Meeting Outcome(s):

I hesitate to refer to this blog posting as the minutes from our last meeting. That sounds entirely too formal—and, frankly, not particularly accurate either. I’d rather refer to what follows as, “The Meeting Outcome(s).” They’ll serve more as a brief synopsis of what was discussed and, more importantly, an outline from which we can evolve and grow our conversation.

Now with that out of the way, I’m very happy to report that CJARL convened last week for the first meeting of the Fall semester. Even though we get together right before Halloween almost every year, there was something special about this meeting because it was the first one to occur in a “post-CJRLC” world. In other words, it serves to signify our intent to continue our tradition, leverage our core principles, and grow our ranks.

Our agenda was, er, ambitious, as always. But we’re a discussion group, after all. One of our greatest assets is our ability to foster open and honest discussion, right?

The item on the agenda that was afforded the greatest amount of time and focus pertained to the future of CJARL. Two important items came from that portion of the conversation. First, the meetings should begin incorporating regular opportunities for resource sharing. Bring your toolbox and share what you’re learned and the resources you’ve developed to assist your students and patrons. Also, if you’re preparing a presentation or an article for publication or even if you just want to explore the boundaries of a research question, put it on the table for some good old fashioned peer review. In short, let’s leverage our collective experience. Secondly, the group should begin encouraging attendance from among the ranks of Librarians at 4-year institutions. Over the years, numbers of regular attendees from 4-yerars schools has decreased. It’s vital to keep them engaged in the conversation.

I’ve agreed to continue to serve as Chair until such time that some brave soul chooses to take my place. This will be my third year as Chair, so if anyone has any interest in taking on the duties of Chair, please don’t be shy.

Our next meeting will be in December. The exact date has not yet been set, but it will most likely be on a Friday from 10am-12pm.

Until then....

NJEDge Conference 7.0: Aligning the Ubiquitous Campus

November 17 – 19, 2010

Register for attending this year’s NJEDge annual conference: http://njedge.net/conference/2010/

On Wednesday, Nov 17th, at 1:30pm we open with Google "From the Clouds: Google Digital Books and Education Apps in Large Classes" with Chris Palm, Manager of Strategic Partnerships for Google Books, Google Scholar, Google News Archive Search, and Google Magazines. This is a good opportunity to find out how Google’s digital books and research sources affect an institutional library. This session is for 1hr and 15mins for the purpose of allowing more Q&A.

Following the Google talk will be breakout session on Abilene Christina University’s initiative on "iPadin Every Student Hand...." Kevin Roberts who heads the program that seems destined for campuses adoption will talk ACU’s successful pilot program. In discussion will be issues that will affect you, the library, students and school policies.

Our keynote speaker on Thursday is Dr. Peter Smith, a renowned academic whose recent book "Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning" brings up issues regarding digital libraries.

At the first breakout session on Thursday, 10:30, Cathy Kelley (FDU) and Mary Jane Clerkin (Berkley) will present on "E-readers & e-books: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Both schools have pilot programs, using Kindle, Sony Reader and iPad Touch this year. This session shows some of the advantages and shortcomings of e-texts and e-readers.

At 11:45, Ken Ronkowitz from Passaic County Community College weighs in on open text books. "It’s anOpen Book: Adopting Open Textbooks" is treatise on why this option is good for learning, good for teaching, and good for the pocket book.

The afternoon has a talk by Perry Samson, "Surprise! Laptops INCREASE Student Engagement in Large Classes." Be sure to stay for Sujay Daniel’s reveal of NJVid.Net.

President Crabill of Raritan Valley Community College will talk about the community college’s Big Idea Initiative.

Taras Pavlovsky, Dean of the Library at The College of New Jersey, and John Brennan, Digital Projects Coordinator for Rutgers University Libraries collaborate on Friday for their poster session on “Partnering Today to Manage Tomorrow’s Libraries.” Here’s your chance to talk directly to them about The VALE OLE Initiative, which brings together leading academic libraries within New Jersey in partnership to employ the Kuali OLE open source library management software.

The conference ends with fireworks! David Pogue of The New York Times will be speaking about "Web2.0, Social Media, and Other Buzzwards."

Meeting Agenda

WHERE: Ocean County College Library (Room L101D) / Toms River, NJ
WHEN: Friday, October 29, 2010 / 10:00am – 12:00pm

Driving directions and campus map available here.

*optional lunch to follow the meeting at a local restaurant*

INTRODUCTION
I. Welcome & introductions
II. Upcoming event & program announcements
III. Update: Information Literacy Progression Standards Task Force
A. Recent “road show” presentations and endorsements
B. Next phase(s) in the project

PRIMARY TOPICS
I. The future of CJARL given the demise of CJRLC
A. What should the future of CJARL look like?
B. What is our most valuable asset?
C. What could we do better?

II. New models for reference desk coverage
A. “On Call”
B. “The Roaming / Mobile Librarian”

III. Evaluating Librarian faculty

IV. Update on credit bearing (3 credits) Information Literacy class at OCC

V. Front-end revisions to discovery software
A. EbscoHost
B. JSTOR
C. Likes? Dislikes? Quirks? Problems?

CONCLUSION
I. Reader's advisory for reference Librarians
II. Nominations for a new CJARL Chairperson

New Meeting Date Announced

Save the date!

