I’ll be a participant in a panel during the Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference. Our program, Riding the “Long Tail”: Leveraging a Niche to Build a Network, focuses on the niche professional networks and interests enabled and encouraged by the use of social media tools. It will be moderated by USC’s John Jackson & the University of La Verne’s Young Lee and feature panelists Nicole Pagowsky of the entertaining Librarian Wardrobe and Micah Vandegrift of the HackLibSchool Blog. I am quite honored to be included in their company to discuss the Information Amateurs Social Club, the informal networking organization my friend Greg Borman and I created after graduating from library school in 2009.

Participation in the virtual conference is free — and highly encouraged! Our panel will speak at 10am Pacific Time on Thursday, November 3.

Jumping on board a presentation like this required me — for the first time — to write a professional bio, a decidedly odd thing to compose (particularly since custom dictates writing it in the third person). Here it is:

Daniel Ransom is the Librarian for Research and Electronic Resources at Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Daniel provides reference and research services and co-coordinates the university’s information literacy program. Daniel also serves on the committee for the California Academic and Research Libraries’ Ilene F. Rockman Scholarship, an annual award for library school students. He co-founded the Information Amateurs Social Club with Greg Borman after graduating from San José State University’s School of Library and Information Science in December of 2009. The goal was to create an informal online and in-person venue for early-career information professionals to stay in contact with their peers and share job-seeking skills and ideas.

I also had to submit a profile photo; I took this shot the morning of my very first day as a professional librarian 15 months ago and have used it as my professional profile ever since (that’s right, I like to rock the argyle sweater vest).

At some point soon I’m going to have to admit that I’m a grown-up.

Engrossed in conversation. Photo courtesy @TheLiB.

The beer table was an entertaining gimmick — it was by the window, near the door, and allowed us to pour beers for new arrivals without them having to walk to the bar and wait for service. Conversation was by turns serious and silly (like all good conversations), and any lull could be filled by filling our own glasses. And, by the end, we knew exactly how much beer we had drunk!

631 ounces! The hefeweizen proved more popular than the IPA.

I’m very proud of our little association. While we have a core group of regulars (some of whom will sadly be leaving the Bay Area shortly), each and every outing has featured at least several new faces. Our group’s name — the Information Amateurs — was born out of our circumstances in April, 2010. Greg Borman and I had both recently graduated with our MLIS degrees (December, ‘09) and were both struggling to find jobs. We couldn’t quite call ourselves professionals without a professional paycheck! So I had the inspiration to call us the Information Amateurs, and stuck with it even though both Greg and I were gainfully employed by that summer. I’ve always kept the tone of messages to the group cheerful and little irreverent in the hopes that it will draw out newcomers, and that seems to work.

The next event is one worth getting excited about: on October 20, USC’s Norris Medical Library’s Megan Curran will be presenting her lecture “Ill-gotten Brains: The Grisly History of Sourcing Bodies for Anatomical Learning” (an appropriately macabre subject for late October) at the Bone Room in Berkeley as part of their ongoing salon series of talks on subjects in natural history. Ms. Curran has already presented this talk in Los Angeles and Brooklyn but this will be her first Bay Area appearance. The recently engaged Ms. Curran has also agreed to join the Information Amateurs for a post-lecture drink at a to-be-determined gathering spot. You can follow her on twitter at @LibraryatNight.

I have organized sessions I attended and events I participated around a couple of the most recurring themes.

Discovery

Cushing Library is currently implementing a new tool for our end users to use for search and retrieval of our items in our collection. This system, called WorldCat Local (WCL), finds and retrieves items be they print or online, and whether they are book, article, journal or other media. WCL and similar products are referred to as “Discovery” systems within the librarian profession.

