Here’s one of the things I like most of all to see AMICAL supporting: professional development events that are created on members’ own initiative and for the benefit of the entire consortium. The AMICAL Conference is largely built out of member contributions as well, but it’s gratifying in a different way to see a specific issue, timely and relevant to member institutions, developed with focus and intensity by member-organizers for a targeted group of member-participants. AMICAL has a grant-funded program specifically to support this: our Consortial Training & Workshop Grants program (“Workshop Grants” for short). With the help of our Coordinating Committee, we just finalized the guidelines for Workshop Grants aimed at those interested in proposing a funded event. The guidelines are pretty detailed, so below is an abbreviated version -- plus an alternative suggestion! Workshop Grants vs. Small Grants What’s the difference? Workshop Grants provide financial support for the organization and delivery of thematic professional development events targeting participation by multiple member institutions. Looking to fund a professional development event for folks at a single member institution? Wrong program -- see the Small Grant Program instead. Participants & topics The primary target audience for Workshop Grants must be from AMICAL member institutions, and events should be open to any interested member. Participants should include some mix of AMICAL’s usual suspects: librarians, faculty, faculty developers, instructional designers, instructional technologists, IT directors and other relevant technology staff. Topics for funded events should help AMICAL members advance in some way the strategic priority areas targeted by our current Mellon grant: Leadership of library and information services Information literacy Curriculum-integrated digital initiatives (digital scholarship, digital pedagogy, digital collections) AMICAL’s collaboration network Face-to-face or online events...and their budgets Proposals can be for face-to-face or online events, with the following budget limits. Normal budget limits: Face-to-face events: €13,000 Online events: €1,000 In exceptional cases, budgets of up to the following limits may be accepted: Face-to-face events: €26,000 Online events: €2,000 If you want to go over the normal limit, get your arguments ready. We’ll want good ones! Timing & deadlines Don’t plan your event in July or August. Don’t plan your event in the middle of a major religious observance. Don’t even dare schedule your event near the AMICAL Conference. (Come ON, people! We want you all with us at the Conference!) Basically: check with us before you start committing to dates. Do get in touch with us as early as possible for feedback on developing your proposal. And do respect these deadlines: Online events: same deadlines as for Small Grants (next deadline: 6 November) Face-to-face events between now and July 2017:Submit statement of intent by 9 October 2016 Submit proposal by 16 October 2016 Face-to-face events between August 2017 and July 2018:Submit proposal by 30 June 2017 How to propose a Workshop Grant Read carefully the full guidelines for Workshop Grants. Get in touch with us, and with any relevant committee chair, as early as possible as you develop your idea. We’ll help make sure your plans fit with the scope of the program and are coordinated with related initiatives that may be in the works. And use AMICAL Connect as a tool, to see what issues members are already discussing, and to bounce your own ideas off other AMICAL colleagues. Previously funded workshops To give you an idea of the type of workshops we’re aiming for, here are examples of AMICAL-funded workshops that align with the scope of the current grant program: Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo (American University in Cairo - March 2016) Evidence-based planning & decision-making in academic libraries (John Cabot University - January 2016) Engage students in creative multimedia content production (American University in Kosovo - 2014) Collaborative Learning Technologies (American University in Cairo - 2012) These are only examples and do not represent the full range of topics that can be funded. Alternative: organize a free online event Who needs a grant! Member-organized webinars, virtual round table discussions, and other online events may not have any direct costs. Online events enable wide participation across the consortium and are strongly encouraged as a choice for organizing AMICAL events. The Professional Development Committee helps integrate such events into AMICAL’s year-level event planning, and AMICAL Administration can assist with the marketing, communications, and web meeting technology. To propose a no-cost online event, ask the AMICAL committee most relevant to your topic for feedback on your idea, then share that with the Professional Development Committee and AMICAL Administration. Members: whatever event you might be imagining -- in person or online -- that relates to AMICAL’s mission, your ideas help us see further and keep us grounded at the same time. I look forward to your proposals!

