Computers in Libraries 2013 Summary

Last week I spent half days attending the 2013 Computers in Libraries conference here in Washington, DC.  This year's theme was "Evolving in New Directions."

Keynote Speakers
This conference likes to bring in speakers from outside of the library/information profession world and have them apply their expertise to the theme of the conference.  I felt that only Wednesday's speaker, Daniel Rasmus, was able to really circle back to the library/information profession world with his talk.  The other two speakers' messages got lost in infomercials for their books (or Amazon) or awkward speaker techniques. Videos of each of the talks are posted here on the LibConf blog.

Here are some takeaways I had from the three keynote speakers:

• The pace of technology is increasing.  There are more iPhones being bought than there are babies being born. 
• There is a shift to a subscription economy, companies are trying to keep customers coming back to them each week/month/year, where true service does pay off. 
• Customers don't want a generic experience - they want the experience customized to them.
• Libraries need to harness the power of citizen led communities and crowd technologies to revitalize our services. 
• When thinking about the future of libraries, remember that we have no data from the future so it is hard to be evidence based.
• Document the uncertainties you face and actively engage with the uncertainities when making strategic decisions. 
• Use scenario planning to help think about possible ways the future may turn out; then plan for contingencies and mitigate risks.

Session Highlights
Below are highlights from sessions that I attended.  I was only able to be at the conference for the morning and early afternoon sessions.

Making Libraries - Getting Into the Hardware Biz​ by Jason Griffey (​slides)

Jason was my mentor in ALA's Emerging Leaders program back in 2010.  I'm always curious to see what interesting things he is exploring within the technology world.  This year's talk was about how libraries can get into the hardware building space using open source hardware.  I had never heard the term open source hardware before until this talk.

Two principles influence the open source hardware world - Moore's Law which states every 18 months, processors get more powerful for half the price &  Koomey's Law  which states every 18 months, the amount of power needed for processors are cut in half. 

There are two open source hardware platforms

1. Arduino single board micro controller - digital board that allows you to measure things in the physical world - control sensors, inputs, lights ($30); thousands of ready to go library driven modules using Arduino via GitHub and other places
2. Raspberry Pi  -a full computer - has memory, input and outputs; runs Linux, runs memory - no hard drive, has slot for memory card

Jason provided some comparisons between building and buying hardware which highlighted the financial reasons for libraries using more open source hardware.

Item	Vendor Cost	Open Source Cost
Patron Counter	$200-300	$70
Temperature/Humidity Loggers	$200-1500	$85

Taking a step back, Jason shared an example of how hardware can give us the ability to measure things that we couldn't before.  If a library hooked up a XBox Kinect in front of a book display, they could measure patron behavior as they browsed.   Jason challenged us to make the tools that measure the future which will provide more data about what our patrons do in libraries and help focus our services to our patrons needs.

Evolving Libraries: What's At Our Core? by Rudy Leon (slides)

Rudy heard John Seely Brown speak at Internet Librarian 2011 and was inspired to focus on the question "Who are libraries if we don't focus on warehousing books?"

Libraries provide access to information via findable content and learning environments and skilled professionals to teach, train and lead users to content.  Given this statement - she challenged us to consider if the physical items on shelves really define libraries or not.

Rudy stated that libraries are makerspaces. (Aside - Makerspaces has been the buzz topic in the library world & #MaykersMondays in the recent months.

Rudy left us with the following question to ponder: What are we, if all the books go away?

After her presentation there was a good 20 minutes of discussion and sharing between the session participants about what is working and what isn't working for them.  This session seemed to go fast and I felt like the discussion could have gone on for another hour. 

Change Without Pain by Laura Botts & Jill Sodt (slides)

We often assume that our staff will learn tools without much training during a period of change. Jill encouraged us to take time to survey your users and staff before implementing a new process and plan out support for the new tool/process.

Laura provided the tip of finding mentors online who have dealt with similar change.  These mentors could be within your professional organizations or by contacting the authors of articles or blogs.

