My time in Edmonton, Alberta attending the 2010 Canadian Library Association conference was well spent and well worth it. I learned a great deal on many different topics, professional and technological. It was also a pleasure to see some friends from my information and library science program who have taken jobs all across Canada. On a less hopeful note, I was troubled to learn about the extent of CLA’s financial crisis and the reality that the organization may be bankrupt in eighteen months without some dramatic changes. Most of the discussion on the conference on that topic seemed focused on describing the problem rather than considering possible solutions, but one has to start somewhere.

My presentation on net neutrality and what it means for libraries was Saturday morning and I’m happy to report that it was a success. There was around fifty people in attendance and plenty of interesting questions and comments, which I find particularly rewarding as a presenter. My point that Canadian libraries and librarians have thus far dedicated little advocacy attention to net neutrality was also well received. Given how many challenges face our society, it is difficult to know which problems we should focus our energy on as information professionals. My argument for focusing more advocay energy on Internet issues rests on three points: 1) the Internet as service delivery mechanism (e.g. I work as a Reference Librarian for the AskON service, a project of Knowledge Ontario which won an award for innovative use of technology!), 2) provide access to collections and 3) act as a community Internet service provider (a point that should especially resonate with those in the public library world).

I had the opportunity to attend several sessions on new technologies and I’ll share some of what I learned on that front. The Boopsie company produced a web based application for the conference itself and they have made similar applications for universities, conferences and libraries across the world. As a user, my view is that such web apps represent an improvement from viewing a plain website on a smart phone but they are still nowhere near as useful and interesting to use as a “native application” (e.g. one that one might obtain through the Apple App Store). The big advantage for such web based apps is that they can be developed very quickly – in one to weeks where as a native application can easily take months of design effort. Though I didn’t have a chance to attend, there was also some interesting presentations made on making technology more accessible for those with disabilities. As the 2005 Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act makes its presence felt in Canada’s largest province, serving the needs of disabled users will become more and more important.

I also managed to find a few other blog posts about the CLA 2010 conference that might be of interest to readers:

• Misadventures at CLA Day One & Misadventures at CLA Day Two by Jason Hammond
• CLA 2010 by Meghan Ecclestone
• Canadian Library Conference 2010 – #cla2010 by the Curling Librarian
• Mobile: Boopsie Releases WebApp for Canadian Librarian Association 2010 Annual Conference from the Resource Shelf

Conferences are interesting events where the learning, socializing and networking combine to produce a more productive and inspired Bruce. The traditional “sage on the stage” giving a presentation is still a very popular model and one that succeeds in many cases. That said, I like when conferences experiment with different models and that’s what I received today. The day began with “lighting strikes” sessions where presenters have to convey a concept or practice in seven minutes. Michelle Baratta and Sarah Forbes  from the University of Toronto presented on their efforts to use games, both video and real life, to engage students and build engagement.The creativity and energy of these presenters (and others I haven’t mentioned) was a great way to start the second day of the conference.

The “birds of a feather” session (see the official WILU notes on the session) was a free form ‘unconference’ style session. Participants looked at a list of tables dedicated to different topics, sat down and started talking. My table explored the challenge of student motivation. To my delight, another librarian raised Dan Pink’s work on motivation who has argued that the drive for mastery, autonomy and purpose. Others discussed exercises they have devised for students that challenges them to think critically about what they read. I was intrigued by the idea of setting high expectations – university is a demanding intellectual environment – and community. By interacting with their sources deeply, students can join the community of scholars. Intrinsic motivation is the best kind and librarians ought to seek out ways to engage it but there was a consensus that some students appear to be motivated solely by carrots and sticks. I’m not sure that a love of learning can be instilled in every case but it is well worth trying.