Latest funded activities Responses were sent out Monday to the latest group of applications for AMICAL’s Small Grant Program. Of the three applications received, we accepted the following two: Actively Engaged by Design: Visual Literacy for University Faculty and Academic Library Professionals (AUBG) March 2017 ACRL Immersion Teaching with Technology Program (AUP) Next deadline for applications: 6 November The next round of applications will close on 6 November, at midnight in whatever time zone you happen to find yourself in. You may submit your application from (American) Samoa if this helps you meet the deadline, but you do need to be from a Full or Affiliate member institution. The Review Committee’s responses will be sent to applicants by 20 November. Small Grant application cycles are roughly every two months, and the dates for this year are posted on our Small Grant pages. New list of recommended professional development events Are you thinking about applying for Small Grant to support a professional development activity? Have a look at our new list of recommended events. These are programs that AMICAL has previously partnered with, events which our members have participated in and found valuable, and other recommendations by AMICAL’s committees. We welcome Small Grant applications for participation in other reputable events, as well as peer and staff exchanges among AMICAL institutions, but we suggest at least considering events from this list. Reminder: Pay close attention to the review criteria This year we’ve opened up the Small Grant program to a larger range of eligible activities than in the past -- beyond just professional development -- and we’re receiving a larger number of applications. We’ve also created more thorough guidelines with more demanding criteria for applications. If you’re seeking a Small Grant, there’s no getting around this: make sure that the activity description in your application responds adequately to as many of the review criteria points as possible. Note that we may revise the criteria slightly over the course of the year. If we do so, we’ll announce this at least a few weeks in advance of the next deadline.

This post was edited to reflect the change of event dates to 17-20 May 2017. I’m excited to share the news that our next annual meeting and conference, AMICAL 2017, will be held 17-20 May at the American College of Thessaloniki. Our theme will be “Centering on learning: Partnerships and professional development among librarians, faculty and technologists”. The first day, 17 May, will be open only to committees with meetings scheduled that day. The open program of presentations, workshops and discussions will run over the three days of 18-20 May. We’ve just launched the AMICAL 2017 page with basic information and a beautiful view of the locale awaiting us! (Evi Tramantza, library director at ACT and local organizer, assures us that it will be even more beautiful, with lovely weather, when we arrive.) Save that link, since it’s where we’ll build out the full conference site in the coming months, and use the social media links to stay connected for conference news. About the Conference Through AMICAL, our member institutions collaborate on the development of library, technology and curricular resources. The AMICAL Conference is where the vision for this work takes shape -- and where the foundations for this work are laid. Our conference brings together faculty, librarians, technologists and others who are passionate about improving the learning experience of their students. Given the geographical spread of AMICAL members, this is the only moment in the year when we’re able to meet face to face as a group, and the quality of the program is therefore critical. The program must also respond to the unique challenges and rich opportunities of AMICAL members: institutions with highly international student and staff populations, adapting the American liberal arts curricular model to diverse regional environments. Centering on learning: Partnerships & professional development among librarians, faculty & technologists Evi and the ACT organizing team wanted to give special focus at the Conference to librarian-faculty collaborations around professional development. At the same time, AMICAL as an organization has been developing an increasing focus on faculty development, in particular as it relates to digital pedagogy, information literacy, first-year-experience programs, and collaborations in general of faculty with librarians and technologists. More and more instructional designers, faculty developers, and leaders of centers for teaching, learning, or writing are getting involved with AMICAL. We wanted the program to accommodate all kinds of cooperation connecting faculty development to AMICAL’s mission, including spaces (like centers for learning and teaching) but also programs and resources. We hope that members will find an inspiring opportunity within our theme, both to share what they know, and to acquire and develop new ideas to put into action at their institutions. Shaping the conference program The Program Committee includes representatives from ACT, AMICAL Administration, and each of the four committees most closely related to the theme: Digital Pedagogy Digital Scholarship Information Literacy Professional Development These folks are responsible for selecting invited speakers, framing the call for proposals, reviewing proposals, and scheduling the program. All AMICAL committees will be solicited for input on the program, however, not only those represented directly on the Program Committee. Although the theme will steer the development of the program, other topics related to AMICAL’s mission and