ULS Universe

The 2009 ULS Program Committee is very excited about their proposed Program at the Annual Conference in Chicago titled “Millennials in Graduate School: How Do We Support Them?”

Millennials, those born between 1982 and 1994, are finishing college and entering graduate school.  Surveys suggest that these students use libraries heavily and are less than satisfied with the experience.  What do these digital multi-taskers want and expect, and how can university libraries support their needs?   This program will bring together a panel of speakers to discuss trends in graduate education, the expectations of this cohort and the successful approaches that will engage them.

Your feedback is welcome! If you have any comments about the theme or ideas for speakers to include, please contact Cory or comment below.

Loreen Phillips, Head of Information Literacy Services in the McDermott Library at the University of Texas-Dallas (http://www.utdallas.edu/library), recently published a book on marketing for libraries. This topic is always of interest to librarians — as Loreen said, “especially in these times when we must maximize use of the campus library while promoting research and information literacy.” The book, titled Cruise to success: how to steer your way through the murky waters of marketing your library, is published by Chandos Publishing. Check it out at Amazon.com!

The following is from Cory Tucker. Contact him for more information.

Program Title:

Subject Librarian 2.0: Emerging Trends and Future Challenges for the Liaison Librarian

Short Description

This panel will take a look into the future to identify new challenges and opportunities for subject liaisons in academic libraries. The panel will outline emerging roles, discuss the skills needed to fulfill those roles, and offer suggestions on developing skill sets appropriate to thrive in this new environment. Topics include interdisciplinary research, technology, scholarly communication, instruction and curriculum design, e-science and more. Presenters: Jim Neal, Karen Williams and Kara Whatley.

Description:

Our profession is experiencing rapid change that creates new challenges and opportunities on subject liaisons in academic libraries. Subject liaisons are experiencing a great deal of uncertainty, and some accompanying anxiety, about how their roles are changing. We propose a panel presentation that outlines emerging roles, discusses the skills needed to fulfill those roles, and offers attendees suggestions for how they may develop new skills and lessen their apprehension.

Specific questions to be addressed through the presentation and audience discussion include the following:

1. What new roles have emerged for academic library subject liaisons in the past 2-3 years? What roles will become increasingly important in the next 3-5 years?
2. How can liaisons work across disciplines to meet the needs of interdisciplinary research?
3. How conversant should liaisons be with technology? Should they serve as technology consultants for busy faculty who do not have time to integrate technology into their courses?
4. What is the role of scholarly communication in the work of liaisons? To what extent should liaisons be advocating for and actively creating change in the publishing environment?
5. Will liaisons be expected to play a larger role in instruction and curriculum design?
6. What new roles does e-science present?
7. What skills will liaisons need in the next 3-5 years? What core set of skills should we expect of all liaisons? How can our more senior staff acquire these skills?
8. How can we address the discomfort and occasional resistance that accompanies a change in roles and expectations?

In order to immediately engage the audience and take their “temperature” regarding change, we intend to present them with 5-10 provocative statements about the future of the profession and ask them to respond to those statements using “clicker” technology, which we will borrow from the University of Washington.

We then invite our three panelists to speak for about 10 minutes each about the questions listed above, and to incorporate the audience’s clicker responses as appropriate.

Dr. Richard Price recently finished his Ph.D on the philosophy of perception from Oxford. With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, he’s just launched a website, www.academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a ‘tree’ format, displayed
according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.
- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area – the
latest people, papers and talks.

They’re hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world — Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers. Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

Academics are joining the tree rapidly. More than 15,000 academics have added themselves in the last two months. Some professors on the site include:

- Richard Dawkins – http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardDawkins
- Stephen Hawking – http://cambridge.academia.edu/StephenHawking
- Paul Krugman – http://princeton.academia.edu/PaulKrugman
- Noam Chomsky – http://mit.academia.edu/NoamChomsky
- Steven Pinker – http://harvard.academia.edu/StevenPinker

Many thanks,

Dr. Richard Price
http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice

Join your colleagues in Seattle, March 12-15, 2009, at the premier professional development event for academic and research librarians and staff. Registration and housing for ACRL’s 14th National Conference is now open!

The ACRL 14th National Conference will challenge you to explore new ideas, engage in new learning, and extend the collective vision of the future of academic and research libraries. ACRL’s celebrated line-up of keynote speakers include Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, activist, and author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; Sherman Alexie, prolific novelist, poet and screenplay writer; and Ira Glass, host and producer of the public radio program This American Life. In addition to program sessions, the conference will provide time to have fun, share informal conversations, network with colleagues, and explore Seattle. ACRL will offer Virtual Conference presentations and embrace Web 2.0 tools such as podcasts, Flickr, blogs, and more to enhance and expand the impact of the National Conference. ACRL 2009 will also implement more eco-friendly practices than ever before and has invited Robin Chase, Founder of Zipcar and GoLoco to speak about her innovative combination of social networking and transportation. Help us reduce the meeting’s ecological footprint by committing to the Green Pledge when you register for the conference. Registration materials are online at www.acrl.org/seattle.