Don't just look for a mentor, but also be a mentor to someone else.  Keep in mind "Someone knows what you need. Someone needs what you know."

"Lazy consensus" is a methodology for collaborative change.  When a decision needs to be made, someone steps up with a proposal about how to proceed and the whole group gets a certain amount of time to speak up against it.  The default answer is always yes.
  
Tools Providing Outcome Measures  - Charlotte Mecklenberg Library
Staff from the Charlotte Mecklenberg Library shared their stories about two development projects that helped provide better metrics around their summer reading program and year round programming. They tackled these development projects in response to having a 30% budget cut and feedback from a patron task force.
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library revolutionized its approach to summer reading and year-round programming by developing technology-based tools to provide outcome measures that are meaningful to funders and advocates.

• Program Portal - a cloud-based database that is accessible to all programming and management staff and facilitates planning, full-costing, and evaluation.
• Summer Reading Online Database - created for the annual summer reading program for all ages, captures in real time the progress toward specific targets such as minutes read per participant and completion rates, tied into research about summer learning loss.

I liked that the IT & Library staff presented the tools together at the conference. I would love to see more of these two groups presenting together.

Computers In Libraries #cildc Reflections

I attended the Computers In Libraries meeting at the Washington Hilton last week.

Conference Presentations & Information Today’s blog about the conference.

Twitter Stream & UStream Video Archive

This year’s CIL theme was “Creating Innovative Libraries”.  Each morning we had a keynote speaker talk about innovation and how it might apply to the Library environment.  In addition there was a program track on the first day that focused case studies and resources to Inspire Innovation.

Wednesday

Keynote Speaker

Jeffrey Phillips, OVO Vice President, started the conference sharing his thoughts on why innovation is important and how to shift the workplace culture to value & incorporate innovation as a normal operation.  He challenged us to think of innovation less as a concept and more as a discipline/methodology.  He shared how the balance between efficiency and innovation started out balanced in the 1970s, but processes like LEAN, Six Sigma and outsourcing turned the focus on efficiency more and less on innovation.  

Jeffrey claimed that middle managers are the key to innovation because they are tasked with getting the business as usual tasks done and often have to sacrifice the innovation activities.  Three factors are needed to turn innovation into a business as usual task: 1) communication and commitment while doing annual planning, 2) rebalance of skill sets to allow for trend spotting and customer insights and 3) modify compensation and recognition policies to include innovation activities.  Check out OVO’s Innovate on Purpose blog for more on sustainable, repeatable innovation.

Inspiring Innovation – Learning to Dream Big

Kateri Abeyta from Denver Public Library and Jason Clark from Montana State University Libraries talked about their Think Tank type groups they started.  Kateri’s group is called TIGers, Technology Interest Group.  They chose a less formal approach meeting after hours outside of work with staff-led sessions. These informal discussions have helped inform the overall 3-5 year technology plan.  Jason’s Think Tank is more brownbag focused and serves as a way to talk and learn about emerging technology on a monthly basis.   Other examples of Library Think Tanks are Harvard’s Library Lab and UVA’s Scholars’ Lab.

Navigating Information Overload – Super Searcher Secrets For Success

Every conference you have some sessions that are your “guilty pleasure.”  At ALA, these sessions tend to be author and/or publisher book buzz related.  At CIL, it is sessions done by a speaker that always have something new to share. 

Mary Ellen Bates’ session on search tips fell into this category.   She talked about creating higher value searching by taking time to think about your search before you start.  What will the user use the search result for?  What format is the user expecting? What is “good enough” outcome versus a “perfect” outcome? She suggested that as you perform the search give yourself a deadline on the research and check-in every 15 minutes.  Librarians are “information pitbulls” and “we want to keep searching.” One of my favorite quotes from her talk was “Searching on the web is like walking down the candy aisle.”  Mary Ellen encouraged us to provide context around the search results we provide back to the user.  What did we find as well as what we didn’t find.  If possible, try to visualize the results.   

