AMICAL Consortium

Events

Webinars, workshops, conferences and other events

AMICAL runs an annual conference on libraries, technology and learning at international American universities, hosted by a different of member institution each year. We also organise workshops and other events. Find out how to propose an online event.

Upcoming events Past events

Showing 0 events

· Online
This regular meeting series gives AMICAL Representatives a chance to connect with each other and to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. The series is organized by AMICAL staff and the Executive Committee. A calendar invitation with Zoom link has been sent to all Representatives. If you didn’t receive it, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “InfoLit MeetUp” event. They are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. Nicoletta Romano and Manlio Perugini, both from John Cabot University in Rome, will briefly share their mapping project aimed at enhancing information literacy instruction across the curriculum, given the ever-present need for IL in the wake of AI. Through syllabi analysis, statistics, and survey data collected from faculty department meetings, they will discuss lessons learned and follow-up efforts in collaborating with faculty in the creation of new sessions, online tutorials, and LibGuides. This informal conversation will be driven by participants’ contribution and discussion. Please join to share your expertise and experiences. Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists, and faculty members involved in information literacy. Facilitators: Nicoletta Romano (John Cabot University), Manlio Perugini (John Cabot University), Joyce Draiby (Lebanese American University) & Michael Stoepel (American University of Paris).
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This talk is organized by AI@AUP for the AUP community, but participation is open to all interested members of the AMICAL Consortium. In this talk Stuart A. Selber, Professor of English at Penn State, addresses how institutions can respond thoughtfully to generative AI by shifting attention from rules and compliance to shared frameworks for digital literacy. Drawing on a multiliteracies approach, the talk situates AI within longer histories of teaching, learning, and technological change, emphasizing that digital literacy is contextual, evolving, and fundamentally tied to educational values. Focusing on the liberal arts classroom, the discussion explores how AI can confound but also clarify assumptions about teaching and learning, and argues for framing academic integrity as a habit of practice rather than a punitive mechanism. Grounded in the institutional priorities of human interaction, local educational goals, and critical digital literacy, the talk offers both conceptual language for campus-wide deliberation and practical pedagogical strategies faculty can adapt in their courses. About the speaker Stuart A. Selber, Professor of English at Penn State and recipient of the university medal for innovative uses of technology in education, studies how literacy and technology intersect and evolve in contemporary settings. He has published eight books on digital writing, including widely adopted textbooks in technical communication. His current book project, Gen AI in College Writing Programs, under contract with the University of Chicago Press, critically examines AI as a writing platform. A frequent keynote speaker, Selber’s insights have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and on National Public Radio. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
Recording available
Mar 31 – Apr 2, 2026 · American University of Sharjah

AMICAL 2026, the consortium’s 23nd annual conference, will be held March 31 to April 2, 2026, at the American University of Sharjah.

Conference
Mar 31 – Apr 2, 2026 · Online
While the AMICAL 2026 Conference had to be postponed, we’ve moved online several of its sessions that had a timely focus on consortial development. We’re calling this new event the Online Spring Summit. The Summit includes four sessions over three days: March 31, 11:00–12:15 (local time)Revisiting AMICAL’s consortial strategy(Representatives, Program Leadership Council, Executive Committee) April 1, 11:00–12:00 (local time)Exploring Erasmus+ grants: Capacity-building(Library and CLT directors and other colleagues with Erasmus+ experience or interest.) April 1, 12:00–13:00 (local time)Exploring Erasmus+ grants: Mobility exchange(Library and CLT directors and other colleagues with Erasmus+ experience or interest.) April 2, 14:00–15:30 (local time)Consortial programs from ideas to action: Program and grant design workshop(open to all AMICAL members who submit an idea) Questions? Questions? Send us an email at contact@amicalnet.org
Other
· Online
This is the third meeting of the OCLC Cataloging User Group. Omar Farhoud, Senior Account Manager at OCLC, will present a live demo on one of AI tools instances that is designed to make cataloging faster, smarter, and more efficient. The demonstration will highlight practical applications and workflows that can help streamline your daily cataloging tasks.
Meeting
· Online
This is the third WMS User Group Meeting, organized by AMICAL’s OCLC Committee. Its purpose is to offer AMICAL colleagues who use OCLC’s WMS the opportunity to share practices and expertise, exchange ideas on issues of concern, and network.
Meeting
· Online
The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) is happy to announce the next AMICAL webinar entitled: “AI and Copyright Developments in the U.S.” This webinar will be run by Kristina (Kris) Martinez who is a copyright lawyer in the United States. She has longstanding expertise in the field and she will talk to us about current cases of AI and copyright issues from the American perspective. This is a real-world conversation about what is happening in the dynamic field of law and copyright in the U.S., where most major tech companies are currently based. Although this area is rapidly changing, this presentation will give participants insights into possible global developments and new approaches to copyright in the age of A.I. Who should attend? Information Literacy Librarians, Librarians dealing with copyright issues, Faculty interested in the subject. Speaker: Kristina (Kris) Martinez has a wealth of experience guiding clients from early case assessment through trial and beyond. Kris was ranked by Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America for Litigation — Intellectual Property (2026). She holds a J.D. degree from the University of California, Irvine. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
· Online
This regular meeting series gives AMICAL Representatives a chance to connect with each other and to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. The series is organized by AMICAL staff and the Executive Committee. A calendar invitation with Zoom link has been sent to all Representatives. If you didn’t receive it, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
Join us for a presentation on the AI Aware Universities project. Matthew Whoolery (AU Bulgaria) and Kaitlin Lucas (Central European U) will present the project, which used deliberative democratic methods to build AI guidelines and policies through inclusive dialogue among students, faculty, and administrators at six universities. After the presentation there will be time for Q&A, as well as a discussion on how attendees’ universities have included or plan to include students-as-partners in their ongoing discussions and policy initiatives surrounding GenAI. This event is organized as part of the monthly meetings of AMICAL’s Campus-Level AI Initiatives Interest Group (CLAII IG), but is open to all interested AMICAL members. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
We are pleased to announce the second session in our event series, “Transparency of Student Writing in the AI Era: Trends and Tools”. This session will focus on the tool Draftback. Draftback is a Chrome extension that allows instructors to replay a Google Doc’s entire writing history as a video, providing a detailed look at how a piece of writing was produced. By visualizing revisions, pauses, and the overall development of a document, Draftback helps educators better understand students’ writing processes, identify patterns, and support more transparent and informed assessment. The tool offers a 30-day free trial. Our invited speaker, James Somers, is the author of Draftback, an independent software developer, and a writer, will provide an introduction to the tool, demonstrate its core functionalities, and discuss practical strategies for integrating it into teaching and learning practice. The session is organized by the AI Topics Interest Group and is designed for faculty, instructional designers, librarians, technologists, and anyone interested in understanding how AI is influencing writing practices and academic integrity.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This regular meeting series gives AMICAL Representatives a chance to connect with each other and to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. The series is organized by AMICAL staff and the Executive Committee. A calendar invitation with Zoom link has been sent to all Representatives. If you didn’t receive it, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
We are pleased to announce a new series of events under the theme “Transparency of Student Writing in the AI Era: Trends and Tools.” This series explores emerging practices and technologies that help educators better understand, support, and assess student writing in an AI-enhanced academic environment. The first session will focus on Process Feedback, a new alternative to plagiarism and AI detection. The Process Feedback tool allows both teachers and students to review the writing process and reflect on the process. It helps teachers identify and analyze possible AI use by providing visualizations of copy-paste actions, typing time, pauses, and other process data. The tool is available free of charge. Our invited speaker, Badri Adhikari, founder of Process Feedback and an associate professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, will introduce the tool, demonstrate its key features, and discuss practical ways to integrate into teaching and learning. This session is designed for faculty, instructional designers, librarians, technologists, and anyone interested in understanding how AI is influencing writing practices and academic integrity. The session is organized by the AI Topics Interest Group.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate). Further information for each event will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) is happy to announce the upcoming hands-on workshop, “Collaborative Rubric Design: Evaluating AI Platforms for Academic Research”. In this session, participants will start working with the rubric provided below to evaluate AI platforms, refining and enhancing it as they go. The goal of the webinar is to create a well-developed rubric that faculty members and librarians can incorporate into AI instruction, in order to foster discussions with students that promote critical and informed use of AI in academic contexts. The workshop starts with a “Rubric Criteria Review” breakouts, where groups of 4–5 participants refine the criteria of the rubric by clarifying the language, adding missing elements, and/or noting impractical parts. In the second round of breakouts, the “Scenario Testing”, groups apply the revised rubric to an instruction context to assess how well the rubric criteria support decision-making and reveal remaining gaps. Participants will leave with a rubric (or a set of questions) to evaluate AI platforms for Academic Research. Who should attend? Librarians, faculty, and instructional designers. Before the webinar: Rubric that will be used as a working document during the workshop “Student Guide: Choosing AI Platforms for Academic Work” If you are interested in general rubric design, here is a good read. The webinar will be led by: Kate Ruprecht Stavros Hadjisolomou Rita El-Haddad Michael Stoepel AI use notice: We used ChatGPT for editing clarity. Perplexity Pro was used to format the rubric for evaluating the AI platforms.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
Join us for a session on the pedagogical uses of Twine, a free, open-source tool for creating non-linear stories and games. The session will include presentations from the following speakers, followed by Q&A and discussion: < p> Kaitlin Lucas (she/her), Academic Technologist at CEUKaitlin will share her experience with Twine for creating interactive fiction in the humanities and social sciences. Through an AMICAL small grant project, a team at CEU created two “choose your own adventure” stories that allow students to explore historical events from a non-linear perspective. These prompt reflection on broader themes within the field: “What is the relationship between history and storytelling? Can a historian reach an objective truth?” Russell Williams, Associate Professor, Director of Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development at AUPRussell will talk about working with Twine with his students as part of a General Education class as part of AUP’s Digital Literary requirements. In the Comparative Literature class, which explores Digital Poetics, students explore notions relating to “immersivity” and “interaction” and how the digital environment allows writers to experiment with non-linear narratives. Students in this class create a Twine story as a way of thinking through these ideas. Both speakers will address challenges and suggestions for implementation and will close with concrete material takeaways. Familiarity with Twine will be helpful, not necessary to follow the session. If you haven’t used Twine before, we encourage you to explore the tool and create a few “passages” in advance of the session. The following resources can help guide you through this process: Twine 2.0 Introduction (the first 15-minute tutorial from this video series should be sufficient) Twine reference guide Who should attend? Faculty, librarians, IT and academic technologists The session is organized by the Digital Liberal Arts Programs Committee and will be facilitated by Kate Roy (she/her; Instructor of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Coordinator of Digital Pedagogy Initiatives and the Writing and Learning Center at FUS).
Recording available
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “InfoLit MeetUp” event. They are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. The Information Literacy Interest Group invites Information Literacy librarians to explore how AI literacy can be embedded into teaching. In the discussion, IL Librarians will share innovative ways to evaluate the effectiveness of innovative IL instruction. Inevitably, the informal conversation will lead to the question of IL and AI learning objectives that are the starting point in the assessment cycle. This informal conversation will be driven by participants’ contribution and discussion and not by a formal presentation. Please join to share your expertise and experiences. Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy. Facilitators: Joyce Draiby (Lebanese American University) & Michael Stoepel (American University of Paris).
Meeting
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
This is the second meeting of the OCLC Cataloging User Group.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
A refresher demo focusing on OCLC’s WMS License Manager, led by Jodie Walker.
Recording available
· Online
This is the second WMS User Group Meeting, organized by AMICAL’s OCLC Committee. Its purpose is to offer AMICAL colleagues who use OCLC’s WMS the opportunity to share practices and expertise, exchange ideas on issues of concern, and network.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
This regular meeting series gives AMICAL Representatives a chance to connect with each other and to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. The series is organized by AMICAL staff and the Executive Committee. A calendar invitation with Zoom link has been sent to all Representatives. If you didn’t receive it, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
Join the Campus-Level AI Initiatives Interest Group (CLAII IG) for a presentation and discussion with Brent Anders (Director of the Sovorel Center for Teaching & Learning, and a Lecturer/Researcher at the American University of Armenia) on AI and sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis is an aspect or ability of NLP (natural language processing) that allows an AI to understand the tone/feeling within the text that it is reviewing. This can be useful for researchers who are analyzing survey results, specifically the comments section. An AI (such as ChatGPT), can review each comment within a survey and determine if it was positive, negative, or neutral. Proper AI Literacy would of course require a review of all AI results, but this use of AI can still function as a second pair of eyes (second opinion) in this research process. An example use would be after a large survey is done asking faculty, staff, and students, about their thoughts on AI in education. This event is organized as part of the monthly meetings of the CLAII IG, but it is open to any interested AMICAL member. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) is happy to announce our upcoming hands-on workshop, “Teaching students how to evaluate AI platforms for academic research”. In this 90-minute workshop, participants will learn how to teach students to critically evaluate AI platforms on a variety of criteria. The goal is to decide if a platform is appropriate for a targeted task and how much content from that platform should be used in a student’s final project. One way this goal can be accomplished is by presenting students with a rubric to evaluate AI platforms for multiple academic criteria, as well as providing a curated list of AI platforms that have potentially strong scholarly value. Participants will be asked to take on the role of a student during the webinar and evaluate one AI platform they are not yet familiar with. They will be divided into breakout rooms according to their choice, and each group will be responsible for trying out and reviewing their chosen platform. Participants will leave with: A reusable evaluation rubric Experience assessing AI platforms Strategies for teaching critical AI evaluation Who should attend? Librarians, faculty, and instructional designers. Before the webinar: Choose a platform you are not yet familiar with and sign up for the free version: Perplexity Elicit SciSpace Consensus Britannica Chatbot (If you’re familiar with all of the above, choose the one you’re least familiar with.) Review the “Student Guide: Choosing AI Platforms for Academic Work” rubric that the organizers have created. You may use this or a different rubric to assess your chosen platform during the workshop. You are welcome to develop your own criteria or adapt the rubric to this exercise The webinar will be led by: Katherine Ruprecht, Information Literacy Librarian at the American University in Bulgaria Stavros P. Hadjisolomou, Associate Professor of Psychology at the American University of Kuwait Fadia M Alakhras, Reference and Instruction Librarian at the American University of Kuwait Michael Stoepel, User Services Librarian at the American University of Paris The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording. AI use notice: We used ChatGPT for editing clarity. Perplexity Pro was used to format the rubric for evaluating the AI platforms.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate). Further information for each event will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
May 19–29, 2025 · Online
AMICAL 2025, the consortium’s 22nd annual conference focused on libraries, pedagogy & academic technology at international American universities, will be held online 19-2, 2025.
Conference
Recording available
· Online
This talk is organized by AI@AUP for the AUP community, but participation is open to all interested members of the AMICAL Consortium. Join us as we examine evidence-informed paradigms and methodologies for addressing plagiarism and academic integrity within contemporary educational contexts shaped by artificial intelligence. In this session Professor Eaton analyzes the intersection of ethical student conduct, human rights, and artificial intelligence. Participants will explore implementation strategies for academic integrity policies that respond to emerging technological challenges while preserving educational values. Speaker: Sarah Elaine Eaton, Professor and Chair, Leadership, Policy, and Governance, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary (Presentation of approximately 45 minutes followed by 30-45 minutes of Q&A.) The event will be held on Zoom and recorded (see our guidelines on setting up for online event participation). If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording. For technical questions about attending this Zoom event, email zoom@amicalnet.org
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This is the first WMS User Group Meeting, organized by AMICAL’s OCLC Committee. Its purpose is to offer AMICAL colleagues, who use OCLC’s WMS, the opportunity to share practices and expertise, exchange ideas on issues of concern, and network. The registration link has been shared to WMS administators across AMICAL
Meeting
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
May 7–8, 2025 · American University of Armenia
AMICAL’s Leadership & Assessment Committee is organizing an in-person meeting for library directors with the theme of “Leadership in a technology-driven world.” The meeting aims to help attendees understand the rapidly changing technological context of modern libraries and to successfully navigate and adapt to the digital landscape. It will also offer an opportunity for library directors to connect in person. The meeting will take place on May 7–8 at the American University of Armenia and include: virtual speakers, presentations by OCLC Research, and many opportunities for discussion and collaboration on issues critical to our libraries. The event is made possible through the generous hosting of the American University of Armenia and sponsorship by OCLC sponsorship.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) is happy to announce our upcoming hands-on workshop, “NotebookLM in action: Practical applications for teaching and research.” This interactive session offers practical, step-by-step guidance on using Google NotebookLM to improve your teaching and research. Participants will use a workshop booklet with practical exercises to actively engage with NotebookLM to create their own instructional activities and research artifacts. The booklet will also contain post-workshop activities for continued skill development. In this workshop, you will: Learn how to set up Google’s NotebookLM, and upload your own sources (Supported file types: PDF, .txt, Markdown, Audio (e.g. mp3), Google Docs - Slides, Links, YouTube Videos) Discover innovative methods for transforming sources into interactive content Optimize NotebookLM’s features specifically for participants’ teaching and research needs Adopt a clear framework for effectively integrating NotebookLM into your instructional and scholarly practices Pre-Workshop Preparation: To ensure participants get the most from this workshop, they are asked to complete the following tasks beforehand: Please respond to a short survey to help us tailor the workshop content to better suit your needs and experience Register for Google NotebookLM using your Gmail account (sign up here) Ask two faculty colleagues who have used or heard of NotebookLM, and be prepared to share their feedback during the session Select five open-access academic articles that you might use in your Fall 2025 courses and have them ready for the workshop Bring your syllabus for Fall 2025 if you wish to work on transforming it into interactive content Who should attend? Teaching librarians and faculty seeking practical tools to improve student engagement and research productivity Speaker: Stavros P. Hadjisolomou, Associate Professor of Psychology, Associate Dean for Accreditation and Assessment at the American University of Kuwait. Explore further (Optional): You are invited, but not required, to watch our previous webinar, “Balancing Pros and Cons of AI for Teaching”, for an overview of NotebookLM before joining this hands-on workshop.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
Join us for a 90-minute session to explore Digital Humanities projects across AMICAL in languages other than English! Each speaker will present a project and discuss it in terms of the way it supports pedagogy or scholarship: “Postcolonial Switzerland: A German oral history project” – Kate Roy, Coordinator of Digital Pedagogy Initiatives and the Writing and Learning Center; Adjunct Professor of Languages, Literatures and Cultures (FUS) “Bridging the gaps: Digitizing Lebanon’s press for a new frontier of research and discovery” – Elie Kahale, Director of Digital Initiatives and Scholarship, University Libraries (AUB) “Arabic literature and digital humanities: possibilities and perspectives” – Mai Zaki, Associate Professor of Linguistics (AUS) “From pixels to words: Breaking language barriers through Urdu OCR” – Farrukh Shahzad, Chief Librarian (FCCU) Target audience: Faculty and librarians interested in digital projects, working in languages other than English Organizers: Digital Liberal Arts Programs Committee
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate). Further information for each event will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
· Online

In this workshop, we will look at Google NotebookLM and explore both the benefits and the challenges of incorporating it into your teaching.

Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
This is the monthly meeting of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
This event was organized by AMICAL’s OCLC Committee in conjunction with OCLC. The meeting link has already been sent to library directors whose institutions subscribe to WMS. We are pleased to invite you to a refresher session on the WMS Acquisitions Module. This 1.5-hour meeting is designed to provide valuable insights into how the Acquisitions module can best support your library’s needs. Whether you are looking for a refresher or have specific questions, we look forward to helping you make the most of the system. Agenda: Introduction – A quick round to get to know each other. Updates Overview – A walkthrough of release notes and new features from 2021 to present. Ordering subscription and specials for one time print-orders. Round-the-clock actions in a budget period. Q&A Session. Presenter: Hans Streefland (OCLC Lead Customer Project Manager)
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be led by Fadia M Alakhras (Reference and Instruction Librarian at the American University of Kuwait), Michael Stoepel (User Services Librarian at the American University of Paris), and the AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee. The starting point of our conversation will be “Chapter 5: AI-Assisted Faculty” by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, a book chapter from their book Teaching with AI (2024). The aim of this session is to focus on what AI can already do for librarians and faculty in the context of teaching and what it might soon do. (Please do not share the PDF linked above.) The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee sees this Keep Current session as one of three sessions on the book Teaching with AI. Here are some suggested bullet points of discussion (you may put forward and discuss further points during the meeting) – the bullet points follow the subheadings in the book chapter: Research Assistant AI and Your Writing Predicting and Big Data Interfacing with Students Classroom discussions Assessment and Customization Designing New Assignments Course Design The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate). Further information for each event will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
This is the first of a series of monthly meetings of the Campus-level AI Initiatives Interest Group. Participation is for group members only.
Meeting
· Online
Join this meeting to learn about the available formats in the AMICAL 2025 Call for Proposals and how to submit a strong proposal. We will also answer any questions you may have. If you’d like to receive feedback on your proposal, we encourage you to draft your proposal using the proposal template and sharing it with contact@amicalnet.org at least a day before the session you’ll be attending.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “InfoLit MeetUp” event (previously called “Virtual Tuesdays”). InfoLit MeetUp events are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven: attendees will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda so that we can all share good practices and learn from each other’s expertise. The integration of artificial intelligence into research processes is fundamentally transforming how information is accessed, evaluated, and utilized in libraries. As AI tools increasingly assist researchers in data analysis, literature reviews, and information retrieval, the role of information literacy becomes more critical than ever. Librarians are tasked with guiding users in navigating AI technologies, ensuring they understand not only how to use these tools effectively but also how to critically assess the information produced by them. Join us to discuss these challenges and how we benefit from these tools in our information literacy and research sessions. Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy. Facilitators: Joyce Draiby (Lebanese American University) & Michael Stoepel (American University of Paris). The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
· Online

This workshop will introduce the concept of research impact, showing why it matters for faculty members today more than ever.

Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate). Further information for each event will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be led by Fadia M Alakhras (Reference and Instruction Librarian at the American University of Kuwait), Stella Asderi (Supervisor of Academic Liaison Librarians at the American College of Thessaloniki), Rebecca Hastie (Reference and Instruction Librarian at the American University of Sharjah) and the AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee. The starting point of our conversation will be the book chapter entitled “AI Basics” by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. The chapter is part of their book Teaching with AI published in 2024. The aim of this session is to deepen our understanding of AI technical terms as well as to hear from participants how they use AI in their information literacy instruction. The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee sees this Keep Current session as one out of three sessions on the book Teaching with AI. Here are some suggested points of discussion (you may put forward and discuss further points during the meeting): What AI software do you use in your information literacy classroom? How do you apply AI into your information literacy instruction? What are the challenges you face when teaching with or about AI in your classroom? To what extent do librarians need to master the technical language of AI? How do faculty and students respond to your instruction? The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
· Online
This event by the American University of Paris is organized for its own faculty and staff but has been generously opened to all interested AMICAL participants. This inaugural talk in the AI@AUP Speakers series will explore the current and historical development of generative AI: What is Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Generative AI, and what is at stake in the major historical debates in the AI community? How has that community imagined the societal impact, the question of regulation, and structures of governance for AI? And what might this mean for the field of education? About the speaker Claudia Roda is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the MSc Human Rights and Data Science program at the American University of Paris. She is also a Member of the IAPP Research Advisory Board and was recently appointed with Susan Perry as UNESCO Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights.
· Online
Join this dynamic professional development workshop designed specifically for librarians. This session will be presented by Fiona Glasgow, Scholarly Communications Librarian at the American University of Sharjah, who will share insights and expertise in bibliometrics and research impact. The core of the session will focus on research impact, covering essential concepts such as identifying key impact metrics, understanding citation analysis, leveraging altmetrics, and using tools for comprehensive impact tracking. The workshop will also highlight successful faculty engagement initiatives and outreach programs at AUS. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “InfoLit MeetUp” event (previously called “Virtual Tuesdays”). InfoLit MeetUp events are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven: attendees will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda so that we can all share good practices and learn from each other’s expertise. Metrics, altmetrics and the question of impact have been on the radar for librarians for a while now. The ILIC interest group intends to revisit the topic in the context of LAU’s new libguide on research impact. Together, we aim to improve LAU’s in-the-making libguide! By doing so, it will remind us of old and new tools in the field and how we can use the question of research impact in faculty development and information literacy instruction. Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy. Facilitators: Joyce Draiby (Lebanese American University) & Michael Stoepel (American University of Paris).
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should attend? The forums are intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate. Any additional information or updates will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
May 27 – Jun 6, 2024 · Online
AMICAL 2024, the consortium’s 21st annual conference focused on libraries, technology & pedagogy at international American universities, will be held online 27 May – 6 June.
Conference
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
This event is organized by the OSUN Library Resources Program and generously made available to AMICAL members. Evidence-based practice (EBP) in academic librarianship is embedded in the way we approach our work. An EBP project might be a yearlong study with many types of evidence collected or a simple assessment that helps you make a small adjustment to your work. Large or small, EBP is a way of operating day-to-day. Join the editors of Everyday Evidence-Based Practice in Academic Libraries: Case Studies and Reflections to learn about evidence-based practice in our field and how it can be applied specifically in academic library contexts. Participants will learn about the EBP model, examine different types of evidence, and apply EBP principles to issues in their own institutional contexts. Facilitators Amanda Click is the Head of Research & Instruction in Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy. Previously, she was the Business Librarian at American University in Washington, DC. In 2016, she earned a PhD in Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied the cultural adaptation of international students to higher education in the United States. Prior to entering the doctoral program, Amanda was the Coordinator of Instruction at the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include evidence-based practice, globalization of higher education, information literacy, and scholarly communications. Meggan A. Houlihan is the Director of the OSUN Library Resources Program at Open Society University Network and previously held leadership roles at Colorado State University, New York University Abu Dhabi, and the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include information literacy, international students, open educational resources, and the use of evidence synthesis methods in LIS. She is a graduate of Indiana University and the University of Reading. Claire Wiley is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at Belmont University in Nashville, TN. In this position she also serves as the liaison to the Social Sciences and is a member of the Teaching & Scholarship Unit. Her research interests include evidence based practice in libraries, scholarly communications, and librarians as academic advisors. Claire holds a BA in English and French from Harding University, a MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a MSM from Austin Peay State University. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “Virtual Tuesdays” event. Virtual Tuesdays events are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven: attendees will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda so that we can all share good practices and learn from each other’s expertise. In this event, participating information literacy librarians and information literacy aficionados will share their current information literacy projects. For example, those projects can be related to new instruction development for the upcoming Fall semester, engagement in strategic planning activities, or other innovative projects and novel ideas linked to information literacy. By asking the question what are you working on, we aim to uncover compelling themes within the field that extend beyond the current conversations on AI & IL. These identified themes will play a pivotal role in shaping the content for future Virtual Tuesday sessions, as well as Keep Current Events, and the AMICAL Conference program. If you can not attend, we would be happy to receive your emails about your current projects and ideas for future events and the conference. Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy. Facilitators: Joyce Draiby (Lebanese American University) & Michael Stoepel (American University of ). The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Meeting
· Online
Join this meeting to ask any questions you may have about the AMICAL 2024 Call for Proposals, and receive advice on how to submit a stronger proposal.
Meeting
· Online

Join AMICAL colleagues for an event on developing campus-level responses to generative AI.

Workshop
Recording available
· Online
Join this meeting to ask any questions you may have about the AMICAL 2024 Call for Proposals, and receive advice on how to submit a stronger proposal.
Meeting
· Online
Join this meeting to ask any questions you may have about the AMICAL 2024 Call for Proposals, and receive advice on how to submit a stronger proposal.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
Feb 13–21, 2024 · Online
AMICAL invites you to our third online Mid-Year Forum on 13–21 February 2024! Led by AMICAL members or invited speakers, Forum sessions address timely issues in libraries, technology, and pedagogy. This year’s sessions will focus on generative AI & pedagogy, Wikipedia editing assignments, course-integrated Digital Liberal Arts, and the convergence of arts & sciences. Participants will come away with recommendations, project ideas and strategies to apply to their own work. Sessions are open to faculty and staff from AMICAL member institutions, and there is no registration fee. The Forum welcomes all members, but will be of particular relevance to: Instructors of any discipline Instruction librarians Library directors Faculty developers Instructional designers and technologists We look forward to seeing you at the event! Media credits: Background image by Harryarts and Face circuit image by starline (both from Freepik).
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. This is the second of a two-part workshop providing AI literacy for librarians, and facilitated by Ekaterina Kombarova. Who should attend? The forums are intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate. Any additional information or updates will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL Keeps Current is an event series for discussing a recent publication (such as articles, book chapters, presentation recordings, webinars, etc.), selected by a different committee or interest group each month. Members may also suggest publications for discussion. The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be led by Kate Roy (Coordinator of Digital Pedagogy Initiatives and the Writing and Learning Center and Adjunct Professor in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Franklin University Switzerland). We will discuss the article “Decolonising Oral History: A Conversation” by Hilary Francis, Inge Boudewijn, Antonia Carcelén-Estrada, Juana Francis Bone, Katy Jenkins and Sofia Zaragocin. The article is available to read online or to download as a PDF. Are current Oral History practices, as we conduct them now, as ethical as we think? Or are they still, wherever we conduct them geographically, power-coded by a Global North framework and by their ultimate institutionalization, emanating from and being archived in our institutional sites and spaces? What does this mean for questions of equitable, shared representation? The article asks us to question our intentions and biases, and be critical of how we gather and (re)present Oral Histories, calling for a transparency of process and a sharing in (re)presentation decision-making with the communities from which the histories emanate. Here are some suggested points of discussion (you may put forward and discuss further points during the meeting): What are the problems inherent in the traditional approach to “gathering stories”? How can we reflect on and reshape modes of control of Oral History narratives? How might the frameworks of our projects and our intentions in approaching participants “shift the focus” away from the narrators themselves? How can we redress the balance? How can interviewed communities be fully involved in and maintain ownership of the (re)presentation of their stories? How can we decolonize notions and practices of institutional archiving of Oral Histories? Who should attend? Faculty, librarians and technologists engaged (or planning to engage) with oral history and/or interested in questions of community accessibility and project archiving. The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording. Organized by: AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Committee
Other
· Online
The Library Directors Forums are organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee as a regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. This is the first of a two-part workshop providing AI literacy for librarians, and facilitated by Ekaterina Kombarova. Who should attend? The forums are intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate. Any additional information or updates will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to another “Virtual Tuesdays” event. Virtual Tuesdays events are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven: attendees will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda so that we can all share good practices and learn from each other’s expertise. This event’s topic is “Synergy of open education and information literacy.” How can open education principles contribute to fostering inclusive and accessible information literacy programs? In what ways does information literacy support the goals of open education in creating a more equitable learning environment? What role can information literacy play in helping learners navigate and critically assess the vast amount of open educational resources available? Who should attend? AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy. This event will be facilitated by Joyce Draiby (LAU), Convener of the Information Literacy Interest Group. The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This event is organized by the OSUN Library Resources Program and generously made available to AMICAL members. In this webinar, two academic librarians will share how generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are disrupting and innovating library services, especially information literacy. How should librarians think about the roles of library instruction and information literacy when it comes to artificial intelligence? What are some opportunities and challenges in teaching generative AI tools in library instruction? This virtual forum will explore these questions and learning resources for librarians to consider. Bring your questions and thoughts to this interactive session! Speaker bios Raymond Pun (he/him) is the academic and research librarian at the Alder Graduate School of Education, a teacher residency program in California, where he supports library services by engaging with residents and teacher educators. Ray holds a Doctorate in Education from Fresno State, a Master of Library Science from the City University of New York - Queens College, a Master of Arts in East Asian Studies, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from St. John’s University. Laurie Bridges (she/her) is an instruction and digital initiatives librarian at Oregon State University, where she supports library outreach by providing instruction and support to faculty and students about learning technologies such as generative AI. Laurie holds a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington, a Master of Science in College Student Services Administration from Oregon State University, and a Bachelor of Science in Education in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Webinar
· Online
AMICAL Keeps Current is an event series for discussing a recent publication (such as articles, book chapters, presentation recordings, webinars, etc.), selected by a different committee or interest group each month. Members may also suggest publications for discussion. The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be co-led by Michael Stoepel (User Services Librarian at AUP), Fadia Al Akhras (Reference and Instruction Librarian at AUK), and Araz Margossian (Academic Support Librarian at AUA). We will discuss the article Where does ChatGPT fit into the Framework for Information Literacy? The possibilities and problems of AI in library instruction by Amy B. James and Ellen Hampton Filgo. The article is available to read as HTML text or to download as a PDF. Is ChatGPT (and other generative AIs) the new Wikipedia? Is it just a disruptive tool that is shaking many pedagogical and academic activities? Or can it become a reliable and efficient tool for academic research, teaching, and learning? The article examines ChatGPT in the light of ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy, revealing opportunities and the value that ChatGPT can bring to information literacy instruction, as well as possible pitfalls and risks when relying on it as a tool for obtaining and using information and academic research. Here are some discussion points (you may suggest and discuss additional points during the meeting): Which of the frame would you use to teach with ChatGPT? Have you used ChatGPT in your classroom? How did it work out? Share activities including its LOs with us! The event will be held on Zoom (see our online event guidelines) and recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording. Organized by: AMICAL’s Information Literacy Initiatives Committee.
Other
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: A calendar invitation with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of representatives is described on our website. This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Meeting
· Online
Organized by the OSUN Library Resources Program and made available to AMICAL members. Open Educational Resources (OER) not only promote student success by lowering textbook costs for students, they also have the potential to increase accessibility, diversity, relevance, and student engagement. Librarians’ information literacy skill set makes them uniquely qualified to provide leadership, education, and collaboration in OER projects. This presentation discusses ways librarians can participate in projects with students and course instructors as well as lead OER initiatives within the library and beyond. Librarians may apply information literacy skills during projects involving selecting, adapting, and authoring OER. They may also teach information literacy skills while educating others about OER and assisting with open pedagogy projects. The presentation will conclude with a list of resources and sources of support for those new to OER as well as those who are more experienced. Presented by: Mary Ann Cullen, Georgia State University (retired). Mary Ann is co-editor of Intersections of Open Educational Resources and Information Literacy, an ACRL publication, and the Fall 2020 special edition of the academic journal, Library Trends, “OER and the Academic Library,” both with Elizabeth Dill. Mary Ann recently retired from Georgia State University where she was Associate Professor and Associate Department Head at the Alpharetta Campus. She has been involved in the open and affordable educational resources movement since 2013, when she participated in the adaptation of an OER text for an introductory English composition course. She has assisted faculty with OER adoption and grants, and presented about librarians’ roles in OER at ACRL, the Distance Library Services Conference, and a Carterette Series webinar. She has been recognized as an Affordable Learning Georgia Featured Advocate. Amanda Larson, The Ohio State University. Amanda works as the Affordable Learning Instructional Consultant at The Ohio State University. Her role involves organizing professional development programs for staff, librarians, and instructors on open pedagogy and open educational practices. Additionally, she was the Open Pedagogy Fellow for the Open Education Network. In this capacity, she developed a curriculum for facilitating a learning circle focused on Open Pedagogy and conducted a pilot learning circle program for instructors, instructional designers, and librarians.
Webinar
· Online
Organized by the OSUN Library Resources Program and made available to AMICAL members. The word ‘open’ means many things to many people, but it is always about who gets to participate and who gets to decide. It is, fundamentally, about valuing the ‘who’ – it is about the empowerment of people. A commitment to openness, this presentation will argue, is a way to maintain the nuance and complexity of multiple voices in order to compete with the increasing reductionist texts produced by GenAI systems. Presented by: Dave Cormier, University of Windsor. With 25 years of experience as teacher, researcher and author, Dave is interested in how technologies change what it means to learn and to have learned. He is currently a learning specialist for digital strategy and special project at the Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor in Ontario Canada. His new book Learning in a Time of Abundance: The Community is the Curriculum will be released by Johns Hopkins University Press in January 2024.
Webinar
· Online
To celebrate International Open Access Week, join us for a presentation on the transition of the scholarly publishing market from a subscription-based system to open access. Colleen Campbell (from the Max Planck Digital Library) will provide a brief history of this transition, a snapshot of where things stand today, and thoughts on where things are headed. She will then invite reflections together with AMICAL members on what all of this means for them. Who should attend? Librarians, faculty, researchers, PhD students, others interested in scholarly communication. This event is organized by AMICAL’s Open Scholarship Interest Group, led by Jyldyz Bekbalaeva & Kara Jones. <h3>Speaker bio</h3> Colleen Campbell is strategic advisor for external engagement at the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), one of the largest research libraries in Europe, serving researchers at the more than 80 institutes of the Max Planck Society across Germany. There she coordinates the Open Access 2020 Initiative (OA2020), a global alliance of research organizations and their libraries that are repurposing their investments in subscriptions to support open access publishing, and the ESAC Initiative, a library community of practice dedicated to optimizing open access workflows and processes. She serves on the managing board of EIFL, a not-for-profit organization that works with libraries to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries, as well as on the committees and advisory groups of a variety of international initiatives related to publishing and open access. (The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.) This event will be held on Zoom. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up well.
Webinar
Recording available
Oct 2–12, 2023 · Online
We’re thrilled to invite you to the AMICAL Open House, a two-week event series that’s all about connecting and getting inspired for the year ahead. You won’t want to miss this! 🗓️ When: 2–16 October 2023 🕒 Time: Various times, check the schedule below 📌 Where: Virtually, of course! Click on the links below to register for each separate session 👤 Who: All AMICAL members are invited to attend events within their interests What to expect AMICAL’s work is led by our Committees and Interest Groups and the Open House is your chance to hear what they’re planning for the year ahead. It’s also an opportunity to ask questions about these groups, find out how you can get involved, and help shape the groups’ plans. Unless otherwise noted, each event will follow a 30-minute format, where our various Committees and Interest Groups will present their plans for the year, and then open the floor for questions and discussion with participants. Where available, we’re also linking to an outline of each group’s key objectives for the year.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to the first of this year’s “Virtual Tuesdays” event series. Virtual Tuesdays events are informal conversations on information literacy topics important to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven: attendees will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda so that we can all share good practices and learn from each other’s expertise. This event’s topic is Faculty Research Support. How do IL Librarians support Faculty members in research? What services do IL Librarians offer to Faculty members? What challenges do they face in providing support to Faculty members? Do they assist faculty members in the publishing process? How do they reach out and promote their support to Faculty members? etc. Who should attend? All AMICAL librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy are encouraged to join. This event will be facilitated by Joyce Draiby (LAU), Convener of the Information Literacy Interest Group. The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
AMICAL’s OCLC Committee in conjunction with OCLC has organized an event series offering updates about the Arabization and Arabic searching project, data sync, and resource sharing. Presenters: Nikolina Ivanova-Bell (Library Director, American University in Bulgaria) and Furrukh Shahzad (Chief Librarian, Forman Christian College) No library can provide all the resources their users, but with WorldShare Interlibrary Loan you can reach out to the largest network of resource sharing libraries in the world to supply your library users with the resources they need, whether print or electronic. We help you to provide the delivery experience people expect with accurate and immediate resource availability. And with remarkable speed and minimal manual intervention, saving you time and money. During this session, we will hear from representatives from Nikolina (American University in Bulgaria) and Furrukh (Forman Christian College) who will share their experiences of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan and the benefits they have experienced.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
There has been a flood of news concerning ChatGPT in recent months. You may have heard some unfavorable news reports about it, such as how it may be used by students to plagiarize or how the content it generates may include errors (“hallucinations”). The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) is happy to invite you to the webinar entitled “Using ChatGPT and artificial intelligence tools in instruction to promote AI literacy”. You will learn why understanding AI tools and chatbots is an important part of information literacy and something library staff should be learning and teaching about. After participating in this event, you will: Understand the basics of what ChatGPT is and how it works. Know several ways to use ChatGPT effectively. Understand common criticisms of the technology and problems with it in its current form. Be aware of some other tools and apps that use this technology. You will come away with: Knowledge of why AI literacy is an important part of information literacy. Inspiration & ideas for how to teach your users about it. Ideas for staying current with new developments. A bibliography of sources for learning more. Bring your thoughts! Time will be set aside for discussion. Nicole Hennig is an expert in user experience and emerging technologies. She is currently an e-learning developer at the University of Arizona Libraries. Previously, she worked for the MIT Libraries as head of the user experience department. In her 14 years of experience at MIT, she won awards for innovation and worked to keep academics up to date with the best mobile technologies. (The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.)
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
AMICAL’s OCLC Committee in conjunction with OCLC has organized an event series offering updates about the Arabization and Arabic searching project, data sync, and resource sharing. Presenters: Paul Shackleton (Metadata Operations Manager, OCLC), with an introduction from Vicky Tseroni (Dean of Libraries, the American College of Greece) Data synchronization is an automated service which allows you to synchronize your holdings with WorldCat to make your collections visible and available through various OCLC services. This integration is important as it enables WorldCat to accurately reflect your library holdings and make them visible to users locally, regionally, and globally extending the reach of your library. In this session, Paul will discuss why this matter, talk you through the steps of data synchronization, and how to manage, delete, and de-duplicate your holdings. Relevant resources: WorldCat data sync collections: Useful links Data requirements for bibliographic processing Prepare your data Data Sync Processing Matching for Data Sync Collections
Webinar
· Online
These forums, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, are part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This event is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
The release of ChatGPT has generated significant academic and professional interest and instigated a vibrant discussion on the opportunities offered and challenges posed by powerful and readily accessible generative AI reshaping teaching and learning at universities. ChatGPT has reignited an age-old debate on the impact of disruptive technologies on occupations and the labor market, but recent discussions have paid little attention to how university offerings may need to adapt. We strive to open this discussion, arguing that while recent GPT technology has, indeed, made more conceivable the substitution of many tasks of white-collar and knowledge workers, calling for more technology-centric training, it has simultaneously made a stronger-than-ever case for more transdisciplinary competencies. A short talk will be followed by Q&A and discussion. Speakers: Vera Dianova (Professor of Economics) and Mario Schultz (Professor of International Management) from Franklin University Switzerland. Who should attend? Faculty, staff and students interested in impact of AI on professional skills and higher ed
Webinar
· Online
AMICAL’s OCLC Committee in conjunction with OCLC has organized an event series offering updates about the Arabization and Arabic searching project, data sync, and resource sharing. Presenter: Omar Farhoud (Senior Library Services Consultant, OCLC) Back in May 2022, Omar Farhoud, previously of the Lebanese American University, joined OCLC. In his new role, he has been working with our Development Team to progress the Arabic features of our system, such as searching and making sure that Arabic is indexed correctly. During this session, Omar will give a live demo of the system to show you the work that has been completed.
Webinar
Recording available
The campus of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane.
May 24–26, 2023 · Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

AMICAL 2023, our next annual meeting and conference, will be held May 24–26 at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.

