Reports from the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting: Seattle, Washington, January 18‐22, 2007

Abstract

PurposeTo share information and insights from the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting. Several contributors reported on different aspects of this meeting. Design methodology/approach –A report of the conference.FindingsSummary of discussion forums, work of ALA's Divisions, and conference lore.Practical ImplicationsA working meeting to plan for the annual conference in June 2007. This meeting attracts the current leadership of the different divisions in ALA who are holding discussion groups and committee meetings as there are no official programs at Midwinter.Originality/valueConference reports on many current trends in scholarly communication issues to information professionals in academia, access, and intellectual property issues related to a range of library environments and the state of the art in technology.

Information literacy online tutorials

“…Lamb and Johnson (2008) voiced their dissatisfaction with "static web pages" vs "web presence" in online tutorials. There was a call at the 2007 ALA Midwinter meeting for librarians to "move on from stale, barely interactive tutorials of the 1990s" (Brown et al, 2007).…”

“…A survey conducted in 2002 (Jones, 2002) shows that "students entering our institutions to be Internet natives eager to collaborate and interact virtually" Information literacy online tutorials (Brown et al, 2007). When creating library online information literacy tutorials, the challenge is to meet the learning needs of the Generation M students.…”

Interlending and document supply: a review of the recent literature: 60

“…Of particular interest is the section on what he terms “author‐side payments”. A report on the Mid Winter ALA (Brown et al , 2007) has the following fascinating illustration of the impact of journal pricing and the growth of open access:…”