In the afternoon, I attended two sessions that sought to explore and understand students more deeply. From Utah State University, Wendy Holliday presented on, “From Active Learning to Activity: Getting Beyond Busy Work and into Deep Learning.” This ethnographic research followed a first year composition class, observing how students and instructors interacted. Reading actual transcripts of instructor-student interaction was enlightening on several levels as it revealed how both parties think about assignments and learning. Many students appear to desire (or indeed, operate from) a check list approach for research that short circuits learning and research. As Holliday argues, “information literacy is a reading problem,” – without deep and sustained reading, students will rarely progress beyond busy work.

The day’s presentations culminated with a deeply challenging but vital issue facing academic librarians; how can we support at risk students? Presented by Janet Goosney from Memorial University, I learned how librarians worked with struggling students, writing centre staff and instructors to support students. One of the reasons given for the success of the program was the history of close collaboration between Memorial’s librarians and writing centre staff – that strikes me as a natural partnership once I think about it but it isn’t an idea I had encountered before. The kind of support provided in thte at risk student program (if failing students take it and pass, they can stay on, otherwise they have to leave the university for a time) is a model of academic collaboration. Some of the methods – such as self-reflective student journalling on education – strike me as an effective approach to stimulate student interest. Arguably, many students would benefit from doing that and it is unfortuante that this practice is not more wide spread.

The WILU 2010 conference began today in Hamilton at McMaster University and it looks like it will be a great event. The opening keynote address was given by Dr James Paul Gee, an American academic who has recently published some very interesting work on the relationship between education and video games. Increasing academic interest in gaming is a fascinating trend that I want to understand better. Gee made the argument that players of highly interactive and flexible games (e.g. World of Warcraft and The Sims) master complex rules, language and narratives to successfully play games. They also construct theories about the game’s operation, build software and teach themselves new skills in cooperation with other gamers.  There was a lot to digest in this address and there is a challenge to discern how to apply these ideas to education and libraries.  One appealing idea is to find ways to increase the speed, quality and frequency of feedback in education. Make a mistake in a game and your character perishes; make a mistake in class and it might be weeks before  you fail a test and realize you have to go back and relearn it.

As with other conferences I have attended, deciding which sessions to attend is always a challenge. In the afternoon, I attended two sessions: “Student-focused learning curriculm planning: starting from the ground up” and “Good, better, best! – in peer learning” both given by librarians from Edmonton, Alberta. The student focused learning session, based on research conducted by Professors Heidi Julien and Lisa Given explored how K-12 education prepares students in research and information literacy skills in Alberta. The preliminary results from this multi year study – which tracks students from the senior year of high school to about half way through undergraduate study – are not encouraging. The median score of high school students on the James Madison University Information Literacy Test was 51% or less than proficient. The researchers identified several possible explanations for this weak student performance including the fact that information literacy skills are not formally tested in the province’s education exams. It looks like there is a significant if not institutionalized disconnect between secondary and post-secondary educational priorities.

The last session of the day concerned an interesting internal training program in place at Grant MacEwan University. As Karen Hering described it, the non-evaluative peer learning program involved librarians observing their peers teach and learning new approaches that they could apply on their own. Designed in cooperation with the Faculty Development Office and library leadership, the program has been a success in encouraging better information literacy teaching and bringing together the institution’s librarians who are spread out over several campuses. One of the critical rules that made the program successful was the participation rule: every participant must observe and be observed. This reminds me of Dr Gee’s opening address where he remarked that gamers tend to insist that all players contribute actively; sitting out and underperforming is noticed.

The second day of the OLA conference had plenty of interesting sessions on all manner of topics. I attended two sessions on academic libraries and one on reference practice. That last session was particularly thought provoking as I ponder how to implement those insights in the context of virtual reference work. The conference has also been a good opportunity to meet and see librarians from across Ontario and other places including some friends from my graduate program that I haven’t seen in a few months.

