• About WordPress
    • WordPress.org
    • Documentation
    • Support
    • Feedback
  • Log In
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Committees
    • Bylaws
    • Strategic Plan
    • Annual Reports
    • Administrative Centre Staff
    • Contact Us
  • Members
    • Benefits of Membership
    • Join or Renew
    • Get Involved
    • Awards
  • Opportunities
    • Interest Groups
    • The Conference
    • The Journal
    • International Collaborative Writing Groups
    • ISSOTL Fellows Program
    • Committees
    • Board of Directors
  • Events
    • Annual Conference
      • Past Conferences
      • ISSOTL22
  • Publications
    • Teaching & Learning Inquiry
    • ISSOTL Blog
  • Updates
    • Blog
    • News
    • Jobs
    • ISSOTL Social Media
    • Become a Member
    • Log in
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL)
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Committees
    • Bylaws
    • Strategic Plan
    • Annual Reports
    • Administrative Centre Staff
    • Contact Us
  • Members
    • Benefits of Membership
    • Join or Renew
    • Get Involved
    • Awards
  • Opportunities
    • Interest Groups
    • The Conference
    • The Journal
    • International Collaborative Writing Groups
    • ISSOTL Fellows Program
    • Committees
    • Board of Directors
  • Events
    • Annual Conference
      • Past Conferences
      • ISSOTL22
  • Publications
    • Teaching & Learning Inquiry
    • ISSOTL Blog
  • Updates
    • Blog
    • News
    • Jobs
    • ISSOTL Social Media
    • Become a Member
    • Log in

Blog

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Blog
  • Making New Connections: Librarians Meetup at ISSOTL 2017

Making New Connections: Librarians Meetup at ISSOTL 2017

  • Posted by ISSOTL Admin
  • Categories Blog
  • Date December 3, 2017
  • Comments 0 comment

If one theme stood out during the 2017 conference, is was the idea of “community.” However you identify with SoTL, the discipline’s mission and philosophy encourages community interaction, collaboration, and the exchanging of ideas.  This blog post is an account and reflection on how a group of  librarians found their community during the 2017 conference.

As a newcomer to ISSOTL, Erik Christiansen – a Librarian at Mount Royal University – was both excited and unsure what he’d find at the conference. He knew two things: on Thursday October, 12th he had a poster to present, and several librarians he’d never met, from around the world, were joining him in the exhibit hall for a meetup later that evening.

In the days prior to the conference, his colleague Margy MacMillan had introduced a handful of SoTL librarians to each other through an email introduction. The plan was for all these like-minded librarians to meetup and go for drinks. In hindsight, it made for a great social experiment. During the conference, a few of the librarians had bumped into each other at workshops and sessions. The email list grew and became more diverse. By Thursday evening, eight librarians showed up in the exhibit hall and awkwardly tried to make a plan. After some deliberation, the group decided to walk down Stephen Avenue in search for food and drinks.

While there was a brief awkwardness (as is often the case when meeting new people), the group quickly found common ground. The librarians had not walked 100 feet down the road, and already they were exchanging ideas and laughing. They quickly settled on a local pub, ordered drinks, and did a round of introductions.

What emerged from the meetup was quite remarkable. Two hours of rich conversation occurred – covering a wide range of academic topics such as how information literacy intersects with SoTL, alternative publishing methods, experiences during PhD programs, and perceptions of librarians as teachers. They also covered not so academic topics like: the Swedish pronunciation of phenomenology, the precise definitions of “Midwest” and “Eastern Canada,” the prevalence of hockey in Sweden and North America, white gravy vs. brown gravy, and the “Canadianness” of poutine.

This meeting inspired us to work together, think more deeply about librarianship as a field situated within higher education, and to confirm our beliefs that we are teachers. One thing that stood out to us was the common threads that united our conference experience. While academic librarians were a minority at ISSOTL, our shared presence bolstered us and made us feel more at home. We were able to look out for friendly faces during different conference sessions, and had ready colleagues with which to share ideas and discuss how we could take content back to our institutions. A few of us even brainstormed ideas for future conference proposals. Erik started a Google Doc, and the ideas have been flowing ever since.

