Academic Librarians 2010: Faster than the Speed of Bytes: Technology, Cognition, and the Academic Librarian

June 7 & 8, 2010, Holiday Inn Downtown, Ithaca

Are we organically shaped by technology? If so, how can academic librarians respond? How do cognitive changes influence the way’s we lead our libraries and teach our users?  This conference will explore changes in cognitive development, based on new models of interacting with information and how these new models will impact collections and services.  Participants will examine what this means for academic librarians and the way they interact with users.  This event is brought to you by the NY 3Rs Association and the Academic and Special Libraries Section of the New York Library Association.

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Michael Stephens, Assistant Professor, Dominican University, speaking on Hyperlinked Users: How Academic Librarians Can Respond. What trends are shaping the 21st Century student experience? What does emerging research tell us about expectations for learning environments, creative collaboration and “always on” access to information? This presentation will provide a roadmap for serving our hyperlinked users online, in our physical spaces and wherever they happen to be. Mobile solutions, creation spaces and embedded librarians are all part of the equation.

Dr. Deborah Gagnon, Associate Professor of Psychology, Wells College, speaking on This Is Your Brain on Technology: The Technology Exposure Effect (TEE). The media offer a bewildering array of doomsday as well as more benign prognoses of the effect that excessive exposure to extant technologies -Twitter, FaceBook, GPS, Second Life, etc. – present to our cognitive and neural functioning. Is that GPS on your dashboard possibly shrinking your hippocampus? Or is it really the Holy Grail that the more spatially challenged among us have been searching for our whole lives? This talk will attempt to sort questions like these out and, more to the point, will reveal how technology may be changing our perception, attention, memory, reasoning, decision making, and problem solving processes.

For complete conference details and registration information, please visit: http://www.nyla-asls.org/AcademicLibrariansConference.

Registration Discount for the Computers in Libraries Conference

LILRC has arranged with Information Today, Inc. to once again offer discounted registration rates for the Computers in Libraries conference (http://www.infotoday.com/CIL2010) being held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington, VA, April 12-14, 2010.

The theme of this year’s conference is Information Fluency: Literacy for Life focusing on leading-edge technology that is building information fluency, transforming library operations, enabling information products and services, and redefining roles within all types and sizes of library and information services. The conference offers five strong program streams each day that are filled with information sessions, panels and facilitated discussions; two special streams focused on special and government libraries; plus many workshops, networking opportunities, and an extensive exhibit hall.

By registering through LILRC, you are eligible for the special rate of $244 for the 3-day event. That is more than a 50% savings off the regular conference registration cost of $489. In addition, you can register for both Computers in Libraries and the co-located conference Internet@Schools East (April 12-13, 2010) for the special rate of $244, or pay the reduced price of $109 for just Internet@Schools East.

In order to take advantage of this valuable offer, you must register by completing the registration form and return it to LILRC by March 8, 2010.  Please be aware, the discount DOES NOT apply to pre-conference or post-conference workshops.