Conference
Recording available
· Online
These forums, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, are part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This event is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL Keeps Current is an event series for discussing a recent publication (such as articles, book chapters, presentation recordings, webinars, etc.), selected by a different committee or interest group each month. Members may also suggest publications for discussion. The series was inspired by, and continues, AMICAL’s long-running Information Literacy Journal Club. The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be led by Michael Stoepel (User Services Librarian at AUP), Fadia Al Akhras (Reference and Instruction Librarian at AUK), and Araz Margossian (Academic Support Librarian at AUA). We will discuss the chapter Emotional Labor of Instruction Librarians: Causes, Impact, and Management by Lorraine Evans and Karen Sobel. The chapter discusses the emotional labor aspects that apply to the work of academic faculty and staff, highlighting risk factors that are specific to librarianship. The authors also present strategies that can be used to manage the emotional labor of teaching faculty and librarians. Here are some discussion points (you may suggest and discuss additional points during the meeting): How does emotional labor manifest in the context of academic librarianship or instruction? What are common types of intense situations in the context of IL instruction? With regard to faculty members, students, and/or in the classroom? What is missing in this article about emotional labor? How can we create a safe and inclusive space to discuss and manage emotional labor at work without judgment or discrimination? This event was organized by AMICAL’s Information Literacy Initiatives Committee.
Other
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to our Small Grant program or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to our Small Grant program or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Among the many legacies of academic libraries that continue to shape our daily practice, one-shot instruction sessions are perhaps the most baffling. Born out of necessity and demand, this model for teaching has continued to dominate the information literacy landscape even though it is not aligned with what we know about best practices for pedagogy and universal design for learning. The one-shot situates information literacy as an afterthought to the curriculum, with librarians as guest lecturers and instructional outsiders. In this session, we will examine the assumptions and beliefs that perpetuate this model and we will explore options for re-envisioning our instructional practice in ways that prioritize student learning over library tradition. Before the event, attendees are encouraged to read Susanna M. Cowan’s “Information Literacy: The Battle We Won That We Lost?” (In portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2014). Who should attend? Librarians teaching information literacy and the faculty that partner with them Attendees to this event will have the opportunity to… Reflect on the narratives that shape their professional identities and organizational cultures. Consider the potential for re-envisioning library instructional roles, strategies, and practices that prioritize student learning needs. Identify potential habits and practices that can be adopted in order to advance new opportunities to evolve information literacy education. Speaker bios Urszula (Ula) Lechtenberg is the Learning Design Coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh Library System. In this position, she works with fellow librarians and teaching faculty on embedding information literacy skills and concepts into curricula, including through digital learning objects. She holds a MS in Library and Information Science and a MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, both from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Carrie Donovan is Head of Research, Learning & Media for the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh’s Library System. In this position, she collaborates with colleagues from the libraries and across campus to influence and enhance knowledge creation and experiential learning. She earned her MLS from Indiana University and a BA in Comparative Literature and Spanish from Indiana University. Ula and Carrie have collaborated on many projects, including a recent publication in the College & Research LibrariesSpecial Issue on One-Shots, edited by Nicole Pagowsky entitled “Undoing our instructional past: Envisioning new models for information literacy”. This event was organized by AMICAL’s Information Literacy Initiatives Committee. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Open research embodies the idea of making research more transparent and efficient and advances research collaboration. It promotes open access to research results, data, protocols and other aspects of the scientific process. It is recognized by UNESCO as “a true game changer in bridging the science, technology and innovation gaps and fulfilling the human right to science”. Iryna Kuchma, Open Access Programme Manager at EIFL, will talk about the latest developments in open research and why it is an issue that librarians and researchers can’t afford to ignore; how to go about making research more open and how to advocate for open research at your institution. Who should attend? Librarians, faculty, instructional technologists, researchers, Ph.D. and Master’s students. Speaker bio Working in collaboration with library consortia in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, Iryna Kuchma advocates for open access to research results, facilitates the development and implementation of open science policies and infrastructures, and provides support and training. She sits on the boards of Confederation of Open Access Repositories, the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations and the Directory of Open Access Journals Council. The event is organized by Jyldyz Bekbalaeva and Kara Jones for AMICAL’s Open Scholarship Interest Group.The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
These forums, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, are part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This event is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to the “Virtual Tuesdays” series of events. The objective of these events is to facilitate informal conversations about information literacy topics, including sharing ideas and best practices about current topics and/or topics of importance to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven. In other words, participants will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda at the beginning of the conversations so that we can all learn from each other’s expertise. One of the topics that may be discussed is AI text generators, such as ChatGPT. All AMICAL Librarians, technologists and faculty members involved in information literacy are encouraged to join. The event will be facilitated by Joyce Draiby (LAU), Convener of the Information Literacy Interest Group.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This is the second of a two-part workshop series on digitally mapping literary spaces led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow. You may attend both or just one of the workshops. This session on will carry on from where we left the training in the previous workshop. We will discuss different ways to integrate Google My Maps, StoryMapJS, and Palladio in the syllabus, examining a variety of potential assignments and how to grade them. This session will conclude with an overview on how to prepare students for digital mapping assignments and support them in the process of creating their maps, annotating, interpreting and reporting their results. Who should attend? Participants who are unfamiliar with the tools and did not attend the first session are encouraged to view the presentation slides so they are better prepared to participate in an informed way. Participants who are already familiar with the tools are encouraged to bring samples of relevant assignments and rubrics to discuss and share with other participants. This workshop will not be recorded. If you are interested but not able to attend, you can request personalized training from the Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This is the first of a two-part workshop series on digitally mapping literary spaces led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow. You may attend both or just one of the workshops. This session offers hands-on training on digitally mapping literary spaces with Google My Maps, StoryMapJS, and Palladio. We will start with a theoretical introduction to How? Why? & What do we digitally map in literary texts? and then move to some considerations we need to keep in mind when annotating digital maps of literary texts before we engage in hands-on training with the three tools. Who should attend? The training for this session is suitable for beginners with no previous experience with digital mapping. This workshop will not be recorded. If you are interested but not able to attend, you can request personalized training from the Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about submitting a proposal to AMICAL 2023 or applying to the Project Incubator. AMICAL staff will be on hand to talk through your ideas, answer questions and provide advice.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about submitting a proposal to AMICAL 2023 or applying to the Project Incubator. AMICAL staff will be on hand to talk through your ideas, answer questions and provide advice.
Meeting
· Online
AMICAL Keeps Current is an event series for discussing a recent publication (such as articles, book chapters, presentation recordings, webinars, etc.), selected by a different committee or interest group each month. Members may also suggest publications for discussion. The series was inspired by, and continues, AMICAL’s long-running Information Literacy Journal Club. The next AMICAL Keeps Current event will be led by Rebecca Hastie (Information Literacy Librarian at AUS). We will discuss a series of short videos in a YouTube playlist called Online Verification Skills with Mike Caulfield. Each short video demonstrates an element of the SIFT method for information evaluation in particular relation to web-based media: Stop Investigate the source Find better coverage Trace quotes to original source As the nature of media changes rapidly, so too must our methods of evaluating media. The traditional information evaluation rubrics used such as the CRAAP test encourage close reading of a text which is not particularly conducive to determining the legitimacy of online information. Mike Caulfield is a digital information literacy expert who created the SIFT method of evaluation for web media. Here are a couple of discussion points (you may suggest and discuss additional points during the meeting): How can we incorporate the SIFT method (or similar methods) into our one-shot IL sessions? What can we do as library staff to encourage our patrons to engage with digital media with a “fact-checking” lens? This event was organized by AMICAL’s Information Literacy Initiatives Committee.
Other
Recording available
· Online
These forums, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, are part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This event is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
This is the second of a two-part workshop series on computer-assisted textual analysis led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow. You may attend both or just one of the workshops. This session on will carry on from where we left the training in the previous workshop. We will discuss different ways to integrate Voyant Tools, Antconc, and CLiC in the syllabus, examining a variety of potential assignments and how to grade them. This session will conclude with an overview on how to prepare students for such assignments and support them in the process of building their corpora, interpreting and reporting their results. Who should attend? Participants who are unfamiliar with the tools and did not attend the first session are encouraged to view the presentation slides so they are better prepared to participate in an informed way. Participants who are already familiar with the tools are encouraged to bring samples of relevant assignments and rubrics to discuss and share with other participants. This workshop will not be recorded. If you are interested but not able to attend, you can request personalized training from the Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to the second “Virtual Tuesdays” series of events. The objective of these events is to facilitate informal conversations about information literacy topics, including sharing ideas and best practices about current topics and/or topics of importance to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven. In other words, participants will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda at the beginning of the conversations so that we can all learn from each other’s expertise. One of the topics that may be discussed is how to teach students about “fake news and quality of information” in information literacy sessions/instruction. All librarians teaching information literacy are encouraged to join. The event will be facilitated by Joyce Draiby (LAU), Convener of the Information Literacy Interest Group.
Forum
· Online
In this session, Omar Farhoud (Senior Library Services Consultant, OCLC), will showcase Hosted EZproxy. Despina Tsilimagkou (eResources & Web Services Manager, ACG) will also share their experience with this product. EZproxy provides a simple, secure way for your library users to connect to your e-content from almost anywhere. The Hosted version of EZproxy is managed by OCLC and meets both the needs of the library and IT because it connects to most identity management systems and supports many different authentication schemes. Hosted EZproxy collects data at the point of authentication and provides insights into who’s using what library resources, when, and from where. It can help when assessing ROI on the electronic resources you subscribe to or when having conversations with stakeholders. Who should attend? Library directors, as well as relevant IT and library staff. This session is organized by AMICAL’s OCLC Committee and ACT Library.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This is the first of a two-part workshop series on computer-assisted textual analysis led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow. You may attend both or just one of the workshops. This session will offer hands-on training on three computer-assisted textual analysis tools: Voyant Tools, Antconc, and CLiC. We will start with an introduction to computer-assisted textual analysis, including a brief survey of Distant Reading, and then move to ways to prepare and compile a corpus for analysis, before we engage in hands-on training with the three tools. Who should attend? The training for this session is suitable for beginners with no previous experience with computer-assisted textual analysis. This workshop will not be recorded. If you are interested but not able to attend, you can request personalized training from the Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
Join Loree Buchan and Steven Wiltz as they introduce the Hypothesis annotation tool and demonstrate how social annotation can transform your classroom, making reading active, visible, and social. Hypothesis is a collaborative social annotation tool that allows students to collectively cooperate while working on class assignments. The tool can be added right on top of your existing coursework in your Learning Management System. Instructors can add their own annotations beforehand to guide students through difficult concepts, and students can annotate course readings collaboratively, sharing comments, replying to each other’s comments, and answering questions posed by the instructor and each other. This event will be followed by another where AMICAL members will be invited to share their experiences with Hypothesis and social annotation. Who should attend Faculty, teaching librarians, instructional technologists, academic IT. AMICAL is in conversation with Hypothesis to offer fully supported pilot programs to interested institutions, so those responsible for academic technology at their campus should find attending this event especially interesting. Speaker bios Loree Buchan (Regional Manager, Hypothesis) – Whether it be in a classroom or a corporate boardroom, Loree has always had a love for teaching and learning. As part of the Hypothesis team, she is excited to tap into all facets of her unique background to combine her entrepreneurial spirit, classroom and online teaching experience, and expertise in leading and coaching sales and technology teams to positively impact the education landscape. Steven Wiltz (Account Executive, Hypothesis) – Prior to Hypothesis, Steven worked in a variety of roles in higher education. He has experience teaching history and using technology in the classroom; has worked as a customer success advocate in publishing to help instructors successfully implement digital solutions in the classroom; and, as a librarian, has focused on collection development and information literacy. Passionate about helping instructors achieve their goals, he is excited to join Hypothesis and continue to have an impact in education. Joe Ferraro (Vice President, Hypothesis) – Joe joined Hypothesis in August 2022. He comes to the organization with over 15 years in the education industry, starting in enrollment management and fundraising, and then moving to the vendor side. Working with products and services that provide students around the world with equal opportunities in the education space, Joe discovered his passion for EdTech. He spent the last four and a half years at Labster, a market leader in science education courseware; in his time there, he grew the sales team from four people to over 100, and built go-to-market teams to support US higher ed, K12, and international higher ed. In addition to his work, Joe is passionate about travel, his rescue dogs and his family. A graduate of Suffolk University, Joe lives with his partner and two dogs outside of Boston, MA. The event was organized by Najla Jarkas, Mellon Digital Liberal Arts Fellow and Chair of AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Programs Committee.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Do you teach writing or a course with a writing component? Are you a writing center director or tutor? Then this online event is for you. Join us for an open discussion about the different ways tutors and teachers provide feedback and guidance to help budding student writers grow overall and improve a specific writing assignment. It’s a chance to share experiences, figure out what works best, learn different approaches from one another, reflect on our own practices, and discover what changes we can introduce in our own contexts. This open discussion will be facilitated by the Teaching Writing Interest Group convenor, Jasmina Najjar (AUS).
Forum
Recording available
· Online
These forums, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, are part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The forums are normally structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the forums may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This event is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
This is the second of a two-part workshop on storytelling and digital timelines with TimelineJS. This session on TimelineJS carries on from where we left the training in the previous workshop to pedagogical applications of the tool in the classroom. We will discuss different ways to integrate TimelineJS in the syllabus, examine a variety of types of timeline-based assignments and discuss the most suitable weight of grades for grading them. This session will end with an overview on how to prepare students for timeline assignments and support them in the process of building their projects. Who should attend? Participants who are unfamiliar with the tool and have not attended the first session are encouraged to watch the recording so that they are better prepared to participate in an informed way. Participants who are already familiar with the tool are encouraged to bring samples of their timeline assignments and rubrics to discuss and share with other participants. About the facilitator This workshop will be led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
Open Access (OA) publishing offers authors, readers, libraries, and other institutions the best way to realize the scholarly goals we as academics aspire to espouse. I will draw on my time at Lever Press to highlight the benefits of publishing your book-length work as an Open Access monograph. OA publications can take advantage of their digital foundations to address some of challenges authors in liberal arts institutions face, and to offer a way for those authors to contribute materially to broader scholarly conversations both within and beyond the liberal arts. I also want to address some of the concerns that faculty have raised, particularly those early in their careers and worried about receiving appropriate credit for their OA books. This event is co-organized by AMICAL and the American University of Sharjah as part of OA Week 2022. Who should attend? Potential authors, especially those in the humanities and social sciences who have a great idea for a book that they want people to read. Academic administrators who are eager to learn more about Open Access and how and why to support it. Librarians and faculty developers will learn something valuable they can use to advocate for Open Access at their institutions. Speaker bio Darin Hayton is an Associate Professor of the history of science at Haverford College and for five years now the Chair of the Editorial Board of Lever Press, an innovative Open Access scholarly press. His research focuses on the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge, especially astrology (and related disciplines) in pre-Modern Europe and the late Byzantine Empire. He is committed to Open Access scholarship in all its forms, including teaching free, adult night classes in downtown Philadelphia for the Wagner Free Institute of Science. His first book was The Crown and the Cosmos. Astrology and the Politics of Maximilian I. He is finishing a study of the medieval Greek collection of astrological aphorisms attributed to the great ancient astronomer/astrologer Claudius Ptolemy, which he intends to publish with an Open Access press.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online

In the first AMICAL Keeps Current event, led by Anguelina Popova (AUCA), we will discuss the article “Digital Hegemonies: The Localness of Search Engine Results”.

Other
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to the Digital Oral History cohort program. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This is the first of a two-part workshop on storytelling and digital timelines with TimelineJS. This session offers hands-on training on a timeline-based digital tool, TimelineJS, which allows users to collaboratively incorporate interactive, media-rich multimodal digital objects in the storytelling of a sequence of events, ideas, and trends. We will start with a theoretical introduction to the method and move on to hands-on training on how to build and develop an interactive digital timeline using TimelineJS. Who should attend? The training for this session is suitable for beginners with no previous experience with digital timelines. This session will end with an optional assignment for participants in preparation for the following workshop on pedagogical integrations of TimelineJS in course work. About the facilitator This workshop will be led by Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow.
Workshop
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online

A 30-minute look at the year ahead for our digital liberal arts programs.

Meeting
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Interest Group invites you to the first of this year’s “Virtual Tuesdays” series of events. The objective of these events is to facilitate informal conversations about information literacy topics, including sharing ideas and best practices about current topics and/or topics of importance to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven. In other words, participants will be able to add topics and/or questions to the agenda at the beginning of the conversations so that we can all learn from each other’s expertise. In this first event, three members of the AMICAL’s Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (Meredith Saba, Chris Furno and Michael Stoepel) plan to talk about a future publication project. Another topic that may be discussed is how to introduce “informal learning” in the information literacy sessions/instruction. All librarians teaching information literacy are encouraged to join. The event will be facilitated by Joyce Draiby (LAU).
Forum
· Online

A 30-minute look at the year ahead for our digital liberal arts programs.

Meeting
· Online
The AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee invites you to its informal information literacy conversations entitled Virtual Tuesdays. The objective is to facilitate conversations and share ideas and best practices about current information literacy topics and importance to AMICAL members. These conversations are participant driven. In other words, participants set the agenda at the beginning of the conversations. The idea is to learn from each other’s expertise. You will have the opportunity to add your topics and/or questions to the agenda. One topic of interest that came up in various conversations recently was ‘plagiarism’ which could be one of the conversation topics. However, feel free to suggest topics or bring your IL related questions.
Forum
· Online

​AMICAL is offering an online Digital Oral History Institute this summer (on June 21, 28, and July 5). The Institute will consist of three interconnected workshops that together will offer introductory, but substantial, training in the methodology of oral history. It will be facilitated by Brooke Bryan.

Workshop
· Online

​AMICAL is offering an online Digital Oral History Institute this summer (on June 21, 28, and July 5). The Institute will consist of three interconnected workshops that together will offer introductory, but substantial, training in the methodology of oral history. It will be facilitated by Brooke Bryan.

