PAST LACUNY Professional Development Grants

The pre-conference sponsored by GODORT (Government Documents Round Table) at ALA 2007 presented nine speakers on various government and non-government online materials, as well as the means of locating them on the Internet. The audience included both government documents librarians and other librarians like myself who just needed to know about these resources. The range of topics included IGOs (International government organizations like the European Union, the G8, the UN, as well as INGOs (non-government) like the World Bank, and Asian and African organizations. Of greatest interest to me were the following: Peter Hajnal, who spoke on the G8 history and relevance (The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation, Aldershot: Ashgate 2007), Mary Gay Anderson who spoke about the 490 million person European Union and its web gateway in all languages http://www.europa.eu/, and especially Susan Bennett White who managed to organize the massive UN e-collection to human comprehension in "Twelve Portals to the E-World of United Nations Documents" http://www.princeton.edu/~sbwhite/EWorld12.html and http://www.princeton.edu/~sbwhite/EWorldUN.html.

Michael Waldman, Baruch College (2007)

NASIG [North American Serials Interest Group] 22nd Annual Conference: Place Your Bet in Kentucky, the Serials Gamble (meeting in Louisville, KY

NASIG, the North American Serials Interest Group, held its Annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky facing the Ohio River. The presentations this year grappled with issues from innovations in serials cataloging to usage statistics for electronic journals. Three Vision Sessions presented us with some of the big issues facing libraries and scholarly communications. In the first vision session Bob Stein explored how the changing nature of scholarly communication, from print to online, is changing the nature of intellectual discourse. In her vision session Karen Schneider raised many significant issues about the changes in the serials landscape, from libraries owning and choosing their collections to a leased model where vendors choose collections and libraries do not own them. Finally Daniel Chudnov looked at the limits of current technology use in libraries and what is already available that could be applied to libraries to make a more seamless and organic searching environment for the user where they can smoothly get content, use it, transfer it, communicate to others about it, etc.

James Patrick Williams, College of Staten Island (2007)

Computers in Libraries: Beyond Library 2.0: Building Communities, Connections, and Strategies. (Meeting in Alexandria, VA)

The Computers in Libraries 2007 Conference was very much focused on the use of Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, blogs, and social networking applications to realize new and powerful efficiencies in research, sharing, instruction, and expression for libraries. Presentations from both librarians and those outside the field emphasized the active encouragement of users to share and use each other’s digital content, and focused on the integration of “sharable” information into the greater information resources landscape. Several presentations addressed creative strategies for implementing free and Open Source Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 technologies—not only for online access, but in support of face-to-face library instruction and reference services as well. Presenters widely encouraged libraries to engage in dialogue with patrons regarding their use of digital tools and information and to include patrons in their experiments with emerging technologies.

The Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) is the premier organization for librarians specializing in Latin American collection development. Some of the panels I attended dealt with the Dominican diaspora and electronic initiatives such as: CARINDEX (http://www.inasp.info/iah/index.shtml), LARRP (http://lanic.utexas.edu/larrp/), LAGDA (http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/archives/lagda); LATINDEX (http://www.latindex.unam.mx/).

CUNY's presence was strong in this year's program. Sarah Aponte, of the Dominican Studies Institute at City College, presented "Dominican Studies: Resources in the Diaspora" and Jorge Matos, of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at Hunter College, presented "The Centro Library and the Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora". I moderated a panel on the changing roles of book dealers and librarians, and I am the process of revising a freely accessible database, "Resources for Locating and Evaluating Latin American Videos" for the SALALM Audio-Visual Media Subcommittee.

Miriam Laskin, Hostos Community College (2006)

Assessment and Beyond: Starting It Off, Pulling It All Together and Making Decisions, ACRL's Preconference Workshop at ALA Annual 2006 in New Orleans

This day-long workshop for academic librarians offered an introduction and best practices of assessment in five areas: Managing Qualitative Data and Interviews (Dave Baca, U. Arizona); Collecting and Using Instructional Data (Lisa Hinchliffe, U. Illinois); Developing Surveys (David Consiglio, Bryn Mawr); Website Usability Testing (Brian Quigley, UC Berkeley); and Assessing Collections (Peggy Johnson, U. Minnesota).

