The three keynote addresses at Menucha this year were presented back-to-back, and even though the speakers did not prepare together at all. Jessamyn West gave her “sensible technology” talk - which she always adapts and changes and updates so even if you’ve heard it before, there will be something that’s new. I should also mention that there are some speakers who, while interesting and effective, come across just as well in an audio-only environment like a podcast. Jessamyn West is not one of those speakers; she’s definitely worth hearing in person. Anyway, what I like about Jessamyn is that she is an advocate for libraries and for library users first, and a technology advocate second. So her work is always very well grounded in the impact that technology has (for good or ill) on libraries - particularly resource-poor, small, or rural libraries. This gives her perspective a certain relevance and significance that goes beyond “isn’t this cool?”
Rachel talked next about the impact of social software on knowledge creation, particularly on academic knowledge creation. This is a topic I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about (frequently with Rachel, natch) so it was great to hear it presented out loud, and in some sort of order, instead of here and there in my email and IM. She focused on the questions that open access, web 2.0 and open data pose for academic libraries, given our key role in the knowledge creation process. The resources she used are tagged on del.icio.us as - menucha06.
The next day was the panel that Shaun and I spoke on. We were joined by Eliz Breakstone from UO, who spoke for herself, and also for Annie Z-K from UO who was too close to having a baby to risk coming to Menucha. Annie’s project (as channeled by Eliz) was an interesting podcasting project focused on the history of the Willamette River in Eugene. It seems there was an oral history project that captured people’s stories and memories about the river. The project team wanted to find a way for people walking the river to hear the stories as they were moving along. They initially though of using a series of voicemail boxes that people could call - figuring that everyone would have their cell phones with them. That idea was rejected because it would be expensive, and the audio quality would be poor. Annie suggested that they let users download the audio content to their mobile devices as a podcast, so that each episode would correspond to a different spot on the walk. I thought this was a great example of how librarians can use their expertise with what is possible technologically to contribute to projects.
Eliz’s project was the UO implementation of IM reference. This was kind of interesting because in many ways it paralleled ours, without the same experience with LNET first. Their numbers are promising - She showed October numbers - with a little less than a week to go in the month they had had 72 IM questions. What she didn’t do was break down those numbers by week. Given that I have had 5 questions in my last 3 hours at the desk, and that’s just me, I would have thought their numbers would be increasing as more students became aware of the service.
Shaun talked about his experiences as a teacher (and token faculty member at library conferences) using blogs and social bookmarking in the classroom. He has been using blogs since 2002 or so in all of his writing intensive courses, and he just started using blogs and del.icio.us in his co-taught introductory social science seminar. He talked about the pedagogical benefits, things to be careful of, and other types of issues (like campus structures, digital divide issues, etc.). I talked about our use of Wikipedia in our Writing 121 research log assignments. I have been wanting to talk about this for a while with other librarians, so it was a talk I was looking forward to giving. It went well, and I got some good questions. Unfortunately, I ended up having to talk about Blackboard as a vehicle for the assignments as well as their content - and I am by no means a blackboard expert.
After the panel, all six of the speakers participated in a free-for-all question and answer session, which I have to say was VERY ably moderated by Robert Hulshof-Schmidt from the State Library. I don’t know what makes some moderators very effective and others … not so much. He was definitely in the first category, though.
All in all, I enjoyed Menucha every bit as much as people told me I would and I expect I will return in two years. Lots of people who are not me took pictures - you can see them on Flickr - tag = menucha06.
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