Hello! I'm excited to be a guest blogger for MLA 17, and really excited to get to Seattle. This will be my second MLA, and I feel like I have a much better handle on sessions I want to attend than I did for my first MLA.
A little about me: I'm the librarian for the College of Nursing at Michigan State University, as well as the liaison to the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. I started my career in librarianship as an instructional technology/information literacy librarian, so I'm particularly interested in how principles of instructional design, educational technology, and information literacy influence teaching within nursing. I'm a member of NAHRS, and there are a lot of NAHRS-related sessions that I'm really excited about.
I'm planning to attend the Plenary Sessions, and I'm excited to hear MLA President Theresa Knott speak, as well as the other well-respected speakers for the different plenaries and speaker series. I also have the Sunrise Yoga on my calendar, but we'll see how that actually works out. Sunday afternoon, I'm planning to attend Evaluating Our Services: Daring to Take a Closer Look. I'm always interested in how to conduct assessment and evaluation on services and instruction, and think this will be a really interesting session.
On Monday, I have a committee meeting at 8am, so that will be an early morning. There are lots of sunrise seminars that look really interesting as well. I'm looking forward to the Janet Doe Lecture by Julia Sollenberger, "Looking Inside Ourselves: A Culture of Kindness." Then I'm planning to attend the session "Engaging Strategies to Teach Information Literacy to Distance Learners." I have many distance learners in a few different programs, and am always looking for new ideas to reach them. I also have a lunch date with my AHIP mentor, which is another great thing about MLA-the opportunity to network is always there!
On Monday, there's another session I'm hoping to make it to- "Technology Dreamin': New Applications for Current and Emerging Technologies." NAHRS is also having a meet and greet on Monday at 3:30pm. This is usually the business meeting time for NAHRS, but we did an online business meeting last week to reach those members who aren't able to make it to MLA. If you're interested in NAHRS, this is a great opportunity to meet members and the board.
There's a lot more great programming Tuesday, including sessions about design and another plenary that looks really interesting. I'm looking forward to meeting new colleagues, reconnecting with those I haven't seen in awhile, and learning a lot from others. See you in Seattle!