We’ve migrated AMICAL Connect to a new platform! Improving communication across the consortium emerged as one of the primary challenges that members brought up during AMICAL 2015. The previous version of AMICAL Connect was a full-blown social network for all our members. An ambitious initiative, to be sure. But in trying to address the consortium’s multiple needs, it ended up being rather complicated to use. The AMICAL website has already taken on some of the content we previously kept in Connect, including event information and public announcements in the form of our blog. Its role is planned to expand in the future even more. For this reason, and after talking with AMICAL members about their needs, we decided to narrow down the purpose of our main communication tool. The new version of Connect is laser-focused on doing only one thing: providing a great discussion forum. We envision the role of AMICAL Connect as a bridge between AMICAL members across institutional, geographic and professional boundaries. A place where you can share your accomplishments, discuss your interests, find answers to your questions, collaborate on projects and pursue common goals. A place where you can inspire your peers and be inspired in return. It’s a place, in short, for community. And like any community, it’s a work-in-progress. There’s some structure in place to hold the content we moved from the previous site. But we’ve kept things simple. There are no complicated groups or teams to join. Only AMICAL members have access to the forum, but once logged in, any member can see and reply to any post. We want you to join us in shaping this community so that it becomes a useful part of your professional toolkit. To participate, just log in and start a discussion about libraries, teaching, ed tech, IT or any other topic that may be of interest to other AMICAL members. Connect is also geared to allow you to continue discussions or plan projects that arise out of AMICAL events, such as the upcoming Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo or AMICAL 2016. Reactivate your account Your existing AMICAL Connect account has been migrated to the new platform. To log in you will first need to reset your password at this link: http://connect.amicalnet.org/password-reset Make sure to use your institutional email address – the one this email was sent to. If you run into trouble, contact me at armstrong@amicalnet.org . I look forward to seeing you in our new forum. P.S. Your AMICAL Connect account is separate from your account on the main AMICAL site. We needed to keep the two systems distinct during the migration, but we will eventually combine them. Originally sent to AMICAL members as an email. Posted here in the interest of publicly documenting AMICAL's development of online community resources.

The full answer is explained on the conference site -- and note in particular that hotel and registration fee are not covered automatically -- but the short answer is: yes, if you’re an AMICAL member. The kind of support you can get depends on 2 factors: your institution’s type of membership in AMICAL (Full/Affiliate/Network) and whether you’re playing an “active role” in the conference. If you’re not sure about your membership type, see the last column next to your institution on our list of member institutions. But what’s this “active role” business? At the level most immediately relevant to conference attendees, this means that to be eligible for requesting financial support of any kind, you need to be playing one of the following “active roles” in the event: contributing a session that has been accepted into the program (see the Call for Proposals, with deadline of 21 February) being a member of AMICAL’s Members Council (AMICAL Reps) or an AMICAL Standing Committee (member lists are linked from AMICALconnect) coordinating an essential resource for production of the conference (webcasting, volunteer program, etc.) OK - I’m playing one of those active roles in the event. What kind of support can I get? There are three types of support, each with its own conditions: Travel support (opens 24 February, apply by 1 March). This is open only to Full and Affiliate members. We can only fund travel for a fraction of attendees -- a maximum of 2 per institution -- and we’re really focusing on institutions that have extremely limited funds available to support travel for staff or faculty. If you’re not in that situation, please do not apply, so that we’re able to help the institutions that need it most. If you’re applying, having an active role will add weight to your request. Hotel support (opens 4 March, request by 10 March). This also is open only to Full and Affiliate members, and -- new this year -- requires playing an active role in the event. Registration fee support (opens 4 March). This is open to all AMICAL member types (Full/Affiliate/Network), but -- also new this year -- requires playing an active role in the event. For full information, see AMICAL 2016 Financial support. Who’s doing the work of reviewing these applications? AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee. Bless their souls. They’re also in the role of Program Committee this year, vetting proposals. So hug them, or at least thank them, when you get to Rome. Why are you making it so hard to get support? We love big library-technology-learning-dancing parties, and wish we could fund everyone’s attendance, but we can’t. Thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are providing the same amount of support for AMICAL members’ participation as we have in recent years. But Rome is an expensive location. And more importantly, we’re increasingly trying to plan AMICAL’s events strategically, in ways that move the consortium towards broader, longer term goals. To that end, we’re aligning event themes with organizational goals, increasing the role of committees and consortial projects in event programs, and building in incentives for individuals to participate and take leadership roles, in the event and in the organization. The AMICAL 2016 financial support model is an example of that: trying to make sure that as many as possible of you that are willing and able to lead “active roles” are able to come.