of broad interest to our members will also be included. And to make strategic use of the Conference for moving forward AMICAL’s collaborative work, we’ll also give ample time to our committees for developing and advancing their goals. We’re paying special attention this year, however, to the daily rhythm of the program, since AMICAL is an intense event where attendees participate continuously for three or four days. We’ll be making sure there’s enough downtime and informal meeting time to allow everyone to re-energize and engage as actively as possible with scheduled sessions. What’s next? Send us your ideas! The Program Committee will be working over the next few months on the general shape of the program, the selection of invited speakers, and the call for proposals to go out in the late fall. We’d love to have suggestions from members as we work on these. Any of the following input would be welcome: Suggestions for invited speakers: Do you know someone who can speak effectively, engagingly and with expertise related to our conference theme? Send us some information about them, including links to professional bios and recent recordings of speaking engagements. Suggestions for shaping the program: If you’re an AMICAL member and have a suggestion related to the conference program, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Post your ideas under the "Suggest ideas" topic in AMICAL Connect and the Program Committee will consider them. If you’re not an AMICAL member, you can make suggestions through our contact form. Finally: Block the dates, AMICAL members -- in person or online, you won’t want to miss this event!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve unified the logins across the main AMICAL site and AMICAL Connect, our community forum. Up until now, each system required a separate login. Now, when AMICAL members login to this site, they’ll be granted access to AMICAL Connect as well. We hope that this change will make accessing both sites much simpler. This feature has been requested for a long time and it’s finally here! Behind the scenes, there were a lot of changes required to make this work. We’d like to outline some of the most important things you’re likely to notice: Your login is now your email address You will now login with your email address and your existing password. Your AMICAL Connect username is still being used, as that is how people @mention you, but it’s not used to login to the site. What happens to my existing accounts? It’s all good: If you had an AMICAL account already, just login with your email. If you didn’t have an AMICAL account before, and you’re an AMICAL member, now is a great time to sign up for one. Your AMICAL account will automatically link up with your existing AMICAL Connect account, if you had one, or a new one will be created for you. If you’re new to AMICAL Connect you'll receive an email with helpful tips. Make sure to also read the first steps topic, which gives some suggestions about things to do. Improved security In order to bolster security, we now require all accounts to confirm their email. Until you verify your email you won’t have full access to the site. If you haven’t verified your account, there will be instructions in your account dashboard about how to do so. We have also sent an email with instructions to all existing account holders. Finally, we’ve enabled HTTPS on both sites, meaning that your connection will be encrypted and any information you send or receive will be secure and private. Great! When does this happen? It already has. By the time you read this blog post, the two websites will be linked. If you have any trouble accessing your account, contact us and we’ll help you out.

AMICAL 2016, our annual conference, wrapped up almost three months ago. Since then many of the participants have been busy writing blog posts and gathering other material from the event. Here is a thorough collection: Blog posts Invited workshop leader Laurie Allen posted Tips for Learning Tools for Librarians as well as a reflection on AMICAL 2016. Jim Groom posted a reflection on his keynote Small is Beautiful: A Study of Ed-Tech as if People Mattered. With Maha Bali, Jim co-wrote a post about the session they presented together, Does EdTech have an ethos? And why should I care? Jim also posted a follow-up. Rrezarta Xhaferi responded to this session with Should Education Have a Soul? Maha wrote about her one-day whirlwind attendance, Rome in a Day, as well as a post on Preparing Audience-Sensitive Presentations and Workshops, derived partly from her experiences at AMICAL. Titia van der Werf reflected on her own attendance through a story about the spirituality of libraries. While Jeff Gima, the consortium’s director, adapted his opening remarks as The AMICAL 2016 program: the library, the digital, and the human. Everything else Recordings to the keynotes and selected sessions are available on YouTube. Reports from the event have found their way onto AMICAL Connect, our members-only forum. Several attendees posted session and unconference reports. Committee chairs wrote up committee reports, based on their 5+5 presentations during the conference’s closing session. Photos from the event are available on Flickr. Finally, Dimitris Tzouris has woved a number of this material in a Storify. Thanks to everyone who has contributed by reflecting in writing or helping to gather material from the event. If I’ve missed anything, let me know. I hope to see you all at our next conference which will be hosted by the American College of Thessaloniki. In the meantime, there are a lot of programs and initiatives led by AMICAL’s committees to keep us engaged in libraries, technology and teaching.

