ACRL, batting .500

I submitted two poster session abstracts to ACRL for the upcoming conference in Seattle; one with a friend and a second with co-workers. Today I learned that one was accepted and one rejected. I'm used to rejection from ACRL, it's a smaller conference than ALA and there are a fewer amount of posters accepted. Acceptance and rejection are all part of professional development, something which should be understood by anyone submitting articles, posters and/or presentations. That said, I found the content of each email interesting.

First, the acceptance. After the "congratulations your proposal has been accepted" and further information pertaining to particulars was:

"Thank you for submitting your proposal for the ACRL 14th National Conference. It is through the efforts of individuals such as yourself that ACRL is able to meet its strategic goal of being a national and international leader in creating, expanding, and transferring the body of knowledge of academic librarianship. "

Very nice. A bit PR heavy, but nice none the less (and I don't mean that in a snarky way, it is nice to be appreciated).

The non-acceptance message was twice as long:

"The Poster Session Committee has completed the review and selection process. It is with regret that let you know your proposal ... was not chosen for presentation. The selection process was an exceptionally difficult one this year. We received more than 300 proposal submissions for the 150 available slots and many fine proposals could not be accepted."

"Thank you for submitting your work to ACRL and your interest in the National Conference. Although you may be understandably disappointed that your proposal was not accepted for the conference, please do not consider this a negative evaluation of the quality of your work, but rather an indication of the volume and quality of the proposals submitted. We look forward to seeing your work published or presented in another forum and hope that you will still join us at the ACRL 14th National Conference in Seattle."

Wow! Again, as with the acceptance, this was a very nice email and I appreciated the prompt notification. I know there is often a great deal of vocal unhappiness when presentations are not accepted, but is it really necessary to have such a carefully worded rejection? I would have been satisfied with simple notice that my poster had not been selected. I am not unhappy with the longer message, but wonder why so much?

Now it's time to start saving money ...

Alas, no poster(s) for me

In January I sumbitted two poster session abstracts for ALA Annual in Anaheim; one session highlighted the library web site redesign process, the second session was submitted with a cohort and detailed our library chat service (start to finish with statistics). We were to learn our submission proposal fate on or before March 31st, today. Since in previous years I had acceptance email messages a week or so prior to the deadline, I was not overly surprised to receive the following late this afternoon:

"Thank you for submitting a poster session proposal for the 2008 American Library Association Conference in Anaheim, CA. The review panel has completed the review and selection process. It is with regret that we inform you your proposal, was not selected for presentation at the conference. This year the quality of the proposals was unusually high, and we received double the number of applications as we have spaces."

"We hope you will consider presenting your work in another forum or in a professional publication."

Unfortunately my presentation partner, lead contact for the second submission, received and forwarded the same message later in the afternoon. As a result, no presentations for me in Anaheim. I am not particulary looking forward to this CA conference (in fact I have yet to register), but presenting always makes it worthwhile.

There are other options for both of these session topics, the least of which is a state conference proposal due at the end of this week. I am more interested in writing about these topics than presenting them, so I may be looking around for additional publishing opportunities.

One baby step closer

This morning I had an email from the assistant editor of the journal I submitted my ALA poster session article to for publication regarding copyright information for submitters and release form/permission form needing a necessary signature (mine!) prior to publication. Actually, this is the article they contacted me and asked me to write (VI still can't get over that). I have been reminding myself for the last six weeks that invitation to submit does not mean acceptance, especially in a peer-reviewed journal, and that the last article I had published took over six months to go from acceptance to publication. Ugh.

Not to mention the six to eight months it has been since I had two articles potentially accepted for publication in a book (so much for not mentioning, hmmm?). I last heard from the editor of this particular project was in May 07 notifying contributors that the project had been shipped and her publishers "guidelines say most books are published within 9-15 months from the time the manuscript is received." That means I have until February of 2008 before I begin obsessing about it's time table. But, once again, I digress.

As the time to submit my second article, the more in-depth offering about my blogging poster session, draws closer, I admit to curiosity regarding the status of the first article. It was a relief to be asked today to complete and sign the necessary forms, scan them, and forward them via email or fax ... especially when the email began "With regard to publishing your conference report." I am now cautiously optimistic the article has been accepted. I am also probably disproportionately excited because it is an international journal. When I finish with the second blogging article, there may be interest in the professional blogs I am currently involved with writing (both alone and in collaboration).

Who says presenting at ALA is the last thing you will ever do with an accepted poster session? I never dreamed to have this chance. Now, I am wracking my brain to come up with a topic for ALA in San Diego this summer. Maybe the library web page re-design and/or the faculty learning community I am involved with will fit the bill. I am still finding it a bit difficult to find my niche as an academic librarian who is not actively involved with bibliographic instruction (reference) and/or technical services.

