Spring & summer conference schedule

I have a few conferences coming up and I thought I'd share my schedule just in case any of you out there in sciencelibrarianblogland will also be attending.

I'll list them in order, along with whatever I'll be presenting.

BookCamp Toronto, May 15, Toronto

9:30: eBooks in Education and Academia -- the glacial revolution
John Dupuis (York University)
Evan Leibovitch (York University)

Description: Despite growing public acceptance of eBooks, two areas in which they could offer the most benefit -- education and academia -- are far behind the eBook mainstream. This session will discuss issues directly related to educational (K-12) and academic (post-secondary) use of eBooks from the perspective of authors, readers and libraries. The session will also discuss the current generation of eBook readers -- both hardware and software -- in the context of student and researcher use.

Canadian Engineering Education Association, June 7-9, Kingston, ON

Using a Blog to Engage Students in Literature Search Skills Sessions

One of the main problems for librarians involved in engaging engineering students in literature search skills sessions is creating a list of customized, course-specific online resources that is easy for students to find and use. Such a list can include links to article databases (ie. IEEE Xplore), ebook packages (ie. Books 24x7), web resources, patent search engines and standards series. It can also be used to hold notes from the session, background information and links to useful tools such as citation management software. Given that blogs are becomming an increasingly popular item in the pedagogical toolbox, creating one to host these notes and links is an obvious possibility. Blogging tools such as Wordpress are simple and straightforward to use. Blog entries can be easily linked to on a course website or even Googled by students. During the classroom session itself, the blog is used both to engage the students' attention and as an outline of the content. Adding interactivity via Instant Messaging widgets such as Meebo also make the blog a good tool for engaging with students both during the session and after it is over. Analysis tools such as Google Analytics can be used to assess the usage of the blog. A sample web page, created for the Engineering 1000 course at York University, can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/yorkueng1000.

(Note: The technical program schedule isn't set yet. I'll post when I know the date & time.)

Science Foo Camp, July 30 - August 1, Mountain View, CA

Science Foo Camp is an unconference, so the program is self-organized by the participants at the conference itself. We're all expected to contribute by participating in creating and running the program.

So far my main idea for a session to propose is about Building Campus Open Science Collaborations. From the point of view of Open Access, Open Data, Open Notebook and all the rest, there are a lot of campus constituencies that can work together build the commitment, infrastructure and policies to make Open Science work. Who are there people and how can they all be brought together to make Open Science a reality on your cmapus.

Obviously this is in super embryonic format. I would really appreciate any input on my idea, especially how to make it speak to researchers that may be considering Open Science initiatives but might not know where to get started.