What’s different about running a first/freshman year experience (FYE) program as part of a liberal arts curriculum in the international environment of AMICAL member institutions? Different, for example, from running FYE programs at colleges or universities in the US? How do differences of language and culture, or the extreme diversity of these within some AMICAL institutions’ own student bodies, affect goals and expectations for these programs? How is information literacy integrated into these programs’ curricular goals, and how should this be done differently from American institutions, because of the diversity of students’ prior experiences with libraries and research, or with consuming and producing information? I met today over lunch with Elizabeth Kinne, a medievalist in the Comparative Literature department of the American University of Paris (AUP), to talk about how we could discuss those questions across the AMICAL Consortium with faculty, librarians and others involved in FYE programs. Elizabeth is the current coordinator for FirstBridge, an innovative FYE program initiated at AUP in 2001. FirstBridge creates small Freshman learning communities around paired and ‘bridged’ courses of different disciplines: students participate in the 2 separate courses but also meet regularly with both of their professors -- and occasionally their librarian -- for a joint ‘reflective seminar’ to work on interdisciplinary questions, information literacy, or various issues of crossing the bridge into their college careers. At AUP, Elizabeth and colleagues are in the process of rethinking the goals and format of FirstBridge, so it’s a perfect time to be in contact with peers coordinating FYE programs at other AMICAL institutions. And an opportunity to start building a peer network across AMICAL focused on this special kind of curricular program. Our initial goal is to launch an online conversation with those coordinators, but we’re hoping to do much more! We’ll be getting in touch soon with AMICAL members to find out more about FYE programs on your campuses, and who’s involved in them. If you’re an AMICAL member, and you simply can’t wait for that questionnaire to come your way, you can also send us a note with a link to info about the FYE program at your institution.

Librarians, technologists, and faculty at AMICAL institutions: AMICAL 2016 is your conference. Below is the short version of “how to make it your conference" by proposing sessions for the program. There’s also a painfully-long Call for Proposals -- which, in all seriousness, you need to read if you’re preparing a proposal -- but here’s the basic idea: You’ve got a vision. Propose a collaborative project planning session. You’re awesome at something. Help others learn a new skill or technique with a workshop. You’ve figured something really useful out. Present what you’ve learned from successes, from failures, and from challenges you’ve been facing. You’ve got problems. Ask for help from your colleagues, framing the question and discussion so that everyone gains by participating. What topics can I propose? We invite you to help us explore the theme of “Digital initiatives and libraries” by contributing a session related to this. You are also welcome to focus on any topic that’s current and relevant to AMICAL’s mission, in particular topics that relate to: AMICAL’s committee areas (Note: all committees will also be holding meetings about their ongoing consortial projects) priority areas for AMICAL’s 2015-2018 Mellon Foundation grant:Leadership of Library and Information Services in Liberal Arts Environments Information Literacy as a Liberal Art Curriculum-Integrated Digital Initiatives Growing the AMICAL Collaboration Network What session formats can I use? We’ve reworked our session formats this year to make them as participative as possible: Community Idea Exchange (posters & tech showcases) Birds of a Feather (guided discussion) Mini-Workshops Lightning Talks Project Meetings Panel Presentations There are some changes even to formats we’ve used in previous years, so find out more and propose your session -- by 21 February at the latest. The AMICAL Conference works because members seek to share with and learn from each other. Add your bit of wisdom or inquisitiveness to the program!