My experience at AMICAL was overwhelmingly fantastic, and fantastically overwhelming. I have tried many times to reflect with some clarity about the many strands of learning that were going on for me at AMICAL. And I still feel like there's too much for me to really follow any one of them into a coherent piece of writing. So instead of full thoughts on the whole experience, I'll sketch a few threads: My presentation / What did I have to offer I was so flattered for the opportunity to lead a workshop on planning for a digital scholarship program at a Liberal Arts College. In my talk and workshop, I shared the program that we built at Haverford College, where I worked until February of this year, and talked about its development. Roughly the program has three parts: engagements with courses in producing new forms of scholarship; student and library-driven projects, especially in the creation of digital and hybrid exhibits; and faculty-driven longstanding research projects. It wasn't until talking with the AMICAL folks, though, that I think I really fully recognized the key to our success. It was the student workers we relied on and trusted that allowed us to do the work we did. I really wished I'd re-done the workshop to focus explicitly on all of the things I learned about managing student workers over time. What we did focus on was pretty straightforward planning practices: build from where you are, use the resources at your disposal, start small and build outwards. But the more I talked with folks, the more I came to realize how much of our growth was in developing strategies, approaches and workflows for working with student workers on complex and substantive projects. Does Ed Tech have an ethos? Maha Bali and Jim Groom led one of the most open and brave conference sessions I've ever been to. It was a conversation, it was tough, it was welcoming, and I was really impressed, in addition to truly enjoying it. Maha and Jim did a great job writing it up already, so I won't say more than that. But the opportunity for real conversation across ways of working and thinking is so rare. And they moderated an important, difficult, and fun conversation about the question of neutrality in our work. For me, most of tensions they brought up were not new, but I really admired how their approach was so open, and so generous in acknowledging the complex and layered day to day work of educational technologies as well as the simultaneous context that it is part of. I think I (and likely the #critlib movement) could learn some humility and openness from their approach. The Archives session There were a lot of sessions that resonated for me, and even more conversations, lunches and relaxed opportunities to hang out. But one session I wanted to call out in particular out was the session on Archives that Demetra Papaconstantinou led. I was a librarian for 12 years before my work turned entirely towards the digital. It was only when I started working fulltime in the creation of new scholarship using technology that I really appreciated the importance of archives, and of the work of archivists. There is a range of archival activity across the AMICAL schools, but honestly, I have to say that I wish there were more. That's not a critique of the activities of AMICAL librarians, more a reflection on the absurdly large job responsibilities of so many librarians. The are expected to simultaneously support research and pedagogy across all academic disciplines and serve faculty interests so that they’re conserving resources for what will be most used for the current faculty. And yet, this focus leaves so little room for the work of maintaining and documenting the history and records of these institutions. I felt some sadness at the loss of these amazing institutional histories. It's nobody’s fault, but it was hard to hear about, and I couldn’t help mourn for the loss to us all from the inattention to the stories that these institutional records might tell. Once again, I want to find ways to create networks of support across borders. It seems like a tough task, one I hope to continue working on. Networks and distance Spending time seeing the amazing work going on at AMICAL institutions through the Community Idea Exchange was fantastic. There are so many creative, thoughtful projects going on. It did make me feel really grateful for the THATCamps, conferences, and local meetings I go to, where I'm exposed to a variety of cool and useful projects. That session, combined with so many others, left me really hungry for ways that US and international librarians could find easier ways of sharing our experiences and learning together. For all of my amazement at the cool stuff there, I was frustrated that my colleagues in the US don't have the benefit of learning from AMICAL schools more often, and that the staff of these AMICAL institutions don't have more easy contact with all of the networks that have benefited me so much in my work. I'm very interested in ways that we might create more opportunities for networking across borders, time, and distance. I love the work going on through Virtually Connecting and the GO::DH crew, and will try to incorporate their practices into some of my future work. But I also want to look for other ways of connecting with my international colleagues in the digital world.

