2011 ACRL President’s Program innovation contest winners

CHICAGO –In conjunction with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) President’s Program at the 2011 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, the association sponsored a contest to identify exciting library innovation projects using teams to implement new ideas. Given the high quality of the proposals and innovative thinking demonstrated in the projects, the President’s Program Committee selected three winners from the 28 teams of academic librarians who submitted proposals. All entries are available online at http://acrl.ala.org/2011presprogram/.

The Cook Library Civility Project from the Towson University Albert S. Cook Library was named the winner in the “in progress” category.

“The Cook Library demonstrated a unique way of dealing with a common problem. Their video empowers the students to handle noise problems themselves. Through this project, the Cook Library benefits from the diverse strengths of every member of the team, a truly innovative and collaborative venture,” the committee noted. “The reviewers admired this positive-oriented approach and the library’s goal of expanding the campaign to other formats.”

The Nightmare on Vine Street: A Team of Zombie Librarians Take On Freshman Orientation from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga Lupton Library and 3-Hour School Library Field Experience for Pre-Service K-12 Teachers from the Lavery Library at St. John Fisher College were named the winners in the “implemented” category.

“The Nightmare on Vine Street video game demonstrates creativity by transforming the traditional library tour into an engaging online encounter,” said the reviewers. “Taking full advantage of the current zombie craze, this project relied on extensive teamwork in order to develop a highly successful and enticing instructional experience. The team was thoughtful in building an assessment component into the project. The zombie hook provides a high impact factor.”

“The St. Johns Fisher College project looks outside the campus and reaches out to the community, another department and to a specific group of students,” the committee continued. “The students get a unique and practical opportunity that benefits their future careers, and fosters the sense of collaboration between teacher and librarian in a K-12 atmosphere. This is a great example of interdepartmental collaboration that impressed the committee with its innovative qualities.”

Looking for ways to increase innovation in your library? Join ACRL for the 2011 President’s Program in New Orleans. Titled “From Idea to Innovation to Implementation: How Teams Make it Happen,” the program features Jason Young, author of the book “Culturetopia: The Ultimate High-Performance Workplace” and an expert on how workplace teams can obtain maximum productivity.

The program, hosted by ACRL President Lisa Hinchliffe of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will take place from 10:30 a.m. – noon CDT. on Saturday, June 25 in room 356-357 of the Morial Convention Center.

More information is available on the President’s Program website at http://acrl.ala.org/2011presprogram/.

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ACRL is a division of the American Library Association (ALA), representing more than 12,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at http://www.acrl.org, Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ala.acrl and Twitter at @ala_acrl.