The first session I attended, There’s a Library Here? Student outreach at the University of Guelph-Humber College, was a review and assessment of the marketing and outreach services recently employed at this Toronto institution. Guelph-Humber, founded in 2002,  has approximately three thousand students and faces the particular challenge of not having a dedicated library space. Nonetheless, Jennifer Easter and Caroline Stewart described Guelph-Humber’s outreach successes. One of the library’s strongest moves was to set up a student advisory committee which advises librarians on a variety of topics including how best to communicate with students. The decision to embed librarians in the institution’s Writing Centre has also been a great success as it allows for extended (30-60 minutes) consultations with students. The more I think about, the more I see a natural partnership between writing centres and librarians. The presenters also covered what didn’t succeed as well was the reference in student residence service; this came as no surprise since most library efforts to do this have not been highly successful. There was also a lively discussion of questions from those in the audience, including some from yours truly. I have written previously about marketing academic libraries; it is a topic of long standing interest for me.

During the extended lunch break, I went to see some of the poster presentations being provided. The sheer scope of projects undertaken was impressive; everything from research databases to developing cataloguing standards for video games was shown here. Of course, I went to see Meghan Eccelstone and Angela Hamilton, of York University, present on screencasting. They’ve found that videos over about five minutes tend to lose student interest. As I have something of an interest in German history and culture, it was also fun to see the German Canadiana in Ontario Bibliography project presented by Helena Calogeridis, Jane Forgay and William Oldfield of the University of Waterloo; it covers books, family histories, newspapers and other kinds of materials by and about this community. Two librarians from Queen’s University, Sylvia Andrychuk and Elizabeth Gibson, presented on some recent innovations that they have participated in. Their poster, From Annotated Bibliographies to Zines: Alternatives to the Research Paper, showed that humanities and social sciences teaching can go beyond the standard essay assignment. For example, there have been course assignments where students have been assigned the task of assessing and improving Wikipedia entries. I love the idea of actually having students improve the state of the world’s knowledge. They also told me that students tend to put more effort into their work, whether it be posters, zines or Wikipedia pages, when they knew it would be publicly displayed. The final poster I looked into was called, “Preserving PAc-Mac: Creating a Metadata Schema for Video Games,” by Max Dionisio and Sheila Mallahi Karai of the University of Toronto and it was enlightening. Unlike book cataloguing, describing and cataloguing video games is up for debate. There are many questions about what to include in catalogue records and how to organize it.

The attractions and challenges of providing 24/7 access to library services was discussed in another session I attended. Presented by Catherine Devion (University of Toronto Scarborough), Mark Robertson (York University) and Martha Whitehead (York University)) have all launched late night library programs over the last few years. In the case of York, student politicians actually campaigned for 24 hour library access and the library responded. In each case, it looks like late night library usage peaks between 11pm and 1am. From my perspective, it looks like academic libraries could justify closing from 2am-6am based on usage. In the Q&A part of the discussion, there were questions raised about whether it is wise to offer this kind of service since it may encourage students to adopt unhealthy work habits; indeed, some health staff at Queen’s expressed just this concern. From an administrative standpoint, it looks like the only real difficulty was keeping libraries clean; security was carefully thought out and there did not appear to be any problems on that front.

I ended the day by attending a stimulating session on reference called, “No Longer Just An Interview: Reference as a Relationship” given by Professor Mary Cavanagh and Luanna Freund. They both emphasized the importance of moving past the reference as transaction model that is suggested by library statistics. Indeed, Cavanagh points out that some library statistics claim that only about 20% of interactions are “real” reference questions but this is misleading. Many of the other interactions are necessary to build rapport and trust between librarian and library user in her view. Freund, who teaches aspiring librarians at UBC, approaches reference from a different angle; how can we teach a set of skills that is notoriously difficult to convey in any other way besides experience? She had some interesting ideas including encouraging people to study human-computer interaction more and learn more about information behaviour. In the Q&A portion, I asked about how one can build reference relationships using virtual reference or chat services. They both agreed it was a great challenge to do this; I think there are ways to change virtual reference technology to make it more conducive to relationships.