Search Websites to Check out

Yahoo Clues – similar to Google Trends, still in beta but has good visualization tools

Samepoint – social media search, can capture negative and positive tone

Social Mention – social media search, include analytics

Inspiring Innovation – Creative Ideas, Insights & Trends: Innovation To Go

Fellow DC/SLA members, Chris Olson from Chris Olson Associates & Barbara Ferry from National Geographic Society shared their thoughts on innovation. Chris shared some websites to collaborate and read about innovation.  Check out her presentation for a full list, but here are a few that stood out to me.  Ideascale is a collaborative space to have staff suggest and vote on innovative ideas.  SmartPlanet focuses on innovation in the world around us.  Barbara shared how the National Geographic Library is reinventing themselves in light of a major cut in staffing.  She shared an S-Curve graph of the shape of change created by Dr. Peter Bishop who teaches Future Studies at the University of Houston.  The S-Curve shows a progression of “No problem” to “Some kind of change” happens to “What is going on Here” to “Whew.”   Sometimes in order to adapt to change and move into the future, you have to let go of the past.  Barbara encouraged her staff to look for new opportunities to integrate with other areas of the company knowing that they didn’t have to provide new services completely themselves just help to facilitate the information sharing.

Web Presence – Getting to Know HTML5 & CSS3

This session was another “guilty pleasure” in the sense that it allowed my programming self to get a quick fix on some new techniques. Also I know that at NPR we are trying to integrate HTML5 & CSS3 into our product development work.  Jason Clark from Montana State University Libraries gave this presentation.  In his view, HTML5 is really moving the web browser from a document display engine to a software development tool.  Highlights of his talk can be found here.  If you are curious to see a example website using CSS3 (styling of elements of a webpage) check out Things We Left On The Moon.

Inspiring Innovation – Strategic Decisions For Insourcing & Outsourcing Innovation Projects

My colleague Hannah & myself put together a small panel to talk about the competing challenges of needing to reinforce our own competencies to innovate with those of consultants. Mary Talley, from TalleyPartners, shared why you might consider bringing in outside expertise to staff your projects.  Angela Titone, shared her experience with using consultants over at the Consumers Electronics Association.  Hannah shared examples from our new archives database Artemis & Elections database project work.   

Thursday

Keynote Speaker

Susan Hildreth, Institute of Museum and Library Services Director, shared how IMLS’ strategic plan is fostering innovative libraries through many different grant programs. She also spoke a bit about the Digital Public Library of America project which IMLS is a funder.

Services With a Twist – Who Let the Dog In?

Julian Aiken & Femi Cadinus from the Yale Law Library shared their case study of implementing a service dog as a library service for the Law students.  NPR’s story of this new service was actually played during the presentation.  Check out the story – it has some great audio of Monty, the therapy dog. 

Ebook Evolution & Revolution – Ebook Trends: Info Pro Perspectives

While ebooks don’t play a huge role in our library services at NPR, I was curious to check out a few sessions just to get a feel for the latest issues.  Plus I wanted to support some fellow Twitter librarians whom I knew were passionate about this subject.  Check out the video archive to see the full talk. Andy Woodworth, who co-authored The eBook User’s Bill of Rights, summarized the ebook world right now as “everything is amazing and no one is happy.”  Sarah Houghton, from San Rafael Public Library, compiled the different lies that publishers, library ebook vendors and librarians tell about ebooks.  Michael Porter, from LibraryRenewal, defined libraries as content plus community and shared LibraryRenewal’s vision for creating a sustainable and practical solutions for sharing electronic content.

21^st-Century Library Systems & Operations – Open Source Trends & Migrations

Marshall Breeding, from Vanderbilt University, shared the latest trends on open source ILS systems.  Irene McDermott, from Crowell Public Library, shared their experience with migrating to an open source ILS LibLime Koha in just over 3 months.  There was an interesting dynamic in this session as the Koha tool is offered in different versions – one open source and one proprietary via LibLime.  In the time that we started to investigate open source options for NPR, there has been a lot of press for Koha & Evergreen two open source ILS systems.

