College & University Librarians – There’s Never Been a Better Time to Attend NJLA!

There's Never Been a Better Time to Attend NJLA

The 2015 NJLA Conference is loaded with programs tailored to the needs and interests of college and university librarians. This year, the sessions sponsored and co-sponsored by the College and University Section are spread throughout the Conference, with a Preconference on Monday, six programs on Tuesday, and another six on Wednesday. Experience the full Conference for three days of professional development, networking, and learning about Libraries on the Edge.

Continue reading for descriptions of the programs sponsored and co-sponsored by the College and University Section!

MONDAY

ESL in Libraries: Communicating with our Communities -- New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the country, and libraries play a crucial role in acclimating newly arrived residents, providing programs and services to help them settle and thrive here. During this extended sessearn about the different avenues for providing ESL service at your library, and how to formulate programs to meet the needs of your community. Then share ideas with freestyle group conversations to develop resources for ESL service at your library.

TUESDAY

RDA Authority Records: An Overview -- Unsure about authority control? Confused about RDA? Do not fear! RDA authorities program is here! Join us for an overview of authority control, its importance for libraries and steps to perform authority control locally. Become familiar with sample RDA authority records and find out how data elements in an authority record can help catalogers. (Tuesday, 9:00-9:50)
Collection Development and Maintenance of eResources: What You Should Know -- As more and more of eResources become available to our patrons, and make their way into our catalogs, they present their own maintenance and collection development challenges. As librarians, we have to deal with publisher restrictions, multiple licensing criteria, expiring licenses, subscription collections and patron-driven acquisition models. Our panel will provide answers on how to manage it all. (Tuesday, 11:30-12:30)
On the EDGE of Their Seats: How to Give Amazing Presentations -- How many times have you sat through a conference presentation that just didn’t live up to your expectations? Don’t be that kind of presenter! In this session, librarians will provide successful examples of creating a catchy description, tips on how to stay on topic, the art of capturing your audience’s attention and many more secrets to their success. With backgrounds in music & theater/performance, teaching and sales, these presenters are skilled at innovative classroom instruction and various conference breakout sessions and want to share their knowledge so that you never have to worry about attendees snoozing or heckling during (or after) your presentation. (Tuesday, 11:30-12:30)
Effective Training: Understanding and Assisting Adult Learners -- Discover what makes adult learners unique and how to identify different learning styles. Find out how using different training styles can maximize the effectiveness of training efforts by matching them to the different learning styles. This session will offer content that is appropriate for presenters and classroom trainers as well as those conducting one-on-one or small-group training. (Tuesday, 3:10-4:00)
2015 Technology Innovation Awards Forum -- This forum features presentations from the winners and nominees of the 2015 Technology Innovation Award, which honors a librarian or group of librarians for innovative use and application of a technology in a New Jersey academic library. The purpose of the award is to recognize distinguished leadership in developing new technologies for academic libraries. (Tuesday, 3:10-5:00) (See 2014 awards here: http://cus.njla.org/node/547)
A Library e-Textbook Project -- Many libraries offer copies of textbooks for students to use within the library, a service that is much appreciated by students coping with the rising cost of textbooks. Seeking to extend this service one step further, Middlesex County College Library partnered with the English Department to create an e-textbook to replace the Introductory English class reader. This session will explore the problems, pitfalls and surprising successes in our efforts to go “textbook-less.” (Tuesday, 4:10-5:00)

WEDNESDAY

On the Edge of Discovery: Students and Web-Scale Searching -- Library discovery tools, with their Google-like single search box, change the way students use and perceive the library. In this session, we present the findings from our user study of the EBSCO discovery tool. Students self-recorded their sessions of using the discovery tool for their research projects, on their own time. These findings have been eye opening to course instructors and informed changes to our discovery tool administration and librarians’ information literacy strategies. (Wednesday, 9:00-9:50)
Which Citation Manager? A Conversation Starter -- Learn about the pros and cons of some of the most popular citation managers: EndNote, EndNote Basic, Mendeley, RefWorks, RefWorks Flow, and Zotero. Each citation manager is popular with some segment of academia because of its features/functionality, or interface. Let’s compare some of the amazing features of these software packages: grabbing metadata from websites, generating bibliographic information, searching for full text, facilitating collaboration, annotating PDFs, working with mobile devices, and working with each other. (Wednesday, 11:30-12:20)
College and University Luncheon with Edward Tenner -- Edward Tenner is an independent writer, speaker, and consultant on technology and culture. His book Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences has been an international bestseller. His most recent book is Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology. (Wednesday, 12:30-2:20)
A Reader's Adventures in Special Collections with Edward Tenner -- An increasing number of academic libraries are encouraging use of special collections in undergraduate courses. "Ever since I [Edward Tenner] wrote my dissertation using German libraries and archives, I have loved to use these collections and archives -- and to assemble a small book and print collection of my own. I'll give a personal account of my experiences in Europe and the U.S. and suggest that librarians don't need conventional rarities or big budgets to engage readers with the fascination of unique objects. I'll include some images from my own collection. And I'll also suggest that a surprising number of academic disciplines originated not within conventional departments but among lay collectors and enthusiasts." (Wednesday, 2:30-3:20)
College and University Section Research Award and Forum -- To promote and recognize excellence in the research efforts of New Jersey librarians, the Research Committee of the NJLA College and University Section (CUS) and the ACRL New Jersey Chapter presents an Award & Forum program. This session features New Jersey librarians discussing their current library research projects. The forum presentations include the winner of the 2015 Research Award for the best published research by a New Jersey librarian in 2014, along with other librarians whose presentations have been selected on a competitive basis by the Research Committee. (Wednesday, 2:30-4:30) (See past awards here: http://cus.njla.org/content/research-award-history-and-winners)
Teaching Information Literacy with I-Learn Model -- In pursuit of effective teaching method, a team of two librarians and one faculty member at Rider University used the new I-Learn model in teaching students in Educational Opportunity Program in the summer of 2014. Beside the traditional ‘access-evaluate-use’ information sequence, they also taught the research process ‘apply, reflect, and know’ to an experimental group. Pretest, posttest, and a second posttest revealed students’ learning and retention of information literacy between the experimental and control groups. (Wednesday, 3:40-4:30)