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Whew! It’s been a great day. As always, detailed notes are in my blog, and you’re getting the conversational perspective. If you want details, here they are:

This morning started out bright and early with the breakfast for scholarship winners. It was a great talk on Millennials, and focused on how libraries will need to change to meet the needs of incoming users. Richard Sweeney spoke from the perspective of University Librarian, researcher, and father of two Millennials. He clearly uses his research when putting together his presentation. It was informative, and active (even though there were over 100 people in the room. Lynda Kellam from UNCG was there, so it was great fun to catch up with her. Everyone was friendly and it was a great program.

After that, I went to a session on peer evaluation of teaching. I’m really interesting in assessment of instruction, and though peer review is stressful, I wanted to know how that works and how people use it to improve. The librarians at the University of Alberta have worked hard to create a program that minimizes stress for the observer and observed to truly give people feedback on their work. They’ve done their research, and their program looks good, particularly for their institution.

I headed to the convention center where I saw Roz, Mary Beth, and Wanda. It sounds like everyone’s doing interesting things… I’m loving all the blog posts. Though exhibits stress me out, I headed there next to wander through. They’re much smaller than the ones at ALA, and much more manageable. I saw the LITA people, which was fun. The Cyber Zed Shed (just for tech talks) was on the other side, so I sat for a while, charged up my battery, and saw how that type of programming works. I also ran into the organizer of my panel, and we chatted a little about what to expect.

The next session on my agenda was on focus groups, and it was really good! The presenters actually ran through a mock focus group as the majority of their presentation. When they explained their plan, I was not sure what to make of it: I normally hate anything “mock.” But after seeing the whole session, I think that it was great. The mock focus group clearly explained the process in a much more interesting and engaging way than just talking about it. On the way out I ran into Molly Keener who is presenting tomorrow during the same period that Lynn, Roz, and I are up.

I can’t come to Seattle without a vegan hotdog, so I took care of that at lunch, and when I got back into the convention center I ran into Lynn for the first time. Finally, in the afternoon on Friday, I had seen (or text messaged) all the WFU folks here! 🙂

I’m trying to catch at least one of every type of presentation here, so luckily, next up there were two papers on assessment. I went in, was scouting for a good seat and possible outlet, and then found Wanda! The papers were very good. The first was on findability of assessment information on websites and the second was on creating comprehensive assessment plans.

Next on the agenda was the Keynote by Sherman Alexie. Having missed the first one, and having heard amazing things about Alexie, I headed straight over and got a good seat near the front. Lauren Ray, organizer of my Roundtable in the morning and fellow Distance Learning Interest Group leader, was there, and we watched together. The talk was amazing: interesting, engaging, funny…I adored it. He clearly knew how to butter the audience up, though. He started up with how “there are thousands of hot near sighted women here!” and talked about his love for librarians.

Now, charging my battery a bit before the Chair’s reception. I think this reception is for people presenting at ACRL and I’m going to meet up with most of my panel people there for last minute file loading on our computers.

Tomorrow is my big day, with my roundtable and panel. I checked out the room where the panel will take place and it’s BIG. More on that tomorrow! 🙂