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On Friday, I attended the NCBIG Camp Unconference at UNCG. NCBIG (NC Bibliographic Instruction Group) is an interest group within NCLA that has been around for a number of years. This was the third NCBIG Camp, and it was organized by Jenny Dale (UNCG), Katy Webb (ECU), and our own Kyle Denlinger. I have missed the last few NCBIG Camps, so I was excited to attend this one! This year’s camp had about 20 attendees from a wide range of institutions, including academic libraries, community colleges, and public libraries. We met in the Digital Media Commons on the lower level of Jackson Library, which was renovated just a few years ago to provide a space for digital media creation and collaboration.

We began the morning with a group check-in, and then we broke up into discussion groups. Each group had a facilitator and a note-taker. The notes from each session are available in a Google doc that participants can continue to add to. During the first session, I facilitated a discussion on the ACRL Framework. Our group spent a lot of time discussing practical ways to implement it, as we felt that was missing from a lot of the discussions around the Framework, especially in regards to one-shots. We shared some of our own experiences incorporating Frames in small ways in our own classes. We spent the last portion of the session watching some of John Oliver’s recent segment on Scientific Studies and talked about the ways we could use it to spark discussion around some of the Frames in both one-shot and credit-bearing scenarios. (I’m already thinking about how to use it in LIB210 in the fall!)

For the second discussion group, I participated in a discussion on Outreach to Faculty and Beyond. We first defined what we meant by “outreach.” According to our definition, outreach does not have to be focused on the library, and that the biggest goal with outreach is to build relationships. We also discussed some of the challenges, including time and resources.

We took a lunch break to Don on Tate Street (I highly recommend the bulgogi don in a hot stone bowl!) and then came back to the DMC for some lightning talks. I learned about making Google docs accessible and also a few new tools that I want to try out: Pear Deck and Screencastify. Pear Deck allows for interactive class presentations and Screencastify is a plugin for Chrome that allows you to record screencasts from your browser. Kyle also demonstrated how he’s using VoiceThread in his online class, which really made me want to do more with it!

I also enjoyed catching up with friends from other libraries, as it was the first time I had seen many of them since starting here at WFU! I’m grateful to Jenny, Katy, and Kyle for all their work in putting together a great unconference!