ACRL MD Meeting Minutes 8/10/10

Attendees: Danielle Whren Johnson, Natalie Burclaff, Pete Ramsey, Katy Sullivan, Shu Qian, Michael Shochet, Joanna Gadsby, Catherine Dixon, Jane Williams, Anna Tatro, Alison Cody, Jess Ambrose, David Dahl

Report on Fall Program planning

The program schedule is complete and will consist of the following:

• Presentations on Perry’s Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development by Catherine Johnson, University of Baltimore
• Pro/con debate on the value of one-shot information literacy sessions between Shana Gass (Towson) and Brandy Whitlock (Anne Arundel Community College)
• Presentation on alternatives to the one-shot, including roving reference services by Joanna Gadsby (UMBC) and Shu Qian (UMBC) and embedded librarianship by Sue Bonsteel (Stevenson)

The program will take place on October 15th at Frederick Community College.

The focus will now switch to promoting the Fall Program through ACRL MD’s various channels.

Report from Conference Committee meeting

The conference theme is “Library Heaven: Something for Everyone”.  At the last meeting there was interest from the Delaware Library Association (DLA) in joining the MLA conference this year.  A decision on this is expected by the next Conference Committee meeting.  If a joint conference is held, Danielle will contact their academic libraries division about putting together a session for/with us.

The banquet and keynote speakers are set for the conference.

Topics of other divisions’ programs that may be of interest to those in ACRL MD include computer security, physical safety of library collections and people, and challenges associated with banned books.

The Friday conference schedule is being revamped to include three shorter (1 hour) sessions. The luncheon and business meeting schedules will be adjusted as well.

Update on ACRL MD’s program planning for MLA

Sessions include:

• Free and easy to use software
• Copyright and creative commons: Mary Somers (Harford Community College) will address copyright, including fair use and any other topics of interest.  Danielle will present on Creative Commons licensing.  It was suggested that copyright concerns as they relate to scholarly publishing be addressed.
• Pre-conference: Joyce Garczynski (Towson) will lead a pre-conference on selecting/creating good assessment tools (surveys, polls, etc.) and using the results.
• Presentation zen: Michael Shochet will lead this session.
• Lessons learned from a for-credit IL class: speakers will be from University of Baltimore.  Michael is still looking for speakers from another school to collaborate on this session in order to give different perspectives.
• Getting into the publishing game: 2 faculty members from the iSchool at College Park were recommended as potential speakers (Trudy Hahn and Paul Yeager). It would be interesting to get someone from a publisher to get that perspective as well.

Feedback from new attendees

Several new attendees were at this meeting, so a discussion on the value/benefits that ACRL MD could offer was held.  The following points were made:

• Networking was mentioned both in regards to professional collaboration and also personal.  ACRL MD can offer value to new-to-the-area librarians by putting them in touch with other librarians.  Events like the Unconference are useful for keeping up-to-date on what other libraries are doing.  These activities can be both formal, professional events and informal, social activities.
• Opportunities to participate was seen as another benefit of ACRL MD.  The chapter is seen as a gateway for presentation opportunities.  Some would also like more opportunities to get involved in the work of the chapter (program planning, etc.).

While conference and Fall Program planning are already underway, it was suggested that a team could be formed to begin work on planning the Spring unconference.

Update on promotional materials

The chapter is working on promotional materials for librarians in Maryland who are members of ACRL but not ACRL MD.  Alison has been working on a brochure to mail to these individuals.  The following feedback was provided on the brochure draft:

• The section listing the various ways to keep in touch with ACRL MD was liked.
• The section on benefits matched well with the benefits discussed earlier in the meeting.
• The cost of membership should be included.
• It would be interesting to get quotes from last Spring’s unconference.  The MLA office should have our feedback forms which we can use for this.
• It was noted that listing our events on the brochure means the brochure will eventually be outdated.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but is something to consider.
• The return address still mentions ARLD.

ACTION ITEM: A link to the draft will be provided soon for individuals to comment on.
Report on feasibility of ACRL MD publications (newsletter, etc)

David Dahl gave an overview of the issues and considerations that would need to be addressed in creating an ACRL MD publication.  The biggest decision is whether to create a newsletter or an academic journal (or both).  The newsletter was seen as easier to put together but could possibly overlap with the purpose of MLA’s Crab publication.  An academic journal would involve more planning and labor to produce.

After some discussion, it was decided that while an academic journal could be valuable to the ACRL MD community, it would be better to start simpler and produce a newsletter.  A hybrid model that would blend a newsletter and peer-reviewed journal was also suggested.  It was also suggested that the newsletter could contain short articles rather than research articles.  Attendees voted to continue to pursue the publication of a newsletter with the potential to scale up to something resembling ACRL’s C&RL News publication.

Several items need to be addressed in the production of this publication:

• Title
• Format: it was agreed that an electronic publication would be best
• Frequency: most ACRL Chapters publish a newsletter at least twice/year
• Publishing platform: the publication could be published using a blog or content management system; there is also an open source journal publishing system, which handles not only publication, but also workflows for copyediting, layout, etc.
• Staffing: several roles will need to be filled to put together a publication. DOAJ recommends 12 different positions for an academic journal; a newsletter would probably require less, but should consist of at least an editor and a designer.
• Hosting: hosting options include purchasing our own domain and server space; hosting it commercially, or asking an ACRL MD institution to serve as a “sponsor” and host it on their servers.

David will send out a call for volunteers to start working on this initiative.

LibraryH3lp Demo

Danielle and Alison gave a presentation and demonstration of the LibraryH3lp instant messaging system (libraryh3lp.com).  This product was created at UNC and is designed for use specifically in libraries.  The price is dependent on the number of FTEs at your institution. It is free to setup a demo.

The benefits of LibraryH3lp are its ability for multiple people to monitor incoming chats, transfer chats, and send files.

The admin site allows libraries to setup individual accounts for staff who will be monitoring the service and place them into queues.  Loyola-Notre Dame Library has two main queues: Reference and Circulation.

Pidgin is recommended as the chat client to use with LibraryH3lp, although others are available.  Existing IM accounts such as AIM, Yahoo, and GoogleTalk can be integrated with LibraryH3lp, or users can use a chat widget that you can embed in a website.