Digital Literacy Presentations from Adventures in August

Hello Library Community,

The Adventures in August workshop on Digital Literacy and Reference, hosted by WVLS on August 14th was a wonderful success.  We had presentations of a caliber typically found at state and national level conventions, and my only regret is that we did not offer our excellent presenters a larger venue.  I'm not writing to pat ourselves on the back however, I'm writing to share the well crafted presentation slides from the morning sessions focusing on Digital Literacy.

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This post is a bit late in coming but the content should be worth the wait.  Our first session had two parts, the first of which featured the nationally recognized former Technology Consultant for Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Division for Libraries and Technology, Robert Bocher.  Bob spoke to us in the context of national agenda, specifically discussing the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Digital Literacy Initiative.

     Link 1 - Please click here to download Bob Bocher's presentation.

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The second part featured Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS) Library Consultant Mark Beatty.  Mark spoke about the very interesting topic of community platform and content creation facilitation.  His topic, "Libraries as Platform" ranged from presenting libraries as a platform for community information collection, processing and sharing, to libraries as Maker Spaces, giving community members access to resources which help them to create digital content and physical "things."  He talked about how libraries are service and reference providers as much or more than they are simply information and entertainment warehouses.

     Link 2 - Please click here to download Mark Beatty's presentation.

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Our second morning session featured Adam Brisk, an ALA and WAPL regular, who worked for Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College (WITC) until recently accepting a position at Marshall Preparatory School.  He joked about about his fluctuating title but as of this writing LinkIn has him as Help Desk Specialist and Technology Integration Specialist.  Adam delivered an excellent presentation on Digital Literacy in Academic Libraries.    Adam has conveniently uploaded his slides to SlideShare.

     Link 3 - Please click here to view his presentation.

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Last, but certainly not least, our afternoon session featured WiLS director, Stef Morrill, and WiLS cooperative purchasing librarian, Sara Gold.  This dynamic duo delivered a phenomenal presentation on digital content and the ever turbulent relationships between libraries, digital content publishers, and middle tier vendors.  Their presentation will be delivered again at various events around the state, so if you missed this one, please contact Stef or Sara (click here to visit the WiLS website) to find out about catching a future event.  Unfortunately their presentation slides include some proprietary data so I am unable to share it in this open blog.  However, we have a copy of the presentation and permission to deliver it solely to our librarians for informational/educational purposes.

I will be sending the slides to our closed listserv for Library Directors, so if you are interested in viewing it, please look to that list or ask your director about it.

Thank you,

Joshua Klingbeil - IT Director

Wisconsin Valley Library Service