I attended several programs relating to the implementation of Discovery systems. Two directly related to the implementation of OCLC’s WCL technology, tasks I am involved in right now, and another on the rate of return various libraries have seen since their implementation of Summon, a competing but similar product to WCL offered by ProQuest. There is strong evidence, from both libraries operating WCL and from libraries utilizing Summon, that full-text article retrievals are up, most notably from smaller, more specialized sources. At WCL libraries, print circulation tends to rise post-WCL implementation as well.

For example, the University of Idaho, which has implemented WorldCat Local, has seen usage over print materials rise 20%, interlibrary loan requests rise 34%, and a 78% increase in full text article downloads. Summon libraries, such as the University of Houston, saw a 50% rise in full text article retrieval. They have also found that the Summon search service is pushing users to finding underutilized resources, such as special collections and multimedia items, and that it favors direct journal services (such as Sage) over aggregators such as EBSCO.

Information Literacy

Part of my continuing duties at Holy Names University is my role as an instruction librarian. I provide information literacy education to students via workshops and research help sessions.

One of the best instruction-related programs I attended was Making Information Literacy Instruction Meaningful through Creativity. The three speakers were current or former faculty for ACRL’s highly-regarded Immersion Program, a “boot camp” for instructional librarians, and the session reinforced many themes that are part of Immersion training — creative lesson planning; interactive, motivational presentation styles; and pedagogy grounded in research and assessment.

In addition to these presentations, I also had chances to sit and talk shop with a good mix of other instructional librarians, such as Michelle Millet, Tiffini Travis, Lea Engle, and Nicholas Schiller. In Schiller’s case, I’ve been reading his articles and stealing his classroom ideas for a year so it was great to get a chance to admit that to him. He didn’t seem to mind.

Out and About

New Orleans: what a city. While I admit I’m not such a fan of colorful drinks in plastic cups — I’d rather have one well-crafted cocktail than a half dozen cups of syrup-flavored alcohol — I have to admit that New Orleans knows how to have a good time, and a good time I had, passing from place to place with a gang of roving librarians I befriended. It’s hot in New Orleans in June (that’s not a newsflash, I realize), but the heat and humidity didn’t keep me from walking continuously from the Garden District, to the Warehouse District, along the river and into the French Quarter, and back again throughout the conference. Café Du Monde was naturally a regular destination, both late at night and after lunch, and I was shocked that a plate of three beignets was only two dollars and change — here in San Francisco, our tourist traps won’t sell anything for less than five dollars.

While I expected to meet hip, smart librarians from Brooklyn (and did) (stereotypes for the win!), there were smart, interesting people coming from all corners of the country — Indiana, Texas, Florida, and even Southern California. In between the beignets, coffee and occasional cocktails there was plenty of sharp chatter about information services, instructional technique, and emerging tech. All of it pointed to my original thesis in founding the Information Amateurs Social Club — that the best, most enlightening professional conversation happens in the informal air of casual conversation. Preferably with a drink in hand. Between the ALA Dance Party, the ALA Tweet-up, the ALA Facebook Afterparty, the Radical Reference Social, the HackLibSchool Social, and all of the more informal connecting in between (including a trip to the Voodoo Museum), I met many of my internet heroes and formed some genuine bonds of friendship I’m going to hang onto. And hopefully, someday, all of them will move to San Francisco. It’d be killer.

That’s Lauren and Lea in the middle at the Radical Reference Social

Battledecks

No report on the goings-on in New Orleans would be complete without mention of Battledecks, the competitive, improvisational battle of slideshow presentations that concluded the conference Monday night. My participation was not strictly speaking voluntary, but it was thrilling to speak right between Lisa Hinchliffe, President of ACRL, and widely known executive and public speaker Stephen Abram. However, I’m going to save my extended thoughts on that experience for a future post — once the videos have weaseled their way online and I can embed my performance right here on The Pinakes.

