Rory's 2009 Library Technology Conference Report
I attended the 2009 Library Technology Conference at Macalester College on March 18th and 19th.
Doreen Hansen and I participated in the poster session with a poster about the library's new widgets. The poster had a good number of viewers who read the text and nodded appreciatively. We answered some questions.
I attended some very interesting sessions at the conference.
One interesting session was about "distributed reference," which in this case meant reference service provided remotely by part time librarians in different parts of the country, supporting students in a private, for-profit, online university. There was a certain sense that what these librarians were doing is a trail-blazing model for reference, in that online education is a growing trend. I found it interesting that this university has 31,000 students and provides access to only 14,000 e-books, and no physical books whatsoever, and no ILL access to physical books whatsoever. And the vast majority of their students are in Masters and Doctoral programs. Some things about what they are doing do not compute. They seem very understaffed to support so many students, and they agree that they are. Their presentation had the quality of a dystopian sci-fi novel in some respects.
Another interesting session was called "Reading for Digital Natives," and it was presented by a school librarian who has studied a lot of education and looked at a lot of brain research. The focus of her talk was on how the younger generation has developed their brains differently because of so much exposure to video games and other new media, resulting in difficulty reading and concentrating. Like many people who talk about how the new generation is different, she seemed a little bit conflicted about whether educators should adapt to the new generation's differences, or find new ways (try harder) to teach them to think as educators have traditionally expected to think.
I attended other presentations that were interesting, including a good presentation on copyright and another one on the basics of InDesign.
Submitted by Rory