The next meeting of the Central New Jersey Academic Reference Librarians Group will be held on Friday, October October 29, 2010 (10AM - 12PM) at Ocean County College Library in Toms River, NJ.

We have a lot to discuss--due in large part to the drastic changes that have occurred across the New Jersey Library landscape over the past 6 months. Among them was the dissolution of our parenting agent, the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative.

I'll post a detailed agenda at this blog in the coming weeks. Of course, if you have an item that you would like to add, please send me an e-mail and I will include it on the agenda.

NB: If your schedule allows, a post-meeting lunch at a local restaurant is always a welcome idea.

If you plan on attending, please RSVP to gschmidt [at] ocean [dot] edu. I'm looking forward to seeing you on the 29th.

Changes at JSTOR don't look good.

I'm not sure if everyone has seen the changes to JSTOR's interface yet but if not its worth pointing them out. Basically the default setting will now searches JSTOR's entire collection whether you want it to or not. You have to use the advanced search to limit to just the things your library subscribes to.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, this blog post does a good job discussing what's at issue: http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2010/08/24/whats-the-deal-jstor/

And Now For Something Completely Different....

...and by that I mean: good news!

The news lately has been more than just a little depressing. But my Director just informed his Librarians that, "Norma Blake of the State Library announced yesterday at the VALE Members Council that the state will underwrite the costs of state-wide access to ASP for FY11."

Academic Search Premier is an essential--and equally expensive--database. I can tell you that our budget would have taken a huge hit if we had to pay for the subscription ourselves.

2/26/10 Meeting Canceled

Due to anticipated inclement weather on Friday, February 26, 2010, the next meeting of the Central New Jersey Academic Reference Librarians Group (CJARL) has been canceled.

The date for our Spring meeting will be determined shortly.

AGENDA - 2/26/2010 Meeting

CJRLC Headquarters
Freehold, NJ
Friday, February 26, 2010
10:00am – 12:00pm

• Welcome & introductions

• Upcoming event & program announcements

• Information Literacy Progression Standards Task Force update

• Reactions to VALE Users’ Conference

• Christie Administration’s F.Y. 2010 budget reductions

• Increasing demand for information literacy instruction

• Reader's advisory for reference librarians

• Updates on new projects and innovative thinking at your library

• Nominations for new CJARL Chairperson

• Lunch at a local restaurant in Freehold following the meeting (optional)

Christie Proposes $721,000 Reduction to Library Programs

This just in from Pat Tumulty, Executive Director of NJLA:

[begins]
To the members of the library community,

On Thursday Governor Christie announced he was “freezing” the current state budget. This will have an impact on the library community. Unfortunately, he is proposing a total of $ 721,000 in reductions to library programs. The reductions are in the following areas: NJ Library Network Aid $373,000; Knowledge Initiative $231,000; and Virtual Library Aid $117,000.

The New Jersey State Library is reviewing the implications of these cuts on current programs and will be sending further information to the library community.

NJLA is preparing a press release on these budget reductions and will testify at a budget hearing on Wednesday.
[ends]

A Webinar on Zotero: A Next Generation Research / Citation Tool for Firefox

WHEN: January 13, 10-Noon
COST: $10.00
(CE Available)

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Library research tools have moved not only onto the web, but into the browser software itself.

Zotero (http://www.zotero.org) is a free Firefox add-on that allows students and researchers to save citations and create bibliographies.

It is as easy to learn and use as iTunes and more powerful than commercial competitors like EndNote and RefWorks. New features such as online storage and shared libraries help researchers collaborate online.

Open source browser plug-ins like Zotero can help library users at every stage of the research cycle, from search and discovery to writing and citation. By using free, open source tools, libraries can offer assistance and resources with little cost and foster skills that patrons can use throughout life.

Participants will learn to:

1) identify some of the advantages of using open-source software tools in library research

2) install the Zotero plugin for Firefox

3) save citations and build a personal citation library

4) synchronize your Zotero library and access it from any computer running Firefox

5) automatically generate bibliographies

6) share references and collaborate using Zotero's new groups feature


Intended Audience:

Library staff who assist researchers, students and anyone else needing to save citations and create bibliographies.


About the Presenter:

Jason Puckett is Librarian for Communication and Educational Technologies at Georgia State University Library. He blogs at http://jasonpuckett.net and is co-producer of the Adventures in Library Instruction podcast (http://adlibinstruction.blogspot.com).

NOTE: This Webinar is being hosted on CJRLC's iLinc Webinar Platform Please follow this link for instructions on setting up your PC prior to the webinar.)

February Meeting - Save the date!

The next meeting of the Central New Jersey Academic Reference Librarians Group will be held on Friday, February 26, 2010 (10AM - 12PM) at Central New Jersey Regional Library HQ in Freehold, NJ.

Directions to the Freehold office can be found here.

If you have an item that you would like to add to our discussion, please just send me an e-mail and I will add it to our agenda.

NB: Following our last meeting, many of us reconvened at a local restaurant for lunch. The event proved very popular and the suggestion to continue this practice was made by more than one participant. Certainly, the post-meeting lunch is obligatory, but all are welcome to join us.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.