I arrived at the Philadelphia Airport Tuesday evening and hitched a ride into downtown Philly on their commuter rail. It took me directly into a subterranean stop that is now called Market East station, but is built under what had been the vast depot of the Reading Railroad (made famous by Monopoly). The massive pavilion above has now been converted into the Philadelphia Conference Center, where ACRL was to take place, and adjacent to and adjoining the hotel where I was staying. So I arrived at the station, walked up what seemed like two centuries of underground history, and directly into the hotel without feeling a hint of outside air. It was surreal, especially at night.

One commenter on twitter called this shot of the conference hall at night a “steampunk wonderland”.

I struck out on foot that night in search of my first Philly cheesesteak sandwich, or as they simply call them locally, a steak. I’d been told by a former Philly local to head to a place called Jim’s Steaks on South Street. It was a good chance to explore the city on foot and see how it actually lives and breathes. Philly was nothing like I expected — all blue collar, Santa-booing meatheads. Instead I saw the quotient of hipsters on fixies I expect to see here at home, plus a community garden, and an anarchist bookstore. Swap the steak shops for taquerías, you’d be in San Francisco’s Mission District; swap them for vegan bakeries, you’d be in Portland, Oregon.

What you get in Philly you don’t get in SF: rowhouses of beautiful brick lining narrow streets.

Jim’s Steaks was the antidote to this Hipsterdelphia. I walked up to the register to order, and the middle-aged local behind the counter (I’ll call him “Jim”) proceeded to ignore me while he finished a conversation with one of the other guys. Or, I thought I was just waiting until he finished what he was saying, but no. He just kept on talking, with me just a couple feet from him on the other side of the counter. Jim wouldn’t even turn his face my direction. He resolutely refused to acknowledge my existence. I should note that I’m the only customer in the store. This went on for more than one full, awkward minute. Now this is the Philly I had arrived expecting! Brusque assholes who wouldn’t give me the time of day. Here was authenticity. Thank you Jim.

Eventually the fry cook took pity on me, and summoned me over with a finger (not that one). I was supposed to order with him, and in their assembly line, I’d get passed down to the drink guy and then to Jim at the register. Didn’t matter that no one else was there — I still had to follow procedure. Once I had done that (note: I was not allowed to touch my beer until I had paid, even though they placed it on my tray), Jim was willing to acknowledge my existence. No mention of the prior awkwardness.

The steak, it should be said, was delish. I’d go back.

The next day I had to myself until the conference started in the late afternoon. Again I set out on foot, first finding a comfy coffeehouse (the negative Yelp reviews are amusing; accusations of hipsterdom abound, as if posting reviews on Yelp about the quality of their vegan goods isn’t an enormously hipster thing to do). It’s in a corner brick Victorian rowhouse in Philly’s gay district (Philly has a gay district? More things I did not know). Here the staff was actually friendly. Probably not natives. They made a solid cappuccino.

From there I was off to the ghastly but utterly fascinating Mütter Museum, a collection of human oddities (think strange skulls, deformed spines, babies in jars…) that was formed from the personal collection of 19th century physician Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter and has grown under the stewardship of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. I’d entertain you with a collection of gory photographs of leather made from human flesh, a modern mummy, 19th century medical tools and all manner of human parts except the museum strictly forbade photography (not that that has stopped others; there’s plenty on flickr).

My museum trawling was not yet done; after that I walked to the Rosenbach Museum, on an elegant street of handsome rowhouses in the Rittenhouse Square district. The Rosenbachs were brothers engaged in the rare book trade in the first half of the twentieth century; they were extravagant bachelors, who entertained lavishly, enjoyed bourbon, pipes, and books, and made the savvy purchase of James Joyce’s handwritten Ulysses manuscript before the book became the icon it is today (amongst many other great purchases, including Herman Melville’s own bookcase, now filled with 1st edition copies of Moby Dick, on their ground floor). Their shops — in Philly and New York — were the locus of the American rare book trade for decades, and the collection of the Folger Library in Washington, DC and many other great private libraries were built by their acquisitions. The museum hosts hourly tours of their mansion and library, with exhibits on news coverage of the Civil War and Joyce’s years in Paris.