Workshop
· Online
AMICAL is offering an online Digital Oral History Institute this summer (on June 21, 28, and July 5). The Institute will consist of three interconnected workshops that together will offer introductory, but substantial, training in the methodology of oral history. It will be facilitated by Brooke Bryan, whose bio you can read below. The Institute is free to interested faculty and staff from all AMICAL members institutions. All costs will be covered by AMICAL. Overview of the Institute During the Institute, participants will learn tools and tactics for planning a digital oral history project, implementing best practices, conducting interviews, working with archives, and building collaborative public-facing projects using digital tools. Each of the three workshops will be 2.5 hours long and take place online between 13:00 and 15:30 Paris time on the dates indicated below. 21 June 2022 – Digital Oral History as Method: Ethics & Best Practices for Community-Based Learning. This session is a fundamental introduction to doing oral history in higher education, including an overview of ethics, best practices and IRB implications— emphasizing how the increased access afforded by curated, public-facing digital projects complicates informed consent. We will consider release forms, project planning basics, and community partnerships. 28 June 2022 – The Art of the Interview: Unstructured Encounters & the Abbreviated Life Story. This session takes a deep dive into one particular model of interviewing and how to plan for unstructured, co-constituted dialog. We’ll consider a tactical strategy for managing the timespace of the interview. 5 July 2022 – Stewarding Story & Scholarship: Working Deeply in Narrative Material. We’ll establish baseline best practices of file management and workflows, consider interpretive strategies and time coded media, and discuss archival partnerships. We’ll explore how undergraduate fieldwork projects using digital tools engage the soft skills of the liberal arts and can support your scholarly agenda through specific pedagogical frameworks. After each workshop, recordings will also be made available to registrants, along with other supplementary material. Because the workshops build on each other to teach this methodology, if you aren’t able to attend a workshop, make sure to view its recording before attending the next one. (Attending all three workshops is also a requirement for further project support, as described below.) We encourage participants who have little or no familiarity with oral history, to view the recording of Brooke Bryan’s webinar, “The Interview Project: Oral history and digital scholarship as method for cross-role collaboration and community engagement,” before attending the Institute. Project support after the Institute Following the Institute, AMICAL members will be able to apply to join our Digital Oral History cohort program for project support. This program will include individual consultations with Brooke Bryan, as well further trainings that will focus on how to build curated, public facing projects with free or open source tools. To be eligible for the Digital Oral History cohort program, all members of a project team must have attended all three Institute workshops. If you have already applied to the Digital Oral History cohort program, you won’t need to do so again, but you do need to attend the Institute workshops to be eligible for support. We may limit the number of projects accepted into the Digital Oral History cohort program according to the funding we have available. About the Institute’s facilitator Brooke Blackmon Bryan received the post-secondary teaching award from the Oral History Association for her work stewarding undergraduate fieldwork projects using oral history and tools from the digital humanities. Trained in philosophical aesthetics, she has been involved in phenomenological oral history for more than 10 years. Brooke’s work emphasizes the importance of the interview encounter and how the prevalence of public-facing digital projects complicates informed consent, or what we might call the guiding logic of oral history practice. Brooke is Assistant Professor of Writing, Aesthetics, and Digital Studies at Antioch College, and an AMICAL digital consultant for oral history projects through the 2022-23 academic year.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
Second of two workshops offered in June 2022 for the members of the Digital Collaborations cohort. Ellen Holmes Pearson and Jeff McClurken will discuss techniques for collaborative teaching in both asynchronous and synchronous environments. Topics include planning collaborative assignments and course sessions, time difference and distance workarounds, “backchanneling” tactics for instructors, collaborative feedback and assessment strategies, and tips for facilitating student interactions and co-work. The recording is available to members of the cohort – just ask the organizers.
Jun 14–16, 2022 · Online
We are delighted to announce that AMICAL 2022, the consortium’s 19th annual conference, will be held online on 14–16 June.
Conference
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.)
Meeting
· Online
First of two workshops offered in June 2022 for the members of the Digital Collaborations cohort. Jeff McClurken and Ellen Holmes Pearson will offer templates and advice for creating syllabi that incorporate digital assignments in a variety of ways, from courses that incorporate one or two collaborative digital assignments within a “traditional” course, to courses that are built around larger digital projects. This workshop will also explore the creation of rubrics to assess digital projects, in order to provide students with clear assignment standards and expectations. The workshop will include some hands-on time for small-group discussions about creating syllabi and rubrics. The recording is available to members of the cohort – just ask the organizers.
· Online
The next meeting of the Information & Digital Literacy Journal Club will be led by Araz Markosian (American University of Armenia) and Fadia Al Akhras (American University of Kuwait). We will discuss the article “Algorithmic Literacy and the Role for Libraries”by Michael Ridley and Danica Pawlick-Potts published in 2021. The authors bring out the skill gap in navigating the algorithms’ (AI) driven information landscape not addressed by our current information and digital literacy programs, and the role for libraries in this regard. Here are some of the discussion points: Considering how algorithms are transforming the information landscape and practices, how does this reflect on the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education? (How do we find, access, evaluate, use, and create information?) Should we address Algorithmic Literacy through our courses/sessions (IL, library, or other disciplinary…)? Or can we embed Algorithmic Literacy in programs/initiatives teaching other literacies? (e.g. Media Literacy, Data Literacy, Privacy, Digital Citizenship, etc.) Do you have experience or ideas for integrating Algorithmic Literacy to your courses/sessions? Are there other opportunities or solutions that the library can initiate to raise awareness and teach Algorithmic Literacy? Are you aware of Algorithmic Literacy initiatives/programs for the students/staff/faculty/librarians/public in your institution/country?
Meeting
· Online
This event is part of a series on “Digital methods and tools in teaching and learning,” organized by the Digital Liberal Arts Programs committee. Najla Jarkas, AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts Mellon Fellow, will be sharing her experiences with integrating digital methods and tools in her writing, literature, and introductory digital humanities courses at the undergraduate level. This two-hour workshop will include a parade of digital methods and tools that engage students in textual, spatial, temporal and network analyses of literary texts. Participants will be invited to a discussion to share their take on the affordances and limitations of digital tools and methods in the class. Who should attend? Faculty teaching humanities courses, who are interested in integrating digital methods and tools in their teaching, as well as librarians and technologists who are curious to learn about these digital methods and tools.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
One might focus on what serving communities look like after the pandemic, but in truth those that we serve and our own colleagues are regularly dealing with trauma and stress. Land wars in Europe, widening ideological gaps, climate crisis, a growing distrust of expertise are all creating a persistent atmosphere of crisis. In such a world, libraries cannot pretend to be neutral and must look beyond documents to seek solutions. This talk will discuss switching from transactions to relationships, from empathy to compassion, and from information to knowledge and action. Speaker bio R. David Lankes is the Virginia & Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the iSchool at University of Texas at Austin. Lankes has always been interested in combining theory and practice to create active research projects that make a difference. His work has been funded by organizations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, NASA, The U.S. Department of Education, The U.S. Department of Defense, The National Science Foundation, The U.S. State Department, and The American Library Association. Lankes is a passionate advocate for libraries and their essential role in today’s society earning him the Reference and User Services Association Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award for distinguished contribution to reference librarianship in 2021 and the Ken Haycock Award for Promoting Librarianship in 2016. He also seeks to understand how information approaches and technologies can be used to transform industries. In this capacity he has served on advisory boards and study teams in the fields of libraries, telecommunications, education, and transportation including at the National Academies. He has been a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada, The Harvard School of Education, the French national library school Enssib, and was the first fellow of ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. His book,The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. Who should come? This meeting is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. How to attend the meeting: A calendar invite with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL library directors. If you believe you should have received this invite, but have not, contact us. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This event is part of a series on digital methods and tools in teaching and learning, with a focus on “Library roles in the Digital Liberal Arts.” This talk will be given by Mackenzie K. Brooks, Associate Professor & Digital Humanities Librarian at Washington and Lee University. Metadata is deeply embedded in library work. We use metadata to describe our resources in our catalogs and to discover research for our students and faculty. Our metadata work demands a certain level of data literacy – a skill-set that is ripe for application in digital projects. But the role of metadata in digital projects can be overlooked as we manage all the moving parts of digitizing content, learning new tools, customizing interfaces, and training students. There is also a reluctance for some humanities scholars to recognize their material as data (Miriam Posner calls humanities data “a necessary contradiction”), which can lead to challenges for collaborating librarians. This presentation will explore the reasons why metadata matters in digital projects. After a brief explanation of the data modeling process, I will share examples of ways that metadata knowledge and skills can be used in the classroom and in research projects. I’ll also share ways to engage collaborators in understanding the importance of metadata and approachable methods for navigating the acronym soup (RDF, OAI, XML, just to name a few!). Speaker bio Mackenzie K. Brooks is Associate Professor & Digital Humanities Librarian at Washington and Lee University. At W&L, she is the Program Coordinator for the Digital Culture and Information program and teaches courses on humanities data, born digital archives, and scholarly editing. Previously, she worked as Metadata Librarian at W&L and at Loyola University Chicago. She received her MLIS from Dominican University. Her research focuses on digital pedagogy, text encoding and publication, and metadata. Her work appears in the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, College and Undergraduate Libraries, and Art Documentation. The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Webinar
Recording available
Apr 26–27, 2022 · Online
The Digital Collaborations cohort program aims to foster and support collaborations across AMICAL institutions on digital projects or assignments that are integrated into coursework. It promotes the development and exchange of expertise in digital scholarship and pedagogy while cultivating innovative, multicultural teaching and learning experiences. The program is being funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. More information about this program, including details about the support offered and a tentative timeline, are available on our website. The first phase of the program is a matchmaking event whose aim will be to help those participating in the event to find a partner at another institution to work on a viable curriculum-integrated digital collaboration in the next academic year. This event is for those who do not yet have a partner at another institution. If you connect with an AMICAL partner on your own, outside of this event, you will still be able to apply for support for your collaboration through our AMICAL Digital Collaborations program, which will open in early May. The matchmaking will take place over two sessions on April 26 and 27. We will do our best to schedule there a series of 1-on-1 meetings between participants and all those they’ve expressed interest in partnering with. Participants will be invited to join one or both of the session dates, depending on who we were able to schedule meetings with. (If you aren’t able to attend either session of the matchmaking event, you can still sign up, and we’ll help connect you to potential partners.)
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.)
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education emphasizes the importance of students as creators within the information environment, not just consumers. This theme runs throughout all of the frames, but is most forthright in Information Creation as a Process. During this webinar, we will dive deep into this frame and discuss the opportunities for developing critical information literacy skills in students through content creation that gives them agency and a lead role in their own experiential learning. We will discuss specific assignments that can be adapted to a range of instruction types and institutional contexts, platforms and tools, and the role of the librarian in these types of projects. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for changing up their assignment design and instruction plans to incorporate student-directed content creation and further their students’ development of information literacy within their own disciplines. About the speaker Amanda Scull, MLIS, is Head of Education and Information Services at the Dartmouth College Biomedical Libraries. She has extensive experience teaching undergraduate and graduate students, and has written and presented several on the topic of adapting instruction to incorporate more student agency and student-directed assignment design. After the presentation, there will be time for Q&A with Amanda.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This is the third in our series of online events on “Digital methods and tools in teaching and learning.” This talk will be given by Kristen Mapes the Assistant Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University. There are many ways that digital humanities methods and approaches can be incorporated into the undergraduate classroom, from a one-off workshop or in-class activity, to a semester-long project. Across this continuum, there are opportunities for librarians to play a crucial role in advancing student learning. First, librarians are adept at thinking about information architecture, metadata, and data literacy, which are crucial aspects to digital humanities work. Second, librarians bring a perspective to working with materials and collections that imagines both the short term audience for a project as well as long term preservation concerns. Third, librarians, especially those in small liberal arts colleges, are adept at cross-disciplinary translation and communication. This presentation will discuss how librarians can partner with faculty in the classroom through examples of projects and activities that foreground librarian expertise. About the speaker Kristen Mapes is the Assistant Director of Digital Humanities at Michigan State University. A graduate of John Cabot University, she holds masters degrees in Library Science, from Rutgers University, and in Medieval Studies, from Fordham. University. In her work at Michigan State, she has led the Global Digital Humanities Symposium since its inception in 2016, teaches courses in digital humanities, consults with faculty on projects and developing their digital presence, and partners with the Library in managing strategy for its Digital Scholarship Lab. Recent courses include a digital humanities study abroad program to the UK, undergraduate Introduction to Digital Humanities courses, and a graduate course in Digital Humanities Pedagogy. Her writing on DH pedagogy can be found in the Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities. (The event will be recorded. If you register for the event, you will be emailed a link to the recording.)
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting is organized by the Leadership & Assessment Committee together with the OCLC committee, as part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. We will be hosting Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Director of Library Trends and User Research from OCLC Research. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, OCLC has connected with leaders and staff at cultural heritage institutions from around the world to understand how the crisis has impacted them, their institutions, and communities, how they have responded, and how the experiences are shaping new library models. In this session, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, PhD, from OCLC Research, will summarize findings from interviews with 29 global library leaders reflecting on their COVID responses and visions for their new model library. The themes from this study are synthesized in the briefing, New Model Library: Pandemic Effects and Library Directions. Who should come? This meeting is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. How to attend the meeting: A calendar invite with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL library directors. If you believe you should have received this invite, but have not, contact us. Relevant OCLC links: Research Publications Presentations The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
Recording available
Makerspace at Habib
· Online
Makerspaces are a recent innovation in academic libraries. They are multi-disciplinary workspaces for students to create, collaborate, and engage with technology helping them with critical thinking and an opportunity to discover their interests in a thoroughly unconventional way. They are also referred to as Creative Spaces, Fablabs, or Hackerspaces. Colleagues from Habib University Library (HUL), Muniba Ather (Coordinator, Information Commons) and Nooruddin Merchant (Chief Librarian), will present their experience in building their own makerspace area at HUL and showcasing the equipment used. There will be a live demo of the actual space, followed by Q&A. Who should attend: Head/University Librarians, library staff, faculty interested in innovative learning, and technologists who support libraries.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL Staff together with AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.)
Meeting
Feb 9–10, 2022 · Online
For the second year, AMICAL is organizing an online Mid-Year Forum for its members. The event will take place 9–10 February 2022 and is open to all faculty and staff from AMICAL member institutions. There is no registration fee — event costs will be covered by AMICAL. The purpose of the Forum is to connect members with each other, and with the consortium’s committees and interest groups, to work on issues relating to libraries, technology and pedagogy. In particular, the Forum will: Provide opportunities for members to reflect on their work, to share lessons learned and to problem-solve with their peers. Address timely member needs, such as planning for upcoming semesters or projects. Encourage connections among AMICAL members, and between members and the consortium’s committees/interest groups. Most sessions will use a mix of informal presentations and participatory interactions, encouraging all attendees to be both learners and contributors. The Forum welcomes all members, but will be of particular relevance to: instructors of any discipline – especially those interested in open education resources and practices, digital methods and tools, or collaboration with technologists or librarians instructional librarians faculty developers and directors of centers for teaching and learning instructional designers and technologists library directors We encourage you to review the program and to register for the event.
Conference
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, is part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The meeting will be structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the meeting may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This meeting is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. How to attend the meeting: A calendar invite with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL library directors. If you believe you should have received this invite, but have not, contact us. Meeting information: Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Library Directors space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
Information literacy instruction has gone through several phases at the Lebanese American University (LAU). Based on LAU libraries’ strong belief that the information literacy skills are deemed necessary not only for the students’ academic success but also for lifelong learning, several strategies were adopted. Due to COVID-19 pandemic and based on the Strategic planning 2019-2023, the LAU Information literacy committee decided to develop information literacy modules to be embedded in the English courses. These information literacy modules are divided into three independent modules: Research process Copyright, Plagiarism & APA style Information quality Each of these modules involves lesson plans, tutorials, quizzes, and assessments. English chairperson and English Program coordinators were approached and approved embedding these modules in the English courses 102 & 202. Join us to learn how the Lebanese American University has developed these modules. This Forum will provide insight on how the LAU Information Literacy Committee developed these modules. Time will be allocated for Q&A. This event is organized by the AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee as part of the ongoing Information Literacy Virtual Forum series and will be facilitated by committee members Christine Furno and Michael Stoepel.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This is the second talk in a series of online events on “Digital methods and tools in teaching and learning,” organized by the Digital Liberal Arts Programs committee. Event description Brooke Blackmon Bryan will discuss projects from the Oral History in the Liberal Arts program. These are collaborative digital projects that have an anchor in the local community of the host institution, a curricular tie, and collaboration involving faculty, technologists, librarians, and community partners. She will showcase how these projects (and the digital exhibits they built) represent different modes of collaboration, and outline the crucial best practices that need to guide this kind of work. From research ethics, considerations of IRB and informed consent, interview methods for qualitative inquiry, and which digital tools hold the most pedagogical promise for an outcomes-oriented collaboration. The event will run for 90 minutes: the presentation will take up the first hour, with the remaining time devoted to Q&A. About the speaker Brooke Blackmon Bryan is Dean of Cooperative, International, and Experiential Education and Associate Professor of Writing, Aesthetics, and Digital Studies at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She has served as founding director of the Oral History in the Liberal Arts Program for the Great Lakes Colleges Association, which grew into a faculty development program and consortial host for digital exhibits across the GLCA and its Global Liberal Arts Alliance. She regularly offers workshops on method and sponsors undergraduate research projects on a variety of socially-engaged themes.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The next Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club will be led by Fadia Al Akhras (American University of Kuwait). We will discuss the article “Undergraduates’ Use of Google vs. Library Resources: A Four-Year Cohort Study”, written by Carol Perruso in 2016. The article describes a cohort study conducted over four years about students’ use of websites and library resources for their research papers, and whether reliance on Google changed over time. Here are some of the discussion points: Challenges of searching library databases Why do students tend to use Google for research? What effect do library instruction sessions have on students’ searching preferences? Is there any relationship between faculty resources requirements and where students start their research and what resources they use?
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
The Digital Liberal Arts (DLA) Programs committee is organizing a discussion forum on textual analysis, as a follow-up to Alex Wermer-Colan’s webinar on the same topic. This event will revolve around an informal discussion among the following AMICAL colleagues who have incorporated textual analysis tools and methods in scholarship and teaching: Jyldyz Bekbalaeva (AUCA) has taught textual analysis methods and tools in an introductory Digital Humanities course. Kristen Doyle Highland (AUS) has used textual analysis tools like Voyant in composition/writing and literature courses. Geoffrey Gilbert & Russell Williams (AUP) have published in the field of computer-aided textual analysis and will be using Voyant and Jupyter Notebook with students this fall semester. James Plumtree (AUCA) has used textual analysis tools to facilitate his scholarship. Anguelina Popova (AUCA) has taught textual analysis methods and tools in a Digital Cultures course. Maya Sfeir (AUB) has taught and done research in the field of Corpus Linguistics and taught textual analysis methods and tools in a Digital Humanities course. Mai Zaki (AUS) has been teaching and publishing in the field of Corpus Linguistics and Translation, and has been using textual analysis tools/resources with Arabic and English corpora. All interested AMICAL members are welcome to attend and hear about the good, bad, ugly and lovely of using textual analysis in the classroom or in their scholarship. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of the group, and to share their own experiences. The discussion will be facilitated by Najla Jarkas (AMICAL Digital Liberal Arts Fellow) and Alex Armstrong (AMICAL Program & Technology Officer).
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL staff and the Leadership & Assessment Committee, is part of our regular event series for AMICAL library directors. The meeting will be structured around active discussion and interaction designed for helping each other with challenges or opportunities we’re currently working on or anticipating at our own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the meeting may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come? This meeting is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions, or another librarian with leadership responsibilities delegated by the library director to participate in this forum. How to attend the meeting: A calendar invite with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL library directors. If you believe you should have received this invite, but have not, contact us. Meeting information: Any additional information or updates about the meeting will be posted in the Representatives space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
The Digital Liberal Arts Programs Committee will be hosting a series of online events on “Digital methods and tools in teaching and learning.” The first of these is the following talk by Alex Wermer-Colan, the Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Temple University. Event description This talk aims to provide direction and clarify best practices for instructors looking to integrate digital pedagogy into learning sessions, syllabi, and curricula more broadly. To do so, I overview a modular framework and strategy for incorporating digital technologies and tools for cultural analytics (including text mining and mapping) into university courses across a wide range of disciplines. Taking emerging software and methods in computational textual analysis as the primary example, this talk will showcase user-friendly, web-based tools, such as Voyant and HathiTrust’s Bookworm, that instructors can use for introducing new methods, such as distant reading, within the context of traditional course content. By adapting a modular framework over time, teachers can experiment with lesson plans, like those available through the Programming Historian, to introduce tools and methods to their students without radically rethinking their syllabus. At the same time, a modular framework allows teachers, by working with a network of collaborators, including librarians, IT staff, faculty, and students, to slowly develop longer-term digital projects for cultural analytics. Such collaborative projects offer a unique opportunity to teach students through active-learning about the entire data life cycle, as students learn how to build a dataset, analyze the data, preserve and share their data and code, and present their research results. To demystify digital pedagogy, then, this talk aims to give a clear idea of practical ways for teachers to introduce new methods into their instruction, while also accumulating over time the work of individual students and classes. Instructors can then approach their pedagogy in relation to digital technology with a holistic eye towards immediate pedagogical benefits and long-term goals, teaching students practical skills while rewarding their productive labor through credited role in contributing to larger digital projects integral to faculty research, departmental initiatives, and institutional projects. Speaker bio Dr. Alex Wermer-Colan works as a Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Temple University Libraries’ Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio. Alex holds an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Alex leads workshops on computational methods of interpretation, while offering consultations, and developing research projects. To contact Alex, email alex.wermer-colan@temple.edu and on Twitter @alexwermercolan.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
A webinar series organized by OCLC for the members of AMICAL’s RESPOND program. Presenters: Annie Charlton, Team Manager, Customer Projects, OCLC; Joanne John, Senior Customer Support Analyst, OCLC. Your users rely on your catalog to find and access your resources, so it’s important to keep your cataloging records as accurate and up to date as possible. Keeping up with commonly held materials and frequently changing collections can take a lot of staff time that could be better spent highlighting the special collections that make your library unique. In this session, Annie and Jo will highlight how Collection Manager streamlines your electronic and print workflows, saving time and improving your catalog so all of your resources are easier for your users, other libraries, and people around the world to find, request, and access.
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
A webinar series organized by OCLC for the members of AMICAL’s RESPOND program. Presenters: Annie Charlton, Team Manager, Customer Projects, OCLC. No one library can maintain a collection with everything that users could possibly need. With WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (ILL), you are connected to over 10,000 libraries around the world, who can supply your library users with the electronic or print resources they want. During this session, Annie will share how WorldShare ILL automates interlibrary borrowing and lending processes, saving staff time and ensuring that requested items are delivered in a timely manner. She will also touch on the document sharing site, Article Exchange, a single, secure safe location to share electronic resources.
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting: The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
Due to a technical issue, this event, which was originally scheduled for September 22, was moved to October 5. You will need to register again for this new date. Apologies for the inconvenience! The next Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club will be led by Dalal Al-Hakim Rahmeh (American University of Beirut). We will discuss the article “Data literacy for researchers and data librarians” written by Tibor Koltay in 2017. (If you do not have access to this article through Sage, there is a pre-print version available through Google Scholar.) The paper describes Data Literacy, its importance and connection to Information Literacy, and the possible roles of the academic library. Here are some of the discussion points: What is research data to you? How comfortable are you in dealing with different data complexities and formats? Experience in initiating data services. Data Management practices, challenges, stakeholders. Data sharing importance, fears, challenges, and success stories. Is the library ready to offer data services? The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are set up to participate with a microphone and/or webcam.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
A webinar series organized by OCLC for the members of AMICAL’s RESPOND program. Presenters: Jill Cantrell, Team Manager, Customer Support, OCLC. Your users rely on your cataloging to find and access your resources but keeping up with recently purchased materials can take a lot of staff time. WorldShare Record Manager provides efficient metadata management for your physical and electronic materials using MARC 21 or Text View editors. Join this session, in which Jill will share how Record Manager allows staff to search for matching bibliographic records in WorldCat when copy cataloging and also, use those records to enrich your catalog and save you time and money.
· Online
A webinar series organized by OCLC for the members of AMICAL’s RESPOND program. Presenters: Jill Cantrell, Team Manager, Customer Support, OCLC; Joanne John, Senior Customer Support Analyst, OCLC. The speed of research is continuing to increase, and your library collections need to be quick and easy for your users to find. FirstSearch provides the most powerful interface for searching the world’s largest bibliographic database, WorldCat, to help users find and select resources from collections around the world. But what about proving the value of your collections to your stakeholders? While FirstSearch provides the interface for your users to find the resources they need, WorldShare Collection Evaluation provides your staff with the tools required to compare and benchmark your library’s collections against other libraries and groups to help in the decision-making process. In this session, Jill and Jo will show you how these services can help you gain better collection visibility and an increased understanding of your collections.
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
In the context of emergency remote teaching, many educators are exposed to tools which can facilitate their work,and students’ learning. In this session, we will sort out and demonstrate a few useful tools for different aspects of the teaching and learning processes. During this session, Dr. Ola El Zein, Head of Saab Medical Library (AUB) will share an extensive list of the most commonly used online resources and applications based on needs and priorities. The types of tools that will be discussed include lesson delivery tools, communication tools, assessment tools, knowledge tools, illustration tools, as well as resources for “beautifying” content in teaching and learning. For each of these categories, several tools will be mentioned depending on the needs of the participant. For example, in the lesson delivery section, we will see tools used for delivering synchronous/asynchronous sessions, discussions, note-taking, digital whiteboards and portfolios, interactive presentations, etc. Similarly, we will be highlighting several resources used for content sharing, online-quizzes and polls, surveys, monitoring and grading, etc. All these tools and resources are either classified as free or paid ones. This session aims to hopefully benefit all AMICAL’s faculty members and librarians. It identifies tools that can help enhance the teaching experience of professors and educators, in addition to students’ learning and education. Who should attend: All AMICAL members are welcome to attend. Session format: 5 minutes meet and greet 30 minutes presentation 25 minutes Q&A + discussion
Webinar
Recording available
Jun 21–24, 2021 · Online
AMICAL 2021 will take place 21–24 June, marking the consortium’s 18th annual meeting and conference, and the first to be held entirely online.
Conference
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee and the Leadership and Assessment Committee, combines two of our regular event series into a single forum this time for: AMICAL Representatives — to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. AMICAL llibrary directors — to help each other with challenges or opportunities they’re currently working on or anticipating at their own libraries. Aside from peer consultation, the meeting may also focus on any topic of discussion of likely relevance to all AMICAL library directors. Who should come?This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). All library directors are also invited (to cover the few cases where the AMICAL Representative is not the library director for their institution). How to attend the meetingA calendar invite with meeting link has been sent to all AMICAL Representatives. Register for the meetingThe registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. Meeting agendaInformation about the meeting will be posted in the Representatives space on Connect.
Meeting
· Online
The next Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club will be led by Krasimir Spasov (American University in Bulgaria). We will discuss the article “Critical discourse analysis as a reflection tool for information literacy instruction: A case study approach of library orientation sessions” written by Devina Danda and Sajni Lacey in 2021. The article explores how language can both alienate and empower students within the IL classroom. In addition, other aspects that are explored include power dynamics and student voice within the classroom, critical discourse analysis as a tool for IL instruction reflection, and how these are connected to critical pedagogy. Here are some discussion questions: How can we popularize library orientation sessions around campus and engage students to be more participative during the classes? The article discusses language as the first barrier to students’ comprehension and immersion into the academic world. How can librarians help break down this language barrier during orientation week so that students feel “at home”? Using a library jargon language can instill power into students’ minds. What are the means and tools to relinquish this authoritative language power and bridge the gap between librarians and students? The article further discusses critical discourse analysis and ways it can be approached during library orientations. How many of us use the critical pedagogy approach when teaching? How do we purposefully use language when practicing it to achieve better results?
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is an initiative that since 2012 works together with Libraries and Institutions to expand the scope of open access scholarly content, making them available for any and all readers around the world. In this webinar, Wilson de Souza, Regional Manager at KU, will introduce Open Research Library. This is a free central hosting platform for academic open access content, developed in partnership with BiblioLabs, and currently hosting more than 14 thousand titles from a wide range of disciplines. The platform is free to use for users and provides MARC records, but certain features (usage statistics, customizing accessible content, etc.) are only available through a subscription. In addition to presenting the main user-level functionalities, Wilson will also present how librarians can easily index the content of the ORL in their library systems, either by using a Discovery Service, if they use one, or by downloading MARC Records. Questions will also be clarified at the end of the presentation. Useful links: Open Research Library (user site) Open Research Library (vendor site) Knowledge Unlatched Privacy notice: Knowledge Unlatched is managing the event and will have access to information you provide during registration.
Webinar
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.)
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
In place of the March iteration of our Library Directors Forum, we’re organizing this online discussion aimed especially at library directors, to follow up on the recent webinar series from ACRL, Open Educational Resources and Affordability. We’ll be discussing material from those webinars, and ideas for follow-up actions as a consortium or at our individual institutions. Topics we may address include ideas for supporting OER use or creation – at the institutional or consortial level – through advocacy, promotion, discovery, funding, campus partnerships, building community around OER, or other areas of action. Who should attend? Library directors interested in discussing their libraries’ role related to OER (participation in the ACRL OER webinar series, or viewing the recordings, is encouraged but not required) Other AMICAL colleagues who are leading or planning OER initiatives at their institution and are interested in discussing libraries’ roles related to OER Intended as an informal discussion, this event will not be recorded. This event is proposed by the Leadership & Assessment Committee and will be facilitated by Committee Chair Asma Al Kanan.
Meeting
· Online
Join us to learn about last spring’s faculty and library collaboration at the American University of Armenia! As institutions quickly had to pivot to online teaching last year, librarians at AUA updated their in-person course content to suit the online model via Zoom. Prior to the sessions, instructional materials were shared with faculty and students, while the use of IL session breakout rooms allowed students to complete IL activities. As a result, this collaboration with freshman seminar faculty and the library facilitated the development of three instructional modules that focused on building and reinforcing information literacy skills and attitudes among undergraduate students. The project modules developed include: Acknowledging sources: by the end of this module, students will be able to identify when information needs to be cited and learn the basics of APA style. Identifying quality sources: by the end of this module, students will be able to identify higher-quality resources based on authority, currency and purpose. Accessing digital resources: by the end of this module, students will be able to access e-resources both on and off AUA campus and perform simple and advanced searches by using boolean operators. Assessment of this project indicated improvement in students’ information literacy skills as they demonstrated success in building effective search strategies and learned how to properly cite sources to avoid plagiarism. This forum will bring together AUA librarians and faculty as they outline the successes and challenges of collaboration during these difficult and remote times. Time will be allocated for Q & A. This event is organized by the Information Literacy Initiatives Committee as part of the ongoing Information Literacy Virtual Forum series, and will be facilitated by committee members Christine Furno and Michael Stoepel.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
