All Sessions

Diversity has become an increasingly important issue within our profession and association. The five associations of ethnic librarians (AILA, APALA, BCALA, CALA and REFORMA), the GLBTRT, and ASCLA’s LSSPS, serve as important forums for the advancement of diversity and service to diverse users. The Town Hall will provide an opportunity to hear from these seven member groups, to discuss their current efforts towards achieving a more diverse profession and to identify new opportunities for collaboration and support across the profession. The Diversity Town Hall is open to all conference attendees.

Meeting of Big Heads

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

The Chapter Leaders Forum, presented by the ALA Chapter Relations Committee at each ALA Midwinter and Annual, provides a great opportunity for Chapter Leaders (especially incoming leaders) to meet and discuss a full agenda on topics to help prepare them to lead an association. Topics have included Membership Development and Retention, New Revenue Ideas, Social Media, and Advocacy. This event requires advance registration and includes lunch.

Please join us for two very interesting presentations on FRBR and its impact on cataloging and catalogs.

Jennifer Bowen, Assistant Dean for Information Management Services at the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries and Chair of the eXtensible Catalog Organization

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) is free, open source software that provides a production system for converting MARC, Dublin Core, and potentially other metadata schemas for use in a FRBR-based discovery environment. XC’s software development and accompanying user research show how the FRBR model directly supports the needs of users and has taught us important lessons about implementing FRBR in a production environment. These lessons can also help guide us as we examine the feasibility of incorporating the FRBR model into the creation of linked data for libraries. .

Scott Piepenburg, Cataloging Coordinator/Metadata Librarian University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Scott will present on the basics behind FRBR and it impacts cataloging and an ILS. He will discuss how FRBR is related to Ranganathan’s theory of cataloging and how an ILS can use the information. The presentation will offer theoretical and concrete examples of FRBR principles in practice and how they apply to real-like objects. It concludes with a discussion and example of how an ILS may, or may not, be designed around FRBR principles.

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

NISO/BISG Update

Speaker session on Intellectual Freedom issues of the day.

"Reimagining the library catalog: changing user needs, changing functionality"

Do we need to change our perspective on what the catalog should be doing based on changes in the education and economic environment? What is needed, what could be changed, and what would be worth retaining, taking economic realities and educational goals into consideration? It has been argued that catalogs are not giving users what they need nor taking into account how they search. There is an objection to cataloging favoring the 1% using the library for research at the expense of the 99%. If cataloging practice is biased toward scholarly research, and we are able to change the bias, will this change the overall quality of education? If the bias is changed in favor of non-scholarly uses, how does the Library of Congress respond? What are the identifiable changes in scholarly discovery in the web environment that could change our perspectives on cataloging support of research?

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

Provides an opportunity for Education Librarians to gather and discuss relevant issues.

What is the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)? How can this ALA division help you? Learn more in this mixer-style orientation, where you can get an overview of the division, its activities and what YALSA has to offer you. New members and those considering membership will learn more about the benefits, and established members are welcome to attend this great networking opportunity!

Find out what's going in ALCTS and meet ALCTS members and leaders

Writers and publishers discuss writing for boys

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket, Why We Broke Up) – Little, Brown
Michael Grant (Gone, The Magnificent 12) - Harper
Jon Scieszka (Guys Read) - Harper
Andrew Smith (The Marbury Lens) - Macmillian

Please join us for the The Cataloging and Metadata Management Section (CaMMS) RDA Conference Forums and Programs Task Force (TF) ALA Annual RDA Update Forum. Panelists will outline steps being taken in preparation for implementation of RDA sometime after January 2013. Scheduled presenters include: Beacher Wiggins (Library of Congress), Linda Barnhart (Chair PCC), Glenn Patton (OCLC), John Attig (JSC update), Sally McCallum (MARBI) and Troy Linker (ALA Publishing).

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

This is a leadership training session for YALSA's Selection and Award Committee Chairs. All Chairs of selection and award committees, are expected to attend. Directors on YALSA's Board are also expected to attend. Never been a Selection or Award Committee Chair, but thinking about being one? Come to this event to learn the leadership basics. Appointments to these committees will be made in October, so now is the time to learn what they're all about.

Taking instruction to the next level: creating evaluations to assess student learning online: Attendees will be provided with a brief background in assessment methods as well as examples of assessments used specifically to evaluate online learning tools such as tutorials, course guides, course management systems, etc. Participants will learn how to create effective assessments tailored to their needs, and examples of assessments used at several institutions to evaluate various online learning tools will be shared. Co-sponsored by the STS Hot Topics Discussion Group and the STS Assessment Committee.

Meeting of the Chief Collection Development Officers IG

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

The meeting of Preservation Administrators Interest Group will include:
Welcome from the PARS Chair
Recap of Preservation Week
IMLS Fellows Presentations
Jan Merrill-Oldham Memorial
IMLS Grant Digitization Data Collection, Jackie Bronicki, University of Michigan
Other announcements and Co-Chair Election

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

Come hear two fascinating presentations and participate in a special game of Interactive Fiction.

Exploring Stories through Interactive Fiction
Remember ZORK? Text-based interactive fiction is a game genre that has existed for decades, but has not been heavily used in libraries. Interactive Fiction is still going strong today, and allows players to explore stories and to create their own interactive stories. Libraries looking to support traditional literacy with gaming activities can look to Interactive Fiction at the core of an easily justifiable and low-cost gaming program. Join Scott Nicholson, associate professor from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and experts from the Interactive Fiction domain to learn about how to use and create Interactive Fiction in both digital and analog forms for your library!

Lemon Tree
We like to bring an element of active learning, including fun and games, into our information literacy teaching when we can, whether that is using crosswords, treasure hunts, or light hearted videos, but we hadn’t before brought games, along with the technology and social nature of web 2.0, into the core of the library. We’re currently changing this and have introduced a social, online game based around using the library resources, developed for us by an external company (Running in the Halls).

Lemon Tree takes ideas of virtual rewards and inbuilt social networks and turns common interactions with the library into a game. Users are able to link Lemontree to their library record, winning points and badges by activities such as taking books out, leaving comments on books, and accessing our online resources. There are social elements built into Lemontree, but the system also pushes key acheivements to Facebook.

Andrew Walsh from the University of Huddersfield will cover some key elements of Lemontree, how they promoted the system, and early feedback from users.

IFLA representatives will provide updates on the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and its Annual Conference.

Deborah Fritz of MARC of Quality will demonstrate RIMMF (RDA in Many Metadata Formats).