The Keynote speaker was Fred Heath, Dean of U. Texas - Austin Libraries who spoke about the importance of assessment and focused on LibQUAL, which he co-created. Each of the speakers provided handouts and several engaged attendees in exercises. Lisa Hinchliffe's discussion of assessing library instruction programs and student outcomes was of particular interest to this writer. The material distributed and the exercises we participated in helped to clarify logical steps in creating assessment tools. Brian Quigley's discussion of how to assess a library's website was also useful, as websites are difficult to "get right" and are not often assessed to find out how students actually use them. Likewise, David Consiglio's presentation on ways to develop user surveys and how to collect and analyze the statistical data collected was of particular interest. The intent behind this preconference workshop was to offer insight and help to academic librarians across several fields; and this was the one weakness of the day: too much to cover, even in eight hours.

Kenneth Schlesinger, LaGuardia Community College (2006) Libraries, Archives, and Museums in the 21st Century: Intersecting Missions, Converging Futures? ACRL's Rare Books and Manuscripts Section 47th Annual Preconference. Held at the University of Texas/Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin.

The conference considered how libraries, archives and museums are similar and overlap in their approaches-and how they are different. Significantly, museum audiences view and ordinarily don't handle display objects-while archival artifacts and manuscripts are examined by hand. Are rare books appropriate objects for museum displays when their content cannot be satisfactorily conveyed? Surprisingly, the conference allotted minimal discussion to digitization-but consensus was that it only provides intellectual access-a surrogate to the empathetic handling of the object itself.

The 350 participants-representing leading university libraries and private collections throughout the United States and Canada- engaged in a stimulating and complex discussion of issues related to access and preservation of our cultural heritage, legal and intellectual property considerations, repatriation of native materials, authors' libraries, as well as the changing landscape for educational training and professional status. Ransom's Center's world-class collections provided a suitable backdrop for these debates-and Austin's reputation as a friendly entertainment capital promoted mutual learning and valuable networking.

Polly Thistlethwaite, Graduate Center (2006)

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections Conference 2006. Held in Minneapolis.

GLBT ALMS 2006 was billed as the first formal world conference for professionals and anyone involved with GLBT archives, libraries, museums and special collections, and collectors of GLBT materials. The conference was held on the university of Minnesota campus, sponsored by the UMN Libraries, the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies, and the Minneapolis Quatrefoil Library. Conference attendance was just over 100, held entirely in UMN Andersen Library which houses the Tretter Collection. Presentations and discussions explored a range of current professional topics, including:
* Cataloging GLBT collections
* Community-based archives and public institutions
* Managing sexually-explicit material
* GLBT oral history projects
* Archiving on the Web
Featured conference speakers included: Elizabeth Kerekere, Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and Andreas Pretzel. For more information, see http://www.lib.umn.edu/events/glbtalms/

Jeanne Galvin, Kingsborough Community College (2005)
Promoting Informational Literacy through Educational Initiatives, London, England, April 4 to April 6, 2005

It is widely believed that information literacy (Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 2000, 2001, 2003) is best acquired when the requisite competencies are taught in the context where they will be used. Much has also been written about the need for collaboration between faculty and librarians. What is being suggested here is that, as colleges and universities implement educational initiatives based on a pedagogy of active, collaborative learning, information literacy is an appropriate component in such initiatives. The initiatives being considered here are Writing Across the Curriculum, the Freshman Year Experience, and Learning Communities. These initiatives are certainly worthy and are appealing to faculty, since they are sometimes supported by extra compensation, released time or guaranteed smaller class sizes.
LILAC Conference Website
paper presented at conference

Catherine Perkins, College of Staten Island (2005)
Instruction and Searching: Computers in Libraries 2005, March 16 to March 18, 2005, Washington, D. C.

Receiving the LACUNY Professional Development Grant allowed Catherine to attend the 2005 Computers in Libraries Conference in Washington, D.C. This conference was of great interest to her due to the focus on technology, instruction, and development of new search skills. Catherine has already shared much of what she has learned with her College of Staten Island colleagues in a presentation she made to library faculty on newer searching tools and techniques and blogs. Catherine also plans to incorporate what she has learned from the various presenters into her library instruction sessions this Fall, particularly towards bridging the research gap that she finds in undergraduate students who have a great grasp on the technology available, but not on how to find the best content or how to critically evaluate the material that they find on the Web.

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Compiled by Prof. Janet Munch (LC) 2006; updated by Linda Roccos (CSI) 2007.