Changing of the Guard

Hello everyone!  My name is Ashley Ahlbrand, and I’ll be the resident blogger this month!  In this first post, I’ll just introduce myself.

I am the Educational Technology Librarian at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law.  I began last July, so I’m rounding out my first year.  This is a new position at our library, so we’ve been enjoying exploring the bounds of this position.  I balance my time between technology projects for the library and technology projects intended for faculty, while also devoting my time to reference duties and teaching responsibilities.  I’m guessing many of you can empathize, but my answer to the question “What do you do?” is not a simple answer!  In fact, one of my favorite aspects of working in a library is that my days are unpredictable, and each one is unique.

The technology aspect of my job takes many forms – from creating and maintaining our social media accounts, to researching for and creating research guides, to creating slides for our digital sign, and so on.  Most recently I’ve begun exploring infographics and their use in libraries and legal education.  As you know, a large part of this job is keeping abreast of changes and trends in technology, so I find myself constantly attending webinars, reading the literature, and participating in training sessions that I believe will be useful to our library and the faculty and students of the law school.  I had the pleasure of attending the CALI conference for the first time last year, and I look forward to this year’s as well!

Being new to the position, there is a lot for me to learn from others in the field, but I think I have a few insightful thoughts and ideas to share as well.  Hopefully you can expect to see one post each week from me this month.  I don’t want to give away too much up front (and not just because I don’t have my posts completely hammered out yet!), but you can expect my posts to be primarily tech-in-the-library focused, particularly exploring different ways newer technologies can help us reach out to our students and patrons, bridge formality with informality, and remind patrons of the library’s continued role and importance in a digital age.

More to come – have a great weekend!