Who may propose a session?

Staff and faculty from AMICAL member institutions are invited to propose program sessions for AMICAL 2015.

Audience

The target audience must include librarians, technologists, or faculty members at AMICAL institutions; proposals that target more than one of these groups will be favored.

Guiding principle: Collaboration

AMICAL is about cooperation, and a primary goal of the AMICAL Conference program is to promote the active sharing of experience, as well as the engaged development of plans for future collaboration.

The Program Committee is therefore looking in particular for proposals that:

• draw from an AMICAL member’s substantial expertise on a topic of current or growing importance, in order to raise the level of discussion and expertise among AMICAL members generally
• involve collaboration, or that support collaboration, between AMICAL member institutions
• intend to produce shared, concrete plans for collaborative projects among AMICAL members by the end of the conference

Topics

The theme of the conference is “Clearing thresholds: information literacy and faculty-librarian-technologist collaboration.”

Session topics most likely to be accepted include those that:

• address the theme of the conference in a way that will be relevant to expected attendees
• address an issue unrelated to the theme but
  • relevant to AMICAL’s mission
  • of expected interest to a significant portion of attendees

Proposals are particularly encouraged in the following areas:

• Information literacy, learning models and pedagogy

  • Threshold concepts
  • First-year experience programs
  • Faculty-librarian collaboration on program/curriculum development
  • Faculty as field-specific information literacy specialists
  • Information literacy and emerging technologies
  • Digital citizenship

• Students as creators & collaborators

  • Students and multimedia content creation
  • Students as team members: work-study roles in libraries and information services

• Digital humanities

  • Humanities research enabled through the digital medium
  • Computer-based research and computer applications in literary, linguistic, cultural and historical studies

• Marketing and communication of library and information services

  • Social media for library and information services
  • Information architecture, design and modeling in library and information services

• Assessment of library and information services

Session formats

See the list of available session formats, which is roughly in order of preference. Only a small number of Presentations and Panel Presentations, which appear to be of exceptional quality or interest, will be accepted. Preference will generally be given to shorter or interactive session formats. Unconference sessions will be proposed onsite at the event.

For certain Talk formats, the following limits apply to the number speakers allowed:

• Lightning talks: 1 speaker
• Presentations: 1 to 2 speakers max

For all proposals involving multiple speakers, the first presenter name on the proposal will be considered the primary contact, responsible for communications between the Program Committee and the presenters.

Preparing your proposal

The proposal itself should be presented clearly and concisely. You may want to look at these sample proposals; they’re for a different type of conference, but the advice is very relevant to AMICAL Conference proposals as well:

• Title: Should communicate the subject of the session briefly and clearly.
• Brief Description: A short paragraph that clarifies the problem or issue being addressed, and what attendees can expect to take away.
• Full Description: Elaborates on the content of the session and what attendees will get out of it. This should briefly demonstrate knowledge of the topic, as appropriate for the session type and topic. For workshops and interactive sessions, this should explain what attendees need to prepare or bring with them. Outlines are preferable to narrative text.

Notification of acceptance

Responses to program proposals will be sent out by 4 March 2015.

Scheduling

Accepted proposals may be scheduled for any day or time during the conference program days (May 28–30, 2015). For accepted proposals, tentative scheduling will be communicated by early March 2015.

Speakers should inform the organizers as early as possible of any scheduling constraints; we cannot guarantee that these constraints will be accommodated, but we will do our best if given sufficient notice.

The call for proposals has ended
If you have any questions about your proposal, email us at contact@amicalnet.org.

Session formats

Common-space sessions

Presentations are delivered simultaneously in a room shared with other presenters, each with a poster or computer to present their topic or project to attendees that come and go freely. Presentations may be as brief as 5-10 minutes, repeated over the course of an hour.

Posters

Informal presentation with the help of a poster or other large visual aid.

Technology Showcase

Demonstrate or present an interesting technology-based project or idea you’ve implemented at your institution, related to libraries, information services, teaching, learning, etc.

Participatory sessions

Workshops

(1 to 2 hours max)

Hands on, participatory session focused on helping participants build practical skills on a given topic.

Discussion Groups

(1 hour)

Lead an open discussion, with a subgroup of attendees (typically 10–20) on a topic likely to be of interest to other AMICAL members.

Talks

Lightning Talks

(10 minutes)

Short, focused presentations structured around 20 slides, each shown for 30 seconds.

Panel Presentations

(10 minutes per presenter)

Short presentations and/or discussion by several participants centered on a common theme.

Presentations

(20 minutes)

Unconference

This dynamic and participant-driven format will be used toward the end of the main conference program to create a space for sharing ideas and collaborating on projects that, for example:

• are too fresh to be planned ahead into the formal program (e.g. ideas formed out of attendees’ reactions to the event)
• are too focused to be of interest to the full group of attendees but still related to AMICAL’s mission or conference theme
• are well suited to active participation by small groups

Attendees will be able to propose, at the event, topics for the unconference sessions, keeping in mind that a good unconference has everyone, not just the session leaders, involved in presenting, speaking and discussing. Attendees will then decide which of the sessions will take place, and will participate in those sessions that they feel they can learn from and/or contribute to. Note that lightning talks may be given as isolated presentations, or they may be used for pitching ideas for unconference sessions.