Thursday, June 30, 2011

ALA/ACRL Conference - Reflection (The Book Proposal Process & Working With Your Campus Library)


Readers,

The ALA/ACRL conference inspired me to start my book proposal process this summer. In fact, I spoke with a book publisher on Monday and she provided me with some promising information about this grueling process. I have been very reluctant to start the book proposal process because I believed that the market is saturated with books on my interests (i.e. - social media, online teaching and learning, and training and development). Could I offer a different perspective? Perhaps.

If any of you could provide me with insight into the book proposal process, I would be very grateful! 

This conference made a BIG impression on my life as a faculty member. Unfortunately, a lot of people feel that librarians do not conduct research and are just there for reference purposes. However, this is not true! Throughout the conference, I became very interested in information sciences and in library sciences. In fact, if every faculty member would have a brief meeting with one of the librarians at their institution, I think they would discover that librarians work VERY hard to stay current on research from a VARIETY of different fields, perform continual  assessment and evaluation of their programs and services, and are the lifeblood of our higher education institutions.

After attending this conference, I think that I will invite a librarian to attend a chat session for my online speech class. Since some of my students are located outside of the United States, I think this will be a very beneficial service for these students. They use the library research databases, but I think the students will greatly benefit from this small gesture. Also, it seems that when some students hear a research suggestion  from their instructor and they do not implement the suggestion. However, if they hear the research suggestion from a librarian, they will implement the suggestion in a heartbeat!

I hope to incorporate the library in a variety of different ways next semester. How do you plan to work with the library next semester?

Sincerely,

Dr. Jennifer T. Edwards
Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.
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2 comments:

  1. Jennifer, you can also "embed" a librarian in your Blackboard sections. I'll send you an e-mail at work about this next week. I'm glad you enjoyed the ALA conference!

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  2. Glad to hear you enjoyed the conference!
    Your point about students listening more to librarian than faculty feedback is interesting...I've always felt it was the opposite, since most students don't even think to ask a librarian for help. :0/

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