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Monday started with the second celebration of Susan’s ACRL/IS Innovation Award, this time at the Lexis-Nexis breakfast and this time a bit more grand.

Susan gave remarks after accepting the award and was very kind to mention a number of Wake Forest people who supported her in the Embedded project, including Professors Smith and Hattery, her entire tech team whom she named by name, and her director, for letting her go in the first place. The program portion was also infinitely more interesting than yesterday’s as Dana Milbank presented very amusing tidbits from his book about life in Washington, DC, “Homo Politicus.”

ACRL President’s Program “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions,” Dr. Dan Ariely

Ariely’s investigation in this area began when he was a long-term burn patient, subjected to excruciating pain at the hands of well-meaning health care personnel. After a series of demonstrated optical illusions, he said the human vision system is the strongest system we have but it is still subject to big mistakes. Other systems that are not as well developed are even more subject to error. He proceeded to give an interesting and amusing set of decisions that people make that seem to contradict their best interests. The most interesting was the rule of three. If presented with a choice between A and B, the choice may be random or obvious. It a third choice is introduced and is a lesser version of either A or B, then the corresponding more desirable version will attract much stronger appeal than the third unrelated choice. This can be used as a force for good or for manipulation. You choose. A panel of librarians then asked a series of questions about the presentation.

The conference is winding down. Tonight: Anaheim Angels v. Oakland Athletics