Sunday 26 September
Travelled to Chicago by bus with the group. It took about 3 hours to get there from Urbana-Champaign. Stayed at the Holiday Inn which was fairly close to Navy Pier where the Conference was being held. Spent some time walking around Chicago waterfront -- Millenium Park and up and down various roads like Michigan Avenue, looking in the shops (and doing some shopping). It really is a beautiful city.
Monday 27 September
We visited ALA offices and had a number of information sessions and presentations staffers there -- on diversity, intellectual freedom and CIPA (it was Banned Books week) and international relations, as well as a tour of the ALA premises. In the afternoon, we had a tour of the Chicago Tribune Newspaper library and an information session with their librarian (research editor) and the head of the foreign desk. I left the Chicago Tribune with a few questions buzzing in my head about the situation of newspaper libraries in South Africa. I know that the IOL newspapers no longer have a library - so what do the reporters do? Search the internet? Search Lexis Nexus? I've fielded some ready reference calls from IOL reporters ... so what is the situation there? Also who is preserving copies of newspapers in South Africa? Is it a NLSA function? Are the newspapers doing it themselves? What media - microfilm? digitization? Another research topic for some one!
Tuesday 28th September
I attended a pre-conference all-day workshop entitled Strategic Marketing Skills for Academic Libraries which once again reinforced what I came back with from IFLA in Glasgow -- we need a marketing plan and that plan needs to be tied to the strategic plan and made known to the library staff. I would like to have the opportunity to present the information from the workshop to the Marketing Team when I get back, and I really do think that I have something valuable to contribute there, and would like to be officially included in the team.
During the time of the conference, we were paired with librarians from other institutions who would help guide/sort out problems etc while we were at the conference - I was linked up with Pamela Ortega from Eastern Illinois University who is a reference librarian with the responsibility of co-ordinating information literacy. We had some very interesting conversations, and I was introduced to other Eastern Illinois University Librarians with whom I will stay in touch, particularly as they have been doing research into my particular honours/masters topic.
Wednesday 29th September
Sessions that I attended on first day of the conference:-
* Higher Education Standards for Libraries (2004): Library Assessment and the New ACRL Multitype Standards which are hot off the press and will be applied from January. Again, what was presented here ties in with marketing and also with information literacy, and there is certainly information that we can use here, especially with the upcoming accreditation visit to the University of Cape Town next year. Again, I would like the opportunity to present this information (certainly my take on it) to library staff. Not everything can be applied directly to our South African situation, but we can certainly take bits and pieces that we need.
* The keynote speaker, Lynne Lancaster, author of When Generations Collide, spoke about generational issues in the workplace and in the marketplace. She identified several clashpoints between the generations. I have asked Celia to order the book for us, as these issues apply in our library as well -- not only among staff, but also among our library users -- and it has implications for how we do marketing, information literacy, signage, notices and other things. It would be a great conversation starter and discussion topic. Think that we have quite a number of Baby Boomers and Generation Xers on the staff, but the students are most certainly Millenials.
*Are you being served? Measuring patron satisfaction in an academic setting which basically was a report on surveys done at Eastern Illinois University Library. When the last survey was done, they distributed the survey all over campus, in residences, food halls etc and achieved a high return rate. Again, I have some notes about this, but the information covered more their survey, rather than offering practical tips.
* What are those kids doing in here? Serving Children in Academic Libraries. The librarians who presented here are in fact Education librarians (mainly Eastern Illinois University). Some of what they were saying doesn't really fit into the South African context, mainly because of the funding of the libraries which means the libraries have to be open to their wider communities. These libraries are running story hours for children, have group visits/training on databases from school children etc amongst the usual operations/services for the primary group of users. They pointed out that this should be regarded as recruitment for the university as well as for the profession. There was an extremely useful bibliography.
All food for thought as you know that my topic for my honours/masters research is the access policies in academic libraries in the western cape with reference including services/outreach to secondary users. But this got me thinking some fairly radical thoughts ... these education libraries act as a resource or research for the students and practising teachers, offering the dedicated, specialised services that we offered at the old Education library, but these libraries also incorporate what would be very similar to the services provided by Teachers Learning and Resource Centre at UCT (which is still going ... and I know at one stage had a question mark over its existence) Could we not start a conversation (my catch phrase of the moment!) about incorporating this into the library -- it kind of makes sense.
