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The American College of GreeceAthens, 14-17 May 2014 About the AMICAL Conference AMICAL’s annual conference is the one opportunity each year for AMICAL members to meet face to face with colleagues from the other American international universities in AMICAL, to discuss shared problems and solutions, and to hear from exceptional thinkers and practitioners whose work is influencing library and information services in higher education. The AMICAL Conference is a small, intimate event that typically has just over 100 attendees, mainly from member institutions: librarians, IT directors, instructional technologists, faculty, but also deans and other administrators. This smallness and focus is one of its strengths, enabling a real sense of community that’s ready to engage with each other and embark on collaborative projects in spite of the geographic and cultural distances. If you’ve never attended an AMICAL Conference, see the public site for last year’s Conference. Information about registration and grant support for attendance will be posted by early February. For more information about the AMICAL Conference, see the Conference site.

AMICAL is pleased to sponsor “Engage Students in Creative Multimedia Production,” a workshop organized by the American University in Kosovo in collaboration with the American University in Cairo. The workshop will be held 21-22 March 2014 at the American University in Kosovo and is aimed primarily at faculty and instructional technologists with experience or interest in working together to support student multimedia content production as a tool for engaging students while promoting and assessing their learning. There will be a limited number of registrations available to students that have done exceptional multimedia work with their attending professos. Basic information will be posted publicly on the workshop page here on AMICALnet.org, but AMICAL members will find the most complete and up to date information posted to the workshop hub on AMICALconnect (AMICAL membership required).

On 25 November, AMICAL launches AMICAL Currents, a series of webinars for AMICAL members on hot topics of joint interest to librarians, technologists and faculty. We’re inviting key thinkers and practitioners on each topic to give a presentation, followed by Q&A, with each webinar lasting about an hour. The first webinar in the series features Audrey Watters, noted writer on higher ed learning technologies, author of the blog Hack Education: Session 1 - Open Educational Resources in Higher EdInvited Speaker: Audrey Watters The use of Open Educational Resources is a trend that can have major impact on academic instruction and learning. What is OER? Should we opt to use them? To save money? To facilitate sharing? What are the barriers of OER, and what happens with copyright? This event will include an overview of OER in higher education from one of the most recognized writers on the topic, followed by time for questions from AMICAL members and discussion. When: Monday, 25 November 2013, 9:00am US Eastern time (click to see your local time)Where: Online - Adobe Connect Open to: All faculty and staff at AMICAL member institutions. More information about the event, including instructions on how to join the webinar, will be posted on the AMICALconnect event page (accessible to AMICAL members only).

The 10th Annual AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June 2013 at John Cabot University in Rome: For more photos, see the 2013 AMICAL Conference photos on Flickr.

Slide shows and other materials from presentations at the last AMICAL Conference are now publicly available here on AMICALnet.org, linked from the 2013 AMICAL Meeting and Conference page under Presentations. Also posted there is the daily program (presentation titles link to files when available), as well as the detailed program with abstracts.

The 2013 AMICAL Conference saw greater participation by faculty than ever before, the result of a conscious effort by the consortium to engage faculty together with librarians and technologists in improving information services and curricular resources. In addition to recruiting our first faculty member to the Program Committee, we structured the daily program to put the bulk of faculty-focused sessions on the last two days of the event, thereby shortening the time commitment necessary for interested, but busy, faculty to participate. We also invited, in addition to a widely-published and award-winning librarian, several exceptional keynote speakers that we thought would speak directly to faculty members’ interests. These efforts bore fruit, and we were happy to welcome to this year’s AMICAL Conference our largest-ever contingent of faculty members, including many faculty members serving in academic administration. The 113 registered attendees at this year’s conference included 88 from AMICAL institutions, of which: 50% librarians 21% faculty 19% IT manager/staff and instructional technologists 8% academic administrators 2% other roles

Judging from attendee comments, the AUB-AMICAL RDA Workshop was a glowing success! AMICAL thanks organizer Kaoukab Chebaro, AUB Libraries Director Lokman Meho, Fatmeh Charafeddine, and all those that helped bring the workshop together. Photos from the event have been posted on: Flickr AMICALconnect (AMICAL Members only)

From AUB Libraries News: The AUB Libraries and the American International Consortium of Academic Libraries (AMICAL) are jointly organizing a week-long (May 27-31st, 2013) workshop on RDA, the Resource Description and Access new cataloging standard which is currently being implemented across libraries in the world. Led by Ms. Lori Robare (University of Oregon), and Ms. Iman Dagher (UCLA), the workshop offers a general overview of cataloging rules in RDA, highlights changes and differences with the previous cataloging rules (AACR2), and offers hands-on exercises and modules. Participants include AMICAL members from various countries (Bulgaria, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Lebanon), as well as invited guests from the Lebanese National Library and the Lebanese University, in addition to AUB Library staff. The workshop is generously supported by AUB, AMICAL and sponsors (Elsevier, ProQuest and Levant). Photos from the workshop on Facebook

The Guidelines for AMICAL Small Grant Awards have just been updated to reflect the renewed grant support for AMICAL from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, running through July 2015, and decisions by the AMICAL Coordinating Committee on the allowed scope and maximum amount for requests. AMICAL members seeking support for any of the following activities are invited to follow the guidelines attentively when appying for Small Grants: high-impact professional development opportunities for library and information service professionals faculty development related to information literacy instruction or collaboration with librarians or instructional technologists small but potentially transformative developments in local library and information services

The official public site has now been launched for the 10th Annual AMICAL Conference: New media, new literacies, new models: Library-IT-Faculty collaboration in a learning intensive world Note that the Conference Hub on AMICALconnect, which has the latest and most complete information about the Conference, remains the site of reference for AMICAL members.