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?