One of the things that is oft-repeated in our line of work is “it’s not about the technology,” or “it’s not about the tool!” While it sounds good as a slogan, it is actually a pretty ridiculous statement in this day and age. In fact, it is almost dangerous because it suggests that we can somehow separate the way we teach and learn from the technological systems in which we work. It seems disingenuous to say “it’s not about the tool” if you are using a Learning Management System (LMS, such as Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas) to teach a course. It would be like saying the utensils you use to cook are irrelevant to the food you produce - when we all know the difference a pot or oven can make, regardless of content. We have both been in the line of work of supporting other faculty in their teaching and use of technology (Maha since 2003, Jim since 2004) and even though our contexts are very different, we have been interacting online for over two years now and take a critical stance (not a value-neutral one) about the relationship between technology and pedagogy. In our session entitled “Should EdTech have an ethos?” we tried to highlight the assumptions particular tools make about the teaching and learning experience. For example, what assumptions does your average LMS make about a course experience? Although LMS’s differ slightly in their implementation, for the most part, they are true to their name: they attempt to “manage” learning in a “systematic” way - what does that say about how the LMS approaches learning, which we as educators know is messy and should be nurtured rather than managed? The LMS delivers on its name: It is a closed, copyright haven that makes giving quizzes and grading easier. How does that measure up in terms of ethos? It reinforces higher ed’s refusal to push back on draconian copyright laws, their intransigent fear of openly sharing, and the continued quest for efficiency around the management tasks of teaching. All of this can make sense in some contexts, but as an ethos for a rich, web-based teaching and learning experience it tends to fall short. Now you can certainly do more with such a tool, but few do---and the tool itself is designed to reinforce the behaviors we have come to expect of the tool (there has been almost two decades of fine-tuning the LMS, so in that regard the tool is a reflection of our desires and priorities). We asked who makes decisions about which tools a university purchases. Should faculty (and even students) have a greater say in which tools the university chooses instead of constantly finding themselves as consumers of those forced upon them by the institution? Should faculty or students feel shamed for not using technology provided by the institution if they feel uncomfortable with it? The tool is not besides the point, it is that much more important as an object of study. The tool has become the manifestation of our ethos, and hence the more we deconstruct the assumptions of our tools, the closer we come to laying bare the ethos we currently champion around our teaching and learning technologies. In this regard the discussion around the LMS (as well as Turnitin, Google Apps for Education, etc.) at AMICAL was tricky because while some haven’t fully deconstructed the tools, most use them even though they fully (or at least partially, or even subconsciously) understand the limitations. And given this, once you articulate a critique of the tool it also becomes a critique of their teaching and learning practices. If you know something is subpar, why do you continue on with it especially given how important it is to the overall experience? This inability to separate the tool from the teaching and learning is demonstrative of how interdependent the two have become, and how problematic the idea is that teaching and learning in 2016 isn’t to some great degree informed by technologies we use. The approach of this session was to directly challenge the ways many of our “teaching and learning” tools enable us to prioritize class management over engagement, hide from important copyright discussions, and assume our students are plagiarists and cheats. And while a difficult and at times agonistic session, we believe it was a really worthwhile conversation to have (and continue having). Tensions ran a bit high at certain points and individuals felt their practices were being challenged, but we think the discomfort resulting from a direct questioning of the assumptions around our everyday practices is why we got into the game of higher education. What’s more, such a discussion reinforces the importance of being able to articulate how and why the tools we use increasingly define our practices.We need to ensure that teachers have agency over how and why they integrate technology into their teaching, rather than give them tools the institution has pre-chosen and paid for, and tell them to limit their arsenal to those, to submit to management and systems instead of learning and engagement. We had a rich, animated discussion, which Maha has always wanted to have on campus but did not have the courage to facilitate on her own (thanks Jim!). But the discussion need not end there - it is one thing to become more conscious of the conflicts between our philosophies and the ethos of our tools, and another to be able to take action based on this. We hope that AMICAL members will continue to ask these questions and support each other locally and consortially, in moving forward. Follow up At the Digital Pedagogy Committee meeting following our session, all committee members (all had attended this session) wanted to continue this type of conversation across AMICAL, online synchronously and asynchronously over time. As posted on AMICAL Connect, the Digital Pedagogy Committee have suggested a preliminary list of possible webinars/activities we can offer and we invite members to express interest at: http://bit.ly/digped2016 (The one that is a follow-up to the Ethos session is “Finding the mix of tools to support your teaching philosophy”.) We will prioritize the webinars/activities that seem to be of most interest to AMICAL members. There is also room for anyone to suggest their own - if they have expertise in an area and are willing to support other AMICAL members in learning about it.

