What Joe was doing while at the ALA Annual Conference 2007 in Washington, DC [Part 3]

This picks up where I left off at the end of Part 2 earlier today.



Monday, 6/25/2007

8:00 a.m.: RUSA Conference Program Coordinating Committee. I'm not a member of this committee, but I attended the beginning of their meeting in order to present the program proposal for Please Talk to Strangers Online: Spreading Trust in Cooperative Virtual Reference, the program that the RUSA RSS/MARS Virtual Reference Committee will make happen at the ALA Annual conference in 2008. I just needed to prepare about a dozen copies to give to those in attendance and read the description. The RSS person on the committee confirmed to me later that the proposal was accepted by the Program Coordinating Committee. Good news! Now we need to find some people to speak on the topic.

10:30 a.m.: Program: See It, Hear It, Touch It: How do Communication and Learning Styles Affect Virtual Reference Service? This was the event at the conference that took the most preparation ahead of time, since I'm the committee chair and somehow agreed to also facilitate the program on stage. We had three excellent researchers answer a series of six prepared questions. They also answered questions from the audience - in fact many more questions than we could get to in the brief hour and a half allotted for the program! These questions from the audience were brought up to me on note cards during the program. Our speakers were Eileen Abels (Drexel University, formerly of University of Maryland's CLIS program), Marie Radford (Rutgers University), and Lynn Westbrook (University of Texas at Austin). The slides from the presenters will soon be posted on the VR Committee page, but for now you can find them here at a hidden URL on our AskUsNow! Presentations Page. A bibliography was prepared by the speakers and an additional one-page handout from Eileen on generations and their information seeking habits. For the perspective of an attendee, I'd suggest taking a look at the great notes that Carla Pfahl took during the program.

The evaluations that I saw after the program were very positive on average, but if there would have been one thing I'd have done differently it would have been to make extra sure that the program description appearing in the ALA Conference Program was in fact the correct description. As it turned out, the description in the program was an earlier version that focused entirely on Learning Styles in VR without mention of Communication Styles, which is the direction that the program mostly took. Someone reading the description in only the conference program might have expected something a bit different. Nonetheless, I think for such a new committee we did a great job pulling together programs at both Annual '06 and Annual '07 conferences. I think it's pretty rare for a committee to be so active. And we'll be back at it next year again.

12:30 p.m.: Meeting with Jeff Penka and Susan McGlamery of QuestionPoint and the coordinators of other Mid-Atlantic Virtual Reference services. In the months leading up to ALA Annual, the coordinators of the VR services in Pennsylvania (Ask Here PA), New Jersey (Q and A NJ), Western New York (WNYLRC's Ask Us 24/7), and Maryland AskUsNow! (represented by Julie and I) had been in communication regarding what feature developments and fixes we needed to see in the QuestionPoint platform. Most of these needs have centered on limitations in the ability for large cooperative models such as ours to run dependable statewide usage reports and survey reports with ease. We shared a document with Jeff and Susan asking for feedback from them regarding when these developments/fixes could be expected (or, if not ever). This meeting was an opportunity for all of us to clarify what were were looking for - with the overall goal of making the QuestionPoint system even better as a result. Based on useful feedback from Jeff and Susan, we and our Mid-Atlantic partners are going to clarify a few questions in the document and get it back to them within the next couple of weeks.

Following this meeting, Julie headed over to the Library of Congress for the QuestionPoint 24/7 Reference User Group Meeting starting at 3:30. I had a meeting back near the DC Convention center at the same time, so had to hop on the Metro and miss this User Group Meeting.

4:00 p.m.: First meeting with members of the Reinvented Reference 4 preconference planning committee. There were only four of us present for this meeting, but thankfully both of the co-chairs were there. I was able to share some information about how planning for this current year's preconference (the one on Friday) had taken shape. This committee will be planning the day-long RUSA preconference that will occur on Friday, June 27, 2008 during the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. The topic will again be on emerging technologies for library reference service.


Tuesday, 6/26/2007

8:00 a.m.: Reference Services Section (RSS) Executive Committee III. The committee chairs (including me as the RSS-side chair Virtual Reference Committee) attend the Ex Comm I and Ex Comm III meetings. Only the elected officers are expected to attend meeting II in the middle of the conference. What was really neat about the location of this meeting is that it was held in the same ballroom where the 10:30 program yesterday had been, except then the room had been set up to accommodate 200+ people. This day there was only a U-shaped table to accommodate about 20 people.

The primary purpose of this Executive Meeting is for the committee chairs to report on what they've accomplished at this conference (see my previous blog post for highlights if interested). Following this RSS meeting there as a joint meeting with the Executive Board of MARS. Honestly I don't really get why RSS and MARS are even two separate sections since they both address REFERENCE SERVICE. Apparently there was some discussion a few years about about merging the two sections but it was decided against at that time. What makes it even funnier in my mind is that most of us who are members of RUSA are actually members of both sections anyway, since when you join you can mark off as many of the six sections as you want for no extra membership fee.

1:30 p.m.: RUSA Board of Directors II. Terms on committees start at the conclusion of the Annual Conference. So, I attended this meeting of the RUSA Board technically as just a visitor. It wasn't like I needed to get a flight out of DC like many other people, so it was convenient to stay. Following this conference (now in fact, as I write this on July 1) I'll officially be a member of the RUSA Board, elected in the past few months as a Director at Large. I'm still not entirely sure what a Director at Large does, but from what I understand I just need to show up and vote on things. At this day's meeting the RUSA Board would have ordinarily made the final approval of the programs for next year's conference, but due to some of the proposals not making it into the packets given to the board members, a vote to officially approve programs was held off until after the end of July when approval will happen electronically. I was glad to see that the VR committee's proposal for 2008 was indeed in the packet ready to be approved.

I'm leaving a lot out, but one tidbit I wanted to share regards an idea for a replacement to the annual Virtual Reference Desk Conferences of 1999-2005. After the 2005 conference the VRD project lost their funding from the U.S. Dept. of Education to continue the conference series, and OCLC also dropped out as a headline sponsor due to concerns that some might see a conflict of interest if other VR vendors were not also participating at the same level. Anyway, currently there is an idea being put forth by BCR, a library network in Colorado for a reformed VRD conference in the future with a broader scope covering all forms of reference service. Kathleen Kern, the outgoing MARS chair, shared some preliminary information about this idea with the RUSA board, in hopes of seeking RUSA sponsorship for this conference if it does happen (as I also really hope that it does). It sounds like some preliminary planning will happen among those interested later in July during the Collaborative Virtual Reference Symposium in Denver. If plans for this All Reference conference go forward, then a proposal can be brought to RUSA to look for sponsorship and funding.


For those of you who read all three of my posts regarding the ALA Annual Conference 2007, thank you! I hope there was something of interest here. Please feel free to add a comment if you'd like to elaborate on any programs that you attended, or ask a question.

-Joe