Author: Michael C. Habib

Virtual Reference Desk Conference in San Francisco


I just got back from the VRD conference. It was at the Airport Hyatt in San Francisco. It was my first visit to San Francisco and, despite the awkward location, I had a number of chances to visit the city. I made it down to Fisherman’s wharf (sea lions, and crab dinner) and North Beach (lots of coffee and City Light Books). Visiting City Light Books was cool as I had recently gotten a tour of the Beat exhibit surrounding the Keroauc scroll during Leslie’s visit. I also went to the Mission district for dinner a couple of times and got to visit Haight St. There is a Gap on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I thought that was weird.

I enjoyed the conference. It was more focused than either the ALA or ACRL conferences I have been too, so I got a chance to talk to a number of like minded librarians. I volunteered as a conference assistant. Two of the speakers I got to introduce were Virtual Dave and Eileen Abels.

Leslie Burger’s visit…

…was very successful. About 20 students attended the brown bag lunch at the Health Sciences Library. Leslie also had time to meet with Sarah Michalak (University Librarian), Dr. Griffiths (our Dean), and Rebecca Vargha (SILS Librarian and President-elect of the ALA. About 90 people showed up for Leslie’s talk (“Transforming Libraries for the 21 st Century: A Call to Action”) and about 45 stayed after the reception for the panel (“Uniting Education and Practice: Preparing Students for Tomorrow’s Workforce”). The press release for the event is located here. A .pdf flyer is also available. We got a digital video recording of the whole event, and took a lot of photos. I will post again when they are available.

Communty Workshop Series

I have been teaching a few classes a month on such topics as internet basics and computer basics at the local public libraries as part of the Community Workshop Series, which is a collaborative venture between the University Librarie’s and the local public libraries. Since we started this program last fall I have designed two courses based off my past experience working as a reference technician at the Northborough Free Library in Central Massachusetts. This morning there were 11 attendees to my “Creating a Resume in Microsoft Word” Workshop, which is the best turnout I have yet had for this one. Hopefully things continue to grow. A few weeks ago we got some press and at least one person from the class I taught a few weeks ago had found out from the paper. Hopefully things continue to pick up.