WILU 2010: A Great Success! September 7, 2010

Thanks to all of our delegates, speakers and volunteers for a fantastic WILU 2010 conference! See you in Saskatchewan for WILU 2011.

The WILU 2010 Organizing Committee

Birds of a Feather Discussion Summaries May 18, 2010

At the end of the Birds of a Feather session, the top 3 (or so) suggestions/tips/take-aways from each group was shared with the rest of the groups. These are shared below.

Improvisation in Instruction

  • difference bet. planned and unplanned improv
  • requirements of improv (experience, knowledge of subject, confidence, risk-taking, spontaneity, PLAY!, back-up)
  • pros and cons: increases alertness, fun, engaging; no interaction, don’t know the answer, difficult to assess learning when content not planned

Expanding ILI to more than just text (videos, maps, images, etc.)

  • how to promote specialities (maps, environmental knowledge) to colleagues
  • internal workshops, LibGuides, cool tools, SEXY!, knowledge-swapping, interdisciplinarity, BEER, be passionate, build others’ confidence

Motivating students: how to inspire passion!

  • acknowledge that motivation is an issue: ask students why they’re there and use that to inform session structure
  • recognize that not all students have the same motivation
  • have students self-select their skill level and then teach the same session anyhow
  • let students define what they need
  • meaningful assignments; treat students as scholars

Serving international students in academic libraries

  • need to investigate stats and trends: how many int’l students do we have in our libraries?
  • recognize cultural differences and differences in libraries and access to resources (closed stacks, AI)
  • partner with other campus units (writing centres, grad student advisors, outreach to int’l students during summer, programming such as language exchange)
  • Int’l Students Library Tutorial at University of N. Carolina

ILI for Nursing / Health Sciences

  • “Reading Research” book by Davies and Logan as a tool for us and students
  • using online tutorials for students to learn basic skills so we can address higher level skills in class
  • affirmation in knowing that other librarians who share the same challenges

Digitization/Metadata

  • make use of student assistants for the laborious work (scanning, etc.)
  • make sure you have policies/procedures/workflows in place ahead of time
  • build a community of peers in digitization/metadata through a blog (You are not alone)

Student contributions to library materials (LibGuides, etc.)

  • BoF: YAY! 🙂
  • partner with a class when building the guide
  • get student feedback on content and placement, language
  • use student groups as a sounding board (announcements, repeate customers, incentives)
  • embed links in LMS/CMS
  • all but one using LibGuides
  • teaching from the guide during class (realtime feedback)

Ideas for active learning

  • large classes: have a pair of students do a database search using kw suggested by peers (FIGHT!)
  • plant questions (Cephalonian method) in audience using coloured cards (Q&A)
  • using Twitter in class: instructor sets up accounts in advance and have students get into groups; one student tweets answers to questions posed by instructor

Developing blended ILI

  • blended: making videos, screencasts
  • encourage the use of blended learning because it meets different learning style needs
  • know why you’re doing it (NOT JUST COOL); gaps and overlaps in your programming/ILI; needs assessment
  • high repetition topics (database searching) are good candidates as well as topics that are very specialized
  • will not save you time

Birds of a Feather: a WILU First! / Groupes de discussion Birds of a Feather: une première à WILU! May 12, 2010

The idea of birds of a feather (BoF) is to give people a chance to get together and discuss topics of mutual interest. Ideas for discussion are all up to participants. If you hear something in a session and want to talk about it more or if you have a topic that hasn’t been discussed at the conference, write the idea on one of the sign up sheets at the Registration Desk.

If you don’t have a topic to suggest, stop by the Registration Desk to check out the other topics suggested by your colleagues and sign up for one that interests you! You will have a chance to contribute your idea or sign up for a session until the end of breakfast on Thursday morning. After breakfast on Thursday, each of the discussion topics will be assigned a table and during the BoF hour time slot (Thursday, 10:45-12:00) groups can take the discussion wherever it will go!

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Les groupes de discussion birds of a feather vous offrent l’occasion de discuter entre collègues de sujets d’intérêt commun. La matière à discussion provient des participants. Si vous avez envie de parler d’un sujet abordé lors d’une conférence ou si vous voulez lancer une toute autre idée, vous n’avez qu’à le noter sur une des feuilles d’inscription disponibles au comptoir des inscriptions.

