Michigan Lib Assoc Academic Libraries 2013

At the opening reception of MLA Academic, Mies Martin challenged me to consider submitting the article I'm writing in Spanish to an open-access journal instead of a traditional commercially-published one. I want to make myself attractive to and competitive for one of two Fulbrights offered from Spain each year for an upcoming sabbatical (possibly 2015-16). After talking with him, my Quaker self questioned, "If I get an article in a journal from a non-open-access commercial publisher, am I supporting the unsustainable, capitalist model?"

Two breakout sessions supported the DOAJ leading:
Publish, not Perish: Supporting Graduate Students and Junior Faculty as Aspiring Authors (Barbara Alvarez, Jennifer Bonnet, Meredith Kahn - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). Barbara Alvarez talked about teaching grad students to find leading journals in their field, matching content, assessing the impact, and finding the time frame from submission to publication. Sarah Beaubian confirmed that she could help GVSU librarians with this as well. Alvarez also said that DOAJ has a process to assess journals before including them.

(Today I have found a couple of DOAJ journals which seem relevant to my topic:
Comunicar, and Revista Española de Documentación Científica.)

The other session was:
Tell Me What You Want, What you Really, Really Want: Faculty Expectations of Students’ Research Skills and the Library's Role in Research Instruction (Catherine Morse, Barbara Alvarez – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). They explained a particular approach to library instruction: engage in an inquiry and cultivate curiosity by shifting from teaching the search tools (mechanics) to asking questions and analyzing the research process (an intellectual process).

1. Start with an image relevant to the discipline course assignment.
2. Facilitate a discussion of the meaning and context of the artifact/image/symbols, customs, history, technique used, indicators of time period and perspective, etc. One easy way to do this is to read an essay about it and form questions from that essay.
3. Examine resources to answer the questions. In this, students will experience the research process as researchers do.

They said that the job of researchers is to figure out why certain decisions were made (in methodology, for example--why were these particular categories selected for a survey? Or how and why a certain technique reflects a photographer's/musician's vision and message.). The assessment Alverez and Morse used was to hold retrospective interviews with the faculty about the impact of the session on students' work to get better qualitative data via the concrete experience in one specific course the previous semester, rather than asking students for their impressions. 

Why did this support the DOAJ idea? This is an approach which would work very well with Photo, and would support the article I'm working on.

The other session I attended, Meaningfully Integrating Technology Tools into Library Instruction … Starting with Librarians! (Amanda K. Nichols – Oakland University),
mentioned Poll Everywhere, which seemed to work well, maybe a good alternative to another tool I tried which didn't work well (allowed only 20 responses). This allows 40 responses for a poll. And docs.google.com allows for 100 responses on surveys. I wonder how each maintains security of the data? See some samples of surveys here.
Would Skype be good for virtual research consultations?

Catching up with Kate Pittsley was great. We were at the School of Information & Library Studies at Univ of MI together. She mentioned her Libguides design research, and since I'm part of a task force to help GVSU librarians redesign libguides, I sent it to the group with comments. She also took us to The Cooks' House for dinner - amazing!

Del latín al castellano medieval

AILCFH Conference Reflections

I attended the XXII Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Literature y Cultura Femenina Hispánico, "De la Tierra al Ciberespacio / From the Earth to Cyberspace" November 8-10, 2012.

Prior to the conference, to help the GVSU onsite organizing committee, I had set up a "Subject Guide," a.k.a. Libguide, with links to the keynote speakers' books I had bought for the library (one of the organizers checked out the books and put them on display), the journal for the Association, Letras femeninas, and the keynoters' websites. I also passed along the request for library laptops for presenters to use. At the congreso, I met some newer GVSU Modern Languages Spanish department faculty, which always helps with liaising. I also met a friend from WMU, and made new friends.
 
Papers I attended: 