Services With a Twist – Creative Computing on Campus: Digital Media Production

This session focused on two case studies of academic libraries setting up digital labs within their Library to support media production needs of their students. Danielle Whren Johnson, from Loyola/Notre Dame Library, shared how they were able to plan for a Digital Lab as part of a Library redesign in 2006 - 2008. Their biggest challenge is the location of the lab is not conducive to walk-by traffic and it requires additional marketing.  Rhonda Moore & John Maclachlan, from McMaster University, shared how their Lyons New Media center was established and the services that they offer.  

Battledecks – Innovation … Now what?

If you’ve never seen a Battledecks session, I would encourage you to check one out in person.  Basically there are a group of “competitors” who give a “presentation” on a “topic” based on totally random slides.  The winner is the person who gets through the allotted slides in the allotted time and can deliver a consistent message.  Here is CILDC 2012’s Battledecks champion Andromeda Yelton’s first win at Battledecks at ALA Midwinter 2010 in Boston.

Friday

Keynote Speaker

Michael Edson, Web & New Media Strategy Director at the Smithsonian, challenged us to Go Boldly Into the Present.  He feels that strategy should be a physical tool that makes something happen and innovation is an endurance race.  Innovation is likely to happen somewhere else not within an organization.  He challenged us to find a way to get ideas and volunteer labor into our organizations.  Innovation happens at the edges, but we need to bring that innovation into the core activities.  Michael ended his talk with the message of Think big, start small and move fast.  This keynote was one of the best I’ve seen in the past year.  Very inspiring, with a good mixture of humor and seriousness.

Reaching Out, Engaging & Marketing – Leveraging Your Social Media to Gain Friends & Influence People

Julie Theado, from Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Social Media Manager, shared their usage of social media tools to help pass a levy to support Library services as well as engaging their community of users.  She encouraged a usage of an editorial calendar to generate weekly features and consistent postings on Facebook and Twitter.  Posts on Facebook should follow a 70-20-10 rule; 70% promotional items, 20% engagement with community and 10% about the Library.  Look to create quality experiences and have measurable objectives.  While NPR’s Library users are internal, I would like to see us start to share our stories and experiences via social media as well.

Reaching Out, Engaging & Marketing – No More Excuses

Janie Hermann, from Princeton Public Library and Nancy Dowd, from EBSCO’s NoveList shared their strategies for Library marketing and engaging your community. Most libraries don’t have full-time marketing staff, but yet we are tasked with having to promote services and a brand. Research your customers’ needs and find the gaps between those needs and your libraries services.  From the gaps – create a plan to new products and/or services. Listen to your customers on social media and respond.  Library As Incubator Project, started by a group of LIS students, is a collaborative space to share advocacy & marketing ideas for libraries.

Ebook Evolution & Revolution – The Future of Ebooks

I attended this ebook session because it was a panel of library vendors and I was curious what their perspective was compared to Thursday’s session.  I felt that Andromeda, from Gluejar, and Ken from EBSCO brought the best perspectives to the conversation.  The Overdrive rep was too much on the defensive and the Ingram/Coutts rep just lost me completely.  I’m curious to see how the ebook world & policies change over the next year. 

ALA Midwinter Reflections

I spent the past 5 days in Dallas, Texas attending ALA's 2012 Midwinter Conference. This trip was my first visit to Texas and I wasn't sure what to expect.

After arriving in town and checking into my hotel on Thursday afternoon, I walked around downtown to get a sense of how long it would take to walk to the convention center. Downtown Dallas is eerily quiet with pedestrians. I found out later that there are underground tunnels between some of the buildings.  I walked by the spot where JFK was shot.  The West End part of town has some Texas and cowboy gift shops which were amusing to explore.  Thursday night I had dinner with the fabulous Courtney Young and Michael Porter at the Dallas Fish Market.