A majority of the courses offered online have course readings. In this workshop Nooruddin Merchant (Sr. Associate, Library and Education Programs, Habib University) will show how hypothes.is, a social annotation tool, could be used for active student engagement with readings in online classes. The workshop will demonstrate how the tool can be used in integration with the Learning Management System (LMS), and/or in the browser. The workshop will also feature a short and reflective talk by Christopher Taylor ( Dean of Faculty and Vice President Academic Affairs, Habib University) on his experiences of using this tool and how it helps in achieving course learning outcomes. Who should attend? Faculty or others with teaching roles, instructional designers/technologists.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to one of our programs (Small Grants, Digital Liberal Arts Cohort, etc.) or how you can participate in AMICAL activities. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice. If we end up with lots of participants (or questions), we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
The next Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club will be led by Araz Margossian (American University of Armenia). We will discuss the article “Visualizing oral histories: A lab model using multimedia DH to incorporate ACRL framework standards into liberal arts education” written by Krista White, in 2017. Here are some discussion questions: Do you have a similar model of faculty-librarian collaboration/partnership incorporating the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in your institution? If not, do you see opportunities for implementing a similar model? What opportunities and challenges do you perceive in this strategy of attaching an optional DH (or other) lab taught by a librarian to an existing course? What do you think about this model of delivering Information and Digital literacies skills to the students vs one shot sessions vs teaching a credit-bearing IL course? Do you agree with the idea that digital natives enjoy advantages over digital immigrants in acquiring and developing Digital literacy skills? Can we map other elements of ACRL Framework for Information Literacy into the DH lab in this article? The article indicates that “Faculty and students all exhibit high confidence in their research abilities using internet resources without assistance from librarians, which results in lower librarian-researcher contact on all levels.” (p395). Based on your observations and experience, do you agree with this statement? As a librarian, how do you feel about new roles in librarianship distributed outside the library?
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
This meeting, organized by AMICAL’s Coordinating Committee, is part of a regular series that provides a forum for Representatives’ to discuss issues related to their role in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium. Who should come? This meeting is intended for the AMICAL Representatives of member institutions (i.e. the Members Council). Register for the meeting The registration link will be sent before the meeting to all AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. As a reminder, the role of Representatives is described in AMICAL’s Operational Guidelines: The Local AMICAL Representative plays a pivotal role in advancing AMICAL’s mission, and promoting the consortium and its spirit of collaboration as a group, by representing the member institution’s stakeholders, be they librarians, technologists, faculty, or administrators. Duties: Encourage local participation in the consortium’s activities and networks. Maintain awareness about AMICAL, and their institution’s AMICAL-related activities, with their chief academic officer and other relevant campus leaders. Engage with and facilitate AMICAL-related communications, using AMICAL’s collaboration networks, social media and other channels. Facilitate input from local colleagues to AMICAL, and distribute AMICAL information to appropriate local colleagues. Participate in the annual Members Council meeting. Submit their member institution’s annual report. Keep records of AMICAL activities related to their institution, and make them readily available to their local colleagues and successors as AMICAL Representatives. Perform administrative tasks related to their institution’s participation in AMICAL, such as vetting/transmitting applications and requests for technical or financial support (Small Grants, conference/workshop participation, etc.)
Meeting
· Online
The RESPOND (Resource Sharing Program for Network Discovery) program is a joint effort on the part of AMICAL and OCLC to create new opportunities for resource discovery by library users at AMICAL institutions. Through this, your library becomes a member of the worldwide OCLC cooperative and can benefit from the cooperative’s services and opportunities for professional contact and development. This program includes: FirstSearch – the most powerful interface for searching WorldCat, the best advanced tool for locating resources. OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription – this provides the tools you need to expand your library’s impact by registering your collections in WorldCat and increase your efficiency through automated processes. WorldShare Collection Evaluation – this service allows your library to compare collections to those of another library to support collection decision making. WorldShare Interlibrary Loan – the largest network of resource sharing libraries in the world helping to supply your library users with the electronic or print resources they need. During this session, OCLC’s Rosanna Ramacciotti and Christian Négrel will share an update on OCLC and these services. Following this, Omar Farhoud (LAU) will share his institution’s experiences of being part of this program, the benefits they have seen, and how these services can help your library. Who should attend: head/university librarians, library staff, and technologists who support libraries. All AMICAL members are welcome to attend, even if your institution’s library does not participate in the RESPOND program yet. This is your chance to learn more about it!
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer. We encourage you to briefly describe your ideas or questions during registration, as that will allow us to more effectively respond to them during the session.
Meeting
Jan 13–14, 2021 · Online
Faced with the new and continuing challenges of another stage in the COVID-19 pandemic, AMICAL’s international liberal arts institutions have much to gain by facing these challenges together. AMICAL’s Mid-Year Forum provides just that opportunity, bringing colleagues from member institutions together for a two-day virtual forum on current challenges and their impact on teaching, technology and libraries. The Forum will take place 13–14 January, from approximately 10:00 to 13:30 Paris time each day, with a social hour tentatively scheduled for 16:00 on the first day. About the Forum Join other colleagues from international liberal arts institutions for a mix of program and social sessions: Program sessions led by AMICAL peers will provide a structured environment to guide attendees through reflection on experiences from the fall semester, discussion of challenges, sharing of good practices, and preparing for the semester and year ahead. Informal social sessions, and dedicated channels in our consortial forum and Slack workspace, will allow attendees to connect with each other between sessions and after the Forum is over. Participating in AMICAL’s network is one of the key benefits of participating in our events. All sessions will be informal, interactive, and participatory using small group or workshop-style formats. For this reason, they will not be recorded. If you wish to attend, you must plan to do so live! Who should attend and how to register All faculty and staff from AMICAL member institutions are welcome to attend, and registration is free. The program caters specifically to the following groups: instructors of any discipline (especially those interested in online teaching or collaboration with technologists or librarians) instructional librarians faculty developers and directors of centers for teaching and learning instructional designers and technologists library directors We encourage you to review the program and to register for the event. If you need help attending this event, send an email to contact@amicalnet.org
Conference
· Online
We recently inaugurated bi-monthly meetings for library directors and AMICAL Representatives, with the focus and audience alternating each month: one month: Library Directors’ Forum, focusing on discussion and peer consultation related to issues at their own libraries following month: AMICAL Representatives’ Forum, focusing on Representatives’ roles in supporting their institution’s membership and participation in the consortium This month it’s the turn of the AMICAL Representatives’ Forum, and we’ll be structuring this with a meeting format. The tentative agenda is as follows: A minute of silence in memory of Elisabetta Morani Brief update from the Consortium Director on recent consortial developments Discussion relating to the role of Representatives (e.g. examples of good practices for outreach, cultivating participation, etc.) Discussion of results of the Oct 2020 institution-level stakeholder survey (challenges faced by member institutions) The registration link has already been sent to AMICAL Representatives. If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
Join the AMICAL Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) for our virtual forum: “Ready-made online instruction: Lessons learned from Credo IL Core.” In the context of the pandemic, asynchronous online instruction has attracted a momentum of attention. It is seen as an alternative to provide learning experiences for students. Credo Information Literacy Core is one of the leading products on the asynchronous IL online market. Rhonda Stricklett (AUS) will share a survey conducted in fall 2020 about AUS faculty members’ opinions on potential use of Credo IL Core. Krasimir Spasov (AUBG) will reflect on AUBG’s experience with Credo IL Core since its implementation three years ago. Everyone interested in asynchronous instruction is welcome to join. Time for Q&A will be allotted. The session will be recorded and shared soon after the event. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
This 75 minute interactive workshop will help you explore online interactive tools and learning games, discuss how to select and integrate relevant tools in the online classroom and LMS, and build your understanding of how these tools can facilitate assessing students’ knowledge. The workshop will present several tools and provide hands-on practice for Slido, Educaplay, and Quizizz. Who should attend: Faculty members, teaching librarians, and anyone interested in learning how these tools can help with online engagement. Facilitator: Nooruddin Merchant (Habib University) The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
Recording available
· Online
In this Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club meeting, Michael Stoepel from the American University of Paris (AUP) and Christine Furno from the American University of Sharjah (AUS) will continue the conversation about the 2013 white paper published by ACRL. This publication discusses and explores three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy, and offers strategies and support for librarians in their academic environment. If you weren’t able to join the November 30th meeting, do consider joining us this time. Your input is appreciated. The white paper is freely available in PDF format: Intersections of Scholarly Communications and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment Some discussion points for your consideration: This paper puts forward the effects of the digital age on the economics of the distribution of publishing, digital literacies, and librarian’s changing roles. How do you see these effects today – 7 years later – and what is the impact on your practise of teaching information literacy? This paper provides strategies that librarians from different backgrounds and responsibilities can use to construct and initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication. What strategies do you feel would work in your current work setting that will support this intersection? What is changing at your institution regarding scholarly communication? How are students reacting to this change and do they understand their role as content consumers and content creators? How are faculty addressing these changes? What is missing from the reading that could have been addressed, but was not? This event will be a discussion, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
The next Information and Digital Literacy Journal Club meeting will be led by Michael Stoepel from the American University of Paris (AUP) and Christine Furno from the American University in Sharjah (AUS). The proposed reading is a 2013 white paper published by ACRL that discusses and explores three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy, and offers strategies for librarians to support librarians in their academic environment. The white paper is freely available in PDF format: Intersections of Scholarly Communications and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment Some discussion points for your consideration: This paper puts forward the effects of the digital age on the economics of the distribution of publishing, digital literacies, and librarian’s changing roles. How do you see these effects today – 7 years later – and what is the impact on your practise of teaching information literacy? This paper provides strategies that librarians from different backgrounds and responsibilities can use to construct and initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication. What strategies do you feel would work in your current work setting that will support this intersection? What is changing at your institution regarding scholarly communication? How are students reacting to this change and do they understand their role as content consumers and content creators? How are faculty addressing these changes? What is missing from the reading that could have been addressed, but was not? This event will be a discussion, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
Many educators are utilizing podcasts in the classroom, and others are exploring the possibility. This creative academic output is the ideal showcase for student work with a bonus of boosting their confidence in finding their voice on topics they are passionate about. Join us to discuss assignments, assessments, and more. Come to share your ideas and/or to get inspiration. Facilitators: Kim Fox (AUC), Nellie El Enany (AUC) and Yasmine Ahmed (AUC) This 90 minute session hosted by AUC’s Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) was organized for AUC faculty, but has been generously opened up to all interested AMICAL participants. Because of this, there are a few required registration questions that don’t apply to non-AUC participants. Fill them in as best you can, and put “0” for “Faculty ID number”. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Webinar
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer. We encourage you to briefly describe your ideas or questions during registration, as that will allow us to more effectively respond to them during the session.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting is the first in what we hope will be a series of regular meetings specifically for AMICAL library directors, organized by the Leadership and Assessment Committee. The meeting will provide a forum for library directors to help each other with challenges or opportunities they’re currently working on or anticipating at their own libraries. Input received by meeting participants will also inform the planning of future meetings in this series. Who should come? This meeting is intended for library directors at AMICAL member institutions (including those in de facto or interim positions of responsibility for their library). All AMICAL library directors are welcome to attend, whether or not they are seeking peer advice on a particular challenge. Overview of the meeting The core of this 1-hour meeting will be a peer consulting session allowing participants bringing a challenge to get focused advice from their peers. The discussion will be in small groups and structured in a way that helps peers to focus on each other’s words, listen actively and ask useful questions, in order to give useful advice. How to prepare If you will be participating but not seeking peer consultation: no preparation is required. If you are seeking peer consultation: ideally, you should let the organizers know (at contact@amicalnet.org) at least a day before the event. Come to the meeting prepared to give a 2-minute, completely informal oral description of your challenge and what kind of help you’re looking for from your peers. Your challenge should relate in some way to library leadership or management, and the help you’re seeking should be something that a group of AMICAL peers might conceivably be able to speak to. Optional, for those interested in knowing more about the discussion format we’re using: see this description of the Wise Crowds format (the basic description, not the “Wise Crowds for Large Groups” description below it). Organizers This meeting is being organized jointly by Asma Al-Kanan (University Librarian, American University of Kuwait, and chair of AMICAL’s Leadership & Assessment Committee) and AMICAL Admin (Jeff Gima and Alex Armstrong). Register for the meeting The registration link has already been sent to all library directors at AMICAL member institutions (including those in de facto or interim positions of responsibility for their library). If you believe you should have received this email, but have not, contact us.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting of the Open Source Library Systems Interest Group, led by Omar Farhoud (LAU), will focus on free tools deemed helpful under the pandemic to ensure sustainability of library services. The session will start by a short demo of three software (Library Seat Reservation, One-to-One Consultations, Online Textbooks Exchange), followed by an open discussion to share experience of used tools and feedback across institutions. This event will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information about how to attend AMICAL’s online meetings and events.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
An informal sharing out by AMICAL members on lessons learned from the Digital Pedagogy Lab, OLC Innovate conference, and our own Liberating Structures workshops, and experiences applying those lessons to the classroom. This session is intended for those engaged in teaching or faculty development. The duration is 2 hours. To gain the most benefit, make sure you free up the time to fully immerse yourself. The event is highly interactive, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. Due to the participatory nature of this event, it will not be recorded. This session will be structured using the Shift & Share Liberating Structure to allow participants to experience presentations in small, interactive groups. The session will be facilitated by Anguelina Popova (AUCA). The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
· Online
This workshop by AUC’s Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) is organized for their own faculty, but has been generously opened up to all interested AMICAL participants. Note: Although this is a repeat of an earlier workshop, different structures will be covered (see below). The workshop will introduce you to Liberating Structures, a collection of alternative and easy strategies to engage and energize your students, many of which can be done very well online using some of Zoom’s features such as breakout rooms. The workshop is intended for those engaged in teaching or faculty development. The focus will be on making classes and orientation/immersion week sessions engaging. However, Liberating Structures can also be used in other contexts, such as organising meetings or workshops. The duration is 2 hours. To gain the most benefit, make sure you free up the time to fully immerse yourself. The event is highly interactive, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. Due to the participatory nature of this event, it will not be recorded. The following Liberating Structures will be covered: Impromptu Networking, Appreciative Interviews and TRIZ. There will be a reflection at the end. The session will be facilitated by Maha Bali (AUC) and Hoda Mostafa (AUC). Because this event was designed for AUC faculty, there are a few required registration questions that don’t apply to non-AUC participants. Fill them in as best you can, and put “0” for “Faculty ID number”. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
· Online
Welcome back to the Fall 2020 semester! The Information Literacy Initiatives Committee (ILIC) invites AMICAL members interested in information literacy to join for a new semester online gathering and discussion. The upcoming session will review current ILIC Committee projects, ask participants to share their current IL teaching praxis, and gather input from participants regarding future IL initiatives as they relate to our AMICAL community. We hope this session will encourage you to express interest in participating in the ILIC’s current and future projects.
Meeting
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
This workshop by AUC’s Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT) is organized for their own faculty, but has been generously opened up to all interested AMICAL participants. The workshop will introduce you to Liberating Structures, a collection of alternative and easy strategies to engage and energize your students, many of which can be done very well online using some of Zoom’s features such as breakout rooms. The workshop is intended for those engaged in teaching or faculty development. The focus will be on making classes and orientation/immersion week sessions engaging. However, Liberating Structures can also be used in other contexts, such as organising meetings or workshops. The duration is 2 hours. To gain the most benefit, make sure you free up the time to fully immerse yourself. The event is highly interactive, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. Due to the participatory nature of this event, it will not be recorded. The following Liberating Structures will be covered: Spiral journal, WiseFish (a combination of Wise Crowds and User Experience Fishbowl), and Conversation Cafe. There will be a reflection at the end. The session will be facilitated by Maha Bali (AUC) and Hoda Mostafa (AUC). Because this event was designed for AUC faculty, there are a few required registration questions that don’t apply to non-AUC participants. Fill them in as best you can, and put “0” for “Faculty ID number”. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying to the Digital Liberal Arts cohort program. Members of the Digital Liberal Arts Program Committee will be on hand to answer any questions you have about the program and to provide advice for preparing your application.
Meeting
· Online
During this intensive workshop, you will experience high-engagement techniques of working alone and in groups in a synchronous manner, using Zoom and breakout rooms. All of these techniques (Liberating Structures) can be used for making your online classes engaging, to organise students’ group work, and to achieve learning results. Liberating Structures can also be used for organising departmental meetings and faculty development workshops. This session is open to all AMICAL members. This session is intended for those engaged in teaching or faculty development. The highly interactive activities you will experience are suited to make your classes and orientation/immersion week sessions engaging; and will help students create a sense of community. The duration of the workshop is 2 hours. Please make sure to free this time to fully immerse in the workshop, and gain a maximum of experience from the Liberating Structures and the collaboration with the other participants. This event is highly interactive, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. Due to the participatory nature of this event, it will not be recorded. The following Liberating Structures will likely be covered: Impromptu Networking, Troika, and Conversation Cafe. A few of the material from an earlier workshop will also be used. The session will be co-facilitated by Maha Bali (AUC), Angelina Popova (AUCA), and Jasmina Najjar (AUB). The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
· Online
During this intensive workshop, you will experience high-engagement techniques of working alone and in groups in a synchronous manner, using Zoom and Breakout rooms. All of these techniques (Liberating Structures) can be used for making your online classes engaging, to organise students’ group work, and to achieve learning results. Liberating Structures can also be used for organising departmental meetings and faculty development workshops. This session is open to all AMICAL members, but will be particularly useful for those teaching and working with first-year students. This session is intended for those engaged in teaching or faculty development. The highly interactive activities you will experience are suited to make your classes and orientation/immersion week sessions engaging; and will help students create a sense of community. The duration of the workshop is 3 hours, with a short break. Please make sure to free this time to fully immerse in the workshop, and gain a maximum of experience from the Liberating Structures and the collaboration with the other participants. This event is highly interactive, so come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. Due to the participatory nature of this event, it will not be recorded. The session will be co-facilitated by Maha Bali from AUC, and Angelina Popova from AUCA. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The platform will be Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Workshop
· Online
In March and April 2020, the AMICAL community initiated various conversations about virtual teaching during COVID-19. The Information Literacy Initiatives Committee contributed to this conversation with the virtual forum: Teaching IL Virtually: Your Ideas, Your Practice. Now that the Spring 2020 semester has concluded, and some time has passed, the Information Literacy Initiatives Committee welcomes back IL AMICAL members to move the conversation forward. Join us as we reflect on our recent virtual teaching experiences and consider upcoming teaching opportunities. In order to build upon the varied outcomes from this rapid transition to the online IL teaching environment, we will revisit our conversation from April’s virtual forum, and we will pick up the conversation to reflect on what has been done and how we can improve our practices for the future. To further the initial conversation, IL librarians from different AMICAL institutions will share their recent experiences and highlight their primary challenges, unexpected outcomes, and mapped strategies for future IL teaching within their local context. Online activities offered during the forum will encourage attendees to discuss and ask questions.
Forum
Jun 15–26, 2020 · Online
This opportunity is a Director’s Initiative in support of online teaching and learning across member institutions. Colleagues at all of our institutions have recently been confronting the need to develop capacity for online instruction, and the need to develop resources and services to support that instruction, while facing budget cuts and shrinking professional development budgets. Many of you may be interested in getting help in this area, or are working in the coming weeks and months to prepare for this online or hybrid instructional environment for the fall – more methodically than you were able to do this spring. AMICAL is preparing a number of initiatives to support you in this, including waived registration for AMICAL members wishing to attend the Online Learning Consortium’s OLC Innovate 2020 Virtual Conference, running 15-26 June, as explained below. The event: OLC Innovate 2020 OLC is a leading organization in the areas of online, blended and digital learning more broadly, and OLC Innovate is one of two large annual conferences they run that are among the most popular amongst those who work in the field. Participants who are supporting others in online and blended course design, and those who are teaching themselves, can expect to learn about the latest research and practice in the field, to find opportunities to practice some hands-on skills, and space to network with others. The availability of recordings for a year after the conference offers an ongoing professional opportunity for participants beyond the conference dates. Virtual participation will be particularly rich because ALL sessions are livestreamed and recorded this year, the usual in-person conference having been canceled. To get a picture of topics discussed at the conference, have a look at their Field Guide Program, and in particular their Engagement Map that groups the sessions according to themes and interest areas. Here are just some of the themes and their session lists that may be of particular interest to AMICAL members: Online Teaching & the Faculty Experience Faculty and Staff Development Online Learning & Student Experience Hybrid, Flipped, & Blended Equity, Inclusion, and UDL New to Online Learning OER and OCW Note that AMICAL colleague Maha Bali (American University in Cairo) will be one of the invited keynote speakers! Who should request a registration waiver? This initiative is aimed primarily at faculty and teaching librarians needing to redesign their instruction for online or blended environments, and those supporting them – in particular faculty developers and instructional designers and technologists. If you’re in one of those roles, and any of the themes listed in the Engagement Map aligns strongly with your own work, have a look at the session descriptions linked there. If these feel relevant to you, and you believe you’ll get things that you can apply in substantial ways to your work, you are welcome to request a registration waiver through AMICAL. What you’re responsible for if you request a registration waiver If you request a waiver, you are committing to: Devoting enough time and attention to substantially engage with the event Responding to the feedback/collaboration interest form that AMICAL will send after the event It’s for you to judge what “substantial engagement” means, but keep in mind that if you request a registration waiver it’s possible that someone else from your institution may not be able to. Each institution has a limited number of registration waivers available. Registration for individuals is normally $210 per person for the main event (the Virtual Conference). For those receiving a registration waiver, AMICAL will cover your conference registration as part of our group. You will not be charged for registration unless you choose to add a pre-conference workshop, in which case you will need to pay just for the workshop. How to request a registration waiver If you’ve taken into account the guidelines above and wish to request a registration waiver, review again carefully the Engagement Map to find the sessions related to specific themes that may be of greatest interest to you. We’ll be asking you to identify the sessions at the top of your list that you plan to attend. Then submit your request through the form linked below. After submitting the form, you’ll receive instructions for registering with the fee waiver. Questions? Contact us at contact@amicalnet.org.
· Online
This webinar follows on the unconference session at AMICAL 2020 entitled “How to implement Google Scholar (GS) for institution repositories”. Omar Farhoud (LAU) will instruct Library IT Admins, System Librarians, Archivists, Technologists on how to configure an institutional repository to be fully harvested and indexed by Google Scholar. We’ll be using DSpace as the example repository. This online tutorial will include common problems and suggested solutions with troubleshooting guidelines. You must register to attend this event. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with a link to join. This event will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information about how to attend AMICAL’s online meetings and events. Organized by the Open Source Library Systems Interest Group.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
Dear AMICAL colleagues, Continuing our series of forums intended to help AMICAL members to draw on their collective wisdom in facing the challenges of COVID-19, this event aims to bring our library directors together for a session of peer consulting. The session is being organized by Jeff Gima (AMICAL Director), Evi Tramantza (Director of Libraries, American College of Thessaloniki) and Asma Al-Kanan (University Librarian, American University of Kuwait), but almost all of the session will be used for library directors to discuss and get advice on their own specific challenges that they’re facing. Library directors are asked to come to the meeting with a specific challenge in mind – something that they would like to get advice on from other AMICAL library directors. Overview of the session To organize this session, we’re stringing together several meeting formats from Liberating Structures, a set of group facilitation techniques that are based on principles of inclusiveness and strong engagement by all participants. After asking participants for some quick feedback about what kind of needs they have for upcoming events and for types of support from their peers, we’ll have several brief rounds of Impromptu Networking in pairs, where you’ll answer each other the questions “What big challenge do you bring to this gathering? What do you hope to get from and give this group?” Each partner will have about two minutes to answer the questions, and then you’ll get re-paired with a new partner for another chance to reformulate your responses to the questions. The bulk of the meeting will then be devoted to a Troika Consulting session, in groups of three. One participant (the “client”) will describe to the other two in their group (who act as “consultants”) the challenge/problem/question they would like advice on. The consultants have a few minutes to ask the client clarifying questions. The client then turns off their mic and video while listening carefully to the two consultants discuss and generate ideas, suggestions and advice in response. After a quick debrief, the roles rotate, one of the consultants becomes the client, and the whole process repeats. A final round allows the remaining consultant to act as client so that all participants have both given and received consulting advice. We’ll wrap up the structured part of the event at the end of 1 hour, but we’ll keep the Zoom room open for an additional 15-30 minutes in case anyone wishes to stay on for an informal ‘watercooler’ discussion – with breakout rooms available for any pairs or small groups who want to continue discussing specific challenges or suggestions. Tentative outline Intro, quick feedback and explanation of meeting structure Impromptu Networking in rotating pairs Troika Consulting in threes Wrap-up of main event Informal discussion Attendance is restricted to library directors. The link to attend the meeting has been sent to AMICAL’s library directors and representatives by email. The meeting will not be recorded. This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Meeting
· Online
The Information Literacy Journal Club will meet on Thursday 14 May at 12:00, Paris time (local time). It will be led by Michael Stoepel from the American University of Paris (AUP) and Krasimir Spasov from the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG). We will discuss the article below written by David Gooblar in 2018 which keeps all its importance during the wake of Covid-19. The discussion is intended to continue our discussion about the Future of Teaching Information Literacy during the 2020 Kuwait Conference. Find here the article that we will discuss: “How to Teach Information Literacy in an Era of Lies” (David Gooblar, 2018). Here are some discussion questions : The article suggests different ways of approaching information literacy instruction – “lateral reading” (Stanford Study) and looking at your “own fault lines” (Danah Boyd). Do you think that those suggestions are new approaches to information literacy instruction? Is the way of how you teach information literacy today adapted to the “era of lies” as David Gooblar calls it? Are fact-checkers becoming more reliable? Should we teach students to use them? Should information literacy instruction include different approaches from different disciplines such as psychological aspects of information literacy, aspects of news and media literacy? What might be the risks or challenges of inserting those suggestions into an information literacy course or one-shot session? Is it possible? Given the context of an “era of lies”, how do you see the future of teaching information literacy? Have you thought about changing your information literacy instruction in the near future? Why and why not? You must register to attend the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Part of AMICAL’s forum series on continuity during COVID-19. Three panellists from three different AMICAL institutions will present briefly and reflect on their practises related to teaching (or not teaching) information literacy virtually in the current context The short panel will address topics such as how did the move to teaching information literacy online take place at their institution? What are their local IL online practises today? Are there models/techniques/tools that they’re developing or learning to use now for information literacy instruction that will be valuable to continue using after confinement? There will be time for participants to share their experiences and for Q&A. The event will be facilitated by Chris Furno (AUS) and the panel will consist of: Tatevik Zargaryan (AUA), Aziz El Hassani (AUI), and Michael Stoepel (AUP). Who should attend? Information literacy librarians and instructors, and faculty interested in information literacy. This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
· Online
In our fifth forum series on continuity during COVID-19 we look at the “new normal” of our work: working from home, in isolation from students, colleagues and without on-campus resources, while supporting ourselves and our families. This discussion will be facilitated by Alex Armstrong, AMICAL’s Program & Technology Officer. We’ll focus on the challenge of, and good practices for, working remotely sustainably. How can we remain productive in our work, and supportive of our colleagues and students, while also ensuring our own well-being? During the meeting, we’ll break up in small groups to listen to one another’s thoughts and reflect together. So come prepared to participate with audio at least, though audio + video is even better. We encourage attendance by AMICAL members who are facing challenges working from home and would like to discuss them with their peers. Members who have experience working remotely and/or have good practices to share are also encouraged to attend. This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
· Online
Evi Tramantza and Asma Al-Kanan, library directors of the American College of Thessaloniki and the American University of Kuwait, respectively, will co-host an online forum about AMICAL libraries leadership during COVID-19. Attendance is restricted to library directors. The forum will be informal and won’t be recorded. Topics will include: Responding to COVID-19 Library operations and continuity Communication with senior management, being informed of the developments and aligning with the institutional priorities Future developments due to the crisis: i.e., new services. The link to attend the meeting has been sent to AMICAL’s library directors and representatives by email. This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam. Part of AMICAL’s forum series on continuity during COVID-19.
Forum
· Online
Part of AMICAL’s forum series on continuity during COVID-19. Jasmina Najjar (Communication Skills Instructor, American University of Beirut) will facilitate a conversation on issues related to writing courses and courses with a writing component. What challenges are you facing and what solutions are emerging? Join this “water cooler” conversation so we can collectively regroup and get fresh ideas. Who should attend? Faculty who teach writing classes, or classes that involve writing, or are involved in running writing centers. Librarians and instructional designers working with faculty members who teach writing. Time & date: 2 April 2020 at 18:00 Paris Time (see local time) This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
· Online
Anguelina Popova, Director of AUCA’s Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology, will facilitate a conversation focused on pedagogy during COVID-19. As a springboard into this topic, she’ll discuss various scenarios for online teaching she has developed for faculty at her own institution. (This description is tentative and may change.) Who should attend? Faculty, faculty developers, instructional designers, staff of centers of teaching and learning. This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
The number of AMICAL institutions suspending, or preparing to suspend, face-to-face classes in response to COVID-19 is growing. We’re all struggling to organize the best response we can, learning as we go in navigating this new territory. Join us Wednesday 18 March, 18:00-19:00, Paris time (see local time) for an AMICAL online forum on the topic of “Continuity of instructional and library activities during COVID-19”. The forum will be broken out into subgroups according to challenge areas, connecting you with peers from across the consortium to discuss strategies that may help you organize your own institution’s response. These parallel discussions will be relatively short, but very focused on finding solutions. Who should attend? Faculty development coordinators, instructional designers/technologists, or others involved in organizing and implementing campus-wide efforts and resources for instructional continuity during COVID-19 IT directors or staff organizing and implementing aspects of campus responses to COVID-19 Librarians organizing and implementing aspects of campus responses to COVID-19 Tentative agenda Essential take-aways from the campus situation survey (5 minutes) Break-out discussions (40 minutes) – parallel groups according to interests: Getting all faculty technically capable to use essential technologies (learning management system, lecture capture, video conferencing…) Pedagogical considerations for helping faculty move teaching online Library services and roles in academic continuity Reporting out (15 minutes) This event will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the event. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone and/or web cam.
Forum
Recording available
· Online
The February meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will meet on Tuesday 11 February at 12:00, Paris time (local time). It will be led by Nadine Aboulmagd from the American University in Cairo (AUA). We will discuss the 8 elements of digital literacies. We will read Chapter 5 of Doug Belshaw’s book “The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies”. (The chapter has provided this chapter for our members, available on AMICAL Connect.) The discussion will focus on the following points: The chapter introduces the 8 elements of digital literacies, which of the 8 were most and least clear to you? Since there is a clear indication in the book that digital literacies are contextual, what are some of the ways the 8 elements could be applied to or understood in your context? Which of the elements of digital literacies are well-realized and which need to be developed at your institution? What about you personally? How differently do you think disciplines would resonate with the 8 elements of digital literacies?
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
The Kuwait Towers overlooking the city in the sunset.
Jan 15–18, 2020 · American University of Kuwait

