1. Conference Wrap up by

2. Poster sessions

With her Reference Services
Committee, Maria presented a
poster session on library vendor
apps.
Full poster description:
http://www.valenj.org/confer
ence/session/p11-rollingvendors-apps-librariansleaders-promoting-easy-accessdatabases

3. Poster Sessions

With her VALE SIL committee,
Amanda presented a Poster
Session that addressed the need
for LIS students to consider the
Importance of taking courses
related to information literacy.
Full posters description:
http://www.valenj.org/confere
nce/session/p09-lis-studentsstep-ring-academic-librarianshipbecoming-best-candidate

4. More Posters Sessions

On the other hand, the poster sessions were informative, where Maria’s poster and
session address the future of vendor Apps. One poster session: Getting in on the
Game: A library and Athletics Partnership, regarding the partnership between
Caldwell College Jennings Library and the student athletes to form the ―Cougar
Enrichment Program‖ inspired me to add a few more elements to our scholar
athlete study hall on the Newark Campus—the key is to have dedicated tutors and
athletic coaches to ensure continued success. And perhaps, rename the program—
send some suggestions! –Susan
I liked the poster session, and not just because our poster received a lot of attention.
Considering that I finished working on it on Thursday afternoon and owe chocolate
to Prof. Fong from ID, and the VIA crew, I was elated that it all went well. -Maria
I enjoyed the variety and creativity in the poster sessions and particularly found
value in Maria's presentation on Vendor APPs. -Laurie

5. Poster Sessions


6. Keynote Speaker

 Although I did not stay for the entire day, I had a chance to see the
keynote speaker, Dr. David Weinberger, and in all honesty it was rather
sad—not that the co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab was
heckled for getting some trivia wrong, but rather the ―innovative‖
technology he was discussing is not innovative at all when we look at
other fields outside of the library realm—it seems we have a long way to
go to catch up where we could have been on the forefront of all this SEO,
and other commonplace technologies. We need to demand more of our
vendors as our interfaces and applications are a bit ―clunky‖ for lack of a
better word. - Susan

7. Keynote Speaker

 During the Keynote Speaker’s presentation, I was too
preoccupied rehearsing for my breakout session, that besides
feeling sorry for Dr. Weinberg being smashed by the ―knowingall‖ librarians, I didn’t get much form his presentation. -Maria
 There was nothing that enlightening that I don’t think librarians
haven’t already heard. I thought the presentation overall was a
bit disjointed. I would have liked to have heard more about how
his work and research applies to our academic library users and
what it means for us as librarians and the future of our libraries
as they exist today. -Bonnie

8. Breakout
Sessions

With her Reference Services Committee, Maria presented a Breakout session on virtual
reference platforms
Full description: http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/b15-power-punchvirtual-reference-tools-libraryh3lp-libanswers-and-mosio
The last breakout session was the VALE Reference Services Committee panel of five
librarians presenting three software programs for collecting statistics from virtual
reference: Library H3lp, LibAnswers, and Mosio. I co-presented on LibAnswers
together with a librarian from Rowan. I don’t have any feedback on the presentation,
but since three Berkeley librarians attended the session, I hope they will share their
opinion about it. - Maria

9. Breakout Sessions

Bonnie & Amanda presented a Breakout
session on how to create successful
programming that promotes lifelong
learning.
33 librarians attended their session!
Full description:
http://www.valenj.org/conference/session/
b04-ropes-and-away-desk-how-lead-waylifelong-learning-through-successfulprogramming

10. Breakout Sessions

 The VALE Assessment Committee hosted a session on using
LibAnalytics for assessment. The panel, consisting of two reps
from Springshare, who showed various data sets, such as
instructions stats, website feedback, foot traffic, prof.
development activities, instruction request forms etc.
Librarians from Montclair State and Caldwell College talked
about best practices in applying the collected data. -Maria