At the AMICAL 2016 conference last month, I heard an inspiring story about the cyclical destruction and revival of libraries. Dr. Richard Hodges, President of the American University of Rome, began his welcome message as follows: “Unlike what many of you may believe, you don’t come from Silicon Valley, you come from the monks”. He went on to explain that libraries were created at the end of the 8th century by monasteries. It was then that monks started to make books, besides growing food and brewing beer. They crafted the leather skin covers, the straps, the folded leaves of vellum, and all the instrumentation necessary to write books. They created the blueprint of the library. In subsequent years, full blown libraries developed, like the ones in Saint Denis and Montecassino. Like with all things successful, once they grow, you need to sustain them. The monks thus devised a model to attract donors with the lure of a counter gift: a hand-crafted book. When, in the mid-9th century, the Vikings and Saracens destroyed many monasteries and their libraries, the books survived in the hands of those who had been donors. And so, the spirituality of what libraries stood for, as preservers of intellectual heritage, survived the destruction and was the seed for the new learning of the Renaissance. The storyteller hinted at globalization as a similar wave of destruction, which might leave us without libraries but with the promise that the spirituality of what libraries stand for, will resurface in a new guise. According to keynote speaker Jim Groom this new guise is the Archiving Movement. He painted the Web landscape as a wonderful space of many small initiatives with do-it-yourself blogs and a Wiki-infra on which one can build an entire curriculum for free, with fascinating open technology and with exciting new learning experiences. In his view, it is all about our individual content, building domains of our own and leaving our personal digital footprints. He advocated the need for individuals to become archivists, reclaiming ownership and control over their data from the “big companies”. In this world of the small against the giants, “rogue Internet archivists” (or morphing librarians, as you wish) are excavating and rescuing the remains of parts of the web, that are dying and being destroyed. In my presentation on “Adapting to the new scholarly record” I talked about shifting trends in the research ecosystem and disturbances which are disrupting the tasks and responsibilities of librarians, as stewards of the record of science. I conveyed the concerns of experts and practitioners in the field, who met during a series of OCLC Research workshops on this matter. They talked about the short-term need for a demonstrable pay-off by universities and funding agencies; the diverse concerns on campus around image, IPR and compliance; the emergence of new digital platforms like ResearchGate and others, that lure researchers into providing data to them and bypassing their institutional repositories; etc. All these forces at play are distracting libraries from safeguarding the record for future scholarship. These observations beg the question, which came from the audience: “what can we do about it?” and in particular “What can we do, as AMICAL libraries”? I had been impressed by the information literacy (IL) session the day before. AMICAL libraries from Paris to Sharjah presented their efforts to engage faculty and to broaden the understanding of IL within the university. Many of the libraries face challenges with their student population, such as reluctance and resistance to reading, deficiencies in academic writing skills, inexperienced information retrieval expectations and ineffective search practices. The session concluded with the desirability to integrate IL in the curriculum. So, I answered my audience without hesitation: Please continue the good work you are doing in IL! Why do we hear so little about IL at other library conferences in Europe? Isn’t IL a core part of that spirituality Richard Hodges talked about – a core part of what libraries stand for? The next generation needs to be prepared for the new learning in the digital information age. This requires education and training. People are not born being-digital!

