So if you’ve read the posts below about ACRL 2015, you may have picked up on the fact that ACRL-OR was involved in a little reception for ACRL Leaders. I led the planning effort for that event, and am absolutely delighted that it turned out GREAT! We had about 80 guests during the course of the reception. ACRL board members, ACRL conference planners, ACRL chapter leaders and ACRL-OR and ACRL-WA members mingled and chatted in the lovely Crystal Ballroom of the Benson Hotel.

I am still ridiculously satisfied with the fact that we “went completely local” with funding. Generous support by local academic libraries and individual academic librarians made this event possible! My heartfelt thanks to all of them.

Beyond the reception, I did attend some great sessions focusing on ethnographic research techniques. I also very much enjoyed all three keynote speakers… not always a given for me. One takeaway that I can’t wait to share with students is the way that Thursday’s keynote speaker, Jad Abumrad, summarized his creative process.

“What? [pause] oh. [longer pause] What?? [pause] Oh. [longer pause] WHAT? [pause] Ohhhhhhhhh!”

For me, this perfectly summed up the information search process in general and really spoke to the iterative nature of research or other creative endeavors.

The rest of my takeaways are not this neatly packaged, but that is what post-conference processing is supposed to help with. Now I just have to make some time to do it!

~ Uta Hussong-Christian, ACRL-OR Vice-President (2014-2015)
Associate Professor & Instruction/Science Librarian
Oregon State University