Boot Camp Day 1

It was one event packed day...

Introduction
Dual Degree Program -- Pauline gave a short 15 minute introduction to the program. I did a little show and tell for the Facebook page. I really dislike being the center of attention... lol, but I suppose one of these days I'll just have to suck it up and get used to it.
Mentoring Component & Boot Camp -- Tim Johnson gave us a nice broad overview of the goals of the program.

Public Services
Lucinda Covert-Vail gave us a nice overview of what public services entails. I think it would be interesting to check out, but I think I'm more of a technical type person than a social type.

Remote Bibliographic Instruction
Tim and Nadaleen Templeman-Kluit gave a really interesting presentation on how they're trying to use videos to instruct people on how to use certain resources. We saw some sample clips (both failed and successful ones). There's also other helpful resources: libguides and lynda.com.

Reference Services
Tim started with explaining what he does. Then Alexa Pearce explained virtual reference (like the Ask-a-Librarian service). Apparently, there's a whole discussion on whether or not it should even be called "virtual reference" since it covers basically everything not in person (like email, IM, and texting)! They're proposing that it should all just be under "reference." We looked at an IM transcript and there was one that took almost 1.5 hours! One of the students actually fell asleep during the presentation; it wouldn't have been an issue if he didn't start snoring quite audibly...lol. Marybeth McCartin introduced classes that the library offers: prescheduled and by request. How do you convey your ideas? How do you motivate them? How do you assess what the students got out of the class? Interesting questions...

Meeting with Mentors
We concluded the day with meeting mentors. Only two showed up because it was a last minute switch and many people were still on vacation. My mentor Meg came, but I had already met her before so we briefly chatted to catch up on my plans for the Fall. We're going to meet over coffee (tea for me) some time later this week to discuss the Learning Contract.