1. Lynn Healy (GVSU), "Remembering the Other: Hegemony and the Ethics of Memory in Peru." She spoke about reinterpreting "collective memory" in an archive of photographic images in terms of gender, Westernizing indigenous women, recognizing difference vs. homogenization. Prior interpretations have been a type of violence, undermining the women's defiance, demands for truth, fight for justice and freedom, agency, organization, and thus have reduced the impact of the photos.
2. Bernadita Llanos (Loyola U) spoke about political and problematic memory.
3. Constanza López Baquero (U of North Florida), "Realidades novelescas: De cómo sobreviven las mujeres en medio del conflicto armado en Colombia." She spoke about several films, such as Impunity: What Kind of War for Columbia? which shows the fight against invisibility and that the only way to possess memory is to transform experiences; Proyecto Rosa, which names those assassinated; The War We are Living; Violeta Cortometraje animado; Kilele; theatre such as Teatro la mascara; oral history such as Throwing Stones at the Moon: Narratives from Colombians Displaced by Violence. All of which stress the importance of women's voices. 
4. Keynote/Plenaria de Lola López Mondéjar: "De pintores, glaciares, esculturas, andróginos y Frankenstein" -- I'd like to read some of her essays in English, to be honest.
5. Ana Bellum (University of New Mexico) “Making the Tangible Intangible: The Reconstruction, Redefinition and Reclaiming of the Woman in Latin American Literature”
6. Maribel Colorado-García (GVSU) “La doble imagen femenina en dos autorretratos: Julia de Burgos y Rosario Castellanos” [poets]. Maribel is another newer faculty member at GVSU.
7. Anne M. Pasero (Marquette University) “A través de los años: La expresión del amor en la obra de Clara Janés.” Anne said that Janés is one of the most important and well-known writers, mystical, spiritual, using love as a paradigm instead of war (very Quakerly). She recommended an anthology.
8. Leticia Espinoza (Western Michigan University) “La construcción de la feminidad en Cuerpo Náufrago.” Leticia addressed the transgender Antonia-Anton, compared to Man Ray, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, and Shakespeare's Viola. We discussed masks, and I remarked that for the transgender person, the body itself is a mask.
9. Hedy Habra (Western Michigan University) “Niveles de recreación del personaje femenino en Travesuras de la niña mala”
10. Irma M. López (Western Michigan University) “La recreación como vehículo de afirmación subjetiva en El amor que me juraste, de Silvia Molina”
11. Karina Ortiz-Pacheco (Western Michigan University) “El pasillo expresión musical popular creadora de la imagenfemenina y su subversión en la obra Si tú mueres primero de Aminta Buenaño”
12. Keynote Address/Plenaria de Belén Gache: "Word Toys y Manifiestos robots. (Navegación comentada por la autora)." Gache reimagines other's words/works electronically. Amazing, interesting, radical mash-ups, such as word-flowers, birds that speak with a mechanical voice (a raven quoting Poe, for example), butterflies with literary quotes about butterflies, a plane which narrates stars' histories, names, and stories from different parts of the world, houses which narrate the dreams of those sleeping under the roof, a Second Life video, a word market.... Useful ideas to show students who are trying to understand and interpret poetry that to them seems "antique/ancient"--putting the poems into web 2.0 context. 
13. Keynote Address/Plenaria de Cecilia Vicuña: “Hilo de agua, hilo de vida” was performance art/shamanic ritual. She spoke about how the quipu represents cyberspace/the virtual worldwide web/the Dreamtime of Australian Aborigines/the cosmic umbilical cord. That "eye," "I," "yo," are the same, the identity of all who are living. That "I am" means "mismo ama" or "same love." That "in - formation" is a synonym for "universe" or "universal," as is also "word" ("palabra") and "sound."  She said that all poetry comes from the ancient silence. Vicuña is what I would call a "Machi" -- a Mapuche curandera/shaman, although she is "mestiza" or mixed-blood, not only indigenous, and grew up in the city. She said, though, that we are ALL indigenous to the Earth.

What I took away: better understanding of Latin@ cultures and literature and a renewed wish to spend my next sabbatical in Spain. What the Library gained: a better collection, donations of the speakers' books, a closer relationship between the Spanish department and library liaison, a liaison who is even more interested in internationalizing information literacy (in Spanish: aprendizaje informado, alfabetización informacional/ALFIN, alfabetización en información, o investigación bibliotecológica).

Constanza Lopez just spent a month in Ibague, Colombia, where Laura Arcila Villa is Decano Facultad de Humanidades, Artes y Ciencias Sociales in the University. Constanza's chair at N.FL was one of my favorite professors at WMU, Jorge Febles. It was fun to make connections like this. I was also interested when 2 of the presenters told me that they decided I had a Latina soul because when they spoke to me in English, I would answer in Spanish. I appreciated when they would speak English to help my understanding, but I was also there to absorb/be immersed in and "negotiate life" in Spanish. There were many words I recognized as having learned in the past but whose meanings escaped me (non-English-cognates), but with a few exceptions, speakers' words were clear to me, even if their meaning lagged behind.