11. Breakout Sessions

 Session I Joining Paths: How to Become One
 Two Rutgers librarians discuss the challenges of merging two
library systems – UMDNJ medical school with Rutgers University:
steps toward aligning collections; licensing contracts; and access –
proxy settings and over 70% duplicate content within the
databases. Although no bells and whistles, I learned from this
session. ―Yay‖ Marlene and Sandra for making this merging of
our collections rather seamless. - Susan

12. Flipped Classroom

 Alyssa Valenti’s breakout session on "flipping out" the
classroom gave me a few ideas on engaging students in ONL
courses. Luckily for Alyssa, she had full cooperation with the
faculty to implement her ideas, including pretest and one-onone sessions for grades. – Maria
 I also attended a session on using videos to flip library
instruction that was presented by librarians from Stevens
Institute of Technology and a session on library chat
services. Both sessions were very interesting and I particularly
liked the instructional videos that were created by
Stevens. The short and entertaining videos provided a lot of
information literacy information that students could utilize at a
time that was most convenient. -Laurie

13. Flipped Classroom

 As I tweeted during this presentation, the coolest thing about the Stevens Tech
videos was how they used free stock video from archive.org during their videos to
capture the users attention, rather than just looking at the text on a white screen. See
Getting Starting With Your Research Videos here:
http://www.stevens.edu/library/research/tutorials
 My second favorite idea learned from this presentation was theu se of a full-time
MLS student/techy intern to help with creating the videos which sometimes can be a
very long and time-consuming process.
 Finally, while disheartening, it was also good to hear that other institutions struggle
with getting faculty on board with the library assignment and the purpose of
librarian instruction. Their idea is to have the students view the videos before
arriving at the class instruction session. They’re still working on getting 100%
cooperation. -Bonnie

14. Flipped Classroom

Don’t Flip Out - Flip Your Classroom! Using Hybrid Information Literacy Instruction to Get
Your Students “Into the Ring” – Alyssa Valenti, Raritan Valley Community College
Alyssa talked about three situations where ―flipped classroom‖ techniques could be used for Info
Lit instruction, and gave examples of two of those classes that she’s done at RVCC.
One-Shot ―Mini-Flip‖ focuses on subject-specific resources. As an ice-breaker, the students are
given different flashcards that represent about 5 databases. She first briefly reviews a familiar Db
(Academic Search Complete) and where to find the others, which is like the pre-work part of the
Mini-Flip. For the active ―flip‖ part, the class breaks into groups based on their flashcards, and
investigates their databases; then they teach each other, by presenting a live demo, showing the
subjects covered and features they discovered to the rest of the class. Alyssa walks around, offering
tips and "secrets" about each database that should be pointed out when the group goes up. She
does have a longer class period for this – 80 minutes – so she can give them at least 15 minutes for
the group work and 5 minutes for each group to present. –Vicki
** To read the rest of Vicki's wrap up of this breakout use this link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14KOJVMrKMF2N-5A_iNbgTxg6Lgxd_rRl7s7Ih9T3KA/pub

15. Short Promo Videos

 During their session, Rider University provided a practical, budget
friendly and exciting way for other libraries to consider promoting
their services by creating short videos starring Rider students. Most
of these videos were created by their work study students.
Librarians and students worked together to develop the script of the
videos. Most of these videos were created with a simple flip camera
and camtasia. -Amanda
 We can do this and we should. Loved these videos!
Great idea in having students describe library services. –Bonnie
You can view them here: http://guides.rider.edu/trlm

16. PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART
at VALENJ Annual Users Conference 2014
(Bonnie)

 Our presentation was very well received. I think part of the
reason was because it wasn’t so ―academic‖ in nature but
more of the fun part of what we do with our programming
and reaching out to our communities. This is often talked
about among school and public libraries, but not so much
within the academic library community
 How we came up with our idea: We have never collaborated
before decided we should use our creative minds and submit
a proposal together for the VALE conference.

17. PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART
at VALENJ Annual Users Conference 2014
 since both had been so
 We started talking and decided
active in programming on our campuses and campuswide events we should present on all of the ―cool‖ things
we have done and teach other how they can have
successful programming at their colleges. From there we
came up with our hypothesis ―Off the Ropes and Away
from the Desk: How to Lead the Way for Lifelong
Learning Through Successful Programming‖ which
turned into our program flow and gave examples for
each:

18. PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART
at VALENJ Annual Users Conference 2014


1-How to Create Meaningful Programming That Instills Lifelong learning:
 Think of the Various Literacies (i.e. Digital, Consumer, Arts & Culture..) in order to
come up with your program idea
 2- Once you have come up with your idea, you must reach your community beyond
our library walls (i.e. participate in campus club, community service day)
 We stated that this is what will allow you to forge relationships with students and
departments and faculty
 3- Collaborate with Other Departments that you have gotten to know on your
campuses (i.e. Career Services, Academic Support, Tech Services)
 4-How to Reach a Diverse Population of Users (i.e. Evening, Commuter, Online
Students)
 5-Method of Delivery for your Programs (i.e. Book club on Facebook, Google
Hangouts)

19. PRESENTING WITH A. PIEKART
at VALENJ Annual Users Conference 2014


We concluded that ―As academic librarians, we have to think
beyond your daily tasks: We can no longer can stay behind the desk
and wait for our community to come to us. In order for libraries to
continue to thrive, especially in the current digital age where we
continually have to justify our value to our community and our
stakeholders, it is now OUR job get off the ropes and way from the
desk, out into the ring in order to become the leaders in our college
communities.―
applause!

20. Helpful Tips for Presenting at a
Conference


-Especially when presenting with another person, practice the flow. Who is speaking to what
slide, how is the slide presenter going to be passed back and forth or is one person going to advance
the slides? Where will you each be standing? Will each person sit while the other one talks or will you
both stand and go back and forth?

-Write a script to go along with your slides. Practice it. By the time you present it you will not
need it. If you do have notes, print them or write them on hard card stock paper or note cards so as
not to be distracting when flipping through your notes.

-Get into the room early to see what the setup is like. In our room there were tables and chairs
set up that were not in view with the projector. Also the projector did not go on and we needed
technical assistance.

-A great idea is to have the laptop facing you so that you can see the slides that your audience
is looking at with you having to look up at the screen to see where you are.
-Bonnie

21. Committee Work

 This year I decided to join the VALE Conference
Planning Committee. I really wanted to know what
it takes to put a conference together and I wanted my
voice to be heard in terms of what librarians are
looking for from these conferences.
 The experience was enlightening and really helped
me understand how these things get put together. I
strongly encourage all of you to get involved next
year! -Amanda

22. Committee Work

While serving on this committee I learned:
 Everyone has an idea to bring to the table and all ideas will be considered
 The selection of the programs are at the mercy of how many submissions we
receive. This year we accepted every proposal because we had just enough to fill all
the times slots.
 It is not that time consuming of a task to take on. The committee only met twice in
person and then communicated via email after that.
 The themes of the conference stem from the trends in our field.
 The survey forms really do get looked at and sometimes the overwhelming
suggestions get taken into consideration.
-Amanda

23. Final Thoughts

 It was a pleasure to see so many current and past colleagues presenting at
the conference. –Susan
 Note to Vale Conference Planning Committee- please do not try so hard
with naming the Conference! Winter or Annual conference should suffice!
– Susan
 First: the weather. It’s quite risky to hold this Conference in January. If I
wasn’t presenting, I would have turned back after I saw on the dashboard
display that my car had no traction.
-Maria
 The only way to increase the quality of these breakout sessions is for more
librarians to submit proposals so that the conference committee can be
more selective. -Amanda

24. Until next year…..

 NJ Librarians- Consider joining a VALE Committee
 Go here for more information on the committees
http://www.valenj.org/committees