Dr. Melissa (Johnson ’94) Atkinson, director of distance and online services, was an invited panelist at the Christian Scholars’ Conference at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. The panel discussion, titled “What We’ve Learned: Recovering Hope for Christian Universities,” was led by Dr. Mindi Thompson (ACU) and included panelists from ACU, Harding University, and Liberty University. The panel was part of the Teaching, Learning, and Technology section. The topics discussed included challenges during the pandemic, the role technology played in helping or hindering teaching and learning, and what God taught us in order to move Christian higher education forward.
photo credit: Kristi Jones, Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee
Laura Baker (’87), librarian for user experience and assessment, was featured in Dttp: Documents to the People, which is the official journal of the Government Documents division of the American Library Association. It has a column called “Get to Know…” that profiles notable librarians who work with government publications.
The journal contacted Baker after she gave a presentation at the national Federal Depository Library Conference where she described how a library can use existing tools and staff to digitize and share government publications. “It’s a way to take small-scale digitization efforts and make the results available worldwide. We used it frequently during the switch to online classes, and it really highlights the value of our depository collection. Best of all, the documents can be used by anyone online, so it continues to benefit people way beyond campus. I feel good that we can share our resources in an open-access-friendly way.” You can read more about the project and about government documents at ACU in the article at https://journals.ala.org/index.php/dttp/article/view/7534
Amanda (Arzigian ’12) Dietz, archivist, and Mac Ice, director of archives and special collections, attended the Society of American Archivists virtual conference, Archives*Records 2021: Together/Apart in early August. Highlights include sessions on research in archives and case studies on the increase of digital and distance initiatives over the last few years that will serve archives well into the future.
In June Mac Ice presented a paper at Christian Scholars Conference. Drawing from our extensive collection of hymnals in the Taylor Hymnal Collection, Mac surveyed the impact of John Moody’s McCaleb’s gospel song ‘The Gospel Is for All.’ The song became a missionary anthem for Churches of Christ in the 20th century in large measure because of its inclusion in Great Songs of the Church, which was published one hundred years ago, and was unveiled on Restoration Day as a new Special Collections exhibit celebrating the centennial of Great Songs of the Church.