Professional Development

Lauren did an excellent job of outlining the keynote speech and the first concurrent session, and I have to agree that the Roy Tennant gave an amazing presentation. I felt really motivated afterwards. What he mentioned, and Lauren so tremendously outlined, are points that we all need to consider and start discussing at ZSR.

I was hoping that the first concurrent session was going to be a little more focused on privacy and social networking than it was, but it was still a good presentation.

Lunch was good, and although I missed the author speaker (Gwyn Hyman Rubio), I plan to get her books Icy Sparks and The Woodman’s Daughter, they seem interesting.

In the afternoon I attended three more sessions. The first of these sessions was entitled “We Change Our Buildings Our Buildings Change Us.” The director of the Georgia State University Library and one of her librarians discussed their experience of renovating their building. They have a portion of their website devoted to this major GSU Library transformation. One thing I found interesting about this project was/is its funding. With permission and acceptance from student groups on campus, they school has added a student fee to every students’ tuition (undergraduate and graduate students) of $35 to pay off the costs of renovation. The way they presented this possibility to these student groups was also very good, coming from the position that the students deserve a better library, as opposed to we want a better building for us. After all, we are about our patrons.

The second afternoon session I attended was a repeat of a session offered earlier: “Staying Ahead of the Technology Curve.” There is so much out there right now, and of course it’s hard to stay ahead, but the presenters point was that we can’t stay ahead, we just have to be aware of upcoming additions. There are a lot of things out there right now. A few examples given during this session of new technologies: Wapedia.mobi is the mobile version of Wikipedia; more use of Opera (web browser), lots of examples of blogs and social networking sites such as OverheardinNewYork.com (there are a lot of these Overheard sites, I think we need an OverheardinZSR or OverheardinLibraries); Semapedia (this may be a little too much); OQO (I want it); and so on. There will always be something, but we were reminded to watch out for “Technology Tsunamis.”

The last session I attended was the best, but I am biased. Erik and Lauren presented on “Social Software and the Future of the Library,” and they did a fabulous job. As an observer of the presenters and the crowd, people were furiously taking notes, especially when Erik was talking about our recent methods of teaching Information Literacy using the wiki. A lot of people were interested in what they had to say, and I was very proud to be a part of the Library that they were so perfectly representing.

All in all a very good day, and a worthwhile conference. Tomorrow is the closing session and then we’re all coming home.