Friday was split between a pre-conference on the Drupal platform and meeting the NMRT Emerging Leaders Project group. I've been curious about Drupal as I've seen the Library community embrace that platform as well as NPR's Argo, StateImpact and Digital Services have embraced the platform as well. While my Drupal skills are very limited right now, I'm excited to build out a sample site over the next couple of months.  At lunch, I met with the 2012 Emerging Leaders Project Group M who are going to be working on translating the Spectrum Scholarship Professional Fair to a broader ALA Professional Fair.  As an Emerging Leader alum, I'm very excited to be mentoring this group over the next six months.  Friday afternoon I walked around the exhibit hall with fellow librarian Danielle Johnson whom I've just recently connected with on Twitter.  We forged our way through the book publishers to find ARCs and totebags to bring home with us.  Afterwards we had a lovely dinner at The Owner's Box at the Omni hotel.

Saturday was full of NMRT activities starting with our conference orientation session.  We had a nice crowd of conference attendees who were experiencing their first conference.  Next up was the NMRT Board meeting. After a quick lunch and drop off of my laptop, I went to the NMRT Membership and Committee Interest meeting.  NMRT President, Linda Crook, NMRT Secretary Rebecca Miller, NMRT Member Services Director Coral Sheldon-Hess and I shared our experiences with NMRT and answered questions about ALA and volunteering for NMRT.  Next up was a shift greeting folks at the NMRT Resume Review Service.  The last NMRT event of the day was our social, which was very well attended by our roundtable and even some alumni. Saturday ended with dinner and drinks with fellow 2010 Emerging Leaders Leo Lo, Elizabeth Moreau and Kirby McCurtis.

Sunday's activities started mid-morning which was a welcomed change from the past couple of days.  NMRT and LLAMA partnered together to create a New Leaders Discussion Group. The three discussion starters were very inspiring and the discussions afterwards where very interesting.  Next I attended a session explaining what World Book Night is and how to get involved.  If you are interested in giving books to non-readers, check out their website. In the afternoon, I attended part of LLAMA's Leadership Development Seminar and did another greeter shift at the NMRT Resume Review Service.

Monday's conference sessions were both sponsored by ALCTS. First was the Heads of Cataloging Departments Interest Group meeting which focused on cataloging as a public service.  We heard 4 presentations on how different cataloging and metadata service departments are reinventing and repositioning themselves to provide cataloging as a public service. It was interesting to hear the concerns, struggles and successes of other libraries in regards to cataloging their resources.  The second session was author Steve Berry talking about preservation and his latest books.  Steve was a delight to listen to and had the crowd laughing.    In the afternoon, I walked up to Arts district and took the M-Line Trolley to uptown Dallas.


While I didn't get to attend many author talks or other programs, I do feel that this conference was successful and I learned more about NMRT and our members. Other noteworthy sessions that I wasn't able to attend personally include the Occupy Wall Street Librarians, the director of the Dallas Public Library, a sing-along with Lisa Loeb and a whole lot more which is captured on American Libraries website.

Recap of Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Plenary Meeting

On October 21st, I attended a Plenary Meeting for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) project at the National Archives. Below is a short recap of the sessions

The goal of this Plenary Meeting was to kick off the start of implementation of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Representatives from the funders, key government agencies and teams who participated in the Beta Sprints presented to a crowd of over 300 librarians, IT folks, and members of the public at the National Archives.
Highlights from the meeting can be found here.

They had two graphic artists capturing the discussion from each session visually which I thought was a creative idea.

