ALAO’s Professional Development Committee and Support Staff Interest Group sponsored a rebroadcast of two ACRL webinars on Friday, May 31st at Ohio State University Newark / COTC. Participants watched two 90 minute webinars; a brief discussion of key themes followed each webinar.

The morning session, “The Crisis in Academic Libraries (and Why This is the Best Thing Ever)”, reviewed some of the challenges current facing academic libraries and suggested ways for addressing each of these. These suggestions included aligning practice with the goals of the parent higher education institution, seeking to become innovators to redesign library service, and acting as “scholar-practitioners” in the higher education community to gain equal footing with department faculty.

In the afternoon, participants watched “Fair Use in Your Library after Georgia State” and received some critical guidance both on the four key factors for Fair Use decision making (Purpose, Amount, Nature, & Effect) and on how they were applied in the Georgia State case. Participants learned that as a result of this decision, many libraries no longer hold clear decision rules and that instead decisions often need to be made on an individual “ad hoc” basis with the four factors in mind. In the discussion that followed, attendees shared local procedures for guiding professors in complying with copyright law particularly in the area of course reserves.

Of the original 29 registrants, 22 attended the re-broadcasts; conflicts with the OhioLINK directors meeting and the limited availability of summer coverage may have led to this reduction in numbers. Participants came from 16 different home institutions. While organizers are still waiting on the evaluation results, overall it seemed to be a successful opportunity to learn and to network with other support staff and librarians from through out the state. Many thanks go out both to ACRL for providing access to the webinars and to the staff of the Ohio State University Newark / COTC library for providing space and technology for the day.