Si vous n’avez pas d’idée à proposer, vous pouvez tout de même vous joindre à un groupe pré-existant. La période des inscriptions sera ouverte jusqu’à la fin du petit-déjeuner jeudi. Nous désignerons ensuite un numéro de table à chaque groupe et lors de l’heure de discussion birds of a feather (10h45 à 12h00), à vous de prendre la parole !

wilu2010: Your Contributions! / wilu2010: vos contributions! May 12, 2010

Every conference needs a tag! The tag for WILU 2010 is wilu2010 (#wilu2010 on Twitter). Make sure to tag all your contributions (blog posts, flickr pictures, tweets, etc.) with the conference tag so we can find them all!

L’étiquette, ou « tag »pour WILU 2010 est wilu2010 (#wilu2010 sur Twitter). Veuillez l’utiliser dans toutes vos contributions Web (blogues, photos, tweets, etc.) afin de nous permettre de les retrouver facilement!

Thursday Dine-Arounds / Souper-resturants du jeudi May 12, 2010

Checking in to Les Prince Hall residence / S’inscrire à la résidence Les Prince Hall May 11, 2010

For delegates with reservations at Les Prince Hall, please note you need to check-in at the Commons Building.

Veuillez noter que les délégués ayant une réservation à la résidence Les Prince Hall doivent s’inscrire au pavillon Commons Building.

Conference venues / Lieux du congrès April 29, 2010

A few people have inquired about where the conference will take place. All sessions will take place on the McMaster campus, located at 1280 Main Street West in Hamilton. For session room assignments, please check the online program after Monday.

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Veuillez noter que toutes les conférences auront lieu sur le campus universitaire, situé au 1280, rue Main O., à Hamilton. SVP consultez le blogue à partir de lundi pour savoir les salles désignées.

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA): Info for Speakers April 27, 2010

The Government of Ontario recently enacted the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) for the public sector. The goal of the Act is to create standards to improve accessibility across the province.

What You Need to Do as a WILU 2010 Speaker to Comply with the Legislation

In order to comply with this legislation, and to ensure that WILU 2010 conference materials are accessible to all participants, it is important that the following materials be made available ahead of the conference.

Please send the following documents as email attachments to Krista Godfrey godfreyATmcmaster.ca no later than Wednesday, May 5, 2010:

1. Materials for your presentation (PPT, handouts, etc.). These will be uploaded and made available via the conference web site in advance of the conference (more information below).

2. A text version of your PPT or Keynote presentation. For image heavy presentations, please consider preparing a written summary of your presentation in Word or OpenOffice.

If you are planning on showing a video clip, please ensure that it is captioned or provide a descriptive summary of it.

Instructions for sending Powerpoint Presentations to Word

– Go to File and choose send to Word

– If you have images, these will not be moved over. It might be a good idea to summarize the image if it is essential to your presentation.

Instructions for sending Keynote Presentations to Word

– Go to File, choose Export and choose PowerPoint

– Then see directions for sending Powerpoint Presentations to Word

If you don’t have Word, you can cut and paste text in OpenOffice, a free, opensource program http://openconcept.ca/openoffice

Delivering Accessible Presentations

More information about delivering accessible presentations is available at http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_20 . You may also want to consult this PPT presentation, Universal Design for Library Instruction. Complying with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), 2005, recently prepared by one our committee members, Laura Beauchamp, for McMaster library staff.

Online Archiving

In order to facilitate access to conference materials, we will be linking to speaker presentations from our programme page on the blog. When you send your full presentation and your adapted presentation materials, please specifiy your preferred location for posting. Options for posting include:

    send it to us and we can host it on our servers
    post it to slideshare and send us the link and we’ll direct to your slides
    post it to e-lis and send us the link and we’ll direct to your slides

If posting to slideshare or e-lis, please use the tag wilu2010.

If no preference is indicated, materials will be hosted at McMaster.

Need Help?

Should you have any questions or require additional assistance, we would be happy to help. Please contact Krista Godfrey godfreyATmcmaster.ca or John Fink jfinkATmcmaster.ca .

One week left to register / Dernière semaine pour les inscriptions April 19, 2010

Just a reminder that there is only one week left to register for the conference. The registration deadline is Monday, April 26, 2010.

Nous vous rappelons qu’il ne vous reste qu’une semaine pour vous inscrire au congrès. La date limite pour les inscriptions est le lundi 26 avril 2010.

Housing deadlines / Dates limites pour l’hébergement April 6, 2010

Just a reminder that the deadline for booking accommodation is next week. The deadline to book hotel rooms is April 11th and on-campus accommodation is April 12th.

Information on accommodation is available on the Accommodations page
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Nous vous rappelons que la date limite pour réserver une chambre d’hôtel est le dimanche 11 avril; pour les résidences universitaires, veuillez réserver au plus tard le lundi 12 avril. Pour de plus amples renseignements, consulter http://wilu2010.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/hebergement.