My final Wednesday stop before the conference started was lunch with an internet friend, Molly from yon Falling Molly blog. She’s mutual friends with my pal Jenny and we met up so she could teach me about Philly’s other local sandwich, roast pork with broccoli rabe. Because of legacy Quaker liquor laws, most small shops can’t get a liquor license, so they just let you bring in your own beer. So Molly arrived six-pack in hand and we chowed down on these massive, greasy, vinegary sandwiches. It took a couple hours to polish those monsters off (and the six-pack). Molly is both smart and funny; if you’re looking for an entertaining internet friend, you couldn’t do better.

It must be healthy because it’s covered in vegetables. Never mind the other stuff.

After that I headed back to the conference for the opening keynote!

If 6:30 sounds early to you, fear not — I’m sure at least a fair few of us will be out well into the evening, so if you can’t make it until 8, 9 or 10 — that’ll be fine. You can RSVP via facebook or let me know you’re coming via twitter or email — that way we know who to look out for over the course of the evening.

It’ll be a great time out. Let’s just not turn this into one of the Matrix sequels.

It was fun.

This is the part of the blog post were I should be putting up a series of photos of our night out (since a handful of pictures are worth thousands of words). But I didn’t bring a camera. Imagine instead a photo of our three tables cobbled together in a gerrymandered conquest of half the bar’s floorspace; a late-night rendezvous at a taquería where we indulged in tacos, burritos and tortas; margaritas the size of a pint; frenzied debates on the worthiness of Oakland versus San Francisco. Oh, and we talked about libraries too.

It was so much fun that we’ll do it again. Join the Information Amateurs Social Club on Facebook if you want to hear about it when we do.

Changing the Metrics

The first plenary lecture, by Dr. Peter Hernon of Simmons College, covered a broad span of the issues he sees in the profession and some emerging trends. His shock statistic was that reference desk approaches are down 80% from where they used to be. This confirms what everyone has been saying since the advent of internet search: reference, as a department and core duty of librarianship, is in trouble.

I’ve written about reference before, and made it clear that I don’t believe reference is dead (see There He Sat With An Answer For All and my e-Portfolio Competency I). Still, even as an ardent backer of continued (though diversified) reference service, I have to agree that a MLIS graduate can no longer claim to be solely a reference specialist and expect to find work. These days, a librarian needs to have a wider set of skills; capable of providing reference, yes, but inevitably even a reference department librarian will have responsibilities in library instruction, collection development, electronic resources and so on.

The bigger issue is that many traditional statistics of library usage – reference inquiries, circulation, and so on – often indicate to university administrators that libraries are declining, ergo library budgets get cut. So libraries need to produce research – quantitative evidence – to show administrators all of the benefits of continued library support. It needs to become clear what value libraries are supplying students; what are students getting per tuition dollar provided to the library? New metrics can show just how vital libraries remain (some of the presentations I discussed in the Post-CARL Review, Pt. 1 had examples of just the sorts of quantitative research libraries can be doing).

Early Career Librarians

One of the final-day workshops I attended at the conference was a discussion of issues for early career librarians, hosted by Katherine O’Clair of Cal Poly, SLO. There was a lot of practical advice to be had, both in a general sense, and some for me and my situation specifically. Since it was an open discussion, a lot of the attendees had different points of view; some reiterated the commonly held belief that if you’re a paraprofessional (instead of a librarian) for more than a couple years, you’re stuck being a paraprofessional forever. Others disputed that assumption on the basis of the current economy; hiring managers will be more forgiving of non-professional level work on your résumé given of how few opportunities are out there right now.

The eventual consensus was that getting your first professional level job isn’t a function of how long you have or haven’t worked as a paraprofessional, but rather the relationship you’ve developed with your professional level colleagues, peers and professional organizations. It’s vital to develop connections, attend conferences, and write papers; these activities show a professional-level of interest and can make up for any deficiencies on your curriculum vitae.

