WPWVC Virtual Poster Session Now Online

Winter is a difficult time to travel to a conference: Just ask your colleagues who were “lucky” enough to attend ALA Midwinter in snowbound Chicago in February.

To avoid the ice and the snow yet still provide a professional development opportunity for its members, the Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (WPWVC/ACRL) is now hosting the 2015 Virtual Poster Session.

This online event, a first for the chapter, features digital posters on the theme of “Building Community @ Your Library.” The presentations provide examples of how academic libraries and their staff can build community with their native audiences as well as with external groups.

Featured posters include–

• “Building Community @ the Bevier Engineering Library” by Anne Schwan and Judy Brink, University of Pittsburgh
• “Hello Neighbor: Building Community with the High School Next Door” by Carrie Bishop, Penn Sate-DuBois
• “Creating Community through the Sharing of Primary Sources: Or, That’s Why They’re Known as Special Collections!” by Clare Withers and Jeanann Haas, University of Pittsburgh

All posters were peer-reviewed by members of the WPWVC/ACRL. This virtual programming was envisioned and organized by David Kupas, University Of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, who is the Chair of the WPWVC Program Committee.

As part of this online engagement, WPWVC/ACRL Website Administrator Stephanie Gillespie of Duquesne University also hosted a virtual chat via Twitter, in which presenters logged on to discuss and answer questions about their posters. This session took place on Tuesday, February 24, from 3 to 5 p.m.

It’s not too late, though–you can read the discussion and continue to contribute to it by tweeting to the WPWVC Twitter account, @wpwvcacrl, and by using the hashtag, #wpwvcvirtual15.