On Wednesday, September 16, the MLA Council approved ARLD’s name change to the Association of College and Research Libraries, Maryland Chapter – ACRL MD for short.

This name change will more closely align the MLA division with the national ACRL organization.  The new name will help make us instantly recognizable as THE organization for Maryland’s academic librarians.

The ARLD calendar runs from July-June, so we’re coming up on the end of this year. We’ve had a lot of great programming this year, which we hope to continue in the upcoming year.

Our summer and early fall was filled with some great planning meetings that generated a lot of excellent ideas. Thanks to everyone who came and helped contribute. We hope to see you and your great ideas at our future meetings. We tried to conclude each of our planning meetings with short demonstrations of things that might be useful to academic librarians. Danielle Whren Johnson exhibited what the Loyola Notre Dame Library is doing with digital video, David Dahl provided us with a demonstration on how to use Adobe Captivate and Lucy Holman led a discussion on the use of Wikipedia.

ARLD’s fall program this year focused on open source software. “Open Source Catalogs, OPACS and more: The Next Generation is Here Now!” was held at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, MD in September. Andrea Neiman, Technical Services Librarian and Jerry Keiser, Library Director from Kent County Public Library discussed their implementation of the Evergreen open source integrated library system and Andrew Nagy, Technology Department Specialist presented on VuFind the open source OPAC he developed for Villanova University.

This year’s spring program, held in April at Goucher College in Towson, MD, concentrated on how to market your library. Deborah Nolan the University Librarian at the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson provided a hands on presentation on creating a library marketing plan, Eleni Swengler, Senior Graphic Designer from Towson University presented on creating great do-it-yourself marketing materials, and Nancy Magnuson the College Librarian from the Julia Rogers Library at Goucher College discussed the John Cotton Dana award, which is awarded to libraries for outstanding public relations campaigns.

ARLD also hosted five wonderful programs and one preconference at the Maryland Library Association’s Annual Conference, held May 13-15 in Ocean City, MD.

• Stephanie Garibaldi from SpeakEasyDC led our preconference “Sure You Can Find Any Book, but Can You Find Your Story?”
• Terri Ottoson, Consumer Health Outreach Coordinator from the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Health Sciences and Human Services Library presented “From Snake Oil to Penicillan: Health Information for Librarians”
• Carrie Bertling, David Dahl, and Carissa Tomlinson, Emerging Technologies Librarians from Towson University presented “Blog Like You Mean It: Creating a Blog to Fill an Information Need”
• Ray O’Keefe from Enoch Pratt Library, Shana Gass from Towson University, and Mandy Hackley from Salisbury University spoke on “Business Resources for the Literature Lover”
• Lucy Holman, Director of the Langsdale Library at the University of Baltimore spoke on her research regarding “Millenials Mysterious Search Habits”
• Mary Jo Lazun and Katherine Baer from the Maryland State Law Library presented on “Capturing the Elusive Government Document Before It Disappears: The Chesapeake Project”

We hope everyone was able to attend at least one of these great programs, and we look forward to providing you with more great programming in the upcoming year.  We already have the fall program tentatively scheduled for September 18 featuring Susan Strasser, Professor of History from the University of Delaware speaking on what faculty want from libraries and Judi Briden from the University of Rochester libraries speaking on what students need from libraries.  Look for more information on this program in the upcoming months.

And if creating all this wonderful programming wasn’t enough, ARLD was hard at work behind the scenes this year as well.  This blog and our wiki (http://arldmla.wiki.zoho.com/Home-Page.html) were launched.  Additionally, Alison Cody, the Public Relations Librarian at the Loyola Notre Dame Library helped us redesign ARLD’s brochure to help promote our organization.

Thanks to our outgoing President, Patty MacDonald, the Associate University Librarian for Administrative Services at Towson University for providing excellent direction for ARLD over this past year.  We hope to continue your great work in the future.

Additional thanks to Michael Shochet, the Systems/Reference Librarian at the University of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library, who as ARLD’s vice president was in charge of creating all the great conference programs we had this year.  Michael will be continuing his excellent work with ARLD in the coming year as our president.

I (Danielle Whren Johnson, Digital Access Librarian, Loyola/Notre Dame Library) have been pleased to serve as your secretary this year.  Hopefully I’ve been able to keep you informed and up-to-date on what is happening with ARLD.  I look forward to serving as the ARLD vice president in the coming year.

And we will be welcoming on David Dahl, Emerging Technologies Librarian from Towson University as our secretary for 2009-2010.

We’re looking forward to another great year with ARLD and hope you are too.

Friday ARLD hosted the program Marketing Your Library: Planning, Publications, Winning Awards and $$$!

Deborah Nolan the University Librarian at the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson University gave an excellent presentation on how to develop a marketing plan for you library that included hands on activities to give participants a feel for the process.