AMICAL 2020, our next annual meeting and conference, will be held 15–18 January at the American University of Kuwait..

Conference
· Online
Librarian Manlio Perugini from JCU will lead this online forum entitled “Freshmen above and beyond: library workshops as an alternative to the first-year programmes”. This discussion is aimed to understand whether and how library workshops can be a possible alternative to the lack of an institutional first year programme. Information and/or digital literacy skills are often overlooked, in terms of curricular design, and confined to the limits of one-shot library sessions: library workshops can sometimes be the only way to work around these issues. The main planned takeaways for the discussion are: to design (or at least draft) further strategies to integrate information & digital literacy into curricula and to outline programmes that could empower a student-centered approach for information & digital literacy where first year initiatives are lacking. Furthermore, discussing such options could envision a way to tighten these competencies through “unofficial” curricula which might, in perspective, be used to advocate for the creation of official programmes within liberal arts institutions. Who should attend: Librarians and others involved in instruction or curricular planning related to information and digital literacies at AMICAL member institution Presenters: Manlio Perugini and Christine Furno You must register to attend the meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to join the meeting. This meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information about how to attend AMICAL’s online meetings and events. Organized by the Information Literacy Initiatives Committee
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This webinar will help AMICAL members become aware of the services of COUNTER and to understand the models that are available. It will be presented by Lorraine Estelle, the Director of COUNTER, and is intended for librarians responsible for e-resources assessment. The webinar will have two parts, the first of which will provide an overview for those not familiar with COUNTER: Part 1: The Metrics – explaining the usage metrics and how to use them, with some examples. Attributes – how attributes such as Data_Type, Section_Type, Year of Publication help you understand usage and calculate cost per use. Book & journal reports – the different types of reports, what to look out for and the metric for calculating cost per use. Part 2: Scenarios – looking at practice, how user action is recorded and reported. Sample reports. You may reply to this message with specific questions or concerns about COUNTER. The organizers will convey them to the presenter to incorporate into the webinar. Who should attend: Librarians responsible for or interested in e-resources assessment Presenter: Lorraine Estelle, Director of COUNTER The webinar will be conducted using GoToWebinar, which you must install on your device in advance. It will be recorded and shared after the meeting with AMICAL members. Organized by Evi Tramantza and Liza Vachtsevanou on behalf of AMICAL’s Leadership and Assessment Committee.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This webinar will introduce library directors, as well as staff responsible for library assessment, to ITHAKA’s Faculty and Student Surveys. Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, Manager of Surveys and Research at ITHAKA S&R, will present these services and talk about how they may be useful for libraries at AMICAL institutions. Other ITHAKA services may be mentioned briefly as time permits. Following an hour-long presentation of these services, there will be 30 minutes of Q&A Who should attend: Library Directors and/or staff responsible for library assessment Presenter: Christine Wolff-Eisenberg (Manager of Surveys and Research at ITHAKA S&R) The webinar will be conducted using GoToWebinar, which you must install on your device in advance.The webinar will be recorded and shared after the meeting with AMICAL members. Organized by Evi Tramantza and Liza Vachtsevanou on behalf of AMICAL’s Leadership and Assessment Committee.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The December meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will meet on Tuesday 10 December at 12:00, Paris time (local time). It will be led by Tatev Zargaryan from the American University of Armenia (AUA). We will discuss an experiment that the Agder University Library in Norway initiated in 2018. Bachelor students were embedded in teaching the Information Literacy sessions. We will all read the article “Embedded students? Can libraries benefit from students having work placements in the library in planning library instruction?” by H.T.D. Johannessen. The article is open access, and legally available through the link. Here are a few questions to think about before the session: The article discusses students’ needs and perspectives on learning Information Literacy skills. Do you think we can have insight into their perception of Information Literacy sessions if we “embed students” into library instruction sessions? When you are creating your Information Literacy session, are you thinking from students’ perspective or just using the ACRL IL frameworks, or any other guides? What might be the risks or challenges of the “embedded students” into the info/digital literacies course? What are the important elements of Information Literacy skills needed in your context? Can you use Bøyum et al.’s model on page 7, for the library instruction to support the session development with “embedded students”? Bøyum et al. (2017) present the technique approach (case 1), the problem approach (case 2), the coaching approach (case 3) and the negotiation approach (case 4). The model is divided into strong to weak integration and participation, and from interdisciplinary to multidisciplinary and general to practice-based information literacy (Figure 1). The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review our online event guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The November meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will meet on Tuesday 12 November at 12:00, Paris time (local time). It will be led by Maha Bali from the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC). The topic is digital literacies from a feminist perspective. We will all read Maha Bali’s recently published article “Reimagining Digital Literacies from a Feminist Perspective in a Postcolonial Context”. The article is open access, and legally available through the link. Here are a few questions to think about before the session: The article mentions some of the ways in which digital literacies intersect with, but are different from, media and info literacy. What are some of the areas you believe they intersect? What are some areas that are separate? The article talks about a feminist approach to critical thinking. To what extent have you seen this applied in other contexts? How do you feel it might apply to your own teaching or practice? What might be the risks or challenges of inserting a social justice perspective that looks at larger power structures into an info/media/digital literacies course? What are important elements of digital literacies needed in your context? How might this approach support or hinder their development?
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Attend this meeting if you have questions about applying for a Small Grant. AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback and provide advice for preparing your applications. If we end up with lots of questions, we’re happy to extend the session a bit longer.
Meeting
· Online
Welcome back to a new academic year! At the beginning of the Fall semester, the Information Literacy Committee and AMICAL digital literacy advocates Angie Popova, Nadine Aboulmagd, and Maha Bali got together. We would like to invite you to the first “Information Literacy and Digital Literacy Open Meeting” on Thursday, 17th October, 12 noon, Paris time (local time). The idea of this meeting is to continue conversations around one of the AMICAL 2018-2021 Mellon Grant main focus areas: information and digital literacies. Our interest is to hear from the AMICAL community about ideas and projects that are linked to information and digital literacy. How can we think both literacies together? And how can they support or benefit from each other? The interactive online meeting will gather/seek feedback and input from participants. The following agenda will guide the discussion: Community ideas and interest in potential digital literacy and/or information literacy initiatives Conversations about how the community can benefit from each other’s expertise to launch and sustain information and digital literacy initiatives Open Mic: sharing of current or emerging information literacy and digital literacy projects Call for volunteers to host a virtual forum in Fall 2019 (December) Getting ready to hear from you! Hope to see and talk to you then! –Angie, Chris, Livia, Maha, Tatev, Aziz, Krassi, Nadine, Michael
Forum
Recording available
· Online
The next Information Literacy Journal Club will be on Tuesday, 8 October 2019. The session will be hosted by Tatevik Zargarayan from the American University of Armenia. Before the meeting, please read Shaping the Future of Academic Libraries: Authentic Learning for the Next Generation College Students article, by Jurgen Schulte, Belinda Tiffen, Jackie Edwards, Scott Abbott, Edward Luca. We look forward to discussing the changing role of the academic librarianship in response to new pedagogies and educational approaches emerging in the tertiary (i.e. post-secondary, college or university) education sector. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The Information Literacy Journal Club is back from summer vacation and our next meeting will be on Tuesday 10 of September 2019, at 12:00pm Paris time. The session will be hosted by Christine Furno (American University of Sharjah). Before the meeting, please read “What academics really think about information literacy”, by Stebbing, D., Shelley, J., Warnes, M. and McMaster, C. We look forward to discussing the research findings conducted with the Anglia Ruskin University students, difficulties surrounding students achieving adequate IL skills and considerations for future practice in delivering focused IL support. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
If you have questions about applying for a Small Grant, attend this meeting. Members of AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback, provide advice for preparing your applications, etc. No need to sign up, just follow the meeting link that will be posted a few days beforehand on our website.
Meeting
· Online
If you have questions about applying for a Small Grant, attend this meeting. Members of AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback, provide advice for preparing your applications, etc. No need to sign up, just follow the meeting link that will be posted a few days beforehand on our website.
Meeting
· Online
The next meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club will be on Tuesday 25 June at 12:00pm Paris time. The session will be hosted by Vanessa Lawrence. Before the meeting, please read Hype or Real Threat: The Extent of Predatory Journals in Student Bibliographies by Schira and Hurst. We look forward to a discussion of predatory publishers and how or when these ideas are communicated to students. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Librarians Livia Piotto, Manlio Perugini from JCU and Chris Furno from AUS will lead this online forum which will focus on IL lesson planning and implementation using specific examples. Highlights and challenges of IL lesson planning will be addressed. Attendees can expect to learn about specific IL lesson plans which may be useful for teaching scenarios at your home institution. Time will be available for attendees to ask questions and share successful IL lesson plans. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
If you have questions about applying for a Small Grant, attend this meeting. Members of AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback, provide advice for preparing your applications, etc. No need to sign up, just follow the meeting link that will be posted a few days beforehand on our website.
Meeting
· Online
If you have questions about applying for a Small Grant, attend this meeting. Members of AMICAL staff will be on hand to answer questions, listen to your feedback, provide advice for preparing your applications, etc. No need to sign up, just follow the meeting link that will be posted a few days beforehand on our website.
Meeting
· Online
The next meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club will be on Tuesday 14 May at 11:00am Paris time. The session will be hosted by Chris Furno. Before the meeting, please read Predictable Information Literacy Misconceptions of First-YearCollege Students article, by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Allison Rand, and Jillian Collier. We look forward to discussing the nine Information Literacy misconceptions that the authors of this article have identified, and learning outcomes that can counter the misconceptions. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
A network map of Beirut.
May 3–5, 2019 · American University of Beirut
As part of AMICAL’s 2018-2021 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for “Building Leadership and Capacity for Digital Liberal Arts across AMICAL”, a cohort of approximately 15 colleagues from member institutions will be given project support over a period of months centered around group-coordinated participation in the Digital Humanities Institute - Beirut 2019. This cohort program is being organized along lines similar to last year’s AMICAL cohort to DHSI 2018. The cohort will recruit institution-based teams that are leading projects or initiatives in digital humanities, or digital interdisciplinary scholarship or pedagogy, in liberal arts environments. The cohort of teams will attend DHI-B with financial support from AMICAL, but they will also participate in pre-event and post-event webinars, discussions, and consultations organized by AMICAL. The pre- and post-event activities are designed to maximize the impact of cohort participation on the team’s projects, on their institution, and on AMICAL as a collaborative network. The institution-based teams will be composed of faculty, librarians, technologists or academic administrators who are engaged in digital humanities projects or initiatives, or who are poised to launch a project or initiative related to digital humanities. Potential applicants should see Who should apply and How to apply for more information. The DHI-B event DHI-B 2019, the event we are using as the focus of this year’s digital humanities AMICAL cohort, marks the continuing growth of the American University of Beirut’s regional and consortial leading role in digital humanities scholarship and pedagogy. DHI-B is founded on the principles of co-learning and co-teaching of a community of faculty, students, librarians and instructional designers. It provides digital humanities training with a regional and international focus, while growing locally and regionally anchored communities of practice. This year it is also bringing leaders and workshop instructors from the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (University of Victoria) and several DH practitioners who have influenced AMICAL’s own DH-focused programs. See Cohort-focused elements of DHI-B for more information about program content relevant to the cohort. AMICAL is proud to partner with AUB by co-organizing and providing financial support for the cohort-related aspects of the event. What is Digital Humanities?Digital Humanities, commonly associated with scholarly activities at the intersection of humanities and digital technology, is a dynamic field that is constantly developing and changing. A look at some of the definitions pulled from participants from the Day of DH between 2009-2014, for example, bear witness to this field’s interdisciplinarity and reliance on a community of practice where technologists, faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students partner with people in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums to collaboratively work on small-scale or large-scale projects.
Workshop
· Online
In this webinar, Brandon Locke will present a method of rethinking digital humanities projects in the classroom as extensions of traditional liberal arts and information literacy goals. Through partnerships between disciplinary faculty, librarians, and instructional designers and technologists, classroom digital humanities projects can teach students how to construct arguments in digital spaces, critically produce and consume digital media, and think critically about the collection and use of data and algorithms in many different contexts. Through a few different examples of course projects, this session will address the following questions: What can partnerships between disciplinary faculty and librarians look like? What literacies are valuable in an increasingly digital and data-driven world? How can literacies be seamlessly built into course projects and become a major part of a course? Brandon Locke is Guest Faculty at the University of Washington iSchool, and was formerly the Director of LEADR, a student-focused digital research lab at Michigan State University. After the presentation, there will be time for Q&A with Brandon. The session will be recorded and posted publicly after the conclusion of the webinar. You must register to attend the webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to join. The webinar will be conducted using Zoom. Read the guidelines for more information.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The next meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club will be on Tuesday, April 9th, at 11am Paris time. The session will be hosted by Livia Piotto and Chris Furno. Before the meeting, please read The Almost Experts: Capstone Students and the Research Process by Robin E. Miller. We look forward to discussing the challenges that experience capstone students while writing their thesis and how IL librarians can support students with their research. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
Mar 29 – Apr 1, 2019 · American University in Cairo

AMICAL 2019, our next annual meeting and conference, will be held 29 March to 1 April at the American University in Cairo.

