PALA Conference 2015 in 1,000 words (bulleted phrases) or less….

**First off, let me preference this post with reminding the reader that my opinions are not representative of the entire “It’s Academic” CRD Bloggers and the bulleted take away statements are only from a selected few academic focused presentations that I felt were interesting to share.**

Cream of the Crop: PA Forward & Academic Libraries

• Basic Literacy – Penn Highlands Community College hosts a very large PA One Book event utilizing their entire campus and reaching out into the community at the middle school level. The entire campus supports the event financially and provides their time and talents to host events related to the theme of the PA One Book for the year.
• Information Literacy – Muhlenberg College is promoting the idea of using active learning more in one-shot sessions and beyond. The presenter’s handout was very helpful and offered ‘real-world’ examples of active learning activities connected to the new Information Literacy threshold concepts. (More on the Information Literacy Framework check out conference handouts session “Putting the Framework To Work For You” by Carrie Bishop)
• Social Literacy – A preview of a later conference session, Penn State York, introduced their highly interactive first- year experience program titled, ConnectED that in this blogger’s opinion, many universities should consider undertaking. More information to follow.
• Financial Literacy – If you are not familiar with Penn State Main Library Student Financial Education Center, you may want to send this idea up the administrative chain. While many libraries have brought traditional tutoring opportunities to their libraries, Penn State boasts financial student peer educators trained to assist with budgeting, student loans, and credit.
• Information Literacy – Herding Cats and assessing information literacy is the tune at St. Joseph’s University and while the idea may not be unique to some readers, it was to me. The presenter described how they are working with some faculty members to evaluate completed research papers based on the library skills delivered during one-shot sessions. For example, upon completion of the papers, the librarians are gaining access to un-graded copies via the Blackboard platform and evaluating the resources, in-text citations, etc. based on a library specific rubric they created. Since an IRB was not sought and they are using this for internal review, the results were not shared.

Connecting & Collaborating: Using PA Forward in an Academic Library by Barbara Eshbach, Head Librarian, Penn State York

• Brilliant idea to connect events to PA Forward Literacies
• Held 23 events over the course of an academic year targeting First Year Experience students
• Offered scholarship (provided by librarian’s family) to entice participants
• First –year experience only students could win scholarship money
• Created elaborate and colorful tracking score card  (presenter suggested if completed again, she would probably use digital badges instead of score card)
• Most events had nearly a dozen participants
• A lot of events were based on unique journal article ideas & were fun
• Offered speak easies or informal conversation opportunities such as superstition
• All events took place over the common hour
• Utilized TED talks in a unique and constructive way
• To learn more (and I suggest you do) look over conference handouts or contact Barbara

*Thought to share- why not create this idea for not just FYE but all students to entice them to attend library events? We typically don’t have the ability to offer attendance slips so this might be another way to entice students. Create an events passport and offer prizes via a drawing.

Open Access & IRs: Educating & Empowering the Campus Community (in honor, of Open Access Week Oct. 19-25, 2015) by Adam Hess, Arcadia University

• Educate and entice faculty offering space for authorship (ask them to send CV and find out permissions for authorship rights, etc.)
• Visit faculty meetings and offer presentations about repository
• Create a campus-wide steering committee (i.e. faculty champions)
• University of Winnipeg offers a great graph of the Publication Cycle
• If not available, attempt to assist with the creation an University-wide  open access policy
• Visit events that deem relevant for possibility submitting to repository such as Thesis Day, etc.
• Duke University has an awesome Scholarly Communication blog
• Some Universities have created publishing funds to encourage open access
• Repository page landing pages for authors link online sites such as LinkedIn
• Open Access Directory
• Discover ORCID
• Consider working with University Relations, Alumni, and Student Organizations
• Create marketing strategy (print and virtual)
• Presentation catch phrase “Pound the Pavement” (i.e. best advertisement = ‘word of mouth’)

Teaching at Learner, Learning as Teacher: Energizing Your Library Instruction Practice through Feminist Pedagogy by Maria T. Accardi, Indiana University Southeast

• Very inter-active participant centered workshop patterning the style the presenter wanted to teach
• Had an opportunity for reflection and think-pair-share
• Student- centered, being thoughtful of the power structure in the classroom
• Handout offered great examples of feminist instruction librarian strategies
• Handout was from Maria’s book, Feminist Pedagogy for Library Instruction
• Website is very helpful http://mariataccardi.com/
• Referenced educational professionals in the field that believe in feminist pedagogy in education
• Shout out to participants (inside joke – #evilowls)

Overall, due to time and self-imposed word count, I did not summarize every session that I attended. To be honest, I felt that most of the academic sessions could easily be explained by the conference handouts as some of the presenters posted their power point presentations. Finally, coming from a public library setting, I felt that most of the academic sessions were primarily focused on research or ongoing research ideals. These sessions were very different from public sessions. “It’s Academic!”… after all! 950 words