#acrl2015

One of my most recent outings.  The theme was “Creating Sustainable Community” - fitting for a conference held in Portland, OR, and a profession with sustainability at its core.  This was my 2nd ACRL (Association for College & Research Libraries) and the first to which I submitted proposals - 1 poster and 1 roundtable discussion topic. Having attended 2013 in Indy, and participated in some great sessions and workshops, I was a little intimidated to submit. 

Maybe the newness wore off or maybe it was due to the poster and roundtable taking up time that I would otherwise have spent in awesome sessions or workshops but I didn't feel 2015 was as good as 2013 .  Still good and definitely worth the trip though.  ACRL and DLSC (Distance Library Service Conference) are my go-to conferences.  It’s handy that they occur in alternate years. (Posts on ACRL 2013 and DLSC 2014 forthcoming.)

ACRL is viewed by many as the big-deal, national conference for academic librarianship and selects presentations/sessions through a blind peer-review process.  I know great librarians who've submitted interesting proposals without acceptance. This year, 33% of poster proposals and 42% of roundtables were selected.  I was pleasantly surprised and feel fortunate to have had both accepted (with Lauren Newton, coordinator of library instruction). The poster "Sustaining a Community of Change: Using Systematic Staff Training to Influence Culture Shifts in the Workplace" was well received - we got a lot of birds (”put a bird on it” from Portlandia was the method for up-voting posters). And the roundtable discussion "Distance Learning and Library Instruction: Creating Sustainable Connections" garnered a full table.  We were relieved to have so much interest and it was a great conversation. 

I generally try to pick sessions that could help me in my work (distance learning) but also throw in a few things that are just interesting.  This year, that random interest is digital humanities and digital scholarship.  I only recently started paying attention to what those phrases actually mean and they fascinates me. This is a realm that is so crucial to the future of scholarship, online teaching and learning, access to information; and people are doing some really cool things.  I’ll write more about that in another post.  On the work-value front, I attended several presentations that were formatted as panel discussion in which the panel facilitated audience participation.  These are always great for new ideas for teaching or to validate something you already do.  Some of these folks are experts and/or have a lot of experience and knowledge to impart.  I was honored to be counted among them on the conference schedule and fortunate that my school still offers faculty a travel budget so I can learn from them.

Download and print the collaborative zine made at ACRL!

My presentation for the #critlib15 unconference, now with notes!

https://www.haikudeck.com/p/OSAXY6MvD2/critical-theory---some-basics

This presentation came out of a suggested #critlib lightning talk proposal, but critical theory being such a big topic, it was moved the beginning of the day and given an hour for discussion. The must-know theorists to know are so numerous!

Critical Theory encompasses social theory + literary criticism = Herkimer's goal of liberating the human soul from enslavement (ie, capitalism)

The goal of critical theory is to change your mode of thinking, approach to reading.

This is a list of links I consulted as I made these slides:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/vice-guide-to-critical-theory-university-students

https://www.zotero.org/groups/critlib

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_critical_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies

http://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France

http://www.theonion.com/articles/grad-student-deconstructs-takeout-menu,85/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuM-4_xKOOWZnB4j-EQAPQPatpyr7tNk6 [Critical Theory Playlist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8yhRMIYqDk [Intro to the Frankfurt School]

Wow! #acrl2015 and #critlib15 are already over! Hope everyone had a good conference. Thanks to everyone who organized the unconference and to all those who attended (I am so sad I had to miss it)!

We thought having an extra chat tomorrow (Tuesday) would be a good time to re-connect and touch base with new people interested in joining us for the chats, so we’re going to have a pretty chill session of just talking about who we are, where we’re going, and reflect on the conference. Everyone and anyone is welcome to join!

The chat will be March 31st, 6pm Pacific, 7pm Mountain, 8pm Central, and 9pm Eastern. We use the #critlib hashtag and you can check out our cheatsheet for more details.

@pumpedlibrarian will be moderating (er, me), and here are our questions:

Intros

Q1 Let’s talk about what #critlib is as discourse: what is critical librarianship and what is it not? What does it mean to you?

Q2 And now what are these #critlib chats, what do they mean to you? Do you have tips for novices? What are the chats and what are they not?

Q3 Do you have any major takeaways from #acrl2015  or #critlib15 to share? #critlib

Q4 What’s next? Where are we going? Ideas for #critlib action, projects, etc.? This Q is a free-for-all 

Q5 Would anyone be willing volunteer to organize a #critlib uncon for ALA? #critlib15 part 2?

Pitches