Some very good personal advice I received from an established librarian attending the session was that my digitization experience at the California Academy of Sciences, while archival by nature and not at an academic library, still provided me a skill-set a lot of libraries don’t have on staff; he made the point that even if I’m applying for a reference or instructional-heavy academic position, I should promote my digitizing experience. That skill – even if a library hadn’t considered it a priority – could make me a more attractive candidate. I’m capable of stretching a job description (and an FTE) to include new responsibilities, increasing my value.

That concept really holds true to any skill you might have. Don’t discard arrows from your quiver just because they aren’t listed in a posted job description. Make sure a library that is hiring knows all the different things you can do (budgeting experience? supervisory experience? Mention it).

Overall, I feel I came away from the conference with a better idea of current trends in academic libraries and how to better market myself in what is a competitive market. And those are marks of a successful conference-going experience (another mark would be a good time socializing and networking; I did that too!).

About ten of the twenty-four official discussion sessions were focused on information literacy and instruction. Of these, I attended several, and came away with a lot of good ideas and an appreciation for the serious research going on in the subject right now.

Longitudinal Research

Three staff librarians from Cal State-Long Beach presented their ongoing, 6-year research endeavor to determine the effectiveness of their library instruction program. Their presentation, “Are They Getting It: Seeking Evidence of Students’ Research Behavior Over Time” described their grant-funded project from its inception to its current state, two years into the study.

I’m impressed with the depth of their research. They started by developing a large sample of freshman students with the intention of following them throughout their education. Their analysis of the students’ research skills extend to studying the students’ research paper bibliographies for source and citation quality. This sort of extensive, longitudinal study is difficult to implement and ties up a lot of staff time and resources, but the results — sure to be published — will be of use to universities and colleges throughout California and beyond (which is why CARL was the main grant-giving body behind the project). It’s easy to suppose how and why information literacy programs are successful or not; it’s another thing to really study what’s happening in a quantitative manner.

One interesting takeaway from their presentation was their use of a statistician to analyze the substantial data their surveys were generating. You can’t merely collect information — it needs to be analyzed in a meaningful way. Sometimes it is best to bring in an outside expert instead of relying on in-house staff. Their statistician was able to model their data in several dimensions and changed their whole perspective on the information they had gathered — and saved the time and energy of the librarians themselves.

The presenters — Susan Jackson, Karin Griffin and Carol Perruso, all of CSULB — also provided extensive survey details in the form of handouts, including a timeline, survey questions, and project budget. While the survey will run for several years yet, I’m looking forward to their eventual results and what it will teach us about what works and what doesn’t, and how research behavior is evolving.

Working With a Campus Assessment Coordinator

Another example of using outsider expertise came from the presentation “Upstairs-Downstairs: Working with a Campus Assessment Coordinator and Other Allies for Effective Information Literacy Assessment” by Golden Gate University librarians Amy Hofer and Margot Hanson. In this case, their outsider was really an insider: the existing GGU Campus Assessment Coordinator. Still, they were reaching outside the lines of library staff to work with someone with a campus-wide responsibility, and more importantly, an understanding of program assessment.

According to their presentation, the advice and administrative approval they got from their use of the Campus Assesment Coordinator was essential for the success of their program study, which involved the startup of a new, embedded library instruction program that moved away from “one shot” instructional sessions in favor of an ongoing, semester-long engagement with a class. Their Assessment Coordinator started by asking what a successful program actually looked like, who was the audience for their study, and suggesting the use of a control group to put the study’s findings in context. They also devised measures to test discernible improvement in actual information use, rather than relying on the students’ self-assessment of their own information literacy (in the form of traditional satisfaction surveys).

