Utah Library Association Sandy, UT May 2-3, 2002 Shaun Adamson

Thank you for the opportunity to attend the ULA conference on May 2-3, 2002.  This year, I am serving as chair-elect of the ACRL Roundtable, and this was an excellent opportunity for me to network with other officers to discuss plans for updating the Web page on the ULA site, possible speakers for next year's program, and the ACRL Chapter's Council Meeting I will be attending at ALA in June.

The sessions I attended on Thursday provided evidence that Weber State has a very strong information literacy/library instruction program.  The first session focused on faculty-librarian collaborations on information literacy, and was evidence that our information literacy program at Weber State is quite advanced, compared to others.  Most of the comments made by the group I was in centered on faculty-librarian communication.  The second session focused on distance education and library instruction.  This small group discussed individual policies and procedures, provided examples of things happening in their institutions, and discussed some of the challenges presented to librarians by distance learners. 

I also attended a wonderful session presented by Nancy Lombardo on Friday that introduced some basic and advanced features and uses for the PDA, as they related to the library and information environment.  I see, daily, the advantages of the PDA as a scheduling tool; this presentation featured the PDA as an information storage device.   The second session I attended discussed instruction programs used in core writing courses.  One interesting idea that came from this session was the differences in the way librarians and writing/English instructors view library instruction; librarians' perform instruction sessions to teach students how to find and evaluate information, while writing instructors focus on finding information and using it to serve a purpose (rather than simply regurgitating information found in these sources).