It's appropriate

I have been furiously working on completing my article, an invited conference report based upon one of my ALA poster sessions for a journal, before tomorrow. Several days of dragging my computer home from work (it's easier to plop in front of the television than barricade myself in my home office) and not working - as well as several evenings of dragging my computer home and accomplishing a paragraph or two have resulted in, consertively speaking, completing half of my article. What's causing issue today is learning how to use Harvard Style; the journal requires citations in this format.

I have learned that Harvard Style is also referred to as author-date style and "widely accepted in academic publications, although you may see a number of variations in the way it is used" (Monash University Library). Interestingly enough, most of the sites I found with tutorials and examples were from Australian and United Kingdom libraries.

• Harvard Style - UseIt
  Queensland, Australia
• Leeds University Library
  United Kingdom
• Curtin University of Technology
  Western Australia
• USQ Austrailia University Library
  Australia

I have been able to decipher the language differences (spelling, etc) and complete my bibliography. However, I must admit to being a bit stymied with the in publication citation method and have printed out several different handouts for assistance; praise be for libraries and their citation tutorials. With the writing deadline, my procrastination, and my obsession with having things be "just write" before submission, I chuckled this morning seeing a Blogthings quiz on grammar.

You Scored an A

It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Tags: ALA Poster Session, Academic publishing, Harvard Style, Blogthing

Brownie bribery

It was a hodgepodge day in academic library land as we close in on the finish line for the first four-week summer session. Students were frantically printing brochures for class, in color no less, and preparing final project power point presentations. As usual during end of term madness, most of my reference questions were technology related; can you help me download music (no) and why is my presentation burned on a CD-RW appearing as "read only" (it shouldn't).

During this time a friend of mine is conducting inventory on the juvenile books, she works in technical services and wants to finish this particular chore before the students return in a couple of months. Yesterday I mentioned needing to shelve the books on my new bookshelf. Today she shelved both bookcases of old "new" books, hence the brownies. Technically it was not a bribe when she volunteered for the task, but the time she saved me was priceless. Her well-earned reward was a gooey (her request) chocolate brownie with icing and nuts (ick).

Everyone has particular library talents, mine is NOT shelving, at least not if you want to find the books when I have finished. This same wonderful friend, and I'm not being snide or snarky, brought me a nice pile of book slips, purchasing information from B & T the cataloger gives us when books are added to the collection. My relief was palpable. I was concerned the last three entries on my resource center blog were going to be hour's updates. Wouldn't that look lovely for someone viewing the blog for a first time? I was able to add several entries this morning consisting of juvenile fiction, juvenile literature, juvenile biographies, and graphic novels. Sure I will still need to do an hour's update when leaving for ALA and my subsequent vacation, but viable posts will bookend the information.

I finished the web page/handout this afternoon, found a good buy on CD's (100 for $30) and laser printer labels during a lunch errand, and began burning the items on CD's while designing the label. In the midst of this undertaking my boss arrives and asks if I might happen to have a copy of an article I gave him several months ago from American Libraries; and if not, could I find it for him before I left for the day? He wants to give it to someone at a meeting. At this point I would like to brag and discuss how efficient I am at my job, but in all honesty I got lucky by using the ALA web site to browse issue covers (I'm very visual). I found the article(s) in question and printed them in color for, ahem, brownie points. Unfortunately that means I still have CD's to burn tomorrow morning and labels to apply as I check each and every CD for usability. But, the end is near and I vow not to procrastinate should I get sessions accepted next year.

Before I forget, the aforementioned book slips mean I will have new children's books to peruse at my leisure soon. At least I will be able to forage them for potential usage in an upcoming Mock Caldecott session this fall.

Plan ahead ... at least when I am not procrastinating

Tags: Academic library, Summer in academic libraries, ALA poster sessions

Posters or handouts?

It's a bit of a conundrum, which is more important, the poster or the accompanying handouts? As a viewer of poster sessions I spend time looking at the completed project and then quickly grab handouts I can refer to at my leisure. Chances of remembering points from every session that interests me are slim ... and none, so I rely on good handouts. Previously posted poster glee aside, I am now working on crafting cd's (easier to cart on the plane than paper handouts) for people who visit my poster session(s).


I finished the blog poster CD today; it's a single web page that includes all of the text and scaled down images from the poster as well as a webliography of links to the counters, widgets, and blog sites discussed. Naturally I had to create a web page header, design a CD label, and burn the CD's. Beyond that I checked each CD's usability (found one dud), muttered at a computer with an excessively slow CD/DVD drive, and centered labels on each CD. Luckily the muttering commenced this morning when traffic was slight in the resource center and I had students commiserating with my plight. Actually, the students in question asked me to burn them a CD so they could see the project at a later date. But, I digress.


