Our perspectives and how we think form the “lens” through which we view the world and situations. It goes without saying that our “lens” vastly determines how we move forward, the solutions we select, and the decisions we make. In today’s complex world we’re often faced with abstruse situations, so the ability to adjust our lens to view the situation strategically and critically is vital. With 30 years in corporate and academic environments in information services, HR, IT, education, and consulting with clients in libraries, knowledge management, and support services, Jones discusses techniques and tips for taking the long, horizontal, and vertical view of situations, thinking critically without being “critical” or condemning, ensuring the right problem or decision is being discussed, and more.

With veterans, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Millenials all in the work force, academic libraries today can have up to five generations working in them. Add to this the complication of rapidly changing technology and workflows, increased and morphing user demands, and economic stress, and managers may find themselves in a quandary trying to please everyone. Harris discusses managing multiple generations in the academic library in light of massive technology and user expectation changes, using the example of UTC’s recent ILS migration to highlight how you can create synergies among differing work styles and attitudes and build effective teams with your diverse staff. She highlights how managing workflow changes entails handling changes in technology, expectations of staff performance, and user expectations and discusses dealing with staff stress and reluctance to change.

The first presentation provides tips on how to advocate effectively for the library, whether persuading, educating, or informing. Persuasion is particularly important in times of organizational change and uncertainty. At the pivotal persuasion moment, when your career depends on the difference between “no” and “yes,” you need more than expertise in your functional area to effectively communicate your idea, so hear about natural persuasion styles and positive steps to gain influence, credibility, and confidence. King discusses getting permission to be successful and to get things done. He talks about the kind of organization that encourages success and innovation, some reasons you might have difficulty getting permission, and what you can do about it. Join our speakers and learn their secrets for accomplishing initiatives that resonate with both clients and staff.

With the rise of learning commons and collaboration laboratories (COLABs), people are using space differently in order to engage in learning. Rather than a third place as defined by Ray Oldenburg, these fourth places are becoming where people go to participate in specific learning activities. Signorelli discusses the difference between third and fourth places, and how this learning fourth place is different than the library settings we’re used to creating. Coleman and Hurst-Wahl outline how a library can create a fourth place using existing or recycled space (e.g., shipping containers) as well as the library services and resources that would support fourth place activities. Included is an interaction brainstorm about partnerships the libraries can pursue in order to bring this vision to reality.

Countless hours are spent on strategic planning by organizations, and the need to show a return on that investment is growing stronger. This session looks at planning from before and after. Kreymer discusses how to lead effectively by creating a strategic vision, a set of guiding principles, that helps an IT librarian recognize and take advantage of opportunities. If your technology decisions are based on today’s needs, you are bound to fall behind. Your vision will help you to provide your library with consistent and reliable IT leadership and its application in everyday decisionmaking; promoting it among your colleagues will shape your library’s IT future. Simpson & Froslid-Jones present a case study of how American University implemented universitywide assessment tracking software and the challenges associated with aligning institutional goals with library objectives both practically and politically. Hear practical advice on determining what criteria is useful when choosing an enterprise assessment management system, how to implement it, and the benefits and challenges to working with assessment software.

We live in a world of constant survey-taking for just about every kind of opinion, product or idea. Some matter more than others, and some are better than others. For info pros, none matter as much as the most reliable gauge—faculty information use—as well as faculty impressions of library services. Huwe presents an overview of the most influential surveys of U.S. faculty and summarizes how the surveying agencies perceive their results. But rather than stop with what the “experts” say, he moves beyond the “key findings,” posing his own questions and looking for clues that can help info pros devise strategies that succeed—whatever the surveys claim.

Not many libraries have library websites designed with usability in mind, and as a result, usability issues often come up during the website redesign process. As Jakob Nielson, well-known web usability guru, remarked, anybody can do usability reasonably well with a bit of training. Speakers provide a guide to help librarians and library staff quickly discern and improve major usability issues in a short time utilizing usability heuristics and testing methods. They cover: common mistakes and pitfalls, planning and conducting usability testing, usability toolkits, and other resources.

