It’s been awhile since NCLA, but I wanted to make sure you all got to read one more NCLA recap post! NCLA 2019 was my first NCLA and it was memorable! I was lucky to present twice and do a poster during this conference, so most of my time was spent preparing myself! 

On Thursday, I presented with Amanda, Kyle and Hu about trends in credit-bearing instruction. I represented the new & exciting (but challenging) aspects of entrepreneurial pedagogy. In a nutshell I talked about applying #critlib to entrepreneurship pedagogy and my view on teaching the research process authentically, even if that means there is no information readily available or it is a frustrating process. 

Bright and early at 8am Friday, I presented a poster with my fellow BLINC (Business Librarians in North Carolina) members, Angel Truesdale (from UNC Charlotte) and Nancy Lovas (UNC Chapel Hill), about our early career business librarian blog we created about 7 months ago. Through this blog, which we’ve named BizLibratory, we’ve been able to do professional development and networking regularly and cost efficiently.  

Friday afternoon I presented about making your community relationships work for you with another BLINC member, Morgan Ritchie-Baum (Greensboro Public Library). For my part in this presentation, I discussed the work I did with community partners such as the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) at my previous job. Together we put on a week of entrepreneurial events at former library! I also talked about how I’m applying similar strategies here at WFU and within the local community of Winston-Salem.

When I wasn’t presenting, I did get a chance to go to a variety of sessions. My favorite presentation was done by Steve Cramer (UNC-Greensboro), Angel Truesdale (UNC-Charlotte), and Ingrid Hayes (Rockingham County Public Library). They presented about personal branding and I thought their energy and the organization of their presentation was truly fantastic. They even shared examples of their branding visuals and branding strategies!

My other favorite content came from posters that were about gaming in the academic library. I was excited to see that both UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte have gaming spaces that supporting computing, AI, robotics and gaming students as well as students who want to game for pleasure.The UNC-Greensboro poster discussed accessing gaming preferences in students. They found out that students wanted more events related to gaming and that graduate students were their current highest percentage of users. After talking with Mary Beth, I found out that ZSR used to hold gaming events which I had no idea about! The content of these posters resonated with me as the WFU eSports club had members in my recent class and they were also talking about doing more events on campus!

Overall, I had a great time at NCLA. It was nice to have a conference right here in W/S and I’m looking forward to the next one!