The collaborative conference poster session CD is fifty percent completed and I will probably need to purchase additional CD-R's and labels to finish the project. Deciding how many CD's to burn and bring is another issue fraught with guesswork; I would rather run out of CD's than have too many. My main concern with the second poster session is the archived web page from the conference. When discussing the web page option we asked how long the page would remain on the university's server after the conference was over. The answer was indefinitely, but who's definition of "indefinite" will be adhered to is the question. I can say with authority that as of today the site remains and I am reasonably sure it will be live at least through the summer session.

Tomorrow I will finish the project and only have to burn a few CD's Really. Tuesday grades are due. I have a vacation day Wednesday to pack and prepare (I think) and I fly out Thursday. Where has the month of June gone?

Update - next morning: I forgot to mention my fruitless journey to locate CD labels . First the university book store, then a local drug/convenience store and finally the hated WalMart in town. Zip. Nada. Tell me why a huge super WalMart (gag) would have every type of CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-R and not have CD Labels? Today I'll go to the only office supply store in town and hope for the best. Otherwise I won't be finished until Monday.

Tags: ALA, ALA Annual Conference, Poster sessions, Poster session preparation

They're here! They're here!

My posters were delivered this morning and they are beautiful! In between meetings to finalize budget expenditures for the end of the current fiscal year I have been annoying all asunder by asking if they want to see my posters.

Some did .... other's graciously declined (smile).

I am waiting for my boss to see the finished product before gleefully rolling them up and placing them in the traveling tube. This week I have to prepare something for handouts and probably should take a look at conference offerings, print out directions to the airport, and verify a few travel necessities. But right now, I'm positively gleeful at the completion of my posters.

Off to see the wizard

Technically, I have just returned from seeing the wizard; turning in my poster(s) to the print shop on campus for processing. Two hours this morning combined with three hours last night in front of the television (Deal, or No Deal because Dancing with the Stars is over and season two of Eureka has yet to begin), provided me ample time for creating and setting necessary graphics in place for my second poster, conference collaboration.

I struggled somewhat with developing the second poster. After reviewing my abstract I briefly wondered how I would fill the space with enough information to make it plausible and enough graphics to make it visually appealing to attendees. A quick look at the conference web page, still archived on the university server (indefinitely, I hope), provided the answer in the conference photo gallery. The middle of my poster has images from the conference; the left side depicts the web page (my lovely creation) and technology information; the right side details attendee evaluation; and the last section reveals "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of the entire conference project. Since I am often fickle concerning my creations, my current favorite poster is the most recent one.

Creating these posters in Publisher has given me an opportunity to learn more about what this software is capable of doing. I especially liked the horizontal and vertical floating document guides that allowed me to align various textual and graphical elements regardless of where they appeared on the page. I now have a week or so to convert the poster presentations into something viable to burn on CD and use as handouts.

An aside: I just had a student tell me I was "brilliant!" I don't even mind that she may be a bit misguided. I will simply bask in the knowledge that for a short time this afternoon someone thought I was brilliant.

Tags: ALA conference, Poster sessions

Visually appealing or busy

It took most of the day but I finished the blog poster for my session at ALA. I managed and micromanaged the placement of images (all aligned just so and equal in size), inserted the desired text, and continuously reminded myself of the importance of white space within the poster. I ran a spell check, always important and potentially awkward, and created the PDF that will go to the campus print shop tomorrow. I am satisfied with the finished product and have made the timely transition from striving for brilliance to settling for not embarrassing myself.

Short of yesterday's timetable, finishing one poster before lunch, I brought home my laptop to work on the second poster this evening; it needs to be finished by 3:00 pm at the latest. Once the posters are completed, I will be able to create short PowerPoint presentations and handouts to burn to CD detailing the poster. It is simpler to travel with CD's than it is to haul paper handouts on the airplane.

Why the seemingly arbitrary deadline of 3:00 pm? I am leaving for a two-day board retreat Thursday morning and have yet to file my reports, print the necessary documents for the meeting, MapQuest directions to the retreat location, and compile the resulting printouts. I have volunteered for additional responsibilities for a year (it's official, I've lost my mind) and need to prepare for that transition as well. All of these things are important to me both personally and professionally, but some days the juggler gets a workout.