Hofer and Hanson narrowed their research by focusing on a specific segment of the GGU student body, a special program for foreign-born students developing their English-language research skills (the PLUS program). Golden Gate University has an unusually high level of international students due to its emphasis on graduate-level business programs and location in the heart of downtown San Francisco. They were able to measure student research skills based on written tests and an analysis of work performed at the beginning and at the end of the school term, and saw marked improvement in two of the three categories they measured (the hardest area to improve was the students’ choice of subject, which is a critical thinking skill that can extend beyond the library’s sphere of influence).

The Golden Gate University study was a well-orchestrated example of research that would be easier to implement than CSULB’s expensive, time-consuming longitudinal study that would still yield relevant institutional results. More information about this study, including some of the test questions and suggested further reading is available here.

The Post-Google World

The final presentation at the conference I attended was an informative workshop built around information literacy program curriculum, and improving lesson content by reverse engineering the process: start with the (desired) results, and work backwards to build your lesson plan. Korey Brunetti and Lori Townsend of CSU-East Bay were joined by Julian Prentice of Chabot College to lead this session (Let’s Try This Again: Redefining the Content of Information Literacy for a Post-Google World) that combined an initial group presentation with a workshop-style open discussion using Prezi to capture the assembled attendees’ ideas.

There were a few big concepts that emerged:

• Keep your goals simple — reduce, reduce, reduce superfluous objectives in favor of imparting a few key, simple ideas on your students.
• Emphasize critical thinking skills across mediums. Ultimately, the source of a citation doesn’t matter (open web vs. subscription database vs. government website etc.), it’s the quality and verifiability of that source.
• Understand how contemporary students work and integrate better tools and critical decision-making into their existing study patterns.

This sessions’ notes and final “Prezi” will appear in the forthcoming CARL Conference Digital Proceedings.

Take-Home Lessons

I found a number of take-home lessons in this focus on information literacy programs. Beyond the simple opportunity to see how different libraries and universities are pursuing information instruction, it was instructive to see the value of both long-term and short-term research for improving existing programs, jump starting expanded programs and ultimately — and perhaps most importantly — proving the library’s enduring value to campus administrations.

Through each of these sessions were also woven excellent ideas for instruction curriculum in the 21st century; how best to capture the students’ attention and impart meaningful lessons that will actually impact their research methods in a positive way.

My next post will cover some of the career-development issues discussed at the conference, including Dr. Peter Hernon’s plenary lecture.

Thus the idea of the Information Amateurs was born. Early career (ish) professionals getting together to swap stories and job seeking hints, all over a libation or perhaps two. This is a non-discriminatory concept;  I like breaking down silos, so public, academic or special librarians are all welcome, as are archivists, current students or various other denominations.

The first Information Amateurs Happy Hour is going to be Friday, April 30th at the Latin American Club in San Francisco’s Mission District (22nd Street at Valencia). It’s entirely possible it might be just Greg and I. Or 30 people could show up in a crowded bar. So far the invite list includes people I just met this weekend at CARL, people I haven’t run into since a class a couple years ago, some of my closest friends in the profession, and people I’ve never even met that are connected through Greg.

If you’re reading this and haven’t been invited, you’re invited. If you’re interested, contact me via the options on my “about” tab or just respond to this Facebook invitation.

If we get a big response, the Information Amateurs Social Club will officially be born.

So I thought I’d dissect the schedule and the presentations I’m most interested in seeing. Once the event is underway I’ll tweet my live impressions, and when it’s over I’m sure I’ll post a conference wrap-up.

Thursday, April 8

The conference kicks off with AM and PM “Engage Sessions” for early birds. Since these cost extra and both Carolyn and I are on “underemployed” budgets, we decided to pass on extra out-of-pocket expenses. It’s unfortunate, since several of these presentations sound interesting, particularly “Reference Toolkit Revisited” by Amy Wallace, CARL President. I’ve been doing specialized archival reference at the California Academy of Sciences, so a good refresher on the latest tools and tricks for general reference and instruction would have been worthwhile. Perhaps I can pick Amy’s brain during some of the open conference time.

