Apologies for cross-pollination. Greetings, Art Librarians! For those of you looking for ways to leverage IT resources to meet user needs, check out this pre-conference at ALA: Strange Bedfellows: IT and Reference Collaborations to Enhance User Experiences A joint offering from the Reference Services Section (RSS) and Machine Assisted Reference Services Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) ALA Annual: New Orleans Pre-Conference: Friday, June 24, 2011 Advanced Registration ends soon! Be sure to sign up at the reduced rate and don't forget about the discounts available for multiple registrations. Visit http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/events/annual/preconferences.cfm to learn more. The group registration form can be downloaded here: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/events/annual/rusa2011precongroupr.pdf This pre-conference will present strategies for creating successful collaborations between Reference and IT departments. Strange Bedfellows will open with a keynote from Char Booth that addresses the innovative technology-driven potential of meeting user needs when reference departments work in collaboration with IT. Following the keynote, a series of topics will be presented by four teams of Reference and IT staff who have worked together on successful collaborative projects. The line-up includes: * Dan Suchy, User Services Technology Analyst & Matthew Critchlow, Web Technical Manager, University of California, San Diego: Mobile apps * Joanne Kossuth, Technology Strategy Team Member at Educational and Institutional Cooperative Purchasing: Technology Strategy Team Member at Educational and Institutional Cooperative Purchasing: Sharing resources between institutions * Tom Maier, Senior Director Special Projects & Catherine Murray-Rust, Dean of Libraries, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta: Strategic Planning, Implementation, and Facilities Development across multiple departments within and beyond libraries * William Denton, Web Librarian & Adam Taves, Reference and Instruction Librarian, York University, Toronto: Divisiveness, communication failure, and boundary wars as tragicomedy. A staged reading. The afternoon will include breakout sessions where attendees can work with the speakers to brainstorm on applying the strategies presented to real-world projects that they are currently involved in or would like to see realized. This is a solutions-driven session that explores methods for effective collaboration and successfully leveraging the skill sets of multiple departments. This is a session about how to make a technology-driven reference project a success! We hope to see you in New Orleans! Don't forget to register before May 13: http://bit.ly/gClnCl Carolyn Sheffield and Donna Scanlon Co-Chairs, RSS-MARS Pre-Conference Carolyn Sheffield Project Manager Field Book Project Smithsonian Institution 202-633-0902 web: http://mnh.si.edu/rc/fieldbooks/ blog: http://nmnh.typepad.com/fieldbooks/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org/join.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.arlisna.org Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~