Tags: ALA conference, Poster Sessions, Academic Library Association

Posters & procrastination

While grading assignments this morning I was lamenting (on the inside) the number of students who have yet to submit a significant amount of work for a project due next Friday. As I placed, and replaced, images and text to a poster presentation this afternoon, I admit I appreciated the subtle irony of personal procrastination for a task with a self-imposed due date of Wednesday afternoon. Some things just never change.

Poster Update: I am three-quarters finished with my library blog poster presentation and have finished both poster headers (1 ft by 8 ft). I enjoy creating poster sessions, but freely admit to spending an inordinate amount of time determining color palette, graphic placement, and visual literacy elements. Poster sessions are a visual medium, but content should not be deemed a secondary character in the story being displayed. To prepare for content I developed a detailed outline from my session abstract and will be able to insert text tomorrow with some ease. Piecing together the poster I am finding the challenge is viewing the whole project (3 ft by 8 ft sans header) on screen for placement and at 25% to inspect individual pieces and parts. Which is better, the forest or the trees?

Tags: Poster session, ALA conference

Two-a-days

No, this is not going to be a post about football practice, even though the Steelers are holding mini-camps as I type. This will eventually be a post with two short picture book reviews after I bemoan my avid use of draft; blogger post draft. Recently, the blogger post draft option has become my friend. As I write this post I have two book discussions/reviews sitting in draft format waiting to be published and a third I am thinking about. The interesting thing about using draft is that no matter when I finally publish the items, the draft date is the one that posts with the information. So even though it appears I have not posted in two days, when the drafts become live I will have.

After discussing poster session options with the university print shop on Friday, I am almost ready to begin drafting poster layout ideas in Microsoft Publisher. Since the campus printer can handle print jobs ups to 38 inches in width, I will be able to do two banners (each 12 inches) and two posters (each 36 inches) and meet the 4 x 8 requirement for poster sessions. Printing the banner/title/headers on one 8 foot section and having them cut in half will save me at least $45 in printing costs. Armed with that information I was thinking about the screen shots I will be using (posters are a visual medium) and considering the quality of jpgs necessary to create from said screen shots two small, yet niggling, details pushed themselves into the forefront.

Much to my chagrin I have a seriously dated blog. My plan to review a new juvenile book each week derailed in February, as noted by the absence of reviews after February 12th. Additionally, I had yet to transfer the same book review blog over to new blogger so I could take advantage of the labeling option. Friday afternoon I migrated over to the "new" blogger and cleaned up several posts. And today I did two book reviews which served the dual purpose of adding to the blog and removing books from my reading shelf. That brings me to the two-a-day post title and the following two juvenile book reviews.

Courage of the Blue Boy by Robert Neubecker has been a recent favorite. It discusses culture and race differences without preaching a message; so much so that it could easily be a read-aloud without any follow-up discussion on children being different. However, that would be a mistake. Blue Boy's world is completely blue and the other places he visits are equally saturated in monochromtic tones. These choices make the colorful world more visually appealing and interesting.

Blue boy and Polly, his calf, live in a land where everything, including them, is blue. They dream of seeing other places of colors and travel to lands of yellow, purple, orange, red, pink, and green. Blue and Polly feel oddly out of place in each as the only thing blue, but soon arrive in a wondrous multi-colored city. It fills them with joy until they notice once again they are the only blue thing. Gathering his courage, Blue decides to add his own hues to the city so it will represent all colors and but enable him to remain true to self. In doing so, “He wasn’t just blue anymore. He was every color of the world.” Vibrant illustrations, done on watercolor paper and colorized by computer, are saturated with color making Blue and Polly starkly noticeable on the landscape when visiting each land. This book is a nice introduction to multiculturalism for youngsters and would be suitable for discussions regarding courage and self worth.

Today's second title is Winston the Book Wolf, written by Marni McGee and illustrated by Ian Beck. Some of the supporting characters presented in this tale may slip by readers; the three little pigs outside the library and a food cart operator who looks suspiciously like Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy fame, but it will not detract from the overall appeal of the book.

In this fractured tale Winston Wolf has somewhat of a different appetite; instead of Little Red Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs, he favors books to eat. One day, after a particularly disruptive trip to the library, a young girl named Rosie (aptly dressed in a red jacket with a hood) tricks Winston into leaving the library and shows him a better way to feed his hunger for books. “You do not have to chew on a book to taste the wonderful words inside. Words taste even better when you eat them with your eyes!” Fluid text placement illustrates Winston devouring his new treats and soon, with Rosie’s help, a clever plan to return to the library is revealed. Book design, along with pastel toned illustrations, echoes Winston’s healthy appetite as bites are taken out of the cover, various text blocks within the book, and an assortment of page borders throughout the tale. Readers will enjoy finding other cleverly placed fairy tale characters as they follow Winston’s adventure.

