It was the first time I’ve attended this state conference and I was only able to squeeze in one day out of the three. Many UW-Madison folks were there as well as a few people I knew from my early stint at UWM.
I went to three sessions (full program): “Connecting with Faculty” by Regina Pauly, Jennifer Snoek-Brown, Kay Young, & Dr. Rea Kirk, UW-Platteville; “Reinventing the One-Shot Library Session” by Eliot Finkelstein & Carrie Nelson, College Library, UW-Madison and Trisha Prosise, College & Steenbock Libraries, UW-Madison; and “Open Editions: An Introduction to Collaborative Environments for the Production of Scholary Editions” by Thomas Walker, UW-Milwaukee. In my choices, I tried to broaden my horizons beyond instruction (i.e. liaison, scholarly publishing).
I have to say that the instruction folks always give the very well-conceived presentation. Eliot, Carrie, and Trisha managed to introduce a lot of interactivity and engagement into a session with about 100 people. How? They invited volunteers from the audience to participate in a restaurant menu exercise that paralleled the process of searching the library’s licensed database. We (yes, I “volunteered”) had no context for what was going on, didn’t understand the syntax, and ended up with peanutbutter on our placemats. Then they showed the same exercise structured a different way. For the details, you have to go to the authors!
The other presenters were engaging and very enthusiastic about their subject matter. There were also good snacks (thanks planning committee). And at lunch I went offsite for a burger that was about an inch bigger than the bun around the entire perimeter, which I’m in favor of (with a medium diet coke).
