Earlier this month, we attended the 18th Annual Information Literacy Summit at Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) in Palos Hills, Illinois (co-sponsored by DePaul University, Chicago).
It was our third time attending this one day conference and we’d seen some pretty amazing presentations and keynotes in the past, including Emily Drabinski, and Wendy Holiday. Once again the event did not disappoint. This year’s featured speaker was Dr. Nicole Cooke from the iSchool at the University of Illinois and she kicked off the Summit with her keynote “News, Media and Disinformation: Making Sense in Today’s Information Landscape”, introducing and providing depth to concepts of disinformation and misinformation. Especially interesting was her discussion on the emotional dimensions of information consumption.
Cooke's presentation also set the tone for a Summit that provided much in the way of practical, hands-on, classroom exercises from a majority of presentations, which was great to see.
Two excellent additions to this year’s Summit included:
A Google folder created by the Summit hosts for attendees to take collaborative notes on each session.
A closing conversation with a focus on critical librarianship and emergent strategies during which participants had the opportunity to discuss ideas in more depth with one another.
These two collaborative approaches to the Summit created more connections and networking (at least in our opinion) than previous years.
If you have yet to make to this one-day, low-cost conference (only $25 this year if you presented!), we strongly encourage you to take a look at this opportunity for 2020 (call for papers is usually in January) - check them out on Twitter @ILSummit.
Year after year, we see wonderful keynote presenters and attendees from all over the U.S. Check out the Information Literacy Summit website, where you can access keynotes and presentations from the past several years. And shout out to the librarians and other organizers at MVCC and DePaul for coordinating yet another successful event.