The OLA SuperConference has a special place in my professional life and history since it was the first ever library conference I attended. The event is dominated by librarians from all over Ontario, but there are some people from elsewhere in North America as well. Choosing which sessions to attend is always a problem, but it is one of the best kind of problems to have (the professional equivalent of deciding which chocolate to buy). In the end, I attended four events on various aspects of library work. My focus was mainly on the academic library context.

The first session I attended, given by Janice Mutz of Lakehead and John Dupuis of York, led a stimulating session on the future of academic libraries. Some of the presentation was familiar to me from Dupuis’s other writings on the topic but the discussion was lively. One of the most challenging points raised is the perception or brand problem that students and faculty tend to think the library is for print books and little else despite the fact that libraries have many other services and collections. Other debates were a bit more theoretical but still interesting; what happens if the trend toward consolidation and monopoly in academic publishing continues and continues? Is it impossible to imagine a day where Google owns all the major academic publishers? It could certainly afford to do that. In my view, most of the challenges to academic libraries in the next ten years or so are solvable but it will require some unusual thinking. For example, I think there is an opportunity for librarians to take on a publisher role by running and maintaining open access journals.

The next session I attended was all about using the Census, a tremendously valuable resource by any measure but also a difficult one to use effectively. I’ve always wanted to know more about how to use the census better and this session helped. The presenters -  Sue Giles and Dan Jakubek from Ryerson  – demonstrated how the census can be used to answer questions such as “Is it true that many Toronto taxi drivers have PhDs?” (In short: no. About 10% of Toronto taxi drivers have university degrees but only about 0.05% have PhDs) and “What is the average rent in my neighbourhood?” The presenters also explained the complexities of access to Statistics Canada and the relative precision of what you can kind.

The third session I attended, “The Role of the Library in Student Retention,” was interesting and provoked me to think of questions. The central question posed by the session is whether or not the library/librarians have an effect on student retention. Student retention can mean a few different things; keeping students enrolled until they graduate, preventing drop outs, that sort of thing. The speaker, Lorelei Harris of the University of Lethbridge Library, introduced us to the different theories that explain how and why students stay and succeed at college and university. Evidence that the library plays a critical or definitive role is still inconclusive at this point. There are some tantalizing possibilities though; providing student jobs at the library may improve student retention, for example. This session, like the other two above, left me wanting more and what higher praise can you ask from a curious librarian?

A few days ago, I registered for this year’s Ontario Library Association SuperConference 2010, just barely qualifying for the early bird discount. This event has a special place in my professional life since it was the first library conference I ever attended. It is also held in Toronto and thus easy for me to access. Here are ten reasons why I want to go to the OLA conference in no particular order:

10. Extraordinary Canadians! Adrienne Clarkson, Jane Urquhart, Nino Ricci and Mark Kingwell will be speaking on the biographies they wrote for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians biography series.

9. Our Job in 10 years. Learn about the future: John Dupuis and Janice Mutz will be speaking on: Our Job in 10 Years: The future of academic libraries. Predicting the future is tricky business but Dupuis has done some good work in trying to do this.

8. Library Service Meets Brain Research! presented by Julie Mandal (Research Specialist, Canadian Research Association) – I’ve blogged before about neuroscience and education, it is a subject I need to understand better.

7. Get your geography on! I’m serving as the convener for this Saturday morning session on, “Visualizing History: Google Earth as a Information Literacy tool.” You want to meet me? I’ll be here!

6. Where Toronto is public education going? Dr. Chris Spence  (he was interviewed on TVO’s The Agenda if you’re curious to know more); he has proposed boys-only schools and other unconventional ideas to improve the city’s education.

5. Books & reading for better mental health? Yes, that’s here too! (Bibliotherapy: Stories, reading, and the brain that heals itself by Dr. Hoi Cheu, Laurentian University.

