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CHICAGO - Registration is now open for the Association of College and Research Libraries (, which will be offered March 31 – April 1 during the in Philadelphia. It will provide academic and research librarians an affordable opportunity to participate in conference activities online, and for librarians with reduced support for professional development or travel, the Virtual Conference is a great way to leverage a small investment into large learning opportunities.



Like its face-to-face counterpart, the ACRL 2011 Virtual Conference will run on a real-time schedule. The online conference features 12 live webcasts, as well as asynchronous activities, allowing for convenient scheduling and flexibility. The Virtual Conference archive is available for one year and will include more than 130 slidecasts (PowerPoint slides or other presentations synced with audio of the speaker) from every contributed paper, Cyber Zed Shed presentation, invited paper and panel session presented at the face-to-face conference.



The Virtual Conference will also feature interactive Second Life library tours; podcasts; activities on social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube; and discussion boards and daily blog posts from conference correspondents.

The Virtual Conference kicks off on at 1 p.m. CST on March 8, 2011, with a preview webcast featuring Marie Radford, associate professor in the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. The preview webcast is free and open to all, regardless of ACRL 2011 registration. Complete details and the schedule of live webcasts are online at ; (click “Virtual Conference”).



Registration materials are now available at (click “Virtual Conference”). Individual and group registration rates are available. Register your institution as a group and participate in professional development with your colleagues all year long.



Contact Virtual Conference Co-Chairs Erin Dorney (erin.dorney@millersville.edu) and Scott Vine (scott.vine@fandm.edu) or Margot Conahan at ACRL - (312) 280-2522; mconahan@ala.org - with questions.

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ACRL is a division of the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½), representing more than 12,000 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at , Facebook at and Twitter at .