This session looks at a whole suite of low-cost and free tools for library content developers and webmasters, especially those that help analyze how users are interacting with websites and social media so that improvements can enhance user experience. Pack your toolbox and take away some useful programs to use in your own library. Speakers include a number of tools such as Google Analytics, search analysis, site monitoring, and more. All can be used to inform the design process and generate data to create a road map.

Libraries traditionally have created collections by organizing access to information, and YouTube has a way to organize user-created videos into collections as well. It can be a daunting task to create and post original videos in YouTube. However, YouTube playlists can easily be used as a means to organize access to videos created by others in much the same way librarians use collection development for library materials. Walford covers how to create a YouTube channel and playlists, how to select videos made by other YouTube users to populate your library’s playlists, the various types of YouTube accounts, channel set-up and customization, and site maintenance. The second presentation provides concrete recommendations on how to improve the online user experience for researchers. Using the Archives of American Art, a research center at the Smithsonian Institution, Botten and Snyder discuss how user-centered design methods can be used to inform more intuitive design of online catalogs and websites for any kind of collections driven organization.

Organizations are great at starting new online projects ... and then letting them quickly die. Do you know how to plan, sustain, and set goals for an online project? This session describes the planning processes used by several different libraries—how they plan, create strategy, get buy-in, and sustain a social media project.

Murphy kicks off the day with an overall picture of the current landscape, trends, and challenges of mobile technology impacting libraries followed by the hottest topic in mobile tech—location. It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. Location is the trend in mobile technology this year, making waves with Foursquare, Facebook Places, and local discovery. This session reveals how proximity is a gauge of interest, explores the hyperrelevancy of place, considers the shifting concept of privacy in the world of oversharing, and shows clearly just how location as a mobile trend matters to libraries. Still don’t “get” Foursquare? Hear what experts Bishop and Clark have to say about library location-based social networks and why libraries cannot ignore their social location. Bishop explains what locationbased mobile applications are and gives some fresh ideas on how we can use them in libraries. Clark says the question of interest is “Where are you?” and helps us survey and build location-aware library apps.

From the basics of mobile technology to creating mobile catalogs and mobile websites, this session covers major topics of applying mobile technology to library settings, providing the what/why/how for beginners and experts to get to the next level. Ciocco and Howard give us the lowdown on creating mobile websites to match patron needs, marketing them, and assessing the results that are full of ideas, tools, and practical examples. Griggs introduces us to the options, evaluations, best practices, and recommendations of mobile catalogs. Chang walks us through building a mobile website with Drupal and provides lots of tips and tricks.

A mobile bridge between the physical world and digital information, QR codes offer seemingly endless promise for libraries entering the mobile datasphere. This session introduces QR codes and their many possible information applications, exploring the practical considerations and challenges of using QR codes in information settings. Pressley highlights case examples of how QR codes are being implemented within libraries and helps us learn step-by-step how to introduce them in our own information centers.   Gilbertson will discuss how to use analytics to determine the usefulness and custom services built around QR Codes.  Lutz and Clark explore implementing QR codes in an academic setting using practical examples that include adding QR codes with embedded URLs to research guides and library stacks. King tells us about an exciting QR code scavenger hunt in his community.

As libraries develop a mobile presence, it is key that this presence be user-friendly. Usability testing of standard websites is something libraries have experience with, but testing and evaluating mobile is new to many of us. This session provides all the information needed to make it usable as you make it mobile. Wisniewski explores the usability considerations in designing mobile sites and the special considerations inherent in testing for mobile as well as specific ways to test and gather feedback from our mobile users.

Mobile applications for smart phones represent powerful platforms for a mobile library presence. In this session hear about some of the ticks, tips,and approaches for leveraging apps in our library settings. Roalsen and Livergood discuss building community in a mobile world with apps for children and families and illustrates with a unique case study showing how one small public library used mobile devices to enhance their community engagement. Zetterlund shares experiences in developing smartphone applications for library services across platforms, some of the business models, and rollout possibilities. Come see what is possible.