The main draw for us Thursday is the dinner program from 6-8, which promises to be a great chance to reconnect with librarians we’ve worked with in the past and make new contacts.

Friday, April 9

Friday morning is when the serious presentations begin (and the difficult choices). After an early plenary session with Dr. Peter Hernon, we have to decide between four different presentations to attend late morning, another four after lunch, and a final set of four for the early evening. The three sessions I’m leaning towards attending are as follows (and, of course, subject to change):

• New Directions in Library Instruction: Keywords, Visual Literacy, and Critical Thinking by Matt Conner (of UC Davis). This is appealing because I consider Library Instruction to be one of my strengths as a librarian and this is an opportunity to see another professional’s perspective and deepen my own understanding of information search. My own philosophy of Instruction is pretty heavily based on what I learned working with Joe Garity and his team at USF so I’m very curious what other perspectives are out there.
• People Make Research Guides with Jacqui Grallo, Kathlene Hanson (of CSU Monterey Bay), and Jade Winn (USC). LibGuides and similar software are becoming the dominant medium for dynamic research guides (replacing the static pathfinders of the days of yore) and getting a better understanding of how to use these tools will keep me on the cutting edge of Reference Librarianship.
• Digging into Our “Hidden Collections”: Maximizing Staff Skills and Technology to Enhance Access to Special Collections with Elaine Franco and John Sherlock (UC Davis), Sarah Buchanan (UCLA). I may just be getting suckered into a presentation about a mystery with a fellow named Sherlock, but this sounds very compelling to me. A lot of what I’ve been doing with the California Academy of Sciences has been digging through the back cabinets to find the uncataloged, unheralded and otherwise undiscovered items in our collections. I’d love to learn about Franco, Sherlock and Buchanan’s experiences with similar work on the larger scale of a research university.

Alternatively, there is an compelling sounding presentation on information literacy assessments (AM), library research ethics (PM), and wiki-based research guides (late PM) that could draw me away from my initial choices. The Friday lunch is also exciting: CARL will be introducing the current Rockman Award winners, and it will be my chance to meet the other members of the committee.

Saturday, April 10

The final day of the conference promises to be pretty full, too. I’m less decided on my Saturday “Listen & Learn” sessions, but here is what I’m leaning towards:

• The Library as a Student Research Site by Anna Gold (of Cal Poly-SLO). Library service always starts with the user experience. Whether you’re trying to provide access to materials, assist in locating information, or performing behind-the-scenes technical services, everything we do as librarians has to be about easing the experience of our library patrons as they seek information, a place to study, to work and to collaborate. This presentation promises to be a well-researched look at how university library users are using the tools at their disposal and how libraries can make their research goals easier to accomplish.
• Early Career Issues in Academic Librarianship with Katherine O’Clair (Cal Poly-SLO). Well, I fit the bill. I graduated in December and am currently looking for a full-time, professional position, and this session is all about what to do when you’re in my shoes. From the presentation description, this sounds like it could be a great, open discussion, or fall flat if the audience is light and unresponsive. However, given O’Clair’s impressive curriculum vitae, I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s doing and this session will be worth attending — it has the potential to be the most useful I attend all conference.
• Let’s Try This Again: Redefining the Content of Information Literacy for a Post-Google World by Korey Brunetti (CSU East Bay), Julian Prentice (Chabot College), and Lori Townsend (CSU East Bay). It’s pretty clear that literacy and information literacy have diverged pretty sharply in the Age of the PDF. This collaborative, workshop-style presentation is focused on determining just what the necessary research skills are in our current technology-driven environment and how to ensure university students gain that understanding.

There’s also a snazzy-sounding Saturday late afternoon presentation on LibGuides in case I miss the Thursday research guide session. Saturday lunch is also reserved for brown-bag/Dutch-treat interest groups, and I’ll be joining the Rockman Committee and award winners for lunch at Rio City Café.

All in all, I couldn’t be more excited about my first CARL conference!