The Librarians Assembly held its Fall 2018 Professional Development Day last week in the Jones Room. Scheduled twice a year in the spring and fall, the Professional Development Day is an opportunity for librarians and LITS staff to present on topics related to their professional development in a short, lightning-round format. Forum presentation topics include summaries of presentations given, papers written, projects completed, conferences attended, and updates on current research.

Here were this session’s presentations:

Sarah Quigley: Ms. Quigley Goes to Washington: Lessons in Legislative Advocacy from Archives on the Hill

Sarah Quigley spoke about “Archives on the Hill,” an event she organized that was sponsored by the Society of American Archivists.  The event was held the day before the annual meeting in Washington, DC and combined the efforts of SAA, NAGARA, and COSA to create an opportunity for archivist and librarians to meet with staffers from congressional and senate offices. This event didn’t focus on any concrete legislation, but instead was used to build relationships. Sixty members participated in the event, which was proceeded by the creation of an advocacy guide and fact sheets authored by the three organizations.

Kim Collins: Leading your Professional Organization: Tales from ARLIS/NA

Kim Collins reflected on her leadership position over the past year as vice president – and the start of her term as president – of ARLIS.  She discussed the responsibilities, which included communication with membership, appointing new leaders, and setting agendas, and explained her approach in enhancing each of those goals. She explained her use of technology in creating videos to further engage communication, adding more content to the webpage, and working with new members to encourage participation. She also worked on a leadership institute program and organized a more active strategic planning committee to create practical programs from discussions.

Peter Shirts: Better than crystal ball (presenting this week at SEMLA) in Tallahassee

Peter Shirts gave an abbreviated talk on the presentation to be given at SEMLA. His talk focused on creating a quantitative plan for creating collection policy and looked to both circulation and ILL statistics to see what is currently being used from the collection and what patrons are interested in outside our holdings.

Laura Ackerman: Linked Data Summer: 5 conferences/2 webinars

Laura Ackerman related what she learned from five conferences she attended this summer: Code4Lib, ELUNA, ALA, IGeKU, and show and tells. She explained that she attends conferences to learn from other colleagues; discover the “hot topics;” inform others on what Emory is doing; and network to see what has changed, what should change, and how we can work together. Hot topics at these conferences included interoperability and open access, Esploro, and Bibframe. Laura presented on API and ALMA but claimed there was not a lot of interest.

ACRL Immersion: Peter Shirts, Lolita Rowe, Courtney Baron

Peter Shirts, Lolita Rowe and Courtney Baron attended ACRL Immersion. The program was different this year as there were no tracks, but the participants were randomly assigned cohorts, and a final product was a design rationale. Each day focused on a topic and was divided up between conversation or activity. The cohort was able to discuss options and work on tasks together. Learning outcomes included concept design, understanding by design, critical reflective practice, and leadership concept. Each participant had their own project that implemented these ideas. At the conclusion of the talk, Peter, Lolita, and Courtney mentioned that other participants brought up the idea of tackling diversity and were impressed with the program designer’s flexibility in allowing for space to talk about this topic in the course of the program.