I have just returned from the very congenial Getting in the flow, the CIC Library Conference at the University of Minnesota. The conference was about how the library can and must get more readily into the working and learning lives of faculty and students. I thought the organizers worked hard to vary the program interestingly, pulling in a vendor panel, a ‘next-gen’ panel, a Google/Amazon session, and a range of interesting speakers. They surveyed participants beforehand to get a sense of interests [pdf].
And they have been diligent in getting the conference itself into the flow. Commentary and video clips have been appearing on the conference blog. Photos on Flickr. Video clips on YouTube.
Jenny has also done some good reporting of first day presentations (here and here and here and here and here).
I found the discussion refreshing. It corroborated the feeling I increasingly have when listening to library discussion that folks have moved beyond hand-wringing, defensiveness or denial about the current environment and are looking to develop new ways of engaging and building value. There may not be a lot of answers yet, but people sure are asking the right questions. More later ….
Tag: ciclib07
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