We’re sharing this post not to talk about how great librarians are (because, well, hopefully everyone at ISSOTL knows that already!) but as a testimonial for the necessity of community, particularly at a large academic conference. While we made plenty of friends and new connections outside of our library community, nothing beats having a group that uniquely understands where your work is placed in a larger higher ed context.

The ISSOTL 2017 Librarian Group (list names and country + state of origin below)

  • Erik Christiansen — Canada, Calgary, Alberta

  • Claes Dahlqvist — Sweden, Kristianstad

  • Alex Deeke– United States, Ann Arbor, Michigan

  • Lauren Hays — United States, Olathe, Kansas

  • Melissa Mallon — United States, Nashville, Tennessee

  • Kari Weaver — Canada, Waterloo, Ontario

  • Asako Yoshida — Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Post correspondence: Erik Christiansen, Mount Royal University, Calgary (echristiansen@mtroyal.ca)

  • Share:
author avatar
ISSOTL Admin

Previous post

The Status of SoTL in Sociology: Background, Support, Involvement, and Characteristics
December 3, 2017

Next post

Call for Proposals: Reading across Disciplines
December 22, 2017

You may also like

72937_photo (1)
Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and a Focus on Learning for High Achieving Students
23 June, 2022
Kennedy 111
Using Inquiry to Transfer My Teaching Practices to Higher Education and Teacher Preparation
20 June, 2022
Hill
Dialogic Feed-Forward in Assessment: Pivotal to Learning but not Unproblematic
14 June, 2022

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Search

Categories

  • Blog
  • Jobs
  • News
  • Teaching & Learning Inquiry: The ISSOTL Journal Content

Archives

  • June 2022 (4)
  • May 2022 (2)
  • April 2022 (2)
  • March 2022 (9)
  • February 2022 (7)
  • January 2022 (6)
  • December 2021 (4)
  • November 2021 (4)
  • October 2021 (2)
  • September 2021 (1)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • June 2021 (1)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (1)
  • March 2021 (2)
  • February 2021 (5)
  • January 2021 (2)
  • December 2020 (4)
  • October 2020 (3)
  • September 2020 (2)
  • August 2020 (1)
  • June 2020 (4)
  • April 2020 (1)
  • March 2020 (3)
  • January 2020 (2)
  • November 2019 (5)
  • October 2019 (31)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (1)
  • April 2019 (3)
  • March 2019 (27)
  • January 2019 (2)
  • November 2018 (2)
  • October 2018 (6)
  • August 2018 (1)
  • July 2018 (1)
  • June 2018 (2)
  • May 2018 (9)
  • March 2018 (1)
  • January 2018 (3)
  • December 2017 (2)
  • November 2017 (1)
  • October 2017 (3)
  • September 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (5)
  • June 2017 (4)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (3)
  • February 2017 (2)
  • January 2017 (4)
  • November 2016 (3)
  • October 2016 (4)
  • September 2016 (1)
  • August 2016 (1)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (3)
  • March 2016 (1)
  • February 2016 (3)
  • January 2016 (1)
  • December 2015 (3)
  • November 2015 (6)
  • August 2015 (1)
  • July 2015 (1)
  • June 2015 (2)
  • May 2015 (2)
  • April 2015 (1)
  • February 2015 (2)
  • January 2015 (3)
  • December 2014 (2)
  • November 2014 (1)
  • August 2014 (1)
  • May 2014 (1)
  • April 2014 (1)
  • January 2014 (3)
  • December 2013 (3)
  • November 2013 (1)

ISSOTL

© 2021 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) All rights reserved.

Contact Us

MENU

ABOUT

MEMBERS

OPPORTUNITIES

EVENTS

PUBLICATIONS

UPDATES

Facebook Twitter Linkedin Youtube

Web Design by Clio Websites. Powered by WordPress.

Login with your site account

Lost your password?