Advice for those hosting an ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication

This is a result of the ideas and experiences in hosting the ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication. I tried to organize it so that it makes sense. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me! My information is at the end of this page.

There will be up to 7 faculty members you need to add to your count.

Application/Registration Process:

Know how you are going to share the applications with your application review team. There won’t be much time between the end of the application process and when you need to get the information about acceptance. I worked with Google Documents, but there were several people who had firewall issues.

Set your Application deadline early enough that you can move it back. As much as I prefer to set a deadline and keep it, ours was moved back twice.

Credit Cards – Make sure that the name of the participant/registered person and the Institution are mandatory on the on-line form. It was optional on our form and only one person filled it out. It took many hours to track down the names of the Administrative Assistants who completed the form.

Make sure that your survey software (we used Zoomerang) will allow people to leave the software to complete the credit card information and then come back. We had issues with this and there was some confusion. Also, if you work with a fee structure, be clear about what membership you are speaking of. We had a tiered fee: those who were members of Orbis Cascade Alliance paid a lower fee than those who weren't members. There was considerable confusion as to which membership we meant. Even though it stated it earlier in the survey, people assumed that it meant membership in ARL or ACRL.

It might be in your best interest to keep on top of the rooming list. There were several people who thought that they had made reservations who did not for various reasons. A call before the Institute happened saved time and frustration later.

Also, on the registration make sure to add a space so people can let you know about the physical or dietary accommodations they need. We had several which weren’t an issue since we knew about it before the Institute started

Registration at the conference went well. I simply had the name tags in alphabetical order and it went quickly and smoothly. There were people there about an hour before the official registration time started.

Application Survey:

Information we asked for:

The things I would add are: if the institution is a Doctorate-granting or Baccalaureate/Masters or Other institution;

We only left room for three participants to apply. I would add the ability to register up to 6 people. We had a group which had 5 people in it. The resulting process was to have them e-mail me the extra people which ended up cumbersome and didn’t work very well.

Hotel Pickup:

We did have a number of local institutions (Portland Based) but here is the final room pickup:

Welcome/Swag bags:

Every participant will be getting a 10 by 11 inch  - 1.5 inch 3 ring binder, so whatever bag you might decide on needs to be able to hold that size notebook.

We also had a number of coupon books as well as maps of the area and where restaurants were. We included a 4x6 notebook with a pen in the bag.

Advice I got:

Set up and state payment and refund policy up front. The payment needs to be in before the Institute. Consider the weather (we hosted the Institute in December) when setting up your refund policy.

Food and Venue:

Offer Vegetarian options.

Having outside light is helpful as well as being able to work with the temperature. It seemed, at least at this venue, that if it was a touch chilly before people got in the room, it balanced out nicely.

Remember to have a coat rack depending on the weather. Also, on the last day, the Institute ended after the late check-out time. Be prepared to have a secure space for people to store their luggage.

Don’t have lavaliere microphones. The presenters pass the mikes back and forth and the lavaliere mikes were just awkward.

Having caffeine-free beverage options in the afternoon went over well.

There will be at least one plated meal (key note on last day). It worked well to have all of the meals plated. I had ‘meal tags’ (which actually was a name tag insert) that I gave the participants with their name tags. Each meal they were asked to place the tag at their place. It had a different picture for each dish as well as the dish name and the name of the participant on it.  Make each dish a different color so the servers just have to glance at it. Also, make sure that the banquet staff have a set of the cards before the meal.

You only need one meeting room. The program is not based on lecture. The participants move around quite a bit to form and re-form groups for discussion. The room needs to be big enough to accommodate this movement. My suggestion would be to look for a venue for 125 rather than 100. This will build in the necessary room for movement. Also, they will all have large 3 ring binders to look at and deal with as well as trying to take notes. When looking for a room, a square room works better than a rectangle room. It was helpful to have extra chairs along the side so that people could use them as needed.

There needs to be vegetarian options at all the breaks.

We had a ante-room with the break and foods that had speakers connected to the microphone pick-up in it. It allowed people to move around and have their own conversation without missing the presentations or disturbing others.

Negotiating the price of an internet connection into the room rate for participants would have been good.

Starting with a Buffet worked out well. Other groups did box lunches, but, at least at the venue we worked with, having a buffet worked very well for the timing.