Conference
· Online
The next meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club will be on Tuesday 12 March at 11:00am Paris time . The session will be hosted by Livia Piotto and Chris Furno. Before the meeting, please read Crossing the threshold: reflective practice in information literacy development, by Sheila Corrall. We’re looking forward to a discussion of reflective instructional practice in the context of information literacy, and welcome instructors from beyond IL to share their thoughts on reflective practice more broadly. To attend this meeting you must register. Follow the Connect topic to see discussion questions ahead of the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The LibQUAL Survey Results webinar will provide a brief background on the survey components, customization process, and dimensions and will focus on survey results and how to interpret them. Amy Yeager and Angela Pappalardo will go over the notebook structure and interpreting your results: interpretation frameworks, interpreting the charts, and interpreting the comments. There will be a brief discussion on the practical applications that can come from running a survey, including ranking services and communicating results. Then, Mr. Michael Maciel from Texas A&M University will discuss how his institution has implemented change as a result of the LibQUAL survey data. How should attend: The webinar is open to all AMICAL members and will be especially helpful to library directors and staff responsible for library assessment. The webinar will be recorded and made available to AMICAL members. Organised by Evi Tramantza and Asma Al Kanan on behalf of the former Research and Assessment Committee. Webinar structure: Brief overview of survey components, customization, and running a survey (Angela Pappalardo & Amy Yeager, ARL) Discussion of survey results and interpreting the results (Angela Pappalardo & Amy Yeager, ARL) Examples of practical applications and additional resources (Michael Maciel, Texas A&M University). Additional resources: LibQUAL 2013 sample report Improving Library Service Quality to Graduate Students: LibQual+ TM Survey Results in a Practical Setting by Maria Anna Jankowska, Karen Hertel, and Nancy J. Young. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2006.0005 How to Get More From Your Quantitative LibQUAL+™ Dataset: Making Results Practical by Bradford W. Dennis and Tim Bowe
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The first meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club for 2019 will be on Tuesday 12 February at 11:00am Paris time. The session will be hosted by Ivana Stevanovic. Before the meeting, please read Information Literacy as a Human Right, by Paul Sturges and Almuth Gastinger. An open postprint version is also available. We look forward to discussing the idea of Information Literacy as a human right, and to examining how the authors position Information Literacy as an umbrella term for all other emerging literacies (Media, Computer, Digital, etc.) Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
This meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Jasmina Najjar (AUB) with Vanessa Lawrence (AUC). Before the meeting, please read “Fake news judgement: The case of undergraduate students at Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon”, by Maroun El Rayess, Charla Chebl, Joseph Mhanna, and Re-Me Hage. Our discussion will focus on the article and on our experiences with addressing “fake news”. Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Organized by the Information Literacy Committee Join us for the upcoming virtual forum: “First Year Experience programs across AMICAL libraries” on Tuesday, 11 December at 11:00 am (Paris time) (local time). Attendees’ input from the ILC’s October meeting indicated that learning about FYE programs is of high interest to many of you. To get this discussion topic started, please join us to hear from two AMICAL colleagues, Farrukh Shahzad, Associate Chief Librarian at FCC, and Stella Asderi, Academic Liaison and Instruction Librarian at ACT, present the library’s role in their First Year Experience program at their respective institutions. All AMICAL members are welcome to attend. Attendees can expect to learn about our colleagues’ current FYE programs which may inspire some to implement feasible solutions at your home library. Time will be available for attendees to ask questions. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
In this session, attendees will learn how to provide subject access to non-English materials in the language of the script and how to link the non-English term to external sources via linked data techniques. This will allow users to search the catalog by subject in their preferred language. The presentation will address the following questions: Can MARC21 records be utilized to display non-English subject terms in the integrated library system (ILS)? Can non-English terms be linked to FAST subject terms? Can users search the library catalog by subject terms in their preferred languages, e.g., Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, or French? Upon completion of this session, attendees will have learned how to provide access to non-English materials in the language of the script and link non-English terms to external sources with linked data. Who should attend? Metadata, cataloging, area studies, subject librarians, and decision makers. (Participation to this event is restricted to AMICAL members.) Presenter: Magda El-Sherbini is currently the Middle East & Islamic Studies Librarian at the Ohio State University Library. Prior to this, she was the Head of Cataloging. She is the author of RDA: Strategies for Implementation (ALA Editions, Chicago, 2013). She regularly teaches online courses on RDA for ALA. The meeting will not be recorded, but the slides will be made available by the presenter. The webinar will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Webinar
· Online
In recent years, digital mapping technology has made itself more available through easy to navigate technology which can often be acquired at low or no cost. Because of this development now more than ever the visualizations you can create with these tools are ready to be incorporated into your work and the work of your students. In this webinar Tracy Chapman Hamilton, Visiting Associate Professor of Art History at the Virginia Commonwealth University, will share such examples from her own research and classroom assignments. You will be introduced to platforms such as the Omeka Plugins Neatline and Curatescape, as well as Carto, Palladio, Google Maps/Earth/StreetView, Story Map JS, Timeline JS, Tiki Toki, and Thinglink. Each of these will allow you and your students to create robust spatial and/or temporal exhibits and visualize the concepts of your scholarship and teaching in innovative ways. Data organization will also be covered briefly. No prior experience with these digital platforms is necessary to attend this webinar. Come and explore the possibilities that your scholarship and teaching might take! About the speaker Tracy Chapman Hamilton’s research focuses on late medieval and early modern visual culture in Europe and the Mediterranean, especially rooted in questions of gender studies, collecting, spatiality, and material culture. How women made themselves visible through patronage is the subject of her book Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France: The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie de Brabant (1260-1321) and collection, Moving Women Moving Objects (300-1500), co-edited by Mariah Proctor-Tiffany. She is currently working on a series of articles, her second book, and a digital project, Mapping the Medieval Woman. She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kress and DuPont Foundations, the International Center of Medieval Art, and was the first Mellon Fellow in the Digital Humanities at The Villa I Tatti, Harvard’s University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. How to attend This webinar is open to all interested AMICAL members. It will be especially relevant to those who are: Interested in mapping projects Interested in digital pedagogy and implementing classroom projects at both the undergraduate and graduate level Humanities and social science faculty – Tracy is an (art) historian, but these tools will be useful in any discipline Instructional technologists You must register to attend the webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to join. The meeting will be recorded and made publicly available. A link to the recording will be shared with registrants The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance. For more information (especially if you plan to participate in the Q&A with a microphone), review our online event guidelines.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
This meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Vanessa Lawrence (AUC) & Tatevik Zargaryan (AUA) Before the meeting, please read “Outcomes Assessment in Undergraduate Information Literacy Instruction: A Systematic Review”, by Allison Erlinger. Our discussion will focus on the article and on our experiences with assessment. Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom. Read our guidelines for more information.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
Dear AMICAL librarians teaching information literacy! Welcome back to a new academic year. The Information Literacy Committee has been getting ready to hear from you! On Tuesday, October 30, 11am (Paris time), please join us for this year’s “AMICAL Information Literacy Committee Open Meeting”. We would like to have a conversation with you about various issues, including: Your input! Your interests! ‘Reporting out’ of your recent IL and professional development activities at your institution Summary remarks from last spring’s conference, Birds of a Feather discussion: “Shared visions: The makings of a successful faculty liaison program in the digital age.” Hope to see and talk to you then! –Information Literacy Committee You must register to attend the meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing a link to join the meeting. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information, especially if you plan to participate with a microphone or camera, review AMICAL’s online meeting guidelines.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
A meeting of the Open Source Library System Interest Group, convened by Omar Farhoud (AUB). In order to attend the meeting you must register, by clicking on the link below. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information, especially if you plan to participate with a microphone or camera, review AMICAL’s online meeting guidelines.
Meeting
· Online
This meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Tatevik Zargaryan (AUA). The article for discussion, which participants should read in advance, is: “Writing Information Literacy in First-Year Composition: A Collaboration among Faculty and Librarians”, by Scheidt, Carpenter, Fitzgerald, Kozma, Middleton and Shields. The article is actually Chapter 10 of the book Information Literacy: Research and Collaboration across Disciplines. Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information, especially if you plan to participate with a microphone or camera, review AMICAL’s online meeting guidelines.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
This meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Michael Stoepel (AUP) and Aziz El Hassani (AUI). The article for discussion, which participants should read in advance, is: “A Roadmap for Assessing Student Learning Using the New Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” by Megan Oakleaf. The article is available legally available through the link. Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information, especially if you plan to participate with a microphone or camera, review AMICAL’s online meeting guidelines.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The next meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Vanessa Lawrence & Kathryn Vanderboll (AUC). We will all read the article “Transformative? Integrative? Troublesome? Undergraduate student reflections on information literacy threshold concepts” by Rachel E. Scott before the meeting. The article is open access, and legally available through the link. Talking points in advance of the discussion will be posted on AMICAL Connect. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information (especially if you plan to participate in the Q&A with a microphone), review our online meeting guidelines.
Meeting
Recording available
The University of Victoria's MacLaurin Building
Jun 4–15, 2018 · Online

AMICAL is organizing coordinated participation by a member-cohort in DHSI 2018, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute.

External event
· Online
In this 45-minute presentation Ashley Sanders Garcia will provide participants with a road map for planning a course that incorporates, or is built around, a digital humanities project based on the principles of “backward design.” This talk will cover the basics of backward design, how to stage a digital humanities project, choose a project stage for course integration, and scaffold the necessary knowledge and skills for students to successfully complete the assigned portion of the DH project. Each step will include practical examples of best practices and lessons learned from other DH projects. The final 15 minutes will be reserved for Q&A. Ashley Sanders Garcia is Vice Chair and a core faculty member in the Digital Humanities program at UCLA. She holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialization in Digital Humanities from Michigan State University and B.S. in both History and Mathematics from Western Michigan University. In her previous position at The Claremont Colleges, she served as Director of the Digital Research Studio and a faculty member at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, where she taught DH courses and provided DH project and course design consultations. This webinar is open to all interested AMICAL members. It’s the second webinar being organized to support the AMICAL cohort to DHSI 2018, a group of project-based teams from five AMICAL institutions that will be attending the 2018 Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria. The webinar will be followed by a consultation session with Ashley for the members of the DHSI cohort. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information (especially if you plan to participate in the Q&A with a microphone), review our online meeting guidelines.
Webinar
Recording available
May 4–7, 2018 · American University of Central Asia

AMICAL 2018, our next annual meeting and conference, will be held 4–7 May at the American University of Central Asia.

Conference
· Online
The third meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club teams up with AMICAL’s Digital Pedagogy Committee. It will be led by Maha Bali (AUC) & Michael Stoepel (AUP). The topic is AMICAL Reflections on the “NMC Horizon Project Strategic Brief on Digital Literacy, Part II 2017, Volume 3.4” by Alexander et al. We will read and discuss this report in two ways: As a jump start exercise before the online meeting, we would like to encourage all participants to engage in an interactive reading exercise by using hypothes.is for collaborative annotation (i.e. you put in your comments publicly and others can read and respond to them, and you can read others’ comments as well). (See instructions for annotating PDFs.) We will have a live webinar on Tuesday 24 April at 10am, Paris time. Nota bene: AMICAL members can participate in both the Hypothes.is annotation and webinar, or only one of these, if more convenient for them. If you’re new to the term digital literacies, reading the “NMC Strategic Brief” will give you a good idea, whether or not you want to annotate. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review AMICAL’s Online meeting guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
AMICAL’s Information Literacy Committee is pleased to announce the upcoming virtual forum, “Strategies for teaching about fake news.” Jasmina Najjar (AUB) and Tara Keenan-Thomson (JCU) will share their teaching projects and experiences in how to get students thinking about fake news and how to engage them pragmatically on the issue. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review our online meeting guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
In this webinar David Wrisley, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi, will present some of the ways that making digital maps can enrich research and pedagogy in the liberal arts context. We will look at examples of digital projects organized largely around spatial dimensions of society and culture, as well as others that use maps as one of the many ways that their subjects can be better understood. We will look at what makes strong mapping projects from a dual perspective: the data that underlies them as well as their visual clarity. Finally, we will discuss some of the basic skills for collecting and organizing spatial data as well as challenges we face as mapping projects grow. No technical expertise is required for this webinar. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation. Test your setup in advance of the meeting. For more information (especially if you plan to participate in the Q&A with a microphone), review AMICAL’s Online meeting guidelines.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The second meeting of the Information Literacy Journal Club will be led by Vanessa Lawrence & Kathryn Vanderboll (AUC). The topic is “Assessment”. We will all read the article “Using the ACRL Framework to Develop a Student-Centered Model for Program-Level Assessment” by Gammons and Inge before the meeting. The article is open access, and legally available through the link. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review AMICAL’s Online meeting guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone.
Meeting
Recording available
· Online
The E-Resources Committee invites the members of AMICAL’s Library Resources Buyers Group to a virtual forum about the JSTOR DDA pilot the consortium undertook in 2017. The meeting will be facilitated by Elisabetta Morani, the committee’s chair, and Javanica Curry, JSTOR’s Director of International Institutional Participation and Strategic Partnerships. The JSTOR pilot involved 12 AMICAL institutions, 9 of which had never experienced with demand-driven acquisitions before. Participants will be invited to share their experiences, the problems they met, and their evaluations. We will discuss issues like: Is DDA a good method for small institutions like ours?What particular problems did you face?What type of deal should we pursue with JSTOR ebooks in the coming years? Post your questions and comments on Connect before the meeting, so that the facilitators can better prepare to respond to them. This meeting is addressed to the Buyers Group advisers, but other AMICAL members – such as library directors or librarians responsible for managing ebooks or e-resources – are welcome to participate. The meeting will be conducted using Zoom, which may require installation in advance of the meeting. Review AMICAL’s Online meeting guidelines to ensure you are setup to participate with a microphone/webcam.
Meeting
Recording available
Feb 25–27, 2018 · American University in Cairo

TALIX (Teaching and Learning Innovation Exchange) is an event focusing on teaching innovation and digital education, to be held on February 25-27, 2018 at the American University in Cairo.

Workshop
Recording available
· Online

The first meeting of the AMICAL Information Literacy Journal Club will have “Outreach to faculty” as its topic.

Meeting
Recording available
· Online

Informal Question & Answer sessions with the principal organizers of the ACRL-AMICAL “Library partnerships in international liberal arts education” project.

Meeting
Recording available
· Online

Informal Question & Answer sessions with the principal organizers of the ACRL-AMICAL “Library partnerships in international liberal arts education” project.

Meeting
Recording available
· Online

A webinar discussing e-portfolios in our various institutions – how we define them, why we use them, different models of implementing them in courses and institutionally, and how we assess their effectiveness.​

Webinar
Recording available
· Online

AMICAL’s Information Literacy Committee will share how our AMICAL colleagues engage and keep abreast of the latest trends in information literacy.

Webinar
· Online
Organized by the Information Literacy Committee Dear AMICAL librarians teaching information literacy! During the last AMICAL conference in Thessaloniki, we had discussions on how to improve conversations among us which could be beneficial to us as professionals in our local settings. Following up on it, we would like to invite you to the first “AMICAL Information Literacy Committee open meeting”. We would like to have a conversation with you all about various issues, including: Your input! Your interests! Improvement of the communication/sharing ways among us Use of AMICAL Connect as a main communication platform Opportunities for professional development of IL librarians Building a community of practice and what are its pros/cons Speak to you online! Chris, Tatevik, Livia, Krassi, MichaelAMICAL Information Literacy Committee
Meeting
· Online

A webinar discussing blended learning in our various institutions – how we define it, why we do it, different models of implementing it in courses, and how we assess its effectiveness.

Webinar
Recording available
May 17–20, 2017 · Anatolia American University
AMICAL 2017, our next annual meeting and conference, 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”.
Conference
Mar 31 – Apr 1, 2017 · American University of Paris

A workshop on information literacy for teams of faculty and librarians, to be held spring 2017 at the American University of Paris.

Workshop
Mar 10–12, 2017 · American University of Beirut

​An event focused on providing digital humanities training, to be held 10-12 March 2017 at the American University of Beirut.

Workshop
Recording available
· Online

Rrezarta Xhaferi will introduce us to the development of interesting and engaging e-courses using Adobe Captivate.

Webinar
Recording available
Photo of the AUK campus
Jan 26–27, 2017 · American University of Kuwait

A workshop on strategic and sustainable assessment for academic libraries, to be held 26-27 January 2017 at the American University of Kuwait.

Workshop
· Online

Organised by the Digital Collections Committee, this webinar will cover the value of building digital collections, selection of holdings to be digitized, and a showcase of existing AMICAL institution’s digital collections.

Webinar
Recording available
· Online
CORRECTION: In our initial announcement, the time was wrong. This webinar will take place at 8am Paris time, not 10am. Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience. If you are looking for alternative ways to reach your students, engage them with your course, or if you want to give them more voice to express their opinion, this webinar is for you. The AMICAL Digital Pedagogy Committee would like to invite all AMICAL members and a larger audience, to this online session on using podcasts in education. Podcast is a fancy word to refer to audio, or video files, typically produced in continuity, as downloadable radio shows, audio feedback, course introductions, students audio/video projects, etc.The webinar will draw from the research and experience of several AMICAL members. Anguelina Popova (American University of Central Asia) will share her research findings on the effectiveness of different types of podcasts on student engagement and learning. Kim Fox and Hoda Mostafa (American University in Cairo) will talk about good podcasts shows they regularly listen to and recommend for students and teachers alike. They will share how they use podcasts in their teaching, and how their students adopt this technology for learning. In the course of the webinar, participants are encouraged to raise questions, concerns, or share their personal experiences using podcasts for teaching and learning. Ultimately, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how and why using podcasts in education. Resources Anguelina Popova - notes Kim Fox - notes Hoda Mostafa - resources
Webinar
Recording available
Nov 9–10, 2016 · Online

A 2-day asynchronous annotation using Hypothes.is, led by Maha Bali and Nadine Aboulmagd from the American University in Cairo.

Other
· Online
A virtual forum organised by AMICAL’s Information Literacy Committee AMICAL’s Information Literacy Committee is pleased to announce the upcoming virtual discussion forum, Thinking beyond the one-shot: Embedding the Framework for Information Literacy across the curriculum. AUC’s Kathryn Vanderboll will highlight her recent experience in the highly esteemed “ACRL Immersion Program Track”, which focuses on developing, integrating, and managing information literacy programs. Join us for an engaging discussion on topics of building librarian-faculty partnerships, IL program outcomes, students’ IL learning throughout college. Attendees will be able to join the conversation via chat or audio. Invite your AMICAL colleagues Share the link to this event’s site with interested colleagues within AMICAL. (This event is restricted to AMICAL members only.) What if I can’t make it? A recording of this event is available to AMICAL members. (See the menu.)
Webinar
Recording available
Rayane Fayed and David Wrisley leading an unconference session at AMICAL 2016
· Online
Digital scholarship, one of the focal points of AMICAL’s recent Mellon grant, is often project-based and interdisciplinary. During this webinar Rayane Fayed & David Wrisley will present some characteristics of digital projects and take a quick glance at some exemplary projects. They will then open up the floor to discuss with you. What projects are you interested in? What projects might be most locally relevant? Are there such projects already being developed at your institutions? What are the benefits and challenges of working in a group on digital projects? The session will close with suggestions for next steps, including how to submit project ideas to the digital scholarship committee for feedback and further discussion. This webinar, organised by AMICAL’s Digital Scholarship Committee, builds upon an unconference session that Rayane & David put together at AMICAL 2016 in Rome. Who should attend? All staff and faculty at AMICAL member institutions are welcome to attend this webinar. It is the first of several webinars planned to introduce the AMICAL community to different forms of digital scholarship. The webinar is designed as an overview for a general audience and does not require any prior technical knowledge. It will be of particular interest to those already thinking about, or planning, a project that uses digital environments to enable new genres of interdisciplinary scholarship (digital exhibits, mapping, networks, crowdsourcing, etc). Subsequent webinars will delve deeper into specific domains of interest to the community. What if I can’t make it? This webinar will be recorded and made available to AMICAL members. Due to the nature of the webinar, it will not be listed publicly on the web. Slides & resources Slides (PDF)Resources & discussion (members-only)
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
OCLC has organised a series of free webinars specifically for AMICAL members. The webinars will introduce the services that are included in the RESPOND package. This training will cover the following services that are included in the RESPOND package: WorldCat Discovery Base package/First Search (FAQ on WC Discovery & FirstSearch) Links go to support/documentation pages where available. The trainer will be Annie Charlton. Recording & slides Recording (1 hr 35 min 46 sec). You may need to install a WebEx browser extension to view this recording.Presentation slides (PDF)Additional follow up material is available in AMICAL Connect
Webinar
· Online
OCLC has organised a series of free webinars specifically for AMICAL members. The webinars will introduce the services that are included in the RESPOND package. This training will cover the following services that are included in the RESPOND package: Record Manager Collection Evaluation (support page requires logging in) Worldshare ILL Links go to support/documentation pages where available. The trainer will be Jill Cantrell. Recordings You may need to install a WebEx browser extension to view these recordings. Record Manager (50 min 19 sec) Collection Evaluation (23 min 46 sec) WS ILL (54 min 2 sec) Schedule Time Duration Topic 07:00 BST (see local time) 1 hour Record Manager 08:00 BST (see local time) 30 minutes Collection Evaluation 08:30 BST 10 minutes Break 08:40 BST (see local time) 1 hour WS ILL
Webinar
May 12–14, 2016 · American University of Rome
The 13th AMICAL Meeting and Conference will be held at the The American University in Rome from May 12 to 14, 2016. The theme will be “Libraries and digital initiatives”. For more details, visit the Conference site.
Conference
Mar 20–22, 2016 · American University in Cairo
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. Recording The keynotes are available here: Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel, Critical Digital Pedagogy (20 March 2016)Amy Collier, Not Yetness (21 March 2016)Bonnie Stewart, Scholarly Networks (22 March 2016)
Workshop
The Ithaka S+R logo
Jan 22–23, 2016 · John Cabot University
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. Who should attend? Library directors and other staff from all AMICAL member institutions (Full, Affiliate & Network) are eligible to apply to participate. (applications are now closed) Important dates December 22, 2015. Rooms have already been booked for attendees for the nights of January 21 and 22. If you need to book additional nights, you must send your request to Elisabetta Morani by December 22 at latest.
Workshop
· Online

December 15: A one hour online forum to continue our conversation with the AMICAL community about information literacy at our institutions.

