summarized 6 of the trends noted in the annual Horizon report. The report examines technology trends and hypothesizes which will affect libraries and education in the near horizon (adoption in the next year, 2-3 years, 4-5 years) . The process to narrow down to technologies is difficult at best but the trends include:
- user-created content
- social networking
- mobile phones
- virtual worlds
- new scholarship and emerging forms of publication
- massively multiplayer educational gaming
It was a great candid discussion and we were asked if we felt the trends were “out there” or not. While many libraries are starting to look into these technologies I think they were right that these will be the major ones that will be adopted in the next few years. Adoption is the key term – there are a number of other technologies that may be examined in the near horizon but adoption will likely go to those we are already getting comfortable with. The question will be whether we adopt them in time or whether our patrons will have moved on to the next big thing as we adopt them on their way out. I think it was a good thing to note the type of technology (social networking) rather than a particular product (we’re already seeing MySpace use decline). What do you think?
Let the Blogging Begin!
We are in week two of our Learning 2.0 and participants are being introduced to and creating their own blogs. People are really quite excited by this program and it will be interesting to read their blogs.
On another note, I’m frantically trying to put the final touches on a presentation I’m giving tomorrow – Learning in a New World: Social Networks and Second Life (I’ll link to the slides once they’re up). The presentation is for the McMaster Learning Commons Partners’ Learning on Learning Forum. It’s been interesting research and I’m hoping all goes well. Then, in an attempt to pretend to be a jet-setter, almost as soon as I’m done the presentation, I jump on a plane and head out to Edmonton for the Winter Institute on Statistical Literacy. More on that when I return!
Digital Game-Based Learning and Information Literacy
I was particularly interested in this session, as I have been doing a lot of reading about gaming and learning in the last while. I will be doing a session on learning in virtual worlds and social networks and gaming has been a side to my research. The presenter is working on creating a game for her library and I’ll be interested to see how it goes.
Top Tech Trends
What an amazing panel of experts! Michael Stephens, Amanda Etches-Johnson, and John Blyberg (all bloggers I regularly read). Amanda Etches-Johnson brought up three trends to watch – RSS, websites, and meaningful online outreach. I think she was right on the money when she mentioned that our websites are in dire need of help. This is where many of our patrons start – they are virtual library branches – and more thought and time needs to be put into them. We need to stop organizing them in ways that our meaningful to us and start thinking about how our patrons use our sites.
John Blyberg was also amazing. I had also gone to hear about the great work he has done on his library’s OPAC, or should I say SOPAC (Social OPAC). He has integrated social software into their OPAC successfully – a great model for other OPACs to strive for. He spoke of the importance of open source.
This was the first session that I got to hear Michael Stephens speak. He had been at my library early that week (while I was conferencing) to launch our library’s Learning Library 2.0 session (which is going to be great! More on that later I hope). Michael rose a number of points for us to consider when thinking of library 2.0:
- conversations
- convergence
- content
- redefining LIS job descriptions
- citizen journalism
- openness and sharing
- participation
- experience and play
Information is Not Enough: Shaping the User Experience
This session highlighted that we need to think more about what our patrons think about when they approach the library. Is it a place for them, will they succeed, does it fit in their busy life, are they trusted to participate? It seems my library is doing well in most areas but there are always areas for improvment. A couple of the important points:
- information is easy to find now – patrons want information rejection not retrieval
- patron success is important – if they can find 2-3 things on their own, they are 2 times more likely to ask for assistance
- think of reference as “World of Search Craft”
- The final slide was on moving foward and had a number of important points, including plan for success. While this is important, I was particularly found of the last point – laugh a lot. This is a good library and life point. We have to remember that this is about people -that we work with and for – if we can’t enjoy them then maybe we should rethink things. Things won’t always go as planned and the ability to laugh will help us get passed them. Enjoy our successes and be happy.
Is Social Software Too Social?
This session was a panel with Rob Hyndman, Matthew Ingram, and Nora Young – a panel of non-librarians who gave an interesting view point for Web 2.0. The panel was more of a discussion, which I really enjoy. Here are some of the important points I took from this session:
- Web 2.0 still isn’t for everyone – it is largely those who are already technologically inclined – how can we keep a democracy and not let one group (the techies) have too much say?
- It isn’t all techies though – motivation and passion is extremely important – the desire to get the message out
- concerns about connections – allows for global conversations but there is lack of accountability as you don’t have to look someone in the eye when you disagree -can be solitary but may see that virtual connection is made first and then taken into the real world
- truth and trust are now currencies and are no longer given by default – questioning is the norm and shows us we should have questioned “trusted” sources more
- echo chamber phenomenon – how do we keep from becoming too narrow (ie. rss feeds and the loss of serendipity)