With the swelling number of digital items in today’s library collections, including both items that have been digitized and those “born” digital, the continued accessibility of electronic files within those collections is of increasing concern. Whether you have a robust IT department schooled in digital preservation or no IT support at all, it is critical to know about migrating file formats for long-term access. This session discusses ways to incorporate file format migration into a digital preservation strategy to help move into the realm of long-term access, includes details of migration testing using open source tools, what speakers have learned about the various transformations, and what changes they plan for workflow based on this testing. Join them and other content managers in the audience to ensure long-term access to digital materials for our communities.

Whether you call it linked data, Web 3.0, or the semantic web, the next generation of web technologies is reaching maturity. With major search engines, media outlets, and national governments backing the W3C standard, the semantic web is poised to change the way we think about information discovery. Core themes of metadata, collaboration, and interoperability make linked data a natural philosophical match for libraries. Although semantic web standards are quite complex, the linked data vision offers compelling solutions to some of our major challenges such as precise web search, authority control, classification, data portability, and disambiguation, as well as offering intriguing partnership opportunities within the library community and the wider world. This talk outlines some of the benefits that linked data could have for libraries and their user communities, discusses some of the obstacles we face in moving forward, and offers suggestions for practical ways in which libraries can par-

Our panel discusses institutional repository design, technologies, processes, and practices at each of their organizations. They share challenges, lessons learned, and future plans for those contemplating creating their own repository.

Collection is the beginning of a preservation strategy for user-generated content in the digital world. This session discusses strategies for collecting “born digital” content from the web, making it accessible with metadata, highlights work being done by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress, including the Twitter archive project.

Using initiative and patience, a microfiche scanner printer, ADOBE 9, and Photoshop, the Wirtz Labor Library is providing reference, adding to its digital library and saving its deteriorating microforms. This panel addresses how the project started and how they approached the solution, and discusses the equipment and software used and the results achieved. They share how the finished product, copies of historic labor papers, added value to a growing digital library and the lessons learned along the way.

Hear the experiences of a public library using Second Life and an academic library using Facebook to manage courses and engage learners. Paterek discusses how a public library uses different locations and avatars in 3D simulation to facilitate learning and provides examples of virtual classrooms using PowerPoint presentations, live simulations, chat, computer voice applications, and virtual reality. Czech went to the students at Wayne State University with a Facebook group to manage a Productive Tools course. The students relied on the group to access course materials and to communicate with the instructor. Students also worked in groups to develop Pages to market a library, a library program course, or information-science-based business. Czech highlights the pros and cons of using Facebook for course management and identifies enhancements necessary for its widespread use as a course delivery system.

Getting large-scale information-literacy instruction online has challenged libraries for years. The instruction librarians at Ferris State University knew Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT) was showing its age, but its outdated technology made it difficult to update. Their brand-new tutorial, PILOT 2.0, uses free, open source technology with an interface for even nonprogrammers to create and edit interactive lessons, and has high strategic value. The Washburn University Libraries have used a 21st-century information-literacy program to return to the center of the academic experience. They discuss the strategic planning and politics, the assessment involved, and demonstrate the success of the program as it relates to both student achievement and the Libraries’ place.

This powerful panel of practitioners share their experiences in using podcasting and other technologies for all kinds of learning supports. Hear how to use podcasting, wikis, blogs and you name it for class assignments, communications, developing blended learning approaches, and creating content as well as other tools, such as Clickers (student response systems) to obtain instant feedback and engage your learners.

When the Kansas library community participated in a statewide 23 Things program in 2010, it opened up a new way to look at learning virtually, especially for encouraging librarians to continue their learning after the structured program’s end. Through their Passport to Learning, Braum and Hickey show how to enrich the virtual learning experience. Burns looks at how Nebraska’s 23 Things online program has evolved, its strengths, challenges and “what’s next.” Alcorn describes working with individual libraries and regional library support systems across Iowa, offering training on some of the “things” that encompass Web 2.0 for libraries. Together our speakers identify lots of options for creating a successful program.

Literacy isn’t just about the ability to read and write. To be an active participant in today’s society, people need to be “transliterate” across all media. This session explains why transliteracy is important and how libraries are critically positioned to help people develop this competency in school, university, and public library environments.