Not only was this year's Michigan Academy meeting conveniently located on our own campus, I thought we had some very interesting presentations. It was great there were a lot of presentations from Western, as I learned about new things happening in my own institution.
An Improved OpenURL Resolver Menu System. George Boston and Deborah Mouw, WMU - George and Deborah talked about the way they redesigned the SFX system to work for us, and I think it was a very worthwhile process to be shared with others.
Reordering the Ordering Process and Workflow in Acquisitions. Randle Gedeon, WMU - We don't really get to find out what others are doing in their units, and this was a good overview of the changes down in Acquisitions.
Using CONTENTdm at Central Michigan University Library. Ruth M. Helwig, CMU - Very interesting to hear about the process (I am obsessed with processes) of getting an institutional depository going at CMU.
How Can Using an Online Storage Material Request Form Facilitate Document Delivery? Birong Ho, WMU - Again a very useful process to share with others.
Beyond Access: Transformation of Primary Source Materials. Sheila Bair, WMU - Totally fascinating. I knew our Civil War diaries were cool, and that a lot of work went into digitizing them and adding metadata, but Sheila just made this snippet of history come so alive. She got a lot of questions, which showed that her topic and presentation were very engaging.
Institutional Functional Analysis of Archival Records: A Practical Application at Northern Michigan University. Marcus C. Robyns, NMU and Jason Woolman, University of British Columbia - This presentation made me realize how little I know about archive work. I don't even know how Sharon and her crew organize all of our institutional archives. Marcus addressed ways to keep track of the ever changing university structure and important records, a daunting task.
Principles and Practices for Library Outreach to First Year Students. Jane P. Currie, Hope College - Jane reviewed programs to first years. What I liked best was their flexibility at Hope. For a while they tried one thing, then when that wasn't working as well as they would have liked, tried something else.
First Year Experience at Western Michigan University Libraries. Dianna E. Sachs, Western Michigan University - Dianna had a nice overview of the programs we are offering FYE students.
Learning Outcomes, Instructional Design, and the 50-Minute Information Literacy Session. Sara D. Miller, Michigan State University - Sara's presentation had the most implications for my own work. I admire her undertaking instruction in this manner - dividing the class into 5 groups, each finding a different type of resource for the class (a scholarly article, background information, opinion piece, book and website) without instruction. Then each group presents what they found and she gently guides them to better tools. She said it was a real eye opener to see how they really search.
Women Library Leaders as Trailblazers: Mary Spencer and Loleta Fyan. Sharon Ladenson and Portia Vescio, Michigan State University. - Interesting to hear about early Michigan State Librarians and the challenges they faced. One had little formal education, while the other was the first professionally trained state librarian. Michigan has had women State librarians from 1869 to 1968. Laurel has studies these ladies herself and her questions afterward were about the use of archival materials.
On the Family Track: the Effect of Motherhood on the Tenure and Promotion of Library Faculty in Higher Education. Elizabeth Bucciarelli, Eastern Michigan University - Elizabeth had found almost no research on the effects of motherhood on library faculty, so the research she did find was mostly about faculty at universities in general. She plans on doing an in depth research study on this topic. One interesting factor came up in discussion, that librarians might be more supportive of each other than other faculty, as we work together more closely.
Research Behavior of Graduate Engineering Students as Evidenced by Citation Patterns in Master’s Theses and PhD Dissertations. Edward J. Eckel, Western Michigan University - I hadn't seen this aspect of Ed's citation analysis. His results weren't surprising, that PhD dissertations use more scholarly resources than Master's Theses, but there was interesting information on the type of resources used by engineers.
Using Toolbars to Deliver Library-Related Information. Michael C. Sensiba, Wayne State University - Mike talked about toolbars that can be customized to provide links to library users without them having to go to the library home page. It wasn't clear to me why students would download this toolbar, but it it definitely cool and great alternative for library resource users - including ourselves.
Data Curation: A New Frontier in Faculty-Librarian Collaboration. John M. Potter, ITT Technical Institute - This was the last presentation in a long day of presentations, but it is an interesting idea - that librarians could help teaching faculty manage the data sets they create. In the beginning I thought this was just an extension of an Institutional repository, but it is actually a lot more, and there is now a degree available in data curation.
Samuel Tietse from France and Carol A. Zeile from Alma College did not present.
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