Quotes from the speakers that I captured:
"We need an infrastructure of ideas just like we need roads & infrastructure" - James Leach, National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman

"We need to move from a boutique model to a Wal-Mart model" (on the digitization efforts around the country so far) - Peter Baldwin, Arcadia Fund

"Collaboration is key to long-term success with digitization" - Susan Hildreth, Institute for Museum and Library Services Director

"I want to digitize the whole (NARA) collection" - David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

"Our goal is to have the public consider using DPLA when they are trying to find an answer to a question - similar to "Let's google it...." - "I'm going to DPLA it" - Peggy Rudd, Texas State Library and Archives Commission

MUST READ: Amanda French's remarks (Center for History and New Media) Aubade: The Soul and Body of a Library

"We are the generation that can give access to the analogue past" - Jill Cousins, Europeana

Beta Sprint Projects
10 of the 40 projects submitted were given a chance to show what they accomplished over the summer.
Check out this page to see live demos of all the projects.

Workstreams
There are 6 topical areas (Audience & Participation, Content & Scope, Financial/Business Models, Governance, Legal Issues, and Technical Aspects)  that this implementation is being split into.  The public is able to provide input to the 10-15 "leaders" for each topic area.  You can linger on the individual listservs and/or review the wiki pages where discussions for each area will be captured.  For more information here

Conference Happenings - Philadelphia & New Orleans

Last month I was fortunate enough to travel to both SLA 2011 conference in Philadelphia and ALA 2011 conference in New Orleans.  Below are my musings on the sessions and events that I attended.  Enjoy!

SLA 2011 - Philadelphia

Sunday

In the morning, I attended the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) where the chapter and division leaderships gather to hear updates from the President, Treasurer and other leaders across the association.  This session is open to anyone interested in serving in a leadership role in SLA.  The main topics discussed were SLA’s 2015 strategic vision, a possible revamp of the continuing education (CE) programs at conference, the association’s financial picture, upgrade of the chapter, division & caucus websites and the results of the James Kane’s loyalty survey.   Also the SLA Board candidates did a quick talk on their reason for running for office and their goals for the association if elected.  You can read about the candidates and their responses on the SLA blog.   The candidates for President-Elect are also coming to DC for a meet and greet in August.  I found attending last year’s session was helpful in just seeing how each candidate presented themselves.

Sunday afternoon I attended the News Division tour of Rosenbach Museum & Library.  This museum was located in the lovely and quaint neighborhood of Rittenhouse Square.  The Rosenbach brothers were rare book & antique collectors.  Being originally from the Philadelphia area, it was interesting to learn about some local celebrities as well as see their collections. 

I also attended the opening session where New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman spoke.  He talked about globalization and the impact on information technology.  His book, The World is Flat, came out in 2005 and a lot of changed in the past 6 years.   Donald Hawkins wrote a nice summary of the talk for Information Today. 

I ended the day with a nice celebration at the National Constitution Center with other leaders and conference attendees.  

Monday

I attended a “fun” session called CSI Philadelphia where Gene Lanzillo from the Philadelphia FBI Office Evidence Response Team walked through a series of (fake) crime scene photographs and explained how he would approach the scene.  

In 1992, the Evidence Response Team was created.  The team members are part-time collecting evidence at scenes.  The rest of the time they are solving national security cases.  For every incident, the team members ask two main questions are 1) What is the context? 2) Is there a legal authority to be at the scene?

All FBI agents get one week of evidence training at Quantico.  Evidence Response team members get furthering training after they start their job.  The guiding principle they use is that when any two objects meet they leave evidence.

The rest of the day I prepped and ran a committee meeting and then went to the Mid-Atlantic Reception.

Tuesday

In the morning, I had breakfast with a library student and attended a few sessions. 

In the afternoon, I went to a session called Alternate Uses of a Library Degree.  A panel of 5 people was moderated by Ruth Wolfish.  Each panelist was given a set list of questions and they presented their answers to the attendees.  Overall all panelists identified that people who are able to be flexible, open minded and not afraid of change, have good communication skills, and can be resourceful are more likely to succeed at a non-traditional job.  A few other key points that surfaced were ‘Always say yes!’ and ‘Opportunities come through networking’.