Tags: Winston the Book Wolf, Courage of the Blue Boy, Robert Neubecker, Ian Beck, Marni McGee, Picture books, Juvenile fiction

Last day of classes

Friday was the last day of classes for the spring 2007 semester. While we still need to officially survive finals week, always an interesting endeavor, the tide begins to change in the library and on campus very quickly as spring leaves and the summer term begins; the last day of finals is Thursday, students are out of the dorms Friday, graduation is Saturday, and Monday is the first day of summer I classes. It is continuously amusing when students ask what I do all summer when they are not here (we work a 12 month contract).

For the record, summer is not all that different from the rest of the year. There are students on campus all summer because the university has a large summer program for education majors. My hours remain the same (8 am to 5 pm), but since instead of a full contingency of people working in the resource center, myself, two graduate assistants, and ten to twelve student workers, there is just me. That means hours availability is significantly less as I attend various workshops, conferences, and use vacation time. Next week I travel to the Cincinnati area for a workshop. As opposed to last year when the spring workshop was near Dayton, I paid attention to the location and made sure to make a hotel reservation the evening before. I will be driving down Thursday evening, attending the workshop on Friday, and returning home that evening. No three hours in a car, a full day at a workshop, and three more hours in a car for me. Do you know how early you have to get up to be ready to drive three hours for an 8:30 am workshop (she asks facetiously)?

I have made inquiries of campus printing services concerning my posters for the ALA conference next month. After last year's challenge, I will definitely plan better this year and hope not to have an overabundance of pink on my posters (it should have been purple). I am tempted to share a snotty email response from a print shop person regarding that issue, but will take the high road and make due with the simple mention. So fair warning; as there were many, many, many posts on web page redesign, there will now be many, many posts on creating the poster session for ALA.

Finals, here we come.

ALA, Posters, and Expedia (oh, my)

Good news came last week in the form of not one, but two acceptances for ALA poster sessions I submitted in January. University funding for conferences, professional development grants, is tied to presenting as opposed to only attending, therefore the good news was also a fiscal relief. Early bird registration ended several weeks before session acceptance and/or denial were slated to arrive. What are the topics? One poster is on a successful library and college of education conference collaboration we held at the university last spring and the other is on different library blogs I am currently using both in the resource center and for professional development.

A quick aside: It is interesting to me that the ACRL committee rejected these topics, yet ALA accepted them. I would hazard a guess that the longer ALA conference has more poster session time slots, a larger pool of poster applicants, and a wider variety of needs to be met (academic, school, public, etc.). I would be interested to see the statistics for acceptances and applications on both. But, as advertised, I digress.

The most exciting part for me, beyond the conference money and presenting of course, is I have plenty of time to design and polish these presentations. Unlike last year's ALA conference when several conference gods were laughing as I had a session accepted, then had to decline due to the roaming gnomes travel plans, only to have a last minute chance at presenting after all with only a week to prepare. Last year I went from wanting to be brilliant ... to settling for not wanting to embarrass myself. This year I am going to plan more diligently (not to mention earlier) and set reasonable goals for the sessions.

Flush with the good news, I had already placed my travel plans on Expedia with hopes of acceptance for at least one of my proposed posters, I was thrilled (sarcasm alert) to see an email message from Expedia arrive over the weekend. After much dithering about choosing an airline and airport, all the flights out of Columbus flew from Columbus to Cleveland before departing to BWI, I went with Continental Airlines and Cleveland Hopkins. My joy was complete as both flights were non-stop at reasonable times. Hesitant to hear the flight news, I put off calling until this evening. Praise be, the only change was in departure times; instead of 7:35 am it is now 8:45 am.

Now I am editing this post while going in to the next room to see my favorite couples on Dancing with the Stars. It is now officially after 9:00 pm and my evening and weekend minutes are reading and waiting my vote. So far my favorites are Ian and Cheryl and Apolo and his partner (her name escapes me).

Tags: ALA, ALA poster session, Travel & Expedia

Posters, posters, ready to go

I picked up my complete posters from graphic arts yesterday and am mostly pleased with the results. It is great to be going to New Orleans with professionally produced works, but I'm not as thrilled with the color outcome as I expected to be. Most of the purple came out pink and the word art is brown instead of black. Luckily, all of the screen shots and text box items are true to color making the overall effect work. I wonder if there was a way to set the printer to print "as displayed on screen" and therefore giving me the correct color match. It's something to consider should we use this for other posters in the library. I'm ready to roll the laminated posters and put them in the cardboard tube for their flight. All of the CD's were burned, sans auto play, and the web page created will work well.

Ready or not ...