Libraries, scholarship and pedagogy are all becoming increasingly digital, even — at a slower but increasing pace — in the humanities. How can libraries partner with instructional designers and faculty to use digital tools and methods for humanities scholarship? thoughtfully incorporate digital tools and resources into teaching? develop digital collections that serve, and perhaps arise from, student’s learning and research? What are the specific challenges — and opportunities — of collaborating on these digital initiatives in AMICAL members’ international-American educational environments? AMICAL 2016: “Libraries and digital initiatives” Join us 12-14 May as we confront these questions at the 2016 AMICAL Annual Meeting & Conference. Invited speakers will inspire and provoke us: Laurie Allen (Assistant Director for Digital Scholarship, University of Pennsylvania) Jim Groom (Co-founder, Reclaim Hosting) Eric Lease-Morgan (Digital Initiatives Librarian, University of Notre Dame) And AMICAL members will share their own expertise and questions, as we grapple with digital initiatives and other issues shared across our consortium. How can I participate? Attend. Faculty and staff at AMICAL member institutions are eligible to attend the conference in person. Anyone is welcome to attend online the keynotes and other live-streamed sessions. Find out more about how to attend, and note that registration opens 4 March, via the AMICAL 2016 website, for in-person attendance. Propose a session. AMICAL members are encouraged to propose a session for the conference program (deadline: 21 February).

We’re happy to announce two updates to the AMICAL website. We have migrated the AMICAL 2015 profiles over to our site and recently launched and a system to manage AMICAL events. AMICAL profiles For AMICAL 2015 we created profiles for all attendees. We had done this for the previous two conferences as well. The profiles allowed attendees to put faces to names and helped them connect with each other long after the conferences were over. But this year our plan was to migrate the 2015 profiles over to the main AMICAL site, where they will serve as one of the components of a new AMICAL collaboration initiative. Although it’s early days yet, these profiles already provide useful information for several AMICAL members. We plan to expand their functionality to tie-in with AMICAL initiatives as well as to facilitate cross-institutional collaboration. The profiles currently include basic biographical information, but they are now fully integrated with the website. So as we expand the AMICAL site, more functionality will be added. It took us a little longer than I thought, but as of today the profiles have all been migrated and are now available on the AMICAL site. If you attended the AMICAL 2015 conference and are an AMICAL member, then your profile will be listed above. See something you’d like to change on you profile? Maybe to correct some information or add a better photo? Just log in to your AMICAL account. If you already created a username and password on the AMICAL 2015 site, you can now use those to log in to the AMICAL site. More in-depth details were emailed out to all account holders earlier today. If you’re an AMICAL member but don’t have an profile/account, I encourage you to create one. Just fill in this form and I’ll set you up. (The process is not automatic, because we have to verify that requests are coming from AMICAL members.) Having a profile will allow other AMICAL members to connect with you. A common question we field over at AMICAL HQ is, “Who is like me at other institutions?” It turns out that it’s helpful to find out how they do things at other institutions, but it’s hard to know who to ask. The AMICAL profiles can help answer such questions. We hope to make them even more useful and easier to use as time goes on. Privacy policy Since the AMICAL profiles are public, I wanted to take a moment and bring up the topic of privacy. Earlier this fall we put together a privacy policy that goes into detail about what kind of information we gather across all our platforms, as well as what we do with it. We’ve been linking to this policy from the emails we send to members, but I wanted to highlight it here as well. Although it’s not very exciting, we did try to make it simple to read. Have a look and let us know if you have any concerns about it. AMICAL events Last week we launched a system for displaying AMICAL events on the website. This will be the go-to place to find out about events that AMICAL is organising or sponsoring, including all upcoming webinars, workshops and our annual conference. Previously this information was only available in bits-and-pieces across AMICALconnect and emails that we sent out. No more! The event system integrates with the profiles, so it will be possible to see the events that an AMICAL members has attended. We haven’t populated the system with older events yet, but plan to do so. We will also be listing external events where AMICAL has significant participation, providing connections with global events around topics of interest to our programs areas. That's all for now. Going forward we will keep uploading content from the old website and past activities, but we also look forward to next year's events, program initiatives, as well as updates to the website and our other tools.