There was another very radical thought that I had, during this session, and is something that I would like to "start another conversation" about -- introduction to databases as an extra-mural during summer school ; what about offering similar sessions to Grade 11 or 12 students during the vac -- although given the current policy at UCT Libraries about school children in the library, this may be a better idea to take to Genevieve Hart and Sally Witbooi at UWC. However Julian has pointed out that there is a proposal on the table for the establishment of Centre for Open Learning under CHED with one of its the objectives as " to make the academic resources of the institution accessible to a wider range of participants .... and to become socially responsive" - so this would be something that they could follow up. Of course, I would very much like to be involved in this!
Just as aside: in talking to librarians here about the official no-access that outsiders have to using the databases because of software agreements, they all point out that it doesn't say that in the agreements their institutions have signed ... as long as the user is in the library, he or she has access. Many of the librarians say (and I saw this myself at Northwestern) that they have public access computers. The pcs are all password controlled -- students have to sign in with netlogins, but those public access computers have very generic passwords. Something for the LIS in SA to take up with the database providers who are the same! Or is there something I am missing here?
Thursday 30 September:
This was the day of our presentation (Library Advocacy in South Africa) and we had a good turnout. No one left early which was great, as we ran a little over time. The South African team then attended the Mortensen Center's presentation when our colleagues from Columbia, Vietnam, Uganda and Kenya did presentations on their countries. These presentations will probably be on the web shortly.
That afternoon I spent walking about the exhibits, attending poster sessions and sessions called Table Talks. Looked at a poster session entitled "Showing up in the strangest places : shifting the setting for academic librarian/teaching faculty collaboration" -- some interesting strategies there, but what was gratifying to know is that certainly in the work that I have been doing in collaborating with our academic staff, I am on the right track. The presenter was from Illinois State University.
Another poster session dealt with Copyright Basics : tools to assist educators. I will pass information on to Charles Masango in CILS, but I think that we can adapt the tools to suit our needs.
The table talk session that I sat in on was on a project called Illinois Clicks -- a portal or gateway (think funded by Illinois State Library) set up by librarians giving useful sites for the citizens of Illinois, including homework help. Yes, there was another thought coming on .. can we do something similar in South Africa? Province based? There is something at the moment in the Western Cape but not from libraries.
Friday 1 October 2004
* The ABCs: Assess before Change looked at assessing library instruction programmes and what is meant by "outcome assessment" , "session specific assessment" and "programmatic assessment" - the session described how Illinois State University's Milner Library started to overhaul library instruction and information literacy programmes' evaluation and assessment process. The first thing that comes to mind is that we don't have any sort of formal assessment ... and as the session went on, it confirmed my strong feeling that we as subject librarians actually need some sort of teaching education if we are involved in any sort of library instruction. I know that we have had this conversation before without any resolution, but sitting in the session only confirmed it. So what if the academics don't have a teaching qualification! We are not academics, but to be able to do an effective job in drawing up a curriculum, devising outcomes, assessing and evaluating the programmes, coping with the different learning styles and impact of the diversity of students in the class, as well as for our own professional integrity we need to have some sort of recognised national qualificiation -- that the info lit programmes presented by subject librarians at UCT are quality programmes. But sitting in that session, I became more adamant that I need and want to have a SETA recognised train the trainer qualification if I am to provide a better quality service, and if it cannot be part of my development plan at UCT Libraries, then I will simply have to pay for it myself!!
* More Poster Sessions
I then spent the rest of the morning looking at other poster sessions and walking around the exhibits. The poster session was entitled "Graphic Novels as LIterature" -- again Librarians at Eastern Illinois University. They applied for a grant to beef up the collection on Graphic Novels -- various departments at Eastern had been including graphic novels (comics) in reading lists etc, and the library was unable to supply. With the support of the various faculties, they successfully applied for an external grant to purchase graphic novels and materials about graphic novels.
We then left to return to Urbana-Champaign and stopped along the way for lunch at some fast food places. KFC tastes awful in the States
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