The following post is adapted from opening remarks given last week at AMICAL 2016, our consortium’s annual meeting and conference. This year’s AMICAL Conference is the first time that we’ve tied the theme of the event directly to the Mellon Foundation grant that is supporting many of AMICAL's programs. We built this year’s conference program under the theme "Libraries and digital initiatives”, aligning it with one of the strategic priority areas we established in our current Mellon grant: the collaborative work of librarians, technologists and faculty on curriculum-integrated digital initiatives. Donald Waters, Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at the Mellon Foundation writes in a recent blog post that the Foundation is trying to help "make the digital environment a natural place to do scholarship." For AMICAL, this event is a milestone in the three-year journey of our current grant, one step on our way toward making AMICAL a natural place for librarians, technologists and faculty to collaborate on digital pedagogy, on digital collections, and on digital scholarship. I credit Alex Armstrong with encouraging us to think of the event more strategically than we have in the past and to shape it in a way that more actively supports our larger organizational goals. Alex has been working with AMICAL as our Web Developer & Digital Strategist since last year, and in addition to building the new website where we host this blog and other public info about AMICAL, he’s created a system of member profiles as well as an innovative discussion forum that are parts of a new online network for AMICAL members. But he’s also contributed in important ways to our planning for new committees that relate to digital initiatives. And as you can see from the program, AMICAL’s standing committees, which help to guide our consortial programs in areas like professional development and digital pedagogy, were given a featured role in the event. Each committee had two chances to meet, and then, during our closing session, they led their “5+5” talks. Committees were given 5 minutes to share with us their plans for the coming year, and to invite, question, and inspire us around what they’re doing. And then the audience was given 5 minutes to react and question them. Aside from committee work, there were presentations, workshops and discussions touching sometimes on digital collections, scholarship and pedagogy, but also spreading out in other directions of AMICAL’s work. The word cloud above was made from the titles and abstracts of our program sessions. With apologies to speaker Eric Lease Morgan and his abstract, and to our Birds-of-a-Feather discussions, this version of the word cloud excludes the words stone, soup, beef, and birds, all of which occurred with high frequency. Between Eric, Laurie Allen and Jim Groom, our keynote speakers provided an interesting mix of library-anchored digital scholarship, human-anchored approaches to educational technology, and the very human aspects of good collaboration necessary for any of this role-bridging work to really happen on our campuses. We brought humanity to the digital humanities last week!

AMICAL 2016 is finally upon us! Even if you aren’t able to attend the onsite event, you can still participate online. (And if you are attending, you can share this with a colleague who may not know about AMICAL yet!) The online options are: Watch the live streamed sessions Participate via Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #amicalnet Join the Virtually Connecting conversation after Jim Groom’s keynote Discuss on AMICAL Connect All options are open to everyone -- except for discussing on AMICAL Connect, which is only available from members. Watch the live streamed sessions We have an incredible roster of speakers this year and we’ll be streaming a large portion of the program, including the keynotes, featured presentations, lightning talks, the first part of the invited workshop, and the plenary sessions. You can find more details, including the links to watch live or recordings, on the live streaming program page. During the live streams, you’ll be able to type questions using the chat feature of YouTube Live. The session’s convener will be monitoring the chat and may ask the presenters on your behalf. The live stream links will also allow you to access the recording immediately after the streaming ends. Join the Virtually Connecting conversation In partnership with Virtual Connecting, we’ll be hosting an online and informal conversation with Jim Groom, Maha Bali and Nadine Aboulmagd as a follow-up to Jim’s keynote. Find more details at the Virtual Connecting site. But, in short: To join the conversation as an active participant, just tweet to @vconnecting or send an email to info@virtuallyconnecting.org. You can also just watch the conversation, either live or recorded, by following the link on the live stream program. (If you haven’t heard of Virtually Connecting before, this blog post explains what it is.) Participate via Twitter and Instagram Some of us will be Tweeting with the #amicalnet hashtag. You can follow the hashtag and tweet along with us. We’ll also be posting selected photos on Instagram with the #amicalnet hashtag. Discuss on AMICAL Connect This year we’re asking onsite participants to write up brief reports of sessions they attend and post them on AMICAL Connect, the community’s forum. We hope these will seed conversations, perhaps even spark collaborations. AMICAL members that are participating virtually are welcome to join in. Add your name next to a session on the reporting log to declare your intention to report on it. Then check the reporting guidelines for more details. Event photo: Takima Studios taken during Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo: An AMICAL Institute (Copyright Center for Learning and Teaching, AUC. Used with Permission).