Thanks to support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AMICAL will be sponsoring this Spring an event focusing on digital pedagogy, the thoughtful application of technology in teaching. Hosted at the American University in Cairo over 20-23 March 2016, it will be open to a number of local institutions but is principally targeting AMICAL members. This Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo is the first international version of the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute, a professional development initiative from the creators of the journal Hybrid Pedagogy. It's also one of several consortially-supported actions this year building momentum around one of AMICAL's 2015-2018 strategic priorities: Curriculum-Integrated Digital Initiatives. Dr. Maha Bali, a faculty developer at AUC and editor to Hybrid Pedagogy, is leading this effort to bring the institute to Cairo. She's also playing a key role in helping AMICAL organize itself around consortial goals related to digital pedagogy -- about which we'll be posting more here soon. Are you an AMICAL member interested in attending? An overview of the event is provided below, but see the announcement sent to the AMICAL representative at your institution for additional information, including funding possibilities. Digital Pedagogy Lab Cairo - Overview The international Digital Pedagogy Lab (DPL) institute comes to Cairo, facilitated by some of the leading and most compelling voices in the field, pushing at the edges of critical digital pedagogy. AMICAL members are invited to join the institute and get involved in some intense and inspiring conversations about teaching and learning in the digital age. The learning community we create together will be welcoming to a wide range of skill levels and interests. Participants attending the entire event will choose one of two tracks and work collaboratively with a cohort in small peer-driven classes. Additional participants will join us for keynotes and drop-in workshops. At the end of the day on the 22nd, participants will have the opportunity to give brief lightning talks, pose lingering questions to the group, share example assignments, or briefly demo useful tools. Our hope is that this will help frame the discussions and activities that continue during the Unconference on the 23rd. Participants will work with an international team of faculty from the United States, Egypt, and Canada, including Jesse Stommel, Bonnie Stewart, Maha Bali, Sean Michael Morris, and Amy Collier. The unconference will be co-facilitated by David Joseph Wrisley of the American University of Beirut and Maha Bali of AUC. Tracks (1) Praxis. Facilitators: Amy Collier and Sean Michael Morris Pedagogy is praxis, the intersection between the philosophy and practice of teaching Pedagogy is praxis, the intersection between the philosophy and practice of teaching. It involves reflecting on and actively investigating the work of teaching and learning. In this track, we will explore philosophies of teaching, our own and others. We will think specifically about the ways our pedagogies are reflected in the specific choices we make as teachers. We will discuss and experiment with various technological tools from the chalkboard to moveable chairs, computers, mobile devices, social media platforms, and learning management systems. Individual sessions and workshops will focus on teaching philosophies, discernment practices for using digital tools in courses, emergent learning, digital composition, and discussions of the impact of the digital on traditional and critical pedagogies. (2) Networks. Facilitators: Bonnie Stewart and Jesse Stommel Networked learning, from blogs and Twitter to open courses and collaboration This track will focus on the nature of digital networks and network-building, from blogs and social media to open courses and collaboration. It will include discussions of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), rhizomatic learning, how influence and reputation circulate in professional learning networks, the social contracts of closed and networked spaces, and the intersections between networks and face-to-face learning environments. We’ll especially focus on Twitter as an experimental space for thinking about how networks are both responding to and creating the Internet as a learning environment. Individual sessions and workshops will introduce tools and hybrid approaches that can help build learning communities that extend beyond the bounds of the classroom. Participants will also explore the challenges, risks, and benefits of having learners collaborating openly on the web. Further information and questions For further information — or more details as the event draws nearer — subscribe to the DPL e-mail list, follow @digpedlab, and watch digitalpedagogylab.com/cairo. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Maha Bali bali@aucegypt.edu.

