From the President

By Denise O’Shea, NJLA CUS/NJ ACRL Chapter President

With the NJLA 2013 Annual Conference only weeks away, there will be ample opportunity for NJ academic librarians to use their social media skills to network, connect and share conference updates with other librarians online. Following are some useful tips for getting the most out of your social media and mobile technology conference experience:

RSVP and Join the Conversation on FaceBook

First, if you are already on Facebook, you should let your friends and colleagues know that you plan to attend the conference by submitting an RSVP to the conference event on the NJLA Conference Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/545389458835092/. That page is where you will find out who else is planning on attending the conference, and you will get news and updates about the conference.

While you’re on Facebook you should also check out the page titled “Conversation Starter: New Roles in Social Media” (https://www.facebook.com/events/190594514421448/?fref=ts). The owners of this page are presenting a session at the conference on questions raised by recent developments in social media such as -- how do sponsored listings, privacy policies and the changing preferences of the end user affect our services? What is working for libraries? Should we continue to post, tweet, pin and tumbl? You can start the conversation about these topics before the conference by sharing your ideas, comments, trends, pet-peeves and thoughts on this Facebook page.

Sign-up for the Unconference via the Google Groups Carpool/Room Share Listserv

You’ve registered for the conference but would like to save some money on transportation and hotel costs, and start doing some casual networking early. With so many conference attendees driving some distance to get to Atlantic City, NJLA has setup a listserv on Google Groups to help facilitate carpooling and room sharing options. The long drive from points in North Jersey and elsewhere can provide the opportunity for casual, but meaningful conversations about our profession, technology, higher education, cooking, gardening, music, etc. Sign-up for the listserv at http://njlaconference.info/content/carpool-roomshare.

Use Twitter for Promoting and Live Tweeting Conference Program

Before the conference, use Twitter to get the word out about a program where you are presenting or to publicize your poster presentation. At the conference, live tweet the conference in order to share minute-to-minute updates about conference sessions and events. Use the official conference hashtag -- #NJLA2013 – in order to make sure that followers can find your tweets, and that the tweets themselves become part of the larger conversation about the conference. Looking for some best practices for live tweeting a conference? Take a look at this useful blog post from Sage -- http://sageconnection.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/how-to-live-tweet-at-an-academic-event/.

Download the Boopsie App for Conference Info at Your Fingertips

Once again, conference sponsor Boopsie has generously donated its services to provide us with the most necessary conference information right at your fingertips. Find session times, room locations, speaker information, and more with this free app. Details for downloading the app from iTunes and/or Google Play were not available at press time. Visit http://njlaconference.info/ for more information as we get closer to the start of the conference.

Check-in to the Revel on Foursquare

Waiting in line or at a kiosk to check-in to your room? Don’t wait to check-in on Foursquare at the Revel (https://foursquare.com/revelresorts).  Let your friends and colleagues know exactly where you are and what you’re up to. It’s much more efficient than those little post-it notes used at past conferences, and less intrusive than texting your location.

A Picture Really Tells the Story

There are so many ways that you can share pictures from the conference – via Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/njla), Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and of course Facebook.

I hope these options - along with the interpersonal networking that you do throughout the conference - will enhance your conference experience and extend the reach of our conference beyond the walls of the conference hotel.

Denise O’Shea is the Head of Access Services and Systems at Montclair State University’s Harry A. Sprague Library.  She can be reached at oshead@mail.montclair.edu.

By Denise O’Shea
 

VALE Conference 2013 by the Numbers

• 280 Registrations
• 43 VALE institutions represented
• 12 Rutgers library student volunteers
• 19 Poster Sessions
• 23 Breakout sessions
• Featured speaker: Dr. Ellie A. Fogarty, Vice President, Middle States Commission on Higher Education

 
The Fourteenth Annual VALE Users’/NJLA CUS/ACRL-NJ Conference was held on Friday, January 4, 2013 at the Busch Campus Center, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. The theme was “Demonstrating Value for Every User.” We had a full program of 23 excellent breakout and 19 poster sessions on a variety of topics ranging from mobile apps & devices, e-books, patron driven acquisitions, discovery, copyright, the VALID project, collection development, library instruction and information literacy. Attendance remained strong at this very popular conference.
 
In response to attendee feedback from previous years, the VALE Conference Committee changed the schedule of the day’s events. This year, instead of a Keynote Speaker giving a presentation in the morning, we had a Featured Speaker present after lunch. We also offered a post-conference networking/dessert reception. This new conference schedule generated a lot of comments on the conference evaluation form with 68% of the respondents rating the changes positively. It’s too early to say what format the schedule for next year’s conference will take.
 
Our featured speaker was Dr. Ellie A. Fogarty, Vice President, Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Dr. Fogarty currently serves as a liaison for accreditation services to 90 colleges and universities in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. On behalf of the Commission, she presents workshops on issues related to higher education accreditation such as assessment, institutional effectiveness, and compliance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. From 1992 to 2009, Dr. Fogarty was employed by The College of New Jersey, including roles as Associate Provost for Planning and Resource Allocation, Deputy Compliance Officer, and Business & Economics Librarian. During that time, she served as a volunteer peer evaluator on six MSCHE accreditation team visits to a variety of institutions. In her VALE presentation, titled “From Closed Stacks to an Open Book: Demonstrating Value for Accreditation”, she discussed best practices in preparing for accreditation with an emphasis on accountability and transparency in higher education.
 
All of the conference presentation materials that we received have been uploaded to the VALE web site. Among the materials available are:

• Links to photos of the poster session posters
• Our Featured Speaker’s presentation slides
• Presentation materials from most of the breakout sessions 

Go to http://www.valenj.org/conference/2013/program to see what is available.
 
Next year’s conference date has been confirmed for Friday, January 10, 2014 at the same location. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year’s conference.
 
Denise O’Shea is the Head of Access Services and Systems at Montclair State University’s Harry A. Sprague Library.  She can be reached at oshead@mail.montclair.edu.

By Mark Thompson
Middlesex County College Library has just finished the final steps in establishing a complete suite of self-service tools for students at the College.  At the main circulation desk, we have integrated three computers to allow for one-stop shopping for students. 
 
One is a new self-checkout machine.  Bibliotheca's (SIRSIDynix) EM Countertop Self Checkout machine allows scanning of student ID & book barcodes, plus security case
unlock for DVDs.  If in using this, their ID is blocked because it has not been renewed, they simply go to the User PC and print out their current schedule.  This is handed to the Circ staff member who uses the third PC (SIRSI terminal) to update their record.  The suite of services is designed to encourage student management of their library use.  Students can check their own accounts on SIRSI iBistro.  Since MCC is part of LMxAC (Libraries of Middlesex Automation Consortium), students can look across the shared catalog of 28 member libraries in Middlesex County and place holds on items wherever they are.  These items are delivered to MCC and the students are notified by email or automated vmail. 

 
Two weeks ago, the final piece was implemented.  We launched SmartPay (Comprise Technologies) that allows users to pay fines via credit card.  They pay right at the counter, instead of having to go over to Bursar, hand the receipt to staff and their student record holds are lifted. 
 

 
Mark Thompson (mthompson@middlesexcc.edu) is the Director at Middlesex County College Library. 

By Lisa DeLuca
Last fall in New Brunswick future librarians were busy with teambuilding drills, lightning rounds to showcase new library technology and numerous ILS implementations.   This was not a conference or consortia meeting, but Rutgers MLIS graduate students getting hands-on experience in their Understanding Library Systems and Software Applications with Professor Kurt Wagner.
 
Kurt Wagner is an Assistant Director and Head of Library Information Systems at Cheng Library at William Paterson University (WPU).   His course taught students how to evaluate library systems and how to communicate relevant information to systems librarians.  Most students were halfway through their MLIS program; some had taken courses in databases, archiving, and/or digitization.  “While these students may not be focused on becoming systems librarians,” Wagner emphasized, “they will certainly all be interacting with one.”  Read More...

By Amy B. Popp

In the spring of 2012, I was hired to be the Webmaster at Immaculate Conception High School, a Catholic co-educational high school in Montclair, New Jersey. My charge was to update the content, media, functionality, and visibility of the site. Subsequently, the website (www.ichspride.org) became a vital instrument to share school information, activities, and media. Students, faculty, and parents started to look at the website again to learn about school activities, and the website became a recruiting tool for incoming students. As I revamped the website, I noticed that the email system being used by the school was outdated, clunky, and was barely in use by anyone in the school. It needed to be replaced by something that would enable the school community to communicate with each other effectively.   Read More...

By Megan Dempsey

The Evelyn S. Field Library at Raritan Valley Community College has been campaigning to let our faculty and staff know we’re “more than books.”  Our new library brand and motto are catching on, and we’ve been going outside of our own walls, physically and virtually, to spread the word to the college community.

We started by getting the college president’s approval for a new library logo that incorporates our slogan, “More than Books” (Figure 1). The library logo matches the one we created for RVOneSearch, our implementation of Ebsco Discovery Service, which went live in January. We are undergoing a full website redesign this summer, with the logo to be featured prominently on the new website.

We also decided to revamp our library newsletter by sending it out as a monthly email blast with snippets of interesting information about the library and research, rather than publishing a full-length newsletter on our webpage that would only collect virtual dust (Figure 2). Recent issues of the e-newsletter included facts about how the library improves student success; a highlight of a recent journal article published by two faculty members; intriguing quotes from a research study on undergraduate research habits; and a featured app that we thought students and faculty would like to know about. So many departments on campus blast our inboxes on a regularly basis, we figured why shouldn’t the library, and the response has been positive so far.  Read More...

View the list of programs