Kim Dority wrapped up the other panelists and reminded us of some basic career development guidelines:

• The nature of our profession is that we support each other
• We are all self-employed
• Change is always heading our way
• The investments you make in yourself will define your career opportunities
• Be planting seeds all the time
• Forget about perfection, focus on resiliency

In the evening, I took a little time out from conference activities and went to see the Phillies. 

Wednesday

First thing, I moderated a Technical Standards Update session with Todd Carpenter from NISO and Margie Hlava from Access Innovations. 

After that I tried to go to another session, but the room was full so I headed to the Reading Terminal Market for some lunch.  Before heading home to DC, I attended the closing session to hear James Kane speak again.  His slides can be found here.

ALA Annual – New Orleans 

Thursday

I arrived in New Orleans and found my hotel with no problems.  First conference activity ended up being on the famous Bourbon Street at the Royal Sonesta Hotel.  Linda Crook, incoming NMRT President, and I represented NMRT at the Spectrum Scholar Professional Options Fair.  Divisions and Roundtables from across ALA and other organizations as well gathered in a ballroom to share what opportunities and activities they could provide for these diverse group of librarians.  For me it was a good challenge to get my NMRT elevator speech perfected as well as a great opportunity to meet some new folks.  I was so inspired by the event, that I’m already brainstorming how the same concept could be applied for NMRT members and other first time conference attendees with our orientation programs.

Friday

Unfortunately, I came to New Orleans with a little cold and had to take it slow in the morning.  But in the afternoon I did attend the first of two conference orientation sessions that NMRT provides.  It was great to meet some new librarians/library students as well as see what information is given at the orientation sessions.  My first conferences I did not attend one of the sessions and after hearing the session I kinda wish I had gone to one. 

In the afternoon, I attended the opening session with Dan Savage.  Prior to Dan speaking, Roberta Stevens, the President of ALA, provided a status on some of her initiatives as well as gave out awards to different librarians.  Also the mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, came out and spoke a bit about how the city is revitalizing itself and to thank ALA for being the first organization to hold a conference in New Orleans after Katrina hit.

Dan Savage’s talk was focused on how the It’s Get Better project got started.  It was really inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time to hear the statistics and stories that he shared.  I’ve heard Dan Savage speak live before, but it was as a “guest” on This American Life.  The session was in a huge auditorium and it was great to see that very few seats were empty.

In the evening, I went to the NMRT Mentoring Social.  I signed up to be a conference mentor for the first time this year.  I ended up being assigned two mentees and coincidently meet one of them on Thursday night.  As with every NMRT event, it was good to meet new librarians and library students and hear what issues are on their mind.  The job market is still tough for entry level positions and taking a risk to find that first library position is tough.

Saturday

Early morning start to attend the second NMRT orientation session.  I was glad to see a tad bit more interaction between participants and the panel at this session.  

After that session it was time for the NMRT Executive Board meeting.  We had a nice group of existing and new board members (and guests) join us.  We presented Past President Courtney Young with a thank you/birthday gift.  Current President Deana Groves was also presented with a thank you gift.   The incoming board was tasked with reviewing NMRT’s strategic plan to align it with ALA’s 2015 strategic plan.

I took a short break for lunch at the Riverwalk shops next to the convention center and then went to the NMRT President’s Program which focused on professional involvement at the local and national level.  The panelists were very enthusiastic and helpful about how they found opportunities to serve on committees and grow their skills.

Next up I went to hear a presentation on linked data within authority lists and vocabularies at the LOC booth.    The presentation walked through LOC’s experimentation with surfacing their authority lists & vocabularies via linked data. Linked data was definitely one of the buzz words/topics at conference this year.  I heard that one linked data session had over 200 people interested in it (via the conference scheduler), but the room only held 100 people.  