AMICAL is planning to organise several upcoming workshops for our members. The first of these will be a workshop delivered by Roger Schonfeld and Nancy Fried Foster of Ithaka S+R, a non-profit research service that helps the academic community navigate economic and technological change. The workshop will take place 22-23 January 2016, hosted by John Cabot University in Rome. About the facilitators Nancy has worked with many of our libraries already on participatory design and ethnographic methods for understanding the real behaviors of our user communities. AMICAL invited both her and Roger last year to give a webinar on tools and methods for understanding our library communities. We’re excited to be working with them once again, and we hope that many of you will be interested in participating in this workshop. We believe it will be of great use as you lead your libraries’ responses to the shifting environments of higher education, scholarly communications, and academic libraries. The workshop Like other academic libraries, AMICAL libraries face budget limitations and cutbacks while also managing shifts in teaching, learning, and communication technologies. In such an environment, it is risky and potentially costly to base plans and decisions on assumptions or guesswork. The alternative, and the topic of this 1.5 day workshop, is to use existing data, supplemented with locally gathered information, to identify needs, develop and select among possible solutions, and conduct ongoing assessment. The overarching theme of the workshop is Managing Change and the main topics will be Technology in Small College Libraries (e.g., library systems and infrastructure as well as digital collections such as ejournals and ebooks) and Library as Space (policy, purpose, and design). The workshop will include: An environmental scan drawn from Ithaka S+R survey and project data, to frame the workshop topics and provide a rationale for making evidence-based decisions Group discussion of strategies for incorporating evidence most effectively into institutional decision-making on workshop topics Tools to use in library planning and decision-making Group discussion of participants’ institution-level data, including what is useful and what is missing Session to begin formulating institutional plans for structuring evidence-based decision-making processes with regard to either space or technology issues Participants will benefit from this workshop by improving their ability to incorporate evidence into decision-making processes, in general, and by developing the first draft of a project plan for use at the home institution. The workshop will run for approximately ten hours delivered over two days. It will be limited to 14 participants, and applications to participate will be reviewed by the Ithaka and AMICAL organizers. Who should attend? Library directors and other staff from all AMICAL member institutions (Full, Affiliate & Network) are eligible to apply to participate. We recommend that the primary participant from an institution be the library director. If a second person attends, there may be a gain in how well the two can remember and implement what they learned when they get back to the home institution. It may be helpful if the second person work with library IT or facilities. Application instructions and financial support information were sent by email to all AMICAL representatives on Oct 21. If you have misplaced that email, contact us and we'll send you the details again. For more information contact your local AMICAL representative. Key dates November 15: Deadline to apply November 20: Responses sent to applicants

From Fall 2014 through Spring 2015, in consultation with the Mellon Foundation and with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, I worked with Celeste Schenck (President, American University of Paris) to develop an $800,000 grant proposal to support AMICAL's operations and programs from August 2015 through July 2018. I’m thrilled to announce that the proposal was accepted by the Foundation and was disbursed this summer to AUP as responsible party for the grant. This is a critical boost for AMICAL. The grant will allow us to continue, and in some cases expand, our most successful programs. It will give strategic emphasis to consortial activities supporting leadership development, information literacy, digital initiatives, and network-level collaboration. And it has enabled us to hire a Web Developer & Digital Strategist – Alex Armstrong, whom I’ll introduce below – who will tie those activities together with tools and resources that enable you, as AMICAL members, to engage effectively with them. AMICAL’s 2015-2018 Mellon grant: Leadership, digital initiatives and collaboration In drafting our grant proposal, we sought to support AMICAL members in navigating the rapidly changing environments of libraries, IT, scholarship, pedagogy, and higher education in general, while cultivating shared value that comes from our institutions’ international-American visions of liberal education. We also sought points of common purpose with the Mellon Foundation itself, to benefit from their broad-based