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/