Western Libraries is hosting Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU) 2014, Canada’s major information literacy conference. The theme, ‘e–magine’ the Possibilities, recognizes information literacy is continually evolving. Information literacy encompasses learning and teaching practices as well as skills in both digital and face-to-face settings. It calls for creative forms of evaluation and assessment. The possibilities for information literacy instruction are boundless. The WILU 2014 Program Committee have put together a robust conference that will inspire vision, creativity, and innovation as we ‘e-magine’ the possibilities.
WILU history and future
Western hosted the inaugural WILU conference in 1972, and then again in 1985, 2000 and now in 2014. WILU is recognized internationally as a pre-eminent event for academic librarians as well as others interested exploring the theory and practice related to the library’s wide reaching role in teaching and learning in higher education. In order to continue the traditions of WILU, Western Libraries and Western Archives will preserve the past and the curate the future of WILU. The WILU 2014 presentations will be digitally preserved in the Scholarship @ Western website for generations to come.
WILU Community Planning
Planning a conference is a Western community affair and has involved many dedicated individuals at Western Libraries, the affiliated university college libraries and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. Thank you to our WILU community for your sustained contributions that will make WILU 2014 a success.
WILU keynote speakers include:
Craig Gibson
Craig Gibson is currently Head of the FAES (Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Science) Library at Ohio State University. His current research interests focus on threshold concepts for information literacy, research and learning commons and their relation to student success and engagement measures for academic and research libraries. He has taught in the ACRL Immersion Program since 2000, has been editor of the ACRL Publications in Librarianship series since 1999 and is currently co-chair of the ACRL Information Literacy Standards Revision Task Force.
Trudi Jacobson
Trudi Jacobson is the head of the Information Literacy Department at the University at Albany Libraries. She currently co-chairs the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education Task Force with Craig Gibson. Her current research involves metaliteracy, including badging for metaliteracy abilities. ALA Editions will be publishing the book she co-wrote, with Tom Mackey, Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacies to Empower Learners, in 2014.
Megan Oakleaf
Megan Oakleaf is an associate professor of Library and Information Science in the iSchool at Syracuse University. She is the author of the Value of Academic Libraries Comprehensive Review and Report and Academic Library Value: The Impact Starter Kit and has earned recognition and awards for articles published in top library and information science journals. Her research areas include outcomes assessment, evidence-based decision making, information literacy instruction, and academic library impact and value.
WILU 2014 is also sponsoring a special Student Award for the best accepted proposal submitted by a current masters-level library studies student. The winner of the Student Award is Amanda Kelly, whose poster is titled, Teaching Academic Integrity Online: Inspiring Scholarly Success in First-Year Students.
Kelly is a recent graduate of the MLIS program (2014) at Western. She was attracted to librarianship when, as an undergraduate in Western;s Media, Information and Technoculture program, she discovered the writings of Gloria Leckie on library-as-place within the public sphere. She has recently worked as a library assistant at Western’s Weldon Library, and is now the digital media lab strategist at Markham Public Library.
Our WILU 2014 delegates will be on-campus from May 21-24. We have an international mosaic of delegates who have travelled to Western from eight provinces and 20 states. And the delegate who has travelled the farthest to come to Western is from Qatar. Several of our delegates have a long history with WILU and with Western: Tom Adam, Joyce Garnett, Karen Marshall and Jennifer Noon.
Wednesday evening, May 21, Weldon Library hosted our delegates for a gala evening of conversation, connecting, music, and Southwestern Ontario’s finest culinary delights brought to us by Great Hall Catering.
Catherine Wilkins is the assistant university librarian with Western Libraries.
