All Sessions

New and experienced External Review Panelist (ERP) pool members are invited and encouraged to attend this session on the role of ERP members in the ALA accreditation process. Participants will learn about the comprehensive review process and timeline, hear from experienced panelists, and work in a group to analyze a sample Program Presentation. This session will focus on Standard II: Curriculum of the 2008 ALA Standards for Accreditation.

Participation in a training session is a prerequisite for serving on a review panel. Currently assigned ERPs are especially encouraged to attend.

New and experienced reviewers are encouraged to attend this session featuring Rebecca Pasco, Chair of the NCATE Coordinating Committee, and Elizabeth Vilky, Accreditation Associate for Program Review at NCATE. Reviewers will learn about the NCATE process, the 2010 ALA/AASL Standards for Initial Preparation of School Librarians, writing and reviewing reports, and appropriate assessments. Special focus will be on the newly approved 2010 Standards and their application in the review process. Attendees will study a sample report and participate in a review exercise. Program report writers are welcome to attend as observers.

Experienced External Review Panelists (ERPs) and LIS faculty (especially administrators) are invited and encouraged to attend this session on the ALA accreditation appeal process and policies. Experienced ERPs who complete this training would be eligible to serve on an Appeal Review Committee in the event of an appeal.

ERPs assigned to a review where the accreditation decision could result in an appeal are especially encouraged to attend.

The training will cover grounds for appeal, how determinations are made, and the appeal process timeline as documented in the newly updated Section IV: Appeal Process of Accreditation Process, Policies, and Procedures (AP3).

ALSC Priority Group Consults and Committee Chairs meet to discuss committee issues or innovative information ALSC is providing. Division Leadership starts at 9:30 a.m.

A discussion of topical issues, emerging trends, and best practices by personnel and staff development managers.

Orientation for incoming ALSC Board Members

Do those you train resist learning? Is formal training not yielding enough return? Join this program to learn successful methods for empowering your staff to seek learning, develop informal learning goals, and create a culture of growth and learning in your library.

Too Many Conferences, Too Little Money: While budgets tighten, the number of conferences is expanding. Conference attendance has traditionally been used to keep current with the skills and knowledge needed by library staff to effectively perform their duties. Should liaison librarians attend academic discipline conferences rather than a general conference? Should technical services staff attend a topical conference or a general conference? Discuss the many options and how you determine the best conference to attend to enhance your professional development.

RDA has been a keen topic of conversation for years. It’s been speculated about on lists, cooperated on internationally, collaboratively tested nationally, and conditionally accepted for implementation “not before January 2013.” It’s been the subject of numerous forums, trainings, discussion groups, preconferences, webinars, and just about any other mode of communication you can name. In short, it’s been an intensive development cycle for an important new standard. And that’s just as it should be. But now what? Now that the “rubber is hitting the road,” where do individual implementers begin? Can we build upon lessons learned by RDA’s early collaborators? Join us for an interactive conversation about agility, integration, and rigor. And how the collaborators learned to work in this new world.

Did you attend this forum? Take our post-conference survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/alctsevents2012

ABC-CLIO product demo/training, by invitation only

Various ALSC committees meeting with their Chairs and Priority Group Consultants.

Various ALSC committees meet with their Chairs and Priority Group Consultants.

First combined meeting for members from both the Collection Development Education and the Collection Development Planning and Assessment Committees. The members will be developing a new name and revised/combined mission.

Audience involvement promotes learning. Explore tips and best practices for successfully igniting curiosity, promoting interaction, and engaging adult learners regardless of delivery platform: face-to-face, online, or blended. Discover how to effectively transform existing training into a different platform.

A discussion of topical issues, emerging trends, and best practices by personnel and staff development managers.

Group projects are popular assignments to further student learning objectives, but are frequently viewed warily by college students who perceive them as large investments of time with little reward. While the benefits of group work are well-established from a pedagogical perspective, these projects can also lead to a lot of frustration as members try to avoid the pitfalls of working together, including arranging meeting times, sharing information, and maintaining accountability in the creation of content. Even students who feel very comfortable with technology are often unaware of how tools like Google Docs, Doodle, Corkboard Me, Dropbox, and Evernote can be used to facilitate projects. This poster serves three purposes: to outline some free downloadable and web-based tools that can support the processes of group collaboration in educational environments, to introduce methods of sharing these tools with students and faculty through voluntary workshop series and LibGuides, and to familiarize attendees with resources that may also be used professionally to improve team communication.

In early 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency's National Library Network launched a webinar-based training program. Sessions are hosted by the Library Network's coordination team, taught by EPA librarians, and offered to EPA employees and contract staff. Topics are often based on librarian expertise and popular user requests. While many librarians in the Network have stepped forward to volunteer, others are hesitant because they lack experience with webinar technology. User participation is robust and ever-growing. We will explore the challenges encountered in providing training in a virtual environment, frequent questions, and troubleshooting methods that we have engaged in to help users overcome the obstacles that sometimes prevent attendees from fully engaging in sessions. To take a very successful program to even greater success, the Library Network coordination team is developing and implementing "Train the Trainer" sessions to dispel the myths and mystery surrounding webinar technology, and "Train the User" sessions to pre-brief users on the intricacies of online learning and prepare them for the best possible outcomes.

The training showcase is a poster session type of program celebrating innovative continuing education, staff development and training initiatives in all types of libraries and organizations. Participants present best practices from their organization or institution. Raffle, snacks, and informal networking are also part of this popular annual event.

If virtual libraries are the future of libraries, systems librarians are critical components in ensuring the success of this digital future. A successful systems librarian often has to know and stay up-to-date with a large assortment of technical and library knowledge. On a daily basis, they have a wide array of tasks that includes implementing and maintaining various library systems, troubleshooting problems, ensuring access to electronic resources, responding to the technical needs of faculty, staff, and students, providing training, and liaising with the IT department. This poster will show how the two systems librarians at a distance education university serving over 90,000 faculty, staff, and students have documented and shared their expertise and knowledge among the other librarians. As part of a cross-team training effort within the library, they poured their knowledge into a Microsoft SharePoint wiki. Learn how they produced and structured the documentation to create a more collaborative and knowledge-sharing work environment, as well as to provide the best library technical support to the university's constituency. Having this knowledge readily available also allows others to provide technical assistance when necessary.

Library websites are often the primary method by which users interact with our services and resources, yet often these websites have content that is out of date, poorly written, or irrelevant. Libraries need to be proactive in developing sustainable content strategies for their websites that will ensure their content is useful, usable, and findable. Historically, at the University of Arizona Libraries, our website content had little oversight in any sort of ongoing way. In 2011, the newly formed Website Steering Group, led by the Website Product Manager, began to develop a practical and sustainable content strategy to address the creation, delivery, and governance of our content. The process began with a content inventory and analysis that brought to light issues of inconsistency, inaccuracy, and duplication. Several hundred pages were deleted or revised as part of this process. Editorial standards were soon developed to ensure ongoing consistency of content. The group then established a content lifecycle workflow, which included processes for the creation, updating, and deletion of content. New roles and responsibilities, along with methods of accountability, were established. This poster will outline the process we used to develop a content strategy for our library website.