European Conference on Information Literacy: Dubrovnik, Croatia

In October I traveled to Dubrovnik to give a workshop at ECIL, and I was amazed at the beauty of the place. There are mountains, and the Adriatic Sea, and farms and vineyards, and this fascinating ancient walled city. It was amazing. I spent time with fantastic librarians from many different places and really enjoyed the conference.

Day 1: My co-presenter Cass and I spent the day in our swimsuits, recovering from jet lag.

Scenes from a bike tour: Six librarians from Nevada, California, Wyoming and Dubai go for a 10-mile bike ride through the countryside.

Tour of the city: Cass and I had a half-day tour in and around Dubrovnik. I loved the view of the walled city from the top of Srdj (Snow) mountain.

Sunsets from the President, the beachfront hotel, were spectacular.

 And the city was so dramatic at night. What a beautiful place!

Ireland

Limerick

Celebrating at Nancy Blake's pub after a successful workshop

Limerick is not that big of a city, but somehow Cass and I managed to get lost over and over again. Even with plenty of landmarks like this church.

This Pop-Up Museum used a historic Georgian building to illustrate a slice of Limerick's history through the building itself. It was an interesting concept, one that we thought would work really well in our own towns, with their wild West history and buildings. 

Hunt Museum

Celtic Cross at St. Mary's Cathedral

St. Mary's Cathedral, built 1168

King John's Castle (the King John of Robin Hood)

Tea break in Killarney

We took a day-long bus tour of the Ring of Kerry. It was beautiful.

Thatched roof!

Remember that movie, Far and Away, with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise? It was filmed here!

County Kerry

The photos above are from a trip I took in August, to my first international library conference: the IFLA Information Literacy Satellite meeting, in Limerick, Ireland. A colleague from University of Wyoming, Cass Kvenild, and I gave a workshop on Classroom Assessment Techniques for Librarians. The conference itself was great. I especially enjoyed keynotes from Nancy Fried Foster of Ithaka S+R and Conor Galvin of University College Dublin. I was very interested to hear from other librarian presenters about library initiatives and higher education issues from an international perspective. The best part of the conference was chatting with and learning from librarians from all over. (And the food. The food was really good -- at more than one meal I had both mashed and roasted potatoes on my plate at the same time. Delicious.)

Library conference in Las Vegas

Mike and Nora joined me for a library conference in Las Vegas in the middle of November and we got to see some of our family members while we were there. Fun! We visited my cousin Celia and saw a couple of her kiddos (they live in Henderson) and we drove up to St. George and saw Grandma & Grandpa Brough and Brian & Kim Brough and their kids. One of my favorite things was seeing the Brough kids interact with Nora--they were all so cute together! Nora looooved it when Adler let her touch his spiky hair. It made her giggle.

We went to Ethel M.'s Chocolate Factory and enjoyed a factory tour, some chocolates, and the cactus garden that is all decorated for Christmas. It was so strange to me to see Christmas decorations when we were out and about in 70 degree weather.

More cacti

Nora acknowledges her fans

Don't let this pouty face fool you--she was totally into the family gathering.

Adler's hair!

Grandma & Grandpa Brough have this awesome 100-year-old high chair that all the kids get their photo taken in. Nora was hamming it up.

This is the Lied Library on the UNLV campus, where the library conference was held.

And here I am giving my presentation.

Indianapolis

Mike and Nora joined me for a trip to the Association of College and Research Libraries conference in April. We drove to Denver then flew to Indianapolis and Nora was a stoic little traveler. She made it through a long, long day of travel and when we got to our hotel and undressed her on the bed she just started giggling.

At the hotel

At the conference

In the exhibit hall

We met up with Mike's sister Rachel and her family while in Indy, and Nora also laughed at her cousin, Gavin. Mike and I agree that he's pretty funny.

With Gavin (picture credit: Rachel)

At the Indianapolis Zoo (picture credit: Rachel)

Library Assessment Conference

I traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia at the end of October to present at the Library Assessment Conference. I almost cancelled the trip because Hurricane Sandy was supposed to hit the whole East Coast and knock out power for days, but I decided at the last minute to go for it and (luckily) experienced no bad weather, no power outages, and no travel delays.

My presentation is now available from the conference website: http://libraryassessment.org/bm~doc/Bowles-Terry_Melissa_2012.pdf

It was a great conference!

LOEX in Columbus, OH

I recently returned from the LOEX annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. LOEX is the big annual library instruction conference, and I got to give a presentation with my friend Kennedy, who is a political science instructor at UW. Our presentation went really well, and I came away with several new ideas for teaching from other presentations.

Kennedy and me after our presentation

Also, Columbus is more exciting than I expected, with great food, a cool art museum, and a super-funky independent bookstore.

Dinner at Sidebar 122

Ice cream at Jeni's

At the Columbus Art Museum