Big Read NRV

Last year I joined a committee that was tasked with bringing the Big Read to the New River Valley. Librarians, faculty and staff from Radford University, Virginia Tech, New River Community College, Radford Public Library, Montgomery/Floyd Public Libraries, Pulaski Public Library, and the Glencoe Museum and Gallery joined together to make this happen. My co-worker, Lisa Vassady, was the chair of this committee, and so RU took point on this initiative. We chose the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Thankfully we were awarded a $15,000 grant, and the Big Read NRV began.

Our programming began October 2, 2015, with the kick-off event at New River Community College with at presentation by, Hendrix College professor, war literature scholar and Tim O'Brien expert, Alex Vernon. Dr. Vernon's presentation, "Field Notes from The Things They Carried," was insightful and a wonderful way to start off our programming. Throughout the next 6 weeks there were book groups, art exhibits, a health and wellness event, events focused on children and teens, presentations, movie showings, panel discussions, a conference and a concert.

The Big Read NRV concluded with a presentation by the author himself, Tim O'Brien. The grand finale was held at Virginia Tech, and featured an outstanding talk from Mr. O'Brien. The Grand Finale wrapped up with him sticking around to talk to attendees and sign books.

The copy of The Things They Carried that author Tim O'Brien signed for Lisa, Alyssa and I.

Big Read NRV committee members with author Tim O'Brien at the Grand Finale event.
Photo by Lora Gordon.

My co-worker, Alyssa Archer, and I were there to assist Lisa every step of the way. At the time we took this on, we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. This was a huge undertaking, and there is no telling how many hours we put in on this project alone. This project was immensely rewarding though. It was wonderful to see the community come together to share this beautiful work of literature. It was wonderful to be able to reach out to the veterans on campus and in our community. Working with our different partners was a very gratifying experience. We created partnerships that I am sure will continue in the future. It is wonderful to be apart of such an amazing community.

The Innovative Library Classroom Conference 2015

This is year two of The Innovative Library Classroom Conference, and I am very fortunate to be a co-chair of the conference for another year. It was held at Radford University on May 12, 2015. This year's conference had a proposal acceptance rate of 41%. There were 82 attendees, and 38 different institutions were represented from 10 states. I am so very proud of the way this conference has grown.

This year I also co-presented a conversation starter with Katelyn Tucker. This conversation starter was focused on online instruction videos. We wanted to get a dialogue going about how different libraries are handling online instruction videos. We had a great conversation and I feel like everyone left with new ideas on how to create and manage their online instruction videos. Below is the Prezi we used to guide the discussion.



We also published an article on using Prezi to create online instruction videos based on this presentation and the poster that we presented at Metrolina and VLA. The article was published by Internet Reference Services Quarterly in November 2015 and can be seen here.