3. Leadership 2010: Ken Laycock will be presenting a session, Leadership 2010, summarizing the latest insights in 2009. I’ve seen him present before and I was impressed.

2. Awards: Recognize some seriously great librarians through the conference’s awards.

1. Meeting: librarians from all over the place.

I may not be able to do everything on this list but it is a good start.

Most of the large professional associations hold their annual conference in the summer months (e.g. ALA in June, SLA in June and CLA in May/June), but those large events are not the only ones worthy of attention. For some time now, I have been looking into two fall conferences: Access 2009 to be held September 30-October 3 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and Internet Librarian 2009 to be held in Monteray, California which will be held October 24-28. Attending both would make for a very exciting and education fall season certainly!

The Access conference describes itself as, “Canada’s Premier Library Technology Conference.” Though there are still quite a few TBAs in the conference schedule, it looks promising. I like that such conferences are in parts of the country I’ve not yet visited – it makes them doubly appealing. The opening keynote will be given by technology columnist/science fiction author Cory Doctorow. I’ve read several of his novels and his non-fiction work on intellectual property (his novels are available for free under Creative Commons) with interest, so that makes it quite interesting. I also have the impression that it is a smaller event than SLA and CLA which means it should be easy to meet people and connect.

In contrast, Internet Librarian is a large conference that has been fully planned out for some time. There is even a video trailer for the conference (something I’ve not seen before in any other context) to promote it. The keynote is given by Vint Cerf, known as one of the architects of the Internet who now works as “VP & Chief Internet Evangelist” (quite possibly one of the most interesting job titles I’ve ever seen) at Google. There are different themes to the conference covering digital libraries, content management and innovation. The conference’s title is, “Net Initiatives for Tough Times: Digital Publishing, Preservation & Practices.”

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of attending the Canadian Library Association conference in Montreal, Quebec. This trip was made possible by a grant from the Faculty of Information Alumni Association (where I now serve as Treasurer). My report (and thus of others who received the grant) is now available.

Here is my report:

Participating in the Canadian Library Association Conference was a valuable experience for me to meet others in the profession and share my ideas. The conference sessions themselves offer a range of opportunities to learn from other information professionals across Canada. In addition to traditional presentations, I also benefited from the poster sessions where Meghan Ecclestone and I presented results from our research project that examined the professional development activities of students at the Faculty of Information. I also learned from several other poster presenters on everything from studying the relationship between travel and reading, serving multicultural communities in Red Deer and how Canadian librarians have partnered with libraries in Africa. If I could give a single piece of advice to new students, it would be to participate in conferences – the opportunities for networking, learning new skills and more cannot be matched.

This evening, I attended the SLA Salutes! reception at the Library of Congress which was a delight. In addition to seeing a Gutenberg Bible printed on vellum, there were several exhibits of note. The display on Thomas Jefferson’s Library was well presented and informative. I knew that Jefferson had given his books to the Library after the “Congressional Library” was destroyed by in the Library of Congress. It actually turns out that he sold it for about $24,000 (which is something like $300,000 in modern terms). The staff at the Library also opened up the main Reading Room and let us browse around. It was an inspiring place to be in.

Crossposted to the SLA Blog.

When I left the opening session of the SLA conference yesterday, I left inspired. The event opened with a series of awards that recognize professionals in various fields for the numerous contributions. Prefacing each award, there was a “trailer” where interviews and other information on each award winner was displayed on the ball room’s large monitors. As a new member to SLA, I found this especially useful as it introduced me to many new people. Not only that, these video presentations benefited from some high quality production work. The award presentations exceeded my expectations and energized me about the profession.

The opening keynote address by Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, struck a counterpoint to the awards. While Powell did not speak about librarians directly, I still found the speech quite interesting. He covered everything from his many pursuits, his views on leadership and his efforts to modernize the U.S. State Department. His speech also showed that it is althogether possible to deliver a very good speech without PowerPoint or any other visual aids.