Next Eleni Swengler, Senior Graphic Designer from Towson University presented on creating great do-it-yourself marketing materials. She provided information on dos and don’ts and finished by having the participants critique some existing library marketing materials. (See below for her powerpoint)

Finally, Nancy Magnuson the College Librarian from the Julia Rogers Library at Goucher College discussed the John Cotton Dana award, which is awarded to libraries for outstanding public relations campaigns. She talked about Goucher’s application and receipt of the award as well as more general information about applying for the award.

It was a great program with lots of excellent information that librarians can use to jumpstart the marketing efforts at their libraries.

Lots of good ideas were discussed at the program. Please use our comment section to continue the discussion on marketing at your library.

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It’s just a few short weeks until the 2009 MLA conference (May 13-15). ARLD has some great programs planned. We hope you will be joining us in Ocean City. We’ll be hosting programs on finding health information, finding business information, blogging, the search habits of Millenials, and more. ARLD is also sponsoring a pre-conference session on how to tell your library’s story in order to promote it to funders, executives, administrators, politicians and patrons.

For more information on our conference programs and schedule visit our wiki at http://arldmla.wiki.zoho.com/MLA-Annual-conference.html?pid=149677000000003047

Join ARLD for our upcoming program Marketing Your Library: Planning, Publications, Winning Awards and $$$!

The program will take place on Friday, April 17 from 9:30-1 at Goucher College’s Heubeck Multi-purpose room.

Program Description:
Marketing your library is even more important in tough times! Join ARLD for a full-range of hands-on and how-to tips on marketing academic, public or special libraries. Debbie Nolan, University Librarian from Towson University will present the key components of a marketing plan, including i.e., the target audience, key messages, sample strategies and tools, and assessment, with time for group activities and brainstorming. . Next Eleni Swengler will give do-it-yourself tips for creating great marketing materials for those without graphic design background. Then Nancy Magnuson from Goucher College will discuss the John Cotton Dana award. The Julia Rogers Library at Goucher College was a recipient of this prestigious $5000 award that is given to several academic and public libraries each year for outstanding library public relations programs.

Cost:
MLA members: $ 35
Non-members: $ 50
Students: $ 30

Coffee, juice, and a light continental breakfast will be served.

Looking for a great conference to go to this year?  ARLD is sponsoring a number of great programs at this year’s Maryland Library Association conference.

Here’s a look at what ARLD is offering in addition to the other excellent programs at the conference.

Look for registration information soon on the MLA website.

Wednesday May 13, 2009

* Pre-conference, 9:00 – 4:00:
Sure you can find any book, but can you find your story?
Improve your ability to promote your library to funders, executives, administrators, politicians and patrons by learning how to present a compelling story showing the importance of your library.

Presenter: Stephanie Garibaldi, SpeakEasyDC

Thursday May 14, 2009
*Session #1, 11:00 – 12:00:
From Snake Oil to Penicillin: Health Information for Librarians
Learn how to find health information on the web, and how to distinguish the good from the bad.

Presenter: Terri Ottosen, M.L.I.S.,
AHIP Consumer Health Outreach Coordinator
NN/LM Southeastern Atlantic Region
University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Sciences & Human Services Library

* Session #2, 2:00 – 3:15:
Blog Like You mean It: Creating a Blog to fill an Information Need
Learn all about a new technology blog for librarians maintained by the Emerging Technology Librarians at Towson.

Presenters: Carrie Bertling, David Dahl and Carissa Tomlinson
Emerging Technology Librarians
Towson University

* Session #3, 4:00 – 5:15
Business Resources for the Literature Lover
Librarians are known to love books, but how many of our questions are about market share? Learn how to answer those questions effectively.

Presenters: Ray O’Keefe, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Shana Gass, Towson University, and Mandy Hackley, Blackwell Library, Salisbury University.

Friday May 15, 2009

* Session #1, 9:15 – 10:30
The Case of the Millenials’ Mysterious Searching Habits
A presentation based on original research on how the current generation of students search for information.

Presenter: Lucy Holman
Director, Langsdale Library

* Session #2, 11:00 – 12:15
Capturing the Elusive Government Document before it Disappears: The Chesapeake Project
Find out about an effort to catalog and preserve state government documents that are only published electronically.

Presenters: Mary Jo Lazun and Katherine Baer, Maryland State Law Library

• Did you know that ARLD is Maryland’s local chapter of ACRL?

If you’re interested in being involved with ACRL but can’t give up the time or money to get involved nationally, then why not get involved locally.  ARLD is a great way to contribute to the future of academic libraries right in your own backyard.  So get involved or just sit in on one of our meetings to find out what we’re about.  The next meeting is July 25 at Towson University.

• Did you know that membership in ARLD is free with your membership in MLA?

That’s right, free.  You can get all the benefits of being involved with ARLD without any additional cost.  So what’s you’re excuse?  Come join in the fun, and meet some of your fellow academic librarians at our next meeting on July 25.

Welcome to the Academic and Research Libraries Division of the Maryland Library Association blog.  Our goal with this blog is to keep you updated on what is going on with ARLD as well as provide you with information relevant to working in an academic or research library.  So please add us to your RSS feed or your bookmarks and stay current with what is going on in your organization.