Thanks to Prairielands for providing funds supporting my trip to the national ACRL conference in Cleveland, OH. I attended a dozen sessions plus two keynote speakers. One session I’ll highlight was entitled “Working at the Intersections of Information Literacy & Scholarly Communication.” This panel gave me lots to think about regarding students as content creators and the open education movement. Focusing on students as content creators is an area of the Information Literacy Framework that I haven’t spent much time thinking about…until now! Two sessions I attended focused on the topic of reading critically and how librarians might be able to spend time helping students with this vital skill. I also attended sessions focusing on students with anxiety and autism spectrum disorders.
In addition to learning new things, attending a conference can also reinforce choices we’ve made in our library! For example, our library is working to lead efforts to grow OER on campus – this was a recurring theme throughout this year’s national conference.
An added bonus of this trip was reconnecting with a colleague I went to library school with many moons ago!