Forum
Photo of the Balkanski Academic Center (BAC)
Apr 27 – May 30, 2015 · American University in Bulgaria
The AMICAL Consortium, together with the American University in Bulgaria, are pleased to announce that AMICAL 2015, our 12th Annual Meeting & Conference, will be held 27-30 May on the AUBG campus in Blagoevgrad. The theme will be “Clearing thresholds: information literacy & faculty–librarian–technologist collaboration”.
Conference
Photo of Alex Gil
· Online
In this webinar we will look at the general landscape of digital humanities around the world. We will explore digital humanities at the intersections between computational approaches to culture, knowledge design and curation, and scholarly networks. In particular, we will focus on the process of learning how to build projects and work collaboratively across university roles. Paradoxically, the best we can do at the beginning of an institutional engagement with digital humanities is to play in a spirit of ephemerality, while thinking the long term of the humanities and human technology. Speaker Alex Gil Digital Scholarship Coordinator for the Humanities and History, Columbia University LibrariesAffiliate Faculty, English and Comparative Literature Department, Columbia UniversityCo-Chair, Global Outlook::Digital Humanities Alex Gil is Digital Scholarship Coordinator for the Humanities and History at Columbia. He serves as a consultant to faculty, students and the library on the impact of technology on humanities research, pedagogy and scholarly communications. Current projects include an open repository of syllabi for curricular research, an aggregator for digital humanities projects worldwide and other initiatives at the intersection of technology and the humanities. He is currently vice-chair of global-outlook::digital-humanities (GO::DH) and the organizer of the THATCamp Caribe series. His scholarly heart remains betrothed to Caribbean Literature in the 20th Century. When: Tuesday, 17 February 2015, 9:00-9:50am US Eastern time (see local time conversion) Where: Online - Adobe Connect
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy has been inspired by threshold concepts, an emerging theory that urges instructors to engage students in the Big Ideas that guide their discipline. Threshold concepts represent a strikingly different approach to information literacy than has previously been widely implemented by most librarians. This webinar will provide an introduction to the theory, with a focus on how threshold concepts can shape information literacy instruction. We will discuss the form and function of the ACRL Framework as well as offer some examples of what teaching with Threshold Concepts looks like in the library classroom. For more information, publications, and past presentations, please visit ilthresholdconcepts.com.Lori Townsend is an Assistant Professor and the Learning Services Coordinator for the University Libraries at the University of New Mexico. She holds a BA in History from the University of New Mexico and a MLIS from San Jose State University.Silvia Lu is a Reference and Social Media Librarian and Assistant Professor at LaGuardia Community College, a CUNY institution. Silvia holds a BA in Literature and Government from Claremont McKenna College, a MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a MA in English Literature from the University of New Mexico.When: Thursday, 6 November 2014, 6:30-8:00am US Mountain timeWhere: Online - Adobe Connect
Webinar
Recording available
May 14–17, 2014 · American College of Greece
The 11th AMICAL Meeting and Conference was held at the American College of Greece from May 14 to 17, 2014. The theme was “Student engagement and learning spaces”. Resources Conference SiteProgram Proposal Instructions and FormRegistrationFinancial support for AMICAL membersSchedule
Conference
Photo of John Watts
· Online
When: Wednesday 9 April 2014, 8:00-9:00am US central time (see local time conversion) Speaker:John WattsInstruction and Liaison Librarian Webster University About the webinar: see announcement How to attend this webinar: Test your system: As far in advance as possible, run the Adobe Connect Connection Test to check that your system is set up adequately for participating in the webinar. Hardware requirements: You will need a computer with stable internet connectivity, along with headphones or speakers. You may be able to use a microphone for questions if the host enables this, but in any case you will be able to send questions to the speaker by typing into the chat box. You will not need a webcam. Go to the meeting page: 5-10 minutes before the meeting start time, go to the meeting link:https://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/_a1078463850/webinar-2014-04-09 Enter as Guest, with full name and institution: AMICAL is a community of people trying to help, and learn from, each other. We’d like to encourage these personal connections and sense of community by having everyone enter their first and last names as well as their institution (e.g. AU Kuwait or AU Rome). PROBLEMS CONNECTING TO THE WEBINAR?Post a message to the chat on AMICALconnect (Main Room), or send an email to events@amicalnet.org . This webinar will be recorded and made available publicly on the web. Click here for webinar instructions that you can share with AMICAL colleagues not on AMICALconnect.
Webinar
Recording available
Mar 21–22, 2014 · RIT Kosovo (A.U.K)
A 2-day International Workshop sponsored by AMICAL. Organized by The American University in Kosovo in collaboration with The American University in Cairo. Student-centered teaching and learning is widely accepted as the most effective pedagogy to be used in Higher Education and has gained tremendous popularity over conventional lecture-based teaching. Similarly, the rapid development of educational technology has enabled students to engage with learning in a variety of new and creative ways which enable students to acquire and demonstrate a variety of new skills in the process of learning. Producing multimedia assignments is one such area where students can enhance their own individual and group learning experiences by producing creatively new content in their courses. Given the innovative nature of these developments it has also necessitated that faculty collaborate closely with IT colleagues and students in order to explore and implement exciting new educational technologies in the learning process. It is expected that the 2-day workshop explore these issues further and outline the best practice, as well as provide hands on training to faculty who wish to use such forms of assessment. Keynote Speaker Dr. Joan Lippincott, Associate Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Related writings: Lippincott, Joan K. “Student Content Creators: Convergence of Literacies.” EDUCAUSE Review 42, no. 6 (December 2007). Who should attend? Faculty and IT Instructional ProfessionalsThis workshop welcomes faculty and IT instructional professionals who have already made use of such methods of assessment and wish to present their work under one of the available slots in the provisional program OR those who wish to attend and gain experience. If applying for participation please use the application form. Ideal applicants should be teams engaged in, or willing to engage in, a group multimedia project, and preferably an “Authentic Project”. As an example: at the American University in Kosovo, students of the Environmental Policy courses (Public Policy Professional Core) worked closely with students of Effective Web Design and Video Production courses (Media and IT Professional Core) to produce three products: 1) an organized cross classroom Wiki, 2) informational videos that report on Kosovo environmental problems from credible sources, and 3) a Drupal based website. The collaborations have led to numerous opportunities for staff, faculty and student professional development. The “Engage Students in Creative Multimedia Content Production” AMICAL sponsored workshop is intended to demonstrate successful models and to help teams of collaborators from partner institutions develop similar multimedia projects. Student ParticipationThis workshop is also open to students who have attended courses in their respective universities that use multimedia content production as a form of assessment and wish to accompany their professors and attend the workshop. Funding Although this workshop is sponsored by AMICAL there is limited funding to assist colleagues and students who wish to attend. Funding of accommodation and meals for three days in Kosovo is available for only 14 faculty members from AMICAL affiliated institutions. Furthermore, there is accommodation and meals for three days funding for 7 students from AMICAL affiliated institutions who will accompany their respective professors. You may apply for funding by choosing yes under “Requesting funding” below. Applicants for funding will be reviewed and selected on the quality of the application submission by a committee of 4: Dr. Pandeli Glavanis, Prof. Daniel Cosentino, Ms. Ivana Stevanovic and Mr. Ahmad Zorkani. Please note: Participants from AMICAL Full and Affiliate member institutions are eligible to apply for funding; those from AMICAL Consortial Partner institutions can attend the workshop free of charge if their application is accepted, but they will need to find their own funding for all expenses, including hotel accommodations. Check the membership status of your institution here. There is NO funding for travel and visas for any of the participants, ONLY a limited amount for accommodation and meals for three days on the first come first served basis for AMICAL affiliated participants. Unfortunately, although we welcome participants from non-AMICAL affiliated institutions we are unable to provide any funding at all for such colleagues and students. Further Particulars and Questions Please contact one of the coordinators at the e-mails listed below if you wish to make further inquiries. Please note that e-mail communication with the coordinators will NOT be considered as an application to participate or for funding. Pandeli Glavanis: pandeli@aucegypt.eduDaniel Cosentino: dcosentino@aukonline.orgAhmad Zorkani: ahmad.zorkani@aucegypt.eduIvana Stevanovic: : istevanovic@aukonline.org
Workshop
Recording available
Ithaka S+R logo
· Online
Roger Schonfeld will talk about Ithaka’s faculty and now student surveys of library expectations, and how they might be adapted for AMICAL institutions; Nancy Foster will talk about ethnographic methods for studying library communities and how we might expand upon previous work in this area among AMICAL institutions. Together they will address how these methods complement each other to develop a clearer understanding of our library communities, providing a sound basis for strategic planning that supports our institutional missions. Guest speakers: Roger Schonfeld, Program Director for Libraries, Users, and Scholarly Practices, Ithaka S+R Nancy Fried Foster, Senior Anthropologist, Ithaka S+R WHEN: Thursday, 13 March 2014, 7:30-9:00am US eastern time (see local time conversion) How to attend this webinar: Test your system: As far in advance as possible, run the Adobe Connect Connection Test to check that your system is set up adequately for participating in the webinar. Hardware requirements: You will need a computer with stable internet connectivity, along with headphones or speakers. You may be able to use a microphone for questions if the host enables this, but in any case you will be able to send questions to the speaker by typing into the chat or Q&A box. You will not need a webcam. Go to the meeting page: 5-10 minutes before the meeting start time, go to the meeting link:http://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/r5yi8lsvbt6/ Enter as Guest, with full name and institution: AMICAL is a community of people trying to help, and learn from, each other. We’d like to encourage these personal connections and sense of community by having everyone enter their first and last names as well as their institution (e.g. AU Kuwait or AU Rome). PROBLEMS CONNECTING TO THE WEBINAR?Post a message to the chat on AMICALconnect (Main Room), or send an email to events@amicalnet.org . This webinar will be recorded and made available publicly on the web. Click here for webinar instructions that you can share with AMICAL colleagues not on AMICALconnect.
Webinar
Recording available
· Online
The high cost and lack of availability of commercial print textbooks is a major concern to both students and their parents. To address these concerns, the Provost’s Office and the University Libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst launched the Open Education Initiative in the Spring of 2011, having saved over $750,000 to date. This model has an implementation strategy that is easy for others to adopt.Guest speakers: Jay Schafer (Director of Libraries, UMass Amherst) Marilyn Billings (Scholarly Communication & Special Initiatives Librarian, UMass Amherst) For full bios and links to related resources, see the event announcement. WHEN: Tuesday, 11 February 2014, 9:00am-10:00am US eastern time (see local time conversion) How to attend this webinar: Test your system: As far in advance as possible, run the Adobe Connect Connection Test to check that your system is set up adequately for participating in the webinar. Hardware requirements: You will need a computer with stable internet connectivity, along with headphones or speakers. You may be able to use a microphone for questions if the host enables this, but in any case you will be able to send questions to the speaker by typing into the chat or Q&A box. You will not need a webcam. Go to the meeting page: 5-10 minutes before the meeting start time, go to the meeting link:http://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/currents-umass-oer/ Enter as Guest, with full name and institution: AMICAL is a community of people trying to help, and learn from, each other. We’d like to encourage these personal connections and sense of community by having everyone enter their first and last names as well as their institution (e.g. AU Kuwait or AU Rome). PROBLEMS CONNECTING TO THE WEBINAR?Post a message to the chat on AMICALconnect (Main Room), or send an email to events@amicalnet.org . This webinar will be recorded and made available publicly on the web.
Webinar
· Online
Invited Speaker: Audrey Watters (noted writer on higher ed learning technologies, author of blog Hack Education) When: Monday, 25 November 2013, 9:00am US Eastern time (click to see your local time)Where: Online - Adobe ConnectMeeting link: [ View the webinar recording ] The use of Open Educational Resources is a trend that can have major impact on academic instruction and learning. What are Open Educational Resources? 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.How to attend this webinar: Test your system: As far in advance as possible, run the Adobe Connect Connection Test to check that your system is set up adequately for participating in the webinar.Hardware requirements: You will need a computer with stable internet connectivity, along with headphones or speakers. You will be able to use a microphone for questions if the host enables this, but in any case you will be able to send questions to the speaker by typing into the chat or Q&A box. You will not need a webcam.Go to the meeting page: A few minutes before the meeting start time, direct your browser to the meeting link:http://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/currents-watters/Enter as Guest, with full name and institution: AMICAL is a community of people trying to help, and learn from, each other. We’d like to encourage these personal connections and sense of community by having everyone enter their first and last names as well as their institution (e.g. AU Kuwait or AU Rome). PROBLEMS CONNECTING TO THE WEBINAR?Post a message to the chat here on AMICALconnect (Main Room, at the bottom of the window), or send an email to meetinghost@amicalnet.org . NOTE: any updates about this event will be posted to this page.
Webinar
Recording available
Jun 12–15, 2013 · John Cabot University
New media, new literacies, new models: Library-IT-Faculty collaboration in a learning intensive world 12-15 June 2013John Cabot University (Rome) AMICAL’s annual conference is the one opportunity each year for AMICAL members to meet face to face with colleagues from all the other American international universities in AMICAL, to discuss shared problems and solutions, and to hear from some of the most influential leaders in the worlds of libraries and learning technologies in higher education. Keynote and Invited Speakers Char BoothInstruction Services Manager & E-Learning Librarian, Claremont CollegesKeynote: “Informing Innovation: Contextual Investigation for Effective Academic Technology Practice”Gardner CampbellDirector, Professional Development & Innovative Initiatives, Division of Learning Technologies, Assoc. Prof. of English, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityKeynote: “The Arts of Freedom in a Digital Age”Tracy MitranoDirector of IT Policy and Institute for Computer Policy and Law, Cornell UniversityKeynote: “What Traditional Liberal Arts Education has to Offer “MOOCs:” Information Competency, Interdisciplinary Classrooms and Active Learning”Nancy FosterDirector of Anthropological Research, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester Nancy will be leading a workshop on participatory design of library websites as well as a panel report on studies of faculty library use at AMICAL institutions. Who should attend? Librarians, IT staff, instructional technologists and designers, and faculty members - and anyone concerned with information services and their role in teaching and learning at AMICAL institutions - are all encouraged to attend. Faculty and academic leadership may be most interested in attending the latter half of the event, as indicated below. Dates 12 June - Morning 13 June: Forum on library & information services Practical aspects of managing and delivering information services Core audience: librarians, IT staff, instructional technologists Afternoon 13 June - 15 June: Main conference Presentations and discussions exploring the conference theme Core audience: faculty, librarians, IT staff, instructional technologists, academic leadership Theme and Program Technology is enabling students to engage like never before in self-directed - and collaboratively constructed - research, learning, and creative work. How are the roles of faculty, technologists and librarians changing to adapt to learning environments that increasingly engage them in the design and structuring of their own research and learning experiences? This year’s AMICAL Conference aims to help attendees respond to that question, through a program shaped around the broad theme of New media, new literacies, new models: Library-IT-Faculty collaboration in a learning intensive world. Topics addressed by the 50+ sessions in the program cover a wide range of issues relevant to librarians, technologists and faculty at AMICAL institutions. Presentations, workshops, technology showcases, and discussions will engage participants in both practical skill-building and thought-provoking exchanges with colleagues around sub-themes including: Innovative library and learning technologies Understanding faculty use of libraries and technology Collaborating on multimedia content production Social media in teaching Online learning - engagement and assessment Information literacy program development Core academic competencies The online program provides session descriptions, additional ways to connect with fellow participants, and personalized schedules with the sessions you’re most interested in. Questions about the AMICAL Conference? The latest and most complete info about the conference will always be posted to the Conference Hub on AMICALconnect (accessible to AMICAL members). If you don’t find your answer there, or are not eligible for access to AMICALconnect: questions about local organization of the event (including registration, hotel accommodations, ground transportation, etc.) can be directed to amicalconference@johncabot.edu questions about the program, and about travel support for attendees, can be directed to jgima@amicalnet.org Key event sponsors The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation OCLC EBSCO Innovative
Conference
May 27–31, 2013 · American University of Beirut

An intensive 5-day workshop on RDA (Resource Description & Access), scheduled to take place at the American University of Beirut between May 27th and May 31st, 2013.

Workshop
· Online

An online discussion about information literacy programs at our institutions.

Forum
Mar 8–9, 2013 · Lebanese American University
Intended for: E-resource and other librarians from OCLC (RESPOND) member libraries who are currently or will soon be involved in the selection process for a discovery service, or those who are currently directly involved with the management of discovery services. Total attendance will be limited to approximately 20. About the event Libraries are struggling with effectively connecting users with the full range of e-content they manage. Libraries that have implemented Discovery services have found that their user communities are very receptive to this new service by providing them access to their suite of electronic resources. However, we have just begun this journey and various problems and issues are presenting themselves. Questions are emerging about relevance, precision and recall when searching. The behind the scenes work reveals even more problems: e-resource coverage load, accuracy of the selected packages, getting local content indexed, link problems, landing page problems, syncing the catalog with the discovery layer and more. There is much to be considered with this innovative service and this is a product that becomes its own management and technological challenge that requires a care and attention that for many will be unanticipated. Forum participants will be there to discuss precisely these issues.Whether you’re using or considering WorldCat Local, EBSCO Discovery Service, Summon, or some other discovery service, join us for a day and a half of discussions about the challenges these discovery services present. Their introduction into the work environment radically alters existing workflows and even organizational structures. We’ll be focusing on what managers, librarians, and staff should be aware of, types of problems encountered, best practices, and how to devise workflows around a digital product that is now completely outside of the print legacy workflow environment which still guides many in their day to day operations.This event will be largely run by the participants, and we will be counting on you to share what you know in discussion groups and workshops.OCLC staff will also be present to talk about how their products and services can address these issues, and integrated into the event will be training sessions on implementing/using OCLC’s WorldCat Knowledge Base, WorldCat Local, and perhaps even Connexion and Batchloading (insofar as they relate to the above e-content questions), depending on the interests of attendees.A full announcement about the event will be made in January. In the meantime, any input you wish to share about this event, and the topics to be covered, would be warmly welcomed, including offers to lead workshops or discussions (send to events@amicalnet.org). Sponsorship This event is being cosponsored by AMICAL and OCLC. AMICAL will provide travel sponsorship for as many attendees as its budget permits; priority will go to those who are leading a discussion or workshop, and to those who have already begun implementation of a discovery service. Information about how to request for travel funding will be made available in January. Forum Organizers David Nelson, Former Director for Collections, AUC Libraries, American University in CairoCendrella Habre, University Librarian, Lebanese American UniversityJeff Gima, AMICAL Director, American University of ParisArthur Smith, OCLC
Workshop
Jan 3–4, 2013 · John Cabot University
Workshop with anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster on using ethnographic methods to identify how faculty members use any library for their own research, how they use the institutional library in their teaching, and what they expect and hope that their students could do using library spaces and resources to get the most from their courses.
Workshop
· Online
I would like to invite ALL AMICAL members to participate in the Embedded Librarians: Integrating IL Instruction at the Point of Need follow-up discussion! During this session, we will be discussing practical solutions to embedding problems and best practices, as well as highlighting successful collaborations at various AMICAL institutions. Please complete the “Startup”worksheet that was provided in the discussion and webcast. We will use this as a starting point for discussion. For those members who were unable to attend the webcast, please feel to join our discussion and learn more about how to embed information literacy outcomes into curriculum. To join the discussion just click on the link provided under “website.” Please remember, all AMICAL members are welcome and encouraged to participate. I highly suggest that all participants test their Abode Connection prior to the discussion. Please use the link provided below to do so:https://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm –Meggan Houlihan
Forum
Nov 11–12, 2012 · American University in Cairo

A workshop for learning exchanging best practices and innovative ideas for the use of videoconferencing and other collaborative learning technologies, in a participative group environment with colleagues from similar institutions.

Workshop
· Online
Don’t forget, AMICAL will be hosting a follow-up to the e-books virtual conference tomorrow, November 6, 2012, at 12pm (Paris time)! Prepare for this discuss by testing your adobe Connect connection:https://meet80509000.adobeconnect.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm
Forum
· Online
Greeting AMICAL Members! I’m happy to announce that the Association of College and Research Libraries has agreed to work with AMICAL and offer their online learning classes for a reduced price. To pilot this partnership, we are offering all AMICAL institutions the opportunity to enroll in their webcast, “Embedded Librarians: Integrating Information Literacy Instruction at the Point of Need.” This live webcast will take place on October 16, 2012 at 2pm Eastern time. Please note: if you cannot make the session you will have access to the archive of the webcast, and you are welcome and encouraged to have as many interested employees view the webcast as possible.
Other
· Online
Advanced training session on metadata management in LUNA, intended for coordinators of AMICAL’s LUNA implementation.
Webinar
· Online
A 1.5 hour introductory presentation and discussion with OCLC’s Amy Lytle (Portfolio Implementation Manager, WorldCat Local/WorldCat knowledge base), to demonstrate how WorldCat Local works, and help trial libraries work through some of the issues with database configuration, etc.
Webinar
· Online
For those who expressed interest in this webinar but were unable to attend on 29 May: A repeat session on June 4 (9am US Eastern Time) has kindly been proposed by Nancy Harm of LUNA. If you wish to attend, please add your name here:http://www.doodle.com/i33y68xf4vd7w5u4 Webinar attendees should request a LUNA account for any relevant local staff as early as possible before the webinar.
Webinar
· Online
A follow-up to the earlier General Overview webinar, this session will focus on using the Insight client software (Studio, Inscribe, and Insight) to create, edit and publish digital collections. Those interested in attending should sign up here.Webinar attendees should request a LUNA account for any relevant local staff as early as possible before the webinar.
Webinar
· Online
1-hour overview of the LUNA platform being used for the AMICAL Digital Library pilot. Learn what LUNA offers users for discovering and using digital collections - and get a brief look at what LUNA offers staff for managing collections.
Webinar
Apr 4–7, 2012 · American University of Sharjah
The 2012 AMICAL Annual Meeting and Conference will be held 4-7 April at the American University of Sharjah. Official conference sitePresentationsConference photos from AUS (including a hi-res copy of the group photo)ProgramDaily OverviewDaily Overview - print version (PDF)Program with Abstracts - print version (PDF)Social media stream on Storify (#AMICAL2012)Conference discussion
Conference
· American University of Paris

A two-day information literacy workshop led by Susan Barnes Whyte and Jean Caspers.

Workshop
Apr 27, 2011 · American University of Beirut
The eighth AMICAL meeting and Conference was held at the Lebanese American University (Beirut, Lebanon) from April 27 to 30, 2011. The theme was “e-Content: Collecting, Managing, Promoting, Teaching.”
Conference
Jan 4–5, 2011 · John Cabot University
Workshop with anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster on ethnographic methods for studying student research behaviors in the context of library planning and design (Pilot Group 2). See also: Ethnographic Study Pilot Workshop 1
Workshop
Jun 9–12, 2010 · Central European University
The seventh AMICAL meeting and Conference was held at Central European University (Budapest, Hungary) from June 9 to 12, 2010. The theme was “Digital Assets and the Cloud: Building Digital Collections through Library, IT and Faculty Collaboration.”
Conference
Oct 14–15, 2009 · American University of Sharjah
Workshop with anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster on ethnographic methods for studying student research behaviors in the context of library planning and design (Pilot Group 1). See also: Ethnographic Study Pilot Workshop 2
Workshop
· Anatolia American University

Three half-day CONSER-SCCTP serials cataloging workshop at the American College of Thessaloniki.

Workshop
May 21–24, 2009 · American University of Armenia
The sixth AMICAL meeting was held at the American University of Armenia (Yerevan, Armenia) from May 21 to 24, 2009. The theme was “The Learner’s Perspective — Adapting Information Services for Today’s Students.” It took place in parallel with the annual meeting of the Association of American International Colleges and Universities (AAICU). Keynote speakers included: Nancy Fried Foster (Lead Anthropologist, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester) speaking on ethnographic methods and findings on undergrad research behavior.James Simon (Chief Technologist, Principal Engineer, and Director, North American Systems Practice, Sun Microsystems) speaking on user-centered design of web-based information systems.
Conference
May 25–28, 2008 · American University in Bulgaria
AMICAL’s fifth annual meeting was held at the American University in Bulgaria (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) from May 25 to 28, 2008. The theme was “Learning from Each Other: Assessment and Collaborative Learning.” Conference description: “How can we work together, across our own campuses and across AMICAL, to make assessment of libraries and IT services meaningful for the improvement of student learning? How can we use collaborative technologies both to enable assessment and to enrich the learning experience for our students? Librarians, technologists, faculty, institutional research coordinators, and chief academic officers will be joining the discussions.”
Conference
May 27–30, 2007 · Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane
AMICAL’s fourth annual meeting was held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (Morocco) from May 27 to 30, 2007. The theme was “Integrating library and IT services for better learning.” Sub-themes included “Collaboration on Technology-Enhanced Information Environments,” “Collaboration for Academic Integrity,” and “Networks: Sharing Resources, Sharing Expertise.” The keynote address was delivered by Susan Perry, Senior Advisor for Liberal Arts Colleges at the Andrew Mellon Foundation and Director of Programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
Conference
May 31 – Jun 3, 2006 · American University in Cairo
AMICAL’s third annual meeting was held at the American University in Cairo (Egypt) from May 31 to June 3, 2006. The theme was “Integrated Learning: Collaboration with Faculty and Shareholders on Campus.” The meeting featured presentations, working group sessions, and a Technology Forum showcasing AMICAL members’ innovative uses of technology. It also laid the foundation for a formalization of AMICAL’s administrative structure, which eventually culminated in the ratification of the consortium’s organizational documents and mission statement. Keynote addresses were delivered by: Joan Lippincott, Associate Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)Susan Perry, Senior Advisor for Liberal Arts Colleges at the Andrew Mellon Foundation and Director of Programs at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).
Conference
Jun 1–3, 2005 · American University of Beirut
AMICAL’s second annual meeting was held at the Lebanese American University (Beirut) from June 1 to June 3, 2005. The meeting did not have a formal theme, but was largely devoted to consortial work. Members discussed plans for the future and developed timelines for concrete action. Five cross-institutional working groups were created: Databases, Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery, Information Literacy, Professional Development, and E-Books.
Conference
May 7–9, 2004 · American University of Paris
AMICAL’s “first planning meeting” was held at the American University of Paris (France) from May 7 to 9, 2004. The theme was “Exploring Consortial Possibilities between American International Colleges and Academic Libraries: Presentations and Workshops for the Development of a Consortium.” Administrators, academics, librarians and information technologists from 16 independent American liberal arts colleges and universities in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia came together to discuss possibilities for collaboration. Through thematic workshops and social events, participants learned about each other and discussed the challenges and rewards inherent in operating American-model institutions in diverse geographic contexts. Speakers included: Richard A. Detweiler, Interim President of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)JoEllen Parker, NITLE Board Chair and President of the Great Lakes Colleges AssociationSuzanne Bonefas, Director of Technology Programs, Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Technology CenterAndrew Lass, Professor of Anthropology, Mt. Holyoke College, Project Manager of the Czech and Slovak Library Information Network (CASLIN) Following the 2004 meeting, the attending institutions signed a Letter of Intent to Collaborate.
Conference