expertise and to ensure that our own objectives could find financial support. The result was a plan that establishes four strategic priorities: 1. Leadership of Library and Information Services in Liberal Arts Environments Overview: AMICAL has finite resources to put towards professional development at 25 member institutions. We’re trying to help our institutions navigate the changes just described, but we must focus much of our support on leaders who are in a position to effect change locally, or to engage local colleagues in conversations, training or other actions that help move their organization forward. AMICAL’s professional development programs will therefore give particular focus to leadership skills, innovation, and change management among library and information services teams at AMICAL institutions. Related actions planned: Priority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for participation inkey externally-organized leadership seminars management-level training in key emerging areas of higher ed libraries and information services AMICAL-organized workshops on strategic planning and evidence-based decision making Facilitation of partnership with mentors - both within and outside of AMICAL 2. Information Literacy as a Liberal Art Working critically with information is a hallmark of liberal education, and part of the 'brand' and value of American universities. This is also one of several perfect spaces in which to cultivate collaboration between all of AMICAL’s target groups: librarians, faculty and technologists. AMICAL-organized face-to-face and online presentations, discussions and workshops related to information literacy Priority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for professional development related to information literacy instruction Consortium-wide collaborative projects on assessment, data sharing, program development, faculty-librarian collaboration, curriculum integration and other issues related to information literacy instruction 3. Curriculum-Integrated Digital Initiatives Digital scholarship and pedagogy, as well as the curriculum-relevant curation of digital content, are increasingly considered as intrinsic to research, teaching, and libraries. This is another set of spaces perfect for collaboration between AMICAL’s target groups of librarians, faculty and technologists. AMICAL-organized face-to-face and online presentations, discussions and workshops related to digital scholarship/pedagogy/collections Priority support in AMICAL’s Small Grant Program for professional development or projects related to digital scholarship/pedagogy/collections 4. Growing the AMICAL Collaboration Network Only a small fraction of AMICAL staff and faculty are able to meet face to face at our conferences. A robust array of resources for online collaboration – and in particular a network for discovery of, and exchange with, colleagues – is absolutely essential for collaborative activity to grow across AMICAL. Build a coherent web presence for communicating about AMICAL’s programs, througha redesigned website with vastly improved architecture and design a blog, supported by an editorial strategy that uses AMICAL news and reflections from staff, members and invited guests to build shared vision and focus for AMICAL as a growing, dynamic organization coordinated social media activity to engage with members and other stakeholders Replace existing network structures (primarily AMICALconnect) with more flexible, easy to use tools for topical discussion among interest groups project or committee-based communication and sharing discovering and interacting with AMICAL peers according to teaching, research, and professional interests Explore ways in which AMICAL can showcase and link students and their work, through:sharing of learning and research-related objects such as student digital multimedia projects and digital scholarship projects in a consortial repository facilitating communication and collaboration amongst students who are leading AMICAL-funded projects How will AMICAL support the work in these areas? Organizationally and peer-to-peer, through the ongoing programs coordinated by our five standing committees:Professional Development Institutional Research & Assessment E-Resources OCLC Programs Information Literacy Financially, through our grant-funded programs:Annual AMICAL Conference AMICAL-organized topical workshops and webinars A new Small Grant Program (to be officially launched in November) that supports individual training or local projects in three areas:Professional development Emerging technologies and practice in libraries, teaching and learning Digital scholarship and digital collections Through communication and collaboration resources - spearheaded by our Web Developer and Digital Strategist Introducing AMICAL’s Web Developer & Digital Strategist: Alex Armstrong We have struggled for years with ambitions of developing a functional and robust array of resources for communication and collaboration among AMICAL members. Over the years, we managed to get the most essential program information to members via our website, and we created a basic