These are some thoughts that have been spinning through my head since I did half of my MLIS online, and my work in libraries and as an online writing coach since then has made then spin faster.

Think about a typical reference desk, f2f transaction. Now think about a chat reference transaction. Think about a typical conversation on a social media platform, and about a typical conversation in an online classroom’s discussion board.

All of these seem like good places for the Socratic method, a time-honored tool of philosophy and education, to be used, and in some of them people work very hard to employ it. They definitely not equally successful, though. Why do responses become monosyllabic or angry or simplistic so quickly in online environments? How much of this is due to the environment, and how much is maybe just due to human nature? What could we do to make our conversations more Socratic?

P.S. Apologies for anything weird in here. I’ve never posted to WordPress from my phone before…I hope there weren’t any crazy spelling errors! I’ll try to double-check this on my laptop when I have internet tomorrow.

Image from THATCamp Penn, by Weigle Information Commons on Flickr.

We are quickly nearing conference time, and are very excited to have THATCamp be a part of ACRL this year. In case you haven’t checked the schedule yet, THATCamp ACRL will be held on Friday, April 12 from 8am-5pm.

Since we’ll be unconferencing at the same time as much conferencing is going on, we’ll be using a modified schedule: typically, THATCamp’s begin with a planning session to organize the day’s breakout sessions. As we expect many folks will be coming and going throughout the day, we plan to have two mini-camps. We’ll meet in the morning, plan and schedule morning sessions, then reconvene after lunch and do the same.

Here’s the basic idea:

• Show up on day of the event. Volunteers will coordinate check-ins at the door, hopefully there will be t-shirts, name tags, goodie bags, info sheets, whatever the coordinating committee can put together.
• 8:30-9:30 – Planning the Morning Sessions
  • Organizer hooks up laptop to the screen so all can see and then sessions are grouped, combined, separated, scheduled and organized in about an hour by all attendees using a shared Google spreadsheet updated live on screen. (Often there will be “tracks” that come out of the planning, grouping sessions around areas like technical, discussions, projects).
• 9:30-10:30 – Morning Session # 1
  • People break out into groups based on which session they want to attend. In this case, since we’ll only have one large room, we’ll grab chairs and tables and floor space, spread out and go. Whomever proposed the session is the unofficial leader. So, if John Jackson proposes a discussion on text mining in Religious Studies, he will introduce the topic, manage discussion themes/questions, start to discuss, take notes or request a note taker (in a shared Google doc), etc. etc., and generally follow through on whatever the session produces.
• 10:30-11:00 – Break
• 11:00-12:00 Morning Session # 2
  • (Same format as session # 1) People break out into groups based on which session they want to attend. Whomever proposed the session is the unofficial leader. So, if John proposed a Omeka hack session, he will introduce the topic, show the tool(s), start to hack, take notes or request a note taker (in a shared Google doc), etc. etc., and generally follow through on whatever the session produces.
• 12:00-1:30 Lunch
• 1:30-2:30 Planning the Afternoon Sessions
  • Organizer hooks up laptop to the screen so all can see and then sessions are grouped, combined, separated, scheduled and organized in about an hour by all attendees using a shared Google spreadsheet updated live onscreen.
• 2:30-3:30 Afternoon Session # 1
  • Same as above. Break-out groups. Session proposer leads. Talk, discuss, hack, share, do, make.
• 3:30 – 4:00 Break
• 4:00 – 5:00 Afternoon Session # 2 
  • Here we have some leeway. We could do another break-out session, or we could come back together as one whole group, and have each “Session facilitator” describe their session, what came out of it, etc. in 5 minutes or less. Sort of like mix of wrap-up, Plenary, Dork-shorts, etc. A good way to wind down and see what THATCamp ACRL is/was.

That’s the plan for the time being. But, since we’re trying to put the “Un-” in the unconference, who know’s what could happen!

Registrations will open in late February. Start to think up your proposals for sessions now! 

We’re happy to announce that there will be a THATCamp unconference as part of the programming at ACRL2013! The details will be published here as we work them out. Meanwhile, read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.

We especially encourage you to click through Miriam Posner’s comprehensive reading list of articles relating to Digital Humanities and Libraries. Hopefully some of the topics she highlights there will inspire the conversations we’ll have at ACRL2013.

Also, we are very thankful to Microsoft Research for providing support and funding for our THATCamp.

– Brought to you by The ACRL Innovations Committee