A new session for NMRT was a joint discussion group with LLAMA.  Three panelists gave 8-10 minute talks on how they became new leaders and/or leadership topics.  After that the attendees broke up into small groups and discussed the topics that the panelists had talked about.  Again it was a nice way to meet and network as well as share experiences with leadership.  I’m excited that NMRT & LLAMA are starting up a partnership and I’m looking forward to more opportunities to network between the two groups.

In the evening, I went to the Scholarship Bash at the World War II museum.  It was a nice atmosphere to mingle and enjoy the museum as well.  The highlight of the evening for me was the two musical groups – a small jazz ensemble and a trio of women who sang songs from the WWII era.

Sunday

This day was my busiest of the whole conference.  In the morning I had two meetings regarding possible partnerships with NMRT.  As incoming NMRT Vice President, it was a different conference experience for me since I had to split my conference activities between NMRT activities/discussions, professional development sessions and author related sessions. 

In the afternoon, we had a NMRT membership meeting.  While the group that gathered was small, it was helpful to hear what interests, concerns and questions they had about ALA, conference and the library world.  I was impressed with how eager they were to volunteer and learn more about NMRT & ALA as a whole. 

After a quick Starbucks trip, I attended the ALA President’s Program with Sue Gardner from the WikiMedia Foundation. She used to be a producer for the CBC so there was an interesting journalism twist to her talk.  We’ve had Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales speak at work a few times, so it was also good to hear Wikipedia spoken about from a different perspective as well.

In the evening, I went to two back to back receptions for NMRT.  First up was the Student Reception where the Student Chapter of the Year award was presented as well as the NMRT Video award.  After that I headed over the NMRT/Merritt Fund Reception at a local art gallery.  The space was quaint, but unfortunately the band playing made it almost impossible to talk and network. 

Monday

It was an early morning again to attend the Legislative Assembly meeting to represent NMRT.  While I was aware of ALA’s Washington Office, I wasn’t aware that legislative representatives from across the organization meet to report on their activities at conference.  I learned a lot and there are some good opportunities for NMRT members to become involved in legislation activities.

The rest of the day I got to listen to three different authors back to back.  First up was Marilyn Johnson who wrote a wonderful non-fiction book about librarians last year.  She is active in ALTAFF’s “Authors for Libraries” program.  She shared how she came to write a book about librarians as well as how writers need libraries as much as libraries need writers.   After that I briefly sat in Jeff Jarvis’ talk about privacy versus public in the digital age.  He has a new book coming out in September called Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live.  Last, I went to a reading by Eleanor Brown of her first book Weird Sisters.  I read an advanced reading copy of this book a few months ago and loved it. Eleanor has a lovely personality and even though the crowd was small for her reading, I enjoyed her talk immensely. Even though I have a copy of her book already, I stood in line for her to sign a hardcover copy. 

In the afternoon I went with a group of librarians to tour an independent jazz radio station – WWOZ.  It was fascinating to see how a local radio station archives their collection and operates.  It turns out that WWOZ is digitizing their CD collection in a similar method that NPR is using for our commercial music collection.  The Library of Congress also helped to archive and preserve some performances they had on DAT tapes and other older formats so that WWOZ could reuse in the future. 

The last session of the day was Battledecks 2011 which challenges participants to get through a random 10 powerpoint slides with 5 minutes while talking about the future of libraries.  I’ve heard about this event at past conferences, but I have never attended in person.  Definitely a fun way for conference attendees to “let their hair down” at the end of the conference and just have some fun.

Tuesday

Last day in New Orleans started out with the closing session with SNL alumni Molly Shannon.  She wrote a children’s book called Tilly the Trickster.  Molly talked about how she became interesting in acting, comedy and finally ended up at SNL in New York.  She explained how skits are written and chosen for the live show.  She called her time there a comedy boot camp.  While Molly was clearly a little nervous, her reading of her book at the end was a lovely way to wrap up this conference.

I  spent the next 4 hours or so being a tourist – riding the streetcar and exploring the French Quarter a bit – before heading to the airport.