collaboration network with AMICALconnect. However: there is an immense void of missing or inaccessible information about AMICAL's programs AMICALconnect has turned out to be far less functional and used than we hoped we were missing someone with the skills, and a solid understanding of AMICAL's mission, to develop a coherent set of online resources for communication and collaboration – for existing needs, but in particular to support the goals laid out in our 2015-2018 grant proposal. Luckily, we connected with Alex Armstrong at the right moment. Alex worked previously at the American College of Greece, and has now struck out on his own as an independent consultant. AMICAL has contracted with Alex as Web Developer & Digital Strategist for the period of this Mellon grant, and I hope that we'll be able to continue working with him going forward. Alex brings together the skills and understanding mentioned above (in spades!). He also brings along vision and methodology for organizing AMICAL's digital resources in ways that will serve the strategic goals we've laid out for the coming years. He developed the AMICAL 2014 and AMICAL 2015 web sites, as well as the new AMICAL website that is under continuous development. Here are just a few of the things Alex has already helped with since starting his new AMICAL role this summer: Alex accompanied me and a team of AU Cairo/Beirut/Iraq colleagues to a summer institute on digital scholarship in liberal arts colleges. He and I are already working together to steer AMICAL support for a number of digital humanities and digital pedagogy projects that have spun off from that and from other discussions with AMICAL colleagues. As Provisional Chair of the E-Resources Committee, Alex has been consolidating existing data and looking for ways to streamline work on this program. Laying a foundation for growing but sustainable committee work in this area is important in its own right, since this program generates a significant part of AMICAL’s financial value to members. However another critical reason for involving Alex in E-resources this year is to investigate committee-level communication needs and to develop appropriate communication tools and processes. Alex has been reviewing all of AMICAL’s web-based resources for improvement. He has created the new AMICAL website, implemented a new helpdesk system, and begun planning and testing new discussion and project management platforms. In all kinds of ways, Alex has already proved himself to be an essential partner in developing and managing the consortium’s programs. He's currently working on plans for rolling out several new communication tools that will replace AMICALconnect, so you’ll be hearing from him soon as he talks about these developments on AMICAL’s blog. If you want to talk to him about any of this, he can be reached at armstrong@amicalnet.org. Welcome, Alex! If you’ve read this far, I’m amazed and appreciative. I feel strongly that all of the above is important news for AMICAL, so thank you for giving it your time. Here’s to three great years of consortial collaboration ahead of us! Originally sent to AMICAL members as an email.

Technologists, librarians and faculty at AMICAL institutions: this is your conference. This is where you can work together with peers from other international American universities on the use of information and technology in teaching. This is where your institution’s IT staff can workshop together with your librarians and faculty, regardless of how far apart your local offices are. This is where you can reflect on issues and questions that are shared across our consortium – and are sometimes unique to our fundamentally international-American environments. And in 2016, you can do all this in Rome! A smaller, more interactive event at AUR It’s a great pleasure to announce that the next AMICAL Conference will be held May 12–14, 2016, at The American University of Rome. The AUR campus, located on the fabulous Janiculum Hill, offers a smaller and more intimate venue than we’ve typically had for the AMICAL Conference. We will be taking full advantage of that to create an environment conducive to smaller-group discussions and workshops. And with three days to work with, we will be running a smarter, tighter, and more interactive program this year. With fewer formal presentations, we’ll create more space for posters, technology showcases, workshops, discussions, and project-oriented meetings. Parallel sessions will allow smaller and focused groups to meet at the same time. And as usual, inspiring keynotes will kick off each of the main conference days. Share the news, and stay tuned! Visit the AMICAL 2016 Conference site and forward this announcement with other colleagues at your institution that may be interested. The major announcements about the conference will be sent to everyone on AMICALconnect, as well as those who sign up for the AMICAL Conference interest list. You can get the freshest news about the event, however, by following AMICAL’s social media channels below. Full information about the event will be posted to the Conference site by early December. Hope to see you in Rome!