Highlights from ACRL 2013 (Indianapolis)

Here are a few memorable aspects of ACRL 2013:

1) Henry Rollins Keynote – punk rock icon, spoken word artist, amateur archivist Rollins spoke eloquently about the importance of librarians and libraries in helping people discover “the information” they need. One great story (both hilarious and poignant) after another for 80 minutes.
2) Visits with vendors – ACRL is the best single meeting to see what’s happening in academic library vendor world and I was able to meet with nearly everyone on my checklist.
3) Attended an interesting session presented by librarians and faculty from Illinois Wesleyan and Pacific University about their success with publishing online, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly journals. Luther could consider this kind of innovation.
4) Attended a session presented by three librarians from three different sized academic libraries in Michigan on deaccessioning projects. They all worked with Sustainable Collection Services to acquire lists of books to consider for withdrawal.
5) Attended a good presentation by Brian Matthews from Virginia Tech about the need for helping our patrons discover and frame the problems they are trying to solve. Often the question we are asked is the result of a poorly-defined or misunderstood problem. Libraries can be promoted as places that solve problems.