In the wake of the Library Camp of the West, I’m bullish on library camps and unconferences. You can keep track of past and future Library Camps via the LISWiki Library Camp page, but I wanted to take just a moment to promote two unconferences that I won’t be able to attend.
The first might be a regional challenge for most of you: Library Camp Nebraska is November 19. They are planning for up to 100 participants, and at the moment there is still room. They are following a plan similar to the one we used for Library Camp of the West (and cribbed from most of the library unconferences we were aware of at the time). It’s open to anyone and all library-related topics are on the table. Michael Sauers, Christa Burns, and Karin Dalziel are behind it, which would indicate participants will be in good hands.

Another interesting upcoming unconference is the ACRL Preconference Unconference, conceived by the folks at Radical Reference. By positioning this unconference as an ACRL preconference, they stand a chance of pulling in national participation. The regional nature of Library Camp of the West was more of a feature than a bug, as it facilitated discussions of issues that we could tackle as Colorado and Wyoming librarians. But I think it will be great to get people together from across the the country to meet in a Library Camp environment. I predict many more unconferences scheduled as official or unofficial preconferences or post-conferences to established national meetings.

The RadRef preconference also diverges from the usual subject matter of library unconferences. Most previous events have either had a technology focus, or, like Library Camp Nebraska and Library Camp of the West, have had no stated theme or focus. This one, though, will be “on social justice and alternative and radical collections and programs in academic libraries.” I hope that doesn’t limit their participation too much. It might be worth pointing out that you don’t have to be radical to attend. You might just want to think about how to serve your populations that are interested in social justice and alternative literature. On my campus, that’s a not-inconsiderable number of students.

Jenna Freedman is one of the rad people behind this pre/un-conference. She’s high on my list of librarians I would like to meet. If I were going to ACRL, you can be sure I’d arrange things so I could attend this event.