Yesterday, parts of Louisville, Kentucky were horribly flooded from massive amounts of rainfall. The main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library was particularly hard hit.
To contribute to the recovery:
The Library Foundation Attn: Flood 301 York St. Louisville, KY 40203 (502) 574-1709
Michael Porter of Libraryman blog fame has put out a call for participants to be part of his new song and video: Library 101. I took a few still photographs at our library instruction retreat, but then a call went out for actual video. I had never used a Flip (or any video camera for that matter), but I tried my best to capture a few moments on the camera, including what was supposed to be a few of our librarians saying, "We are Library 101!"
Of course, I totally missed the moment and only got myself talking on camera, and couldn't cajole my co-workers into a fourth take. I posted two of my three attempts to the group pool on flickr anyway, and today I find two positive comments! Librarians are so nice. (Including my colleagues, who I think still don't quite understand what I videoed them for, but were game anyway.)
I had an excellent time co-presenting my first poster session with Stacey Greenwell. We presented on the University of Kentucky's annual freshmen orientation event, The Hubbub, which I've written about before.
I was a little nervous about doing a poster session, which was a new format for me, but I actually loved talking to all the people who stopped in to learn more about how to show their students what a great place the library can be.
The July/August 2009 issue of ACRL's College and Research Libraries News just appeared, and one of the articles is The Huge Hubbub: Freshmen orientation fun at the library, written by yours truly. I really enjoyed writing about the University of Kentucky Libraries' huge freshmen orientation event, which I was involved in for its first two years, in 2007 and 2008. I'm also very excited to have an article appear in a publication so widely read by academic librarians. I hope I did UK's marvelous Hubbub justice in my story.
photo credit: Beth Kraemer and the Hubbub Photo Booth Team
In related news, Stacey Greenwell and I will be co-presenting a poster session on the same topic at the American Library Association's Annual Conference next Sunday, July 12, from 1:00 to 2:30pm at McCormick Place West. I hope to see you there!
I was recently shocked to learn that the academic publishing giant Elsevier had published an allegedly peer-reviewed academic journal called the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, which was actually a disguised promotion for Merck products.
Academic libraries pay through the nose for academic journals, particularly from Elsevier, and in return we should be able to expect the highest quality information. This type of fraudulent information should do a lot to increase the already steamrolling interest in open access publishing instead.
photo by Alice Wasielewski A recent special issue on learning spaces of Educause Quarterly contained a photo of the Information Commons at the University of Kentucky taken by yours truly (at the bottom of the page second from right if you click on the link).
The Information Commons at UK is a great place for students, and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to be a part of it. At my current job at Eastern Kentucky University, we are working on our own great new space for students, The Noel Studio for Academic Creativity. Construction is beginning soon!
I recently read a useful book (that I have to give back to ILL today) called Motivating Students in Information Literacy Classes by Trudi E. Jacobson and Lijuan Xu. This handy little volume is aimed at librarians teaching full-semester IL classes, but it contains a lot of good advice that can also be applied to the brief sessions that I teach. One standout was the advice on student autonomy and how students become more motivated when given simple choices. This is a book that I don't want to return.
photo from LouisvilleKy.gov
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