By Heather Dalal
The VALE Conference was a success! Our Keynote Speaker, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe commented about all the successful and positive projects completed by New Jersey Librarians. In her presentation, she discussed the Value of Academic Libraries (link to exec summary) and how it has helped to communicate the impact between the library and a lot of measures like student success, enrollments, and future employment. The conference had a number of sessions tailored around the conference theme, Libraries as Agents of Change.This opened up discussions on how to empower our students to think critically about information and their roles in the information economy. Thank you to all who provided feedback on your Vale conference experience. Each year this feedback is used to make the following year’s conference better. Conference co-chair Amanda Piekart and ACRL-NJ/NJLA CUS President Elect Leslin Charles are already planning the 2018 conference. They will send a call for members of the conference committee to begin their work in the summer.
The NJLA Conference is just a few weeks away. We’ll be back at Harrah’s Conference Center and Resort. We are honored to host Emily Drabinski of Long Island University – Brooklyn. For the CUS Luncheon, she is presenting, “Local Contexts, National Demands: Navigating Standards in Academic Libraries”. She will address librarians’ need to produce metrics of success with and without the help of national standards. Professor Drabinski will also share how librarians play into the dominant narrative and how we might change that in a separate session Wednesday morning titled: “Narrative of Library Power: The Stories Library Shelves Tell.”
I have been collaborating with two public librarians, Andrew Luck (Elizabeth Public Library) and Jill D’Amico (South Brunswick Public Library) on a NJLA preconference for Monday, “Library Workers Today: Strong Staff Equals Strong Service.” We must focus on the needs of librarians and library workers along with the needs of our libraries. Since I’m no stranger to labor issues at my institution, I’ve been very interested in this. We welcome two outside speakers, Marc Meola (Community College of Philadelphia) and Eamon Tewell (Librarian at LIU- Brooklyn) to join us, both are active members of their faculty unions.
Please keep your eyes open for news of other professional development activities organized by the committees of ACRL-NJ and NJLA CUS. Last week, the Reference Committee hosted “The New Reference Librarian” workshop with lightning talks and roundtable discussions. We also host ACRL webinars, where we gather together to view and discuss a webinar. We plan to host “Essentials of Usability Design for Library Research Guides” on July 12th, so watch for an announcement soon.
Finally, thank you for the opportunity to serve as President this year. I have learned so much about the passion and energy of NJ’s academic librarians. College librarians have such a unique role in the lives of students. We always fight for our users to have equitable access to information and learn how to speak with their own voices. Though the semesters are long and not all of our teaching colleagues quite understand what we do, we’re always out giving our all to the community and I see that NJ is better for it.
Heather Dalal is an Assistant Professor II-Librarian at Rider University's Moore Library. She can be reached at hdalal@rider.edu.