Published: October 13, 2015 by Allison Randall Gatt

The semester is in full swing now, and even though your schedule is full of assignments, discussions, laundry and the odd social moment with friends and family, you keep hearing how great it is to attend professional conferences and network and connect. But who has the time for travel?

Well, you don’t have to go any further than your computer for the fifth annual Library 2.0 conference. Library 2.015, a completely virtual, entirely free and totally amazing conference for librarians and information professionals, will be held on October 20, 2015. You can attend during your lunch break or in your bunny slippers during your morning coffee, depending on your schedule and your time zone.

If you need help figuring out how the conference schedule translates into your time zone, then use this handy-dandy session schedule and click on your GMT+ (that would the number of hours you are ahead of Greenwich Mean Time). For instance, if you’re in Bangkok, Hanoi or Jakarta then you would be GMT+ 7. (And if you are in Bangkok, Hanoi or Jakarta, then you should leave me a comment because I’d like to interview you for an international students post…thanks!) Once you click on your time zone then you’ll get the schedule of presentations and speakers in your very own time zone—no math required! And there’s some exciting stuff on there, including presentations from many of your iSchool instructors.

Hear Speakers from the iSchool and Beyond
Director of the iSchool Dr. Sandra Hirsh will start off the day with her presentation entitled “Information Services Today: Essential Tools, Skills, and Competencies for Transformative Information Landscapes.” This talk will even give you a preview of what Hirsh’s book of the same title is all about, a detailed look at the dynamic ways that information has changed over the centuries but especially in the last decade and why information services are more important than ever.

Other professors sharing the results of their extensive research in the field include Dr. Virginia Tucker who will talk about leadership roles in design and information experience and Dr. Lili Luo presenting the topic “Consumer Health Reference Interview: Best Practices.” For those whose interests focus on school libraries, Dr. David Loertscher will talk about project-based learning in both a morning session and one toward the end of the day. “How do we successfully lead our information organizations when so much change happens so fast?” Dr. Michael Stephens will answer this question and a few more in his presentation in the morning—morning PSD, that is. Tina Jagerson, iSchool alumna and social media tech maven, will present “Become Your Library’s Technology Futurist.”

Keynote speakers include Norm Jacknis with his talk, “How the Future Requires Us to Re-envision Libraries,” and Toby Greenwalt presenting “Flywheel libraries: Making Library Service Visible in the Info Ecosystem.” Toby Greenwalt, the director of digital strategy and technology implementation for the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will discuss his research regarding the integration of technology, library service and community. Norm Jacknis, the president of the board at the Metropolitan New York Library Council, will give listeners insight into how a variety of trends will affect libraries and open up new opportunities in the future. Jacknis and Greenwalt will be giving their presentation at 12 noon and 7 pm PSD, respectively.

Join in the Enlightening Fun
To join in the enlightening fun as it happens, go to the conference home page on October 20. You can attend just one or a variety of sessions, and many of the speakers will leave room for real-time questions, if you’ve got them. If you aren’t able to participate in the live sessions, you can always follow the conversation on Twitter—the conference hashtag is